The Kingdom of Georgia (), also known as the Georgian Empire, was a medieval Eurasian monarchy that was founded in  AD. It reached its Golden Age of political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar the Great from the 11th to 13th centuries. Georgia became one of the pre-eminent nations of the Christian East and its pan-Caucasian empire and network of tributaries stretching from Eastern Europe to Anatolia and northern frontiers of Iran, while also maintaining religious possessions abroad, such as the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem and the Monastery of Iviron in Greece. It was the principal historical precursor of present-day Georgia.

Lasting for several centuries, the kingdom fell to the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, but managed to re-assert sovereignty by the 1340s. The following decades were marked by the Black Death, as well as numerous invasions under the leadership of Timur, who devastated the country's economy, population, and urban centers. The Kingdom's geopolitical situation further worsened after the conquest of the Byzantine Empire and the Empire of Trebizond by the Ottoman Turks. As a result of these processes, by the end of the 15th century Georgia turned into a fractured entity. This whole series of events also led to the final collapse of the kingdom into anarchy by 1466 and the mutual recognition of its constituent kingdoms of Kartli, Kakheti, and Imereti as independent states between 1490 and 1493—each led by a rival branch of the Bagrationi dynasty, and into five semi-independent principalities—Odishi, Guria, Abkhazia, Svaneti, and Samtskhe.

Background

Early Georgian kingdoms were reduced to feudal regions over the course of the Roman–Persian wars. The area then fell under the control of the early Muslim conquests of the 7th century.

Iberian princes from the Bagrationi dynasty fought against the Arab occupation and came to rule the Tao-Klarjeti region. They established the Kouropalatate of Iberia as a nominal vassal of the Byzantine Empire. By 888, they had gained control of the central Georgian land, Kartli, and restored the Iberian kingship. The Bagrationi dynasty was unable to maintain their kingdom, and it was divided between the three branches of the family. The main branch controlled Tao, while another controlled Klarjeti.

In 736, Marwan ibn Muhammad's invasion of Georgia was repelled by Abkhazians, Lazic and Iberian allies. This successful defense along with increasing struggles against Byzantium helped lead to a process of unification of the Georgian states into a single feudal monarchy. The Georgian Church broke away from Constantinople in the 9th century, instead recognizing the authority of the Catholicate of Mtskheta. The church language was changed from Greek to Georgian.

History

Unification of the Georgian State

During the 10th century, David III of Tao invaded the Duchy of Kartli, giving it to his adopted son, who would later be known as Bagrat III of Georgia, with his biological father, Gurgen of Iberia, as regent. In 994, Gurgen was crowned King of the Iberians. In 975, supported by the Duke of Kartli Ivane Marushisdze and David, Bagrat claimed the throne of Kartli, becoming King of the Kartlians. During this time, the Kingdom of Abkhazia in what is today northeastern Georgia was under the rule of Theodosius the Blind, who did away with Abkhazian traditions. In 978, the Abkhazian aristocracy, dissatisfied with the rule of Theodosius, performed a coup d'état and invited Bagrat to claim the throne of Abkhazia.

Gurgen died in 1008, leaving his throne for Bagrat, allowing Bagrat to become the first king of a unified Abkhazia and Iberia. In his early reign, Bagrat pressed a claim to the kingdom of Khakheti-Hereti to the east, and annexed it in 1010. Bagrat also reduced the autonomy of dynastic princes to stabilize his realm, with his fears focusing on the Klarjeti line of the Bagrationi. In order to secure the throne for his son, George I of Georgia, Bagrat tricked his cousins into a meeting and imprisoned them, and his cousins' children fled to Constantinople, where they requested the aid of the Byzantine Empire to take back their patrimonial land.

Bagrat's reign secured a victory for the Bagratids of Georgia, ending the power-struggles that had plagued the region for centuries. Bagrat had a peaceful foreign policy, successfully avoiding conflicts with the Byzantines and nearby Muslim realms, even though some of David's territory, such as Tao and Tbilisi, remained in Byzantine and Arab control, respectively.

War and peace with Byzantium

George I's reign was known primarily for its war against the Byzantines. This war had its roots in the 990s, when David III, after losing a rebellion against the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, agreed to cede his lands in Tao to the emperor upon his death. George I, in an attempt to take back the Kuropalates' land, occupied Tao starting from 1015 or 1016, during a Byzantine war with the Bulgarian Empire. When Bulgaria was dealt with in 1021, Basil II turned his attention to Georgia, leading to a two-year-long war and an eventual Byzantine victory. George, as a result, had to abandon his claims in Tao and surrender some of his southwestern lands, which were eventually made into the theme of Iberia. George's son, who would eventually become Bagrat IV, was also given to Basil as a hostage.

Bagrat IV spent the next three years in Constantinople, being released in 1025. George I's death in 1027 saw him succeeded by the 8-year-old Bagrat. By the time Bagrat ascended to the throne, the Bagratids' unification drive had gained much momentum. Many of the Georgian lands, such as Tao, Tbilisi, Kakheti and Hereti, were either under the rule of foreign empires or of independent kings. The loyalty of Georgian nobles was also questionable. Bagrat IV's childhood saw the regency increase the influence of the nobility, something which he tried to stop when he assumed his full powers.

Great Turkish Invasion

In the later half of the 11th century, the Seljuq Turks invaded nearby regions, prompting greater cooperation between the Georgian and Byzantine governments. In a political arrangement, Bagrat's daughter Maria married the Byzantine co-emperor Michael VII Ducas at some point between 1066 and 1071.

In 1065 the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan attacked Kartli, taking Tbilisi and building a mosque. During the internecine conflict between Seljuk heirs, George II of Georgia defeated a Seljuk governor, Sarang of Ganja, at the Battle of Partskhisi in 1074. In 1076, the Seljuk sultan Malik Shah I attacked again. Georgia eventually submitted to Malik Shah, paying an annual tribute in order to have peace.

Georgian Reconquista

David IV

George II ceded the crown to his 16-year-old son David IV in 1089. Under the tutelage of his court minister, George of Chqondidi, David IV suppressed the feudal lords and centralized the power. In 1089–1100, he organized military action to destroy Seljuk troops, beginning the resettlement of occupied regions. In 1099, David IV refused to pay tribute to the Seljuqs.

By 1104, the local king of the eastern Georgia provide of Kakheti, Aghsartan II, was captured by David IV's supporters, reuniting the area. The following year, David IV defeated a Seljuk force in the Battle of Ertsukhi. Over the course of 1110 to 1118, David IV captured the fortresses of Samshvilde, Rustavi, Gishi, and Lori.

Starting in 1118 through 1120, David IV began major military reforms, including the resettlement of several thousand Kipchaks. In exchange, each Kipchak family provided David IV with a soldier, allowing him to establish a standing army. This alliance was aided by David IV's earlier marriage to the Khan's daughter.

Entering 1120, David IV became more expansionist. He invaded the neighbouring Shirvan area and the town of Qabala. From there, he began to successfully attack the Seljuk in the eastern and southwestern areas of Transcaucasia. In 1121, Sultan Mahmud b. Muhammad declared a holy war on Georgia. but David IV defeated his army at the Didgori. Soon after, David IV secured Tbilisi, one of the last Muslim enclave remaining in Georgia, and the capital was moved there, beginning Georgia's Golden Age.

In 1123, David IV liberated Dmanisi, the last Seljuk stronghold in southern Georgia. By 1124, Shirvan was captured along with the Armenian city of Ani. This expanded the kingdom's borders to the Araxes basin.

David IV founded the Gelati Academy, known at the time as "a new Hellas" and "a second Athos". David also composed the Hymns of Repentance, eight free-verse psalms.

Reign of Demetrius I and George III

The kingdom continued to flourish under Demetrius I, the son of David.As soon as, he ascended to the throne, the neighbouring Muslim rulers began attacking Georgia from all sides. The Seljuqid sultans fought to restore the rule of the Shirvanshahs. Shirvan's large Muslim population rose against Georgia. This probably happened in 1129 or 1130, when Demetrius restored the Shirvanshahs to power in Shirvan, installing on the throne Manuchihr II, the husband of his daughter Rusudan. The Shirvanshahs had to provide the Georgian king with troops whenever the latter demanded it. In 1130, Georgia was attacked by the Sultan of Ahlat, Shah-Armen Sökmen II ( 1128–1183). This war was started by the passage of Ani into the hands of the Georgians; Demetrius I had to compromise and give up Ani to the Shaddadid emir Fadl ibn Mahmud on terms of vassalage and inviolability of the Christian churches. In 1139, Demetrius raided the city of Ganja in Arran. He brought the iron gate of the defeated city to Georgia and donated it to Gelati Monastery at Kutaisi. Despite this brilliant victory, Demetrius could hold Ganja only for a few years. In reply to this, the sultan of the Eldiguzids attacked Ganja several times, and in 1143 the town again fell to the sultan. According to Mkhitar Gosh, Demetrius ultimately gained possession of Ganja, but, when he gave his daughter in marriage to the sultan, he presented the latter with the town as dowry, and the sultan appointed his own emir to rule it. Thus, Ganja once again fell into the hands of the Eldiguzids.

In 1130, Demetrius revealed a plot of nobles, probably involving the king's half-brother Vakhtang. The King arrested the conspirators and executed one of their leaders, Ioanne Abuletisdze, in 1138 (or 1145).

Fadl's successor, Fakr al-Din Shaddad, a Shaddadid emir of Ani asked for Saltuk's daughter's hand, however Saltuk refused him. This caused a deep hatred in Shaddad towards Saltuk. In 1154 he planned a plot and formed a secret alliance with the Demetrius I. While a Georgian army waited in ambush, he offered tribute to Saltukids, ruler of Erzerum and asked the latter to accept him as a vassal. In 1153–1154, Emir Saltuk II marched on Ani, but Shaddad informed his suzerain, the King of Georgia, of this. Demetrius marched to Ani, defeated and captured the emir. At the request of neighbouring Muslim rulers and released him for a ransom of 100,000 dinars, paid by Saltuk's sons in law and Saltuk swore not to fight against the Georgians he returned home.

Although his reign saw a disruptive family conflict related to royal succession, Georgia remained a centralized power with a strong military. A talented poet, Demetrius also continued his father's contributions to Georgia's religious polyphony. The most famous of his hymns is Thou Art a Vineyard.

Demetrius was succeeded by his son George III in 1156, beginning a stage of more offensive foreign policy. In the same year of his ascension to the throne, Giorgi launched a successful campaign against the Shah-Armens, raided their lands and turn back with prisoners and booty. In 1161, George III took over Ani and appointed his general Ivane Orbeli  as its ruler. A coalition consisting of the ruler of Ahlat, Shah-Armen Sökmen II, the ruler of Diyarbekir, Kotb ad-Din il-Ghazi, Al-Malik of Erzerum, and others was formed as soon as the Georgians seized the town, but the latter defeated the allies. 1162 In the summer, the Georgian army, whose number reached 30,000, took Dvin. In response to this, Eldiguz Soon he proceeded northward to recover the city of Dvin. A coalition of Muslim rulers - Shah-Armen Seyfettin Beytemür, Ahmadili Arslan-Aba, Arzen emir Fakhr ul-Din and Saltuk II, led by Eldiguz took the fortress of Gagi, laid waste as far as the region of Gagi and Gegharkunik, seized prisoners and booty, and then moved to Ani capturing and granting it to Shaddadid emir Shahanshah ibn Mahmud. The Muslim rulers were jubilant, and they prepared for a new campaign. However, this time they were forestalled by George III, who marched into Arran at the beginning of 1166, occupied a region extending to Ganja, devastated the land and turn back with prisoners and booty. The Shaddadids ruled Ani for about 10 years as vassals of Eldgiz, but in 1174 George III took the Shahanshah as a prisoner and occupied Ani once again, appointing Ivane Orbeli as governor.
After that, Eldiguz together with other Muslim rulers invaded Georgia twice, the first invasion was successfully repelled by the Georgians, but during the second invasion Georgians lost Ani and in 1175 it was recaptured by
Shaddadids.

Golden age

The unified monarchy maintained its precarious independence from the Byzantine and Seljuk empires throughout the 11th century, and flourished under David IV the Builder ( 1089–1125), who repelled the Seljuk attacks and essentially completed the unification of Georgia with the re-conquest of Tbilisi in 1122. In spite of repeated incidents of dynastic strife, the kingdom continued to prosper during the reigns of Demetrios I (1125–1156), George III (1156–1184), and especially, his daughter Tamar (1184–1213).

With the decline of Byzantine power and the dissolution of the Great Seljuk Empire, Georgia became one of the pre-eminent nations of the region, stretching, at its largest extent, from present-day Southern Russia to Northern Iran, and westwards into Anatolia. The Kingdom of Georgia brought about the Georgian Golden Age, which describes a historical period in the High Middle Ages, spanning from roughly the late 11th to 13th centuries, when the kingdom reached the zenith of its power and development. The period saw the flourishing of medieval Georgian architecture, painting and poetry, which was frequently expressed in the development of ecclesiastic art, as well as the creation of first major works of secular literature. It was a period of military, political, economical and cultural progress. It also included the so-called Georgian Renaissance (also called Eastern Renaissance), during which various human activities, forms of craftsmanship and art, such as literature, philosophy and architecture thrived in the kingdom.

King Tamar's reign

She not only shielded much of her Empire from further Turkish invasions but successfully pacified internal tensions, including a coup organized by her Russian husband Yury Bogolyubsky, prince of Novgorod.

Early in the 1190s, the Georgian government began to interfere in the affairs of the Eldiguzids and of the Shirvanshahs, aiding rivaling local princes and reducing Shirvan to a tributary state. The Eldiguzid atabeg Abu Bakr attempted to stem the Georgian advance, but suffered a defeat at the hands of David Soslan at the Battle of Shamkor and lost his capital to a Georgian protégé in 1195. Although Abu Bakr was able to resume his reign a year later, the Eldiguzids were only barely able to contain further Georgian forays.

The question of liberation of Armenia remained of prime importance in Georgia's foreign policy. Tamar's armies led by two Christianised Kurdish generals, Zakare and Ivane Mkhargrdzeli (Zakarian) overran fortresses and cities towards the Ararat Plain, reclaiming one after another fortresses and districts from local Muslim rulers.

Alarmed by the Georgian successes, Süleymanshah II, the resurgent Seljuqid sultan of Rûm, rallied his vassal emirs and marched against Georgia, but his camp was attacked and destroyed by David Soslan at the Battle of Basian in 1203 or 1204. The chronicler of Tamar describes how the army was assembled at the rock-hewn town of Vardzia before marching on to Basian and how the queen addressed the troops from the balcony of the church. Exploiting her success in this battle, between 1203 and 1205 Georgians seized the town of Dvin and entered Ahlatshah possessions twice and subdued the emir of Kars (vassal of the Saltukids in Erzurum), the Ahlatshahs, and the emirs of Erzurum and Erzincan.In 1206, the Georgian army, under the command of David Soslan, captured Kars and other fortresses and strongholds along the Araxes. This campaign was evidently started because the ruler of Erzerum refused to submit to Georgia. The emir of Kars requested aid from the Ahlatshahs, but the latter was unable to respond, it was soon taken over by the Ayyubid Sultanate in 1207. By 1209 Georgia challenged Ayyubid rule in the Armenian highlands and led a liberation war for south Armenia. The Georgian army besieged Khlat. In response Ayyubid Sultan al-Adil I assembled and personally led a large Muslim army that included the emirs of Homs, Hama, and Baalbek as well as contingents from other Ayyubid principalities to support al-Awhad, emir of Jazira. During the siege, Georgian general Ivane Mkhargrdzeli accidentally fell into the hands of the al-Awhad on the outskirts of Ahlat. Using Ivane as a bargaining chip, al-Awhad agreed to release him in return for a thirty year truce with Georgia, thus ending the immediate Georgian threat to the Ayyubids. This brought the struggle for the Armenian lands to a stall, leaving the Lake Van region to the Ayyubids of Damascus.

Among the remarkable events of Tamar's reign was the foundation of the Empire of Trebizond on the Black Sea in 1204. This state was established in the northeast of the crumbling Byzantine Empire with the help of the Georgian armies, which supported Alexios I of Trebizond and his brother, David Komnenos, both of whom were Tamar's relatives. Alexios and David were fugitive Byzantine princes raised at the Georgian court. Tamar's Pontic endeavor can also be explained by her desire to take advantage of the Western European Fourth Crusade against Constantinople to set up a friendly state in Georgia's immediate southwestern neighborhood, as well as by the dynastic solidarity to the dispossessed Comnenoi. As a retribution for the attack on Georgian-controlled city of Ani, where 12,000 Christians were massacred in 1208, Georgia's Tamar the Great invaded and conquered the cities of Tabriz, Ardabil, Khoy, Qazvin and others along the way to Gorgan in northeast Persia.

The country's power had grown to such extent that in the later years of Tamar's rule, the Kingdom was primarily concerned with the protection of the Georgian monastic centers in the Holy Land, eight of which were listed in Jerusalem. Saladin's biographer Bahā' ad-Dīn ibn Šaddād reports that, after the Ayyubid conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, Tamar sent envoys to the sultan to request that the confiscated possessions of the Georgian monasteries in Jerusalem be returned. Saladin's response is not recorded, but the queen's efforts seem to have been successful. Ibn Šaddād furthermore claims that Tamar outbid the Byzantine emperor in her efforts to obtain the relics of the True Cross, offering 200,000 gold pieces to Saladin who had taken the relics as booty at the battle of Hattin – to no avail, however.

Jacques de Vitry, the Patriarch of Jerusalem at that time wrote:

Nomadic invasions

Reign of George IV and Rusudan

Mongol yoke

George V the Brilliant

In 1334, Shaykh Hasan of the Jalayir was appointed as governor of Georgia by Abu Sai'd. The young and weak politician Abu Sa'id Khan could not stop the decline of the state. In 1335, after his death, complete chaos began in the country, and in fact, Ilkhanate was divided into several neighboring states. George V took good advantage of the created situation. He stopped paying tribute to the Mongols and expelled their army from the country.he recovered restoring the country's previous strength and Christian culture.
During his reign, Armenian lands, including Ani, were part of the Kingdom of Georgia.
In the 1330s, George secured the southwestern province of Klarjeti against the advancing Ottoman tribesmen led by Orhan I. In 1341 he interfered in the power struggle in the neighbouring Empire of Trebizond and supported Anna Anachoutlou who ascended the throne with the help of the Laz, only to be put to death a year later. He also organized a successful campaign against Shirvan, a neighboring state of Georgia.
The restoration of the unity of Georgia, the liberation from the domination of the Mongols and the establishment of order in the country contributed to the revival of the country's economy. In the cities of Georgia, trade and craft production developed significantly; Trade and economic relations were restored not only with the cities of the Middle East and the North, but also with the city-states of Europe, particularly Northern Italy.
George V had friendly relations with King Philip VI of France, as evidenced by the correspondence between them. George V wrote to the King of France that he was ready to participate with him in the liberation of the "Holy Lands" of Syria-Palestine, and had 30,000 soldiers.
The widespread use of the Jerusalem cross in Medieval Georgia - an inspiration for the modern national flag of Georgia - is thought to date to the reign of George V.

Black Death
One of the primary reasons of Georgian political and military decline was the bubonic plague. It was first introduced in 1346 by the soldiers of George the Brilliant returning from a military expedition in south-western Georgia against invading Osmanli tribesmen. It is said that the plague wiped out a large part, if not half of the Georgian populace. This further weakened the integrity of the kingdom, as well as its military and logistic capabilities.

Timurid invasions

Turkmen invasions

After the devastating invasions by Timur and subsequent enfeeblement of the Kingdom of Georgia, it soon faced a new threat. Timur's death in 1405 marked the beginning of the end of his Empire, unified only by fear and blood of the subjected peoples. Turkomans, particularly the Kara Koyunlu clan, were among the first to rebel against Shah Rukh who ruled most of the Persia and Mawerannahr. Qara Yusuf, ruler of the Kara Koyunlu, defeated Shah Rukh, captured Baghdad, and repulsed Timurids from western Persia. After they established themselves as the new leading power in the middle east. They took advantage of the temporary weakness of Georgians and launched attacks against them, apparently in which, George VII of Georgia was killed. Constantine I of Georgia, fearing further encroachment, allied himself with the Shirvanshah Ibrahim I to counter Turkoman advance and engaged them in the Battle of Chalagan, in which he was defeated and taken captive. In captivity Constantine behaved very proudly, which infuriated Qara Yusuf to such an extent, that he ordered his, his half-brother David's and 300 Georgian nobles' execution. Kara Yusuf put Constantine to death by his own hand.

Alexander I of Georgia who sought to strengthen and restore his declining Kingdom, faced constant invasions by the tribal Turkomans. Alexander re-conquered Lori from the Turkomans in 1431, which was of great importance in securing of the Georgian borders. Around 1434/5, Alexander encouraged the Armenian prince Beshken II Orbelian to attack the Kara Koyunlu clansmen in Siunia and, for his victory, granted him Lori under terms of vassalage. In 1440, Alexander refused to pay tribute to Jahan Shah of the Kara Koyunlu. In March, Jahan Shah surged into Georgia with 20,000 troops, destroyed the city of Samshvilde and sacked the capital city Tbilisi. He massacred thousands of Christians, put heavy indemnity on Georgia, and returned to Tabriz. He also mounted a second military expedition against Georgia in 1444. His forces met those of Alexander's successor, King Vakhtang IV at Akhaltsikhe, but the fighting was inconclusive and Jahan Shah returned to Tabriz once more.

As a result of foreign and internal struggles unified Kingdom of Georgia ceased to exist after 1466 and was subdivided into several political units. Kara Koyunlu tribal confederation was destroyed by Aq Qoyunlu, their kin tribesmen who formed another confederation, which was similar in many ways to its predecessor. Aq Qoyunlu Turkomans naturally took advantage of the Georgian fragmentation. Georgia was at least twice attacked by Uzun Hasan, the prince of the Aq Qoyunlu in 1466, 1472 and possibly 1476–7. Bagrat VI of Georgia, temporary ruler of most of Georgia at the time, had to make peace with the invaders, by abandoning Tbilisi to the enemy. It was only after Uzun Hasan's death (1478) when the Georgians were able to recover their capital. In the winter of 1488, the Ak Koyunlu Turkomans led by Halil Bey attacked Georgia's capital Tbilisi, and took the city after a long-lasted siege in February 1489. Alexander II of Imereti, another pretender to the throne, took advantage of the Aq Qoyunlu Turkoman invasion of Kartli, and seized control of Imereti. Occupation of the capital did not last long and Constantine II of Georgia was able to repel them, but it was still costly to Georgians. Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty, formed an alliance with the Georgians in 1502 and decisively defeated Aq Qoyunlu in the same year, destroying their state and marking the end of their invasions.

Final disintegration

Government and society

Administration

Religion and culture
Between the 11th and the early 13th centuries, Georgia experienced a political, economical and cultural golden age, as the Bagrationi dynasty managed to unite western and eastern halves of the country into a single kingdom. To accomplish that goal, kings relied much on the prestige of the Church, and enrolled its political support by giving it many economical advantages, immunity from taxes and large appanages. At the same time, the kings, most notably David the Builder (1089–1125), used state power to interfere in church affairs. Notably, he summoned the 1103 council of Ruisi-Urbnisi, which condemned Armenian Miaphysitism in stronger terms than ever before, and gave unprecedented power, second only to the Patriarch, to his friend and advisor George of Chqondidi. For the following centuries, the Church would remain a crucial feudal institution, whose economical and political power would always be at least equal to that of the main noble families.

During the Middle Ages, Christianity was the central element of Georgian culture. Specific forms of art were developed in Georgia for religious purposes. Among them, calligraphy, polyphonic church singing, cloisonné enamel icons, such as the Khakhuli triptych, and the "Georgian cross-dome style" of architecture, which characterizes most medieval Georgian churches. The most celebrated examples of Georgian religious architecture of the time include the Gelati Monastery and Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi, the Ikalto Monastery complex and Academy, and the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta.

Outstanding Georgian representatives of Christian culture include Euthymius of Athos (Ekvtime Atoneli, 955–1028), George of Athos (Giorgi Atoneli, 1009–1065), Arsen Ikaltoeli (11th century), and Ephrem Mtsire, (11th century). Philosophy flourished between the 11th and 13th century, especially at the Academy of Gelati Monastery, where Ioane Petritsi attempted a synthesis of Christian, aristotelician and neoplatonic thought.

Tamar's reign also marked the continuation of artistic development in the country commenced by her predecessors. While her contemporary Georgian chronicles continued to enshrine Christian morality, the religious theme started to lose its earlier dominant position to the highly original secular literature. This trend culminated in an epic written by Georgia's national poet Rustaveli – The Knight in the Panther's Skin (Vepkhistq'aosani). Revered in Georgia as the greatest achievement of native literature, the poem  celebrates the Medieval humanistic ideals of chivalry, friendship and courtly love.

Missionary activities
From the 10th century, Georgians had started to play a significant role in preaching Christianity in the mountains of the Caucasus. "Wherever the missions of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem failed, the Georgian Church succeeded in bringing Jesus's Cross and preaching His Gospels". This is corroborated not only by old written sources, but also by Christian architectural monuments bearing Georgian inscriptions, which are still to be seen throughout the North Caucasus in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria. The golden age of Georgian monasticism lasted from the 9th to the 11th century. During that period, Georgian monasteries were founded outside the country, most notably on Mount Sinai, Mount Athos (the Iviron monastery, where the Theotokos Iverskaya icon is still located), and in Palestine.

Legacy

Artistic inheritance

See also
 List of the Kings of Georgia
 Georgian monarchs family tree
 Monarchism in Georgia
 Style of the Georgian sovereign
 List of historical states of Georgia

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

Former kingdoms
States and territories disestablished in 1466
Former monarchies of Europe
Former monarchies of Asia
History of Transcaucasia
Medieval Russia
Medieval Iran
States in medieval Anatolia
Medieval Azerbaijan
1008 establishments in Europe
1008 establishments in Asia
1490 disestablishments in Europe
1490 disestablishments in Asia
Former monarchies of West Asia
Christian states
Former empires
States and territories established in 1008

Kingdom of Georgia


God is a being or spirit worshipped as a deity. He is considered to be the creator of the universe in some religions. Theists believe that God created everything that exists and has ever existed. Some theists think God is immortal (cannot die) and has power without limits.  Deism is the belief that God exists, but God does not very often change or never changes things in the universe.  Pantheism is the belief that the universe is God, while atheism is the belief that there are no deities. Agnostics think we cannot know for sure whether God or gods exist, but still might (or might not) believe at least one deity exists.  People who believe that the word "God" should be defined before taking a theological position are ignostic.

In some religions, there is only one deity, God. This is called monotheism. Some monotheistic religions are the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), the Bahá'í Faith, and Sikhism. In other religions there are many gods. This is polytheism. Some polytheistic religions are Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, paganism, Wicca and some variants of Buddhism. Some say that there is one God who can come in many forms, or that there is one God that is more powerful than the other gods.

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There are different names for God in different religions. Some examples are Yahweh, Elohim in Judaism and Christianity, Allah in Islam, Baha in Bahá'í Faith, and Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism.

In English, people write the words "god" and "gods" are in lowercase letters. People that believe in only on god (monotheists) like to write God with a capital letter. Some people that believe in more than one god (polytheists) also like to use capital letters when writing about their gods. Most people that believe in God or gods do not believe in the gods of other religions.

Does God exist?
Many people have asked themselves if God exists. Philosophers, theologians, and others have tried to prove that it exists. Others have tried to disprove the hypothesis. In philosophical terminology, such arguments are about the epistemology of the ontology of God. The debate exists mainly in philosophy, because science does not address whether or not supernatural things exist.

There are many philosophical issues with the existence of God. Some definitions of God are not specific. Arguments for the existence of God typically include metaphysical, empirical, inductive, and subjective types. Some theories try to explain order and complexity in the world without evolution or scientific method. Arguments against the existence of God typically include empirical, deductive, and inductive arguments. Conclusions sometimes include: "God does not exist" (strong atheism); "God almost certainly does not exist" (de facto atheism); "no one knows whether God exists" (agnosticism); "God exists, but this cannot be proven or disproven" (deism or theism); and "God exists and this can be proven" (theism). There are many variations on these positions, and sometimes different names for some of them. For example, the position "God exists and this can be proven"  is sometimes called "gnostic theism" or "strong theism".

Believing in God

By the year 2000, approximately 53% of the world's population were part of one of the three main Abrahamic religions (33% Christian, 20% Islam,  less than 1% Judaism), 6% with Buddhism, 13% with Hinduism, 6% with traditional Chinese religion, 7% with various other religions, and less than 15% as non-religious. Most of these religious beliefs involve God or gods. Some religions do not believe in a god or do not include the concept of gods.

God in the Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions are very popular monotheistic ones. Well-known Abrahamic religions include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Monotheistic means the people in these religions believe there is only one God. The name of God is usually not allowed to be said in Judaism, but some Jews today call him YHWH (Yahweh) or Jehovah. Muslims say the word Allah, which is the Arabic word for "God".

Believers in the Abrahamic religions (except Islamic believers) believe that God has created human beings in his image, but this idea is not easily understood by humankind. One artistic idea is that of an wise elder man in use since the Renaissance.

God in Christianity

The Christian Bible talks about God in different ways. Within Christian canon the Old Testament talks about "God the Father", whilst the Gospels in the New Testament are about Jesus, or "God the Son". Many Christians believe that Jesus was God's incarnation on Earth. Christians consider the  Holy Spirit to be God as well, the third person of God.

In the New Testament, there are three beings who are said to be God in different forms: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (also known as the Holy Ghost). This is called the Trinity. Although the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible, the word used for God in chapter one of Genesis is actually plural, and the phrase "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit' is used in the New Testament, (e.g. Matthew 28:19). Another word that Christians believe has exactly the same meaning as "Trinity" is the word "Godhead", which is in the Bible.

Christians believe that God incarnated in a human body, through the normal birth process, normally growing up into a man named Jesus or (Yeshua), coming to Earth specifically to give every person an opportunity of salvation from their own evil, called sin. The effect of personal evil far transcends the repercussions humans cause to one another in the world, but affects one's relationship with God the Father, and that aspect of the self cannot be addressed through one's own self-improvement efforts, but requires God to intervene in order to set one right. When Jesus prayed and talked to God, he called him "Father," and taught others to do the same.

Jesus also taught that one must be born again in order to receive God's Spirit, otherwise one remains separated from God, acting merely from their own mind, thus being vulnerable to deception by human philosophies or the many spiritual philosophies which do not come from God but from fallen angels, which are within various false religions. After a person consciously accepts the free gift of eternal life, which Jesus's sacrifice offers, God comes to live in the individual, as God lived in humankind before the Fall.

God in Eastern religions
In Hinduism, there is only one God, named Brahman, but Brahman is said to have taken on many different incarnations. Some of these are Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Shiva, Kali, Parvati, and Durga. To many outsiders, the worship of God's different incarnations is considered to be the worship of many gods. However, it is really only the worship of one God in different ways.

Some Hindus also believe that the spirit of God lives in everyone. This idea is called Advaita Vedanta, which is the Hindu term for Monism.

Religions like Buddhism and Confucianism involve the worship of many gods, or sometimes no gods at all.

In Shinto, there is not a single specific God, as is in most religions, but instead, a wide variety of deities called kami, they are the spirit and essence of all nature things, both animate and inanimate, even including rocks, trees and poetry, for example. As Shinto is a  polytheistic religion, it is usually believed that there are eight-million Kami (八百万の神 yaoyorozu-no-kami), in the Japanese language, the number "eight-million" is normally used to mean infinity.

God in Western philosophy
Philosophers can talk about God or god; sometimes they talk about a specific god, but other times they are just talking about the idea of god.

One of the earliest Western philosophers to write about God in a monotheistic way was the Greek Aristotle, who describes god as the Supreme Cause. Aristotle saw God as a being that makes everything happen, but is not influenced by anything else.

The idea of an "all powerful" God raises some interesting questions. One of them is called the God paradox. It asks whether God can make a mountain (or rock) that is so heavy he cannot lift it. The question considers if a god "who can do anything" could do two things that are mutually contradictory.

There have been several attempts to prove the existence of God with logic. Blaise Pascal said that it is better to believe there is a god, than to believe there isn't. This argument is known as Pascal's wager today. Note that Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, and he used this argument to illustrate the concept of expected value in statistics. Other attempts known as the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, and teleological argument today. Kurt Gödel formulated an argument for the existence of God using modal logic in the 1970s.

Related pages
Cosmogony
Deity
Thomas Aquinas
Immanuel Kant

References

Gods and goddesses

God


A funeral march (Marche funèbre, Trauermarsch) is a march, usually in a minor key, in a slow "simple duple" metre, creating the solemn pace of a funeral procession. Some such marches are often considered appropriate for use during funerals and other occasions, the most well-known being the third movement of Piano Sonata No. 2 by Frédéric Chopin. Handel uses the name dead march, also used for marches played by a military band at military funerals and executions.

Other websites
Chopin's Iconic Funeral March

Musical forms

Funeral march


The mechanistic paradigm, also known as the Newtonian paradigm, assumes that things in the environment around humans are more like machines than like life.  It was more common in the 19th century.  This is a set of loosely related beliefs that affects all sciences:

In physics it presents atoms as made of particles in preference to say the wave theory of light.  In fact, both the particle and wave view are required to explain everything light does, but are rarely presented as equals.  Many physics students graduate fully understanding the hydrogen bomb but having no clear idea of how musical instruments work.
In astrophysics it assumes that the universe is like clockwork and works on its own without our choice making any difference - this fits relativity but is not easy to combine with quantum mechanics.
In cosmology it accepts models of our universe more easily if reject the continuous creation of matter, energy or any new "other universes".
In chemistry it assumes that molecules are like building blocks, and have no unpredictable or strange and unique effects when combined.  This is the basic assumption of mechanosynthesis which some scientists think will create a molecular assembler.
In biology it assumes that everything about life - all of biochemistry - is predictable from chemistry and physics.
Believers tend to regard ecology and psychology as "less scientific" than physics, chemistry and biology.
Believers may reject ideas like psychoneuroimmunology, Gaia philosophy or Fecund universes for no scientific reason, simply because these theories assume "higher level phenomena" sometimes drive lower levels.
Greedy Reductionism may be more likely among believers in mechanistic ideas.  For instance, they may want to always see things as made of smaller, even invisible, parts that no one can see or prove is real - like in string theory.
For this reason, when they work in psychology, they may prefer theories like behaviorism that deny free will and try to explain human behaviour as a function of biology.
The philosophy of mathematics of most believers is a form of Platonism.  This assumes there is a perfect or ideal form that theories only approximate.  This lets them explain inaccuracies in mechanistic theories as being due to an imperfection in human ability to reason, instead of imperfections in math itself.

Believers in this paradigm sometimes say that those who do not believe in it are following a cognitive paradigm - but almost no one uses this term, since it is redundant - cognitive science is already accepted as the most basic idea in the philosophy of science.  But mechanists reject some of the ideas of cognitive scientists, like cognitive science of mathematics.

Mechanistic thinking also assumes that philosophy of perception is much less important than cognitive scientists say it is - that humans and their beliefs and equipment do not generally add a lot of bias to a scientific theory.  Thomas Kuhn said otherwise, that these things matter, and that the major assumptions of science, can shift drastically.  This he called a paradigm shift.  The shift from mechanistic to cognitive paradigm is an example of this.
Later he used other words to describe the assumptions and beliefs, like mind-set, but the word "paradigm" is still used.  Some say it is much over-used.

Economics is often said to "suffer from" assumptions of the mechanistic paradigm.  Sometimes those who believe in neoclassical economics and also in the mechanistic paradigm say they "seek to unify physics and economics," as if people and particles behaved as two examples of the same kind of thing.

Technology is often easier to make if people accept a mechanistic paradigm - but it may be harder to say why it does not work, if one believes in these ideas.  For instance, creating diagnostic trees might be easier if one works from experience, not from an idea of how a technology should or must work.

A controversial idea is that mechanistic ideas are just an older idea called scholasticism, with more mathematics.  Both tried to work from what should or must be, instead of what experiment seemed to show.

Another controversial idea is that scientism, belief in science as if it were a religion or ethical tradition, comes from this paradigm.  Most scientists who are mechanistic do not say they see science as a guide to ethics, but try to keep them separate.

Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Philosophy of science

Mechanistic paradigm


Henry the Young King (28 February 1155 – near Limoges, France, 11 June 1183) was the junior king to his father Henry II of England. He was crowned king in 1170, but never actually used the power. The meaning of this is that Henry II's territory covered much of northern France as well as England and Ireland. The idea may have been to have an official deputy for legal actions when Henry was in France, and to indicate the succession to the throne. In practice, Young Henry was not interested in government. According to his tutor, William Marshal, he spent his time in France going from one knights' tournament to another.

The boy was married as a child to Marguerite of France (1158–1197), daughter of the French King Louis VII. The intention was political, but it did not work. War came between Henry II and Louis. Henry joined in rebellions directed at his father. A civil war (1173/74) occurred in which Young Henry and his mother, with Scots and French support, fought against Henry II. The king won, just. Young Henry died ten years later, of dysentery. As he died before his father he never achieved power.

References
Crouch D, 2002. William Marshal: knighthood, war and chivalry, 1147–1219. 2nd ed, London.

1155 births
1183 deaths
Deaths from dysentery

Henry the Young King


Elaine Paige OBE (born Elaine Jill Bickerstaff, 5 March 1948) is an English actress and singer. She was born and raised in Barnet, Hertfordshire, in 1948. She is known for her roles in musical theater.

Life
She worked in the theatre from a young age. She quickly became famous in the role of Eva Perón in the musical Evita in 1978. She studied acting at the Aida Foster stage school in London and then played roles in the British tour of the show The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd and the first London production of Hair. She played Sandy in the London production of Grease and appeared as one of Michael Crawford's girlfriends in Billy. She has since said she was about to leave the world of acting, possibly to become a teacher, but then the role in Evita was offered to her.

After Evita, she did not have any work for a period. She thought that her musical career had seen its best. When the actress Judi Dench had an injury during rehearsals for Cats, the producers asked Paige play the role in stead of Dench. They stated that the role "was not another Evita" and that her role only had one and a half songs. Fortunately, the song was "Memory", which was a top 10 hit for Paige and has become her signature song.

After Cats, she appeared in Abbacadbra, an ABBA compilation, and Chess, also written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA but with lyrics by Tim Rice, co-writer of Evita. Paige then scored a number 1 single, "I Know Him So Well", a song from Chess, as a duet with Barbara Dickson.

In 1989, she co-produced and starred in a production of Cole Porter's Anything Goes in London, which made a star of John Barrowman. In the early 1990s, her term relationship with the lyricist Tim Rice stopped and Paige tried an image change by recording an album with a California-based producer in the Bette Midler torch singer vein entitled Love Can Do That. Her solo albums had so far been a variety of songs, including the very successful Stages in 1983, with songs from musical theatre. In 1993, she returned to the United States to work with Peter Matz on an album called Romance and the Stage featuring songs from earlier days of musical theatre. The following year, she recorded, Piaf, which had music from the role she was playing in the Pam Gems play, also called Piaf. Critics were impressed by her acting skills in that play.

However, in 1995 she had a role in another musical, playing Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard. She had always wanted to perform on Broadway and Sunset Boulevard now made this possible. For more than a year she played the role. She later had another role in 2000 with the King and I. She has recently moved more into television and radio work.

Paige was awarded an OBE in 1995. Now she is hosting a Sunday afternoon BBC Radio 2 show which plays music from the stage and film.

References

Other websites
Official website

1948 births
Living people
Actors from Hertfordshire
English singers
English stage actors
English television actors
Musical theater actors
Musicians from Hertfordshire

Elaine Paige


Reggae is a music genre that began in Jamaica in the late 1960s. Most music from Jamaica comes from the reggae style.

The music has regular chops on the back beat (off-beat).  These are called "skank", and are played by a rhythm guitarist.  The bass drum hits on the second and fourth beat of each measure (each bar). These are called the "drop". Reggae bands also use a bass, a keyboard or organ, and horns.

Reggae music is often used by Rastafarian groups. They are usually songs about religion, love and social problems. Bob Marley (1945-1981) was a famous reggae artist.

Famous instruments in reggae music are drums, guitar, saxophone, trumpet and trombone.

Reggae was started in 1960 but became famous in the 1970s.

Reggae songs often have lots of backing singers.

Rapper Snoop Dogg released an album of reggae music in 2013.

Som[

Pop music

Reggae


The Deportivo Saprissa is a football team of Costa Rica. The team was founded on July 16, 1935. It became a part of the top league, Primera División de Costa Rica on August 21, 1949.

Saprissa was founded because of a group of players and leaders. Ricardo Saprissa Aymá was a part of this group.  In 1952, the team won its first national championship.
Saprissa

History
In 1937, the colors purple and white were chosen as the colors of the club.

Juani Saprissa Aymá was the president of the Saprissa. Jose Francisco "Pachico" García was their manager when the team started in the Third Division. The Deportivo Saprissa won the championship of Third Division in 1947. In 1948, they played in the Second Division. They won the championship of Second Division that year, with no games lost.

In March 1959, the team became the first Latin American team to go the around the World. The "Morados", which is the team's nickname, played 25 matches in 22 countries of the world. They won 14, tied 1 and lost 7. The team scored a total of 66 goals and had 46 goals scored against them.

During the 1970s, the Deportivo Saprissa won 6 championships. They won every championship from 1972 to 1977. On October 12, 1966, the construction of their stadium started. It is called "La Cueva del Monstruo" or simply La Cueva. After 6 years, the opening of Saprissa Stadium was held on Sunday August 27, 1972.

National Titles
 26 National Championships:

 15 national Sub- championships
 6 championships consecutively from 1972 to 1977

International Titles
 3rd place in the FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2005
 3rd place in the Cup RICARD, Uruguay 2006.
 A  Central American tournament (1970)
 Three tournaments of  Central American Fraternity (1972 and 1973 and 1978).
 A Camel Cup in the United States(1985).
 Two tournaments CONCACAF (1993 and 1995).
 Two sub- championships Inter-American Cup.
 LG Cup (1998).
 The Uncaf Cup 2003.
 CONCACAF Champions 2005.

References
Statistics taken from the official website

Other websites

Sport in Costa Rica
1935 establishments in North America
20th-century establishments in Costa Rica
North American football clubs
Organizations based in Costa Rica

Deportivo Saprissa


Armazi () is a locale in Georgia, 4 km southwest of Mtskheta and 22 km northwest of Tbilisi. A part of historical Greater Mtskheta, it is a place where the ancient city of the same name and the original capital of the early Georgian kingdom of Kartli or Iberia was located. It particularly flourished in the early centuries AD and was destroyed by the Arab invasion in the 730s.

Archaeology
Minor excavations on the territory of Armazi carried out in 1890 revealed the plinth of adobe town walls, with stone steps, and cleared the two-room structure, where fragments of a woman's torso of the 1st century AD were discovered. From 1943 to 1948 large-scale excavation was undertaken under Andria Apakidze of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, resumed in 1985 and continuing. These have shown that the adobe town walls and towers, built upon a plinth of hewn stone in the first half of the 1st century AD, surrounded the hill top and the side sloping down towards the river, an area of 30 ha. The land within the walls was terraced and various buildings were sited on the terraces.

The three major cultural layers have been identified: the earliest dates back to the 4th-3rd century BC (Armazi I), the middle one is from the 3rd-1st century BC (Armazi II), and the relatively newer structure belongs to the 1st-6th century AD (Armazi III). Armazi I is constructed of massive stone blocks forming an impregnable base but were finished off by less durable mud brick. It also contains a great hall of six columns with a tiled roof. Armazi II is noted for a temple with an apse. Armazi III is the richest layer constructed of elegantly cut stone blocks, joined together with lime mortar and metal clamps. Among the surviving structures are the royal palace, several richly decorated tombs, a bathhouse and a small stone mausoleum.

The area is now a state-protected field museum administered as a part of the National Archaeology Museum-Reserve of Greater Mtskheta.

History

Archaeological evidences testify that the ancient Armazi was far more extensive than it is today. Armazi's strategic situation was dictated by its ready access to the Daryal Pass, the main road over the Greater Caucasus, through which the Scythians invaded the ancient Near East.

The name of the city and its dominant acropolis, Armaz-Tsikhe (literally, "citadel of Armazi"; არმაზციხე), is usually taken to derive from Armazi, the chief deity of the pagan Iberian pantheon. He was either a shortened form of Armazd or Ahur Mazda, the Zoroastrian God. Or he was derived from the Vedic God Armah which means the Moon God in Sanskrit. The latter is thought to be the correct one because of the findings of moon god relics. The name first appears in the early medieval Georgian annals though it is clearly much older and reflected in the Classical name Armastica or Harmozica of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy and Dio Cassius. According to a collection of medieval Georgian chronicles, Armaztsikhe was founded, in the 3rd century BC, by king Pharnavaz I of Iberia at the place hitherto known as Kartli. This fortress stood on the modern-day Mount Bagineti, on the right bank of the Mtkvari River (Kura), at its confluence with the Aragvi. The other citadel, Tsitsamuri (წიწამური) or Sevsamora of the Classical authors, stood just opposite, on the left bank of the Aragvi and controlled the road towards Mount Kazbek.

Even after the rise of Mtskheta as a capital of Iberia, Armazi remained the holy city of Iberian paganism and one of the defenses of Mtskheta. The fortress was captured by the Roman general Pompey during his 65 BC campaign against the Iberian king Artag. A ruined structure over the Mtkvari River dates from that time and is still called "Pompey's bridge". Armazi's heyday came when Iberia was allied with the Roman emperors. Armazi stele of Vespasian unearthed in 1867 reports that the Roman Emperor Vespasian fortified Armazi for the Iberian king Mithridates I in 75 AD. This defense wall constructed in a unique position to block the southern exit of the Daryal Pass before it widens into the plain of modern Tbilisi was presumably a preventive measure against the Alans who frequently raided the Roman frontiers from across the Caucasus.

During this period, Armazi was governed by a hereditary pitiakhsh, whose rank approximated to that of viceroy or satrap, and was second in the official Iberian hierarchy after the king. The excavations of the hereditary necropolis of this dynasty yielded engraved gems bearing portraits of two of these viceroys, Asparukh (probably the contemporary of the Roman emperor Hadrian, 117-138 AD) and Zevakh (fl. 150 AD), a rare example of authentic, pre-Christian Georgian portraiture. Aramaic inscriptions from Armazi mention also the royal architect and the epitropos ("Lord Chamberlain").

Armazi played a central role in ancient Georgian cultural life and in the evolution of local epigraphy in Georgia, prior to the invention of the Georgian alphabet in the 5th century. Among a number of curious inscriptions found at Armazi, the most important is the bilingual Greco-Aramaic tombstone inscription commemorating the short-lived Serapita and her noble lineage. It contains an unusual, in its ductus and some of its forms, version of the Aramaic alphabet which came to be known as the "Armazi script" although it can also be found outside Armazi, in other parts of Georgia.

With the transfer of the Georgian capital to Tbilisi in the late 5th or early 6th century, Armazi went into a gradual decline. It still had its own high-ranking commandant, a post held in A.D. 545 by a certain Wistam. The city was finally destroyed and razed to the ground in 736 by the Arab commander Marwan ibn Muhammad (the future Umayyad Caliph Marwan II).

The city of Armazi has never been revived since then, but a Georgian Orthodox monastery of St. Nino was constructed there between 1150 and 1178. This is a six-apse hall church which, as well as its associated structures, is now largely in ruins and only some fragments of the 12th-century murals have survived.

See also
Dzalisi

References

External links

 Historical monuments of the Mtskheta District. The Mtskheta-Mtianeti Regional Administration.
The Bilingual Inscription from Armazi (1st century AD) (Greek and Aramaic texts with German translation) The Armazi Project. Open Society – Georgia Foundation.
Ruins on Mount Bagineti. Fund "Udabno".
Mt. Bagineti (Archived 2009-10-25). Photos by Revaz Zhghenti.

Mtskheta
Archaeological sites in Georgia (country)
Museums in Georgia (country)
Former cities in Georgia (country)
Razed cities
4th-century BC establishments in Georgia (country)
Populated places established in the 4th century BC
8th-century disestablishments in Georgia (country)
Populated places disestablished in the 8th century
Buildings and structures in Mtskheta
Tourist attractions in Mtskheta-Mtianeti
736 disestablishments

Armazi


María Cristina Kiehr (born in Tandil, Argentina) is a soprano vocalist associated with Baroque music. After receiving her early musical training in Argentina, she moved in 1983 to Europe and studied under René Jacobs at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, specializing in the Baroque repertoire. She performs and records for the Harmonia Mundi label.

Overview
María Cristina Kiehr was born in Tandil, Argentina.

She made her opera debut at Innsbruck in 1988 in Il Giasone, a work composed by Francesco Cavalli in 1649. In collaboration with the harpsichordist Jean-Marc Aymes, Kiehr founded the Concerto Soave ensemble, a concerto in the original meaning of the word, which specializes in Italian music of the early baroque period. With them she has toured many of the world's most prestigious early music festivals, including the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Ambronay, Pontoise, Simiane-la-Rotonde, Semaine Sainte en Arles, and in Montreux, Lausanne, Marseille, and Paris (Cité de la Musique).

Her recording of Maddalena ai Piedi di Cristo with René Jacobs won a Grammy award in 1997.

Her voice is especially suited to performing the work of neglected Italian female composers of the Early Baroque such as Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini. Though she is known as a champion of little known works and composers, she is also sought after for her interpretations of Henry Purcell and Claudio Monteverdi.

Critical reactions
Critical reactions to Kiehr's voice are often ecstatic:

 Richard Buell, Boston Globe, "Think of a glowing filament, only in sound; the beautiful thinness of Hesperion XX's lead singer Monserrat Figueras's voice, only larger and sweeter. Some singer."
 Craig Zeichner, CDNow.com, "To call Kiehr's voice angelic would not be indulging in hyperbole. She floats through a vocal line, caressing each phrase with marvelous agility."

References

 Sources consulted

 Endnotes

Living people
20th-century Argentine women opera singers
Argentine performers of early music
People from Tandil
Argentine people of Danish descent
Women performers of early music
21st-century Argentine women opera singers
Year of birth missing (living people)

María Cristina Kiehr


"Gimmicks Three" is a fantasy short story by American writer Isaac Asimov.  It was first published in the November 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the title "The Brazen Locked Room", and reprinted under Asimov's original title in the 1957 collection Earth is Room Enough. The title refers to what Asimov called "the three well-worn gimmicks of pact with the devil, locked room mystery, and time travel".

Plot summary

Isidore Wellby has just left the army and, abandoned by his girlfriend, feels lost and let down. In desperation, he signs away his soul in blood to a demon named Shapur.  On the proviso that eventually he will be forced to enter hell, either as an ordinary damned soul or as a member of the cadre, he is allotted a number of demonic powers, the nature of which are not initially explained to him.

Ten years later, he has become a successful businessman and has married his erstwhile girlfriend.  Shapur reappears to demand his price.  If Wellby can perform a simple task using his demonic powers, Wellby will be accepted as a member of the elite of hell.  Otherwise, he will be just an ordinary damned soul.

Wellby is confined to an apparently sealed bronze room and challenged to escape from it. Eventually, with little time left, he realizes that he has the power to move through time - the fourth dimension - and travels backward, thus escaping from the room.

In the story's climax, it is revealed that he has moved back to the time before he had signed away his soul and so he is able to turn down Shapur's persuasive offer, much to the demon's fury.  However, he still had his ten successful years, since deals with Hell can give a person nothing he could not have obtained on his own. And since the demon no longer owns his soul, he has many more years left.

References

External links

Short stories by Isaac Asimov
1956 short stories
Works originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Demons in written fiction

Gimmicks Three


Doric wis aince uised as a name for aw byleids o Scots but is maistly uised as a name for the byleid at fowk spiks in the nor east o Scotland, Mid Northren Scots.

Pronunciation an lexis

The main differs in soond atween Doric an ither Scots byleids is as gien ablo in the IPA:
 wh  is said  insteid o  — "whit"  insteid o , "wha"  insteid o  or .
 aw, au an aa is said  insteid o , — aw,  a'  or aa.
 A a afore , ,  an  micht be  or .
 ui (aften anglifeed oo or dialectalised ee) is said  an  aifter  an  e.g. abeen insteid o abuin, gweed an kweet insteid of guid an cuit.
 The letters ane is said , e.g. in ane an ance.
 Stairtin  an  as in gnap an knowe is said.
 "Y"  soonds is aften heard aifter parteeclar stairtin consonants, e.g. "tyauve" for taw.

Doric hauds a number o wirds nae fund in ither byleids o Scots. For exemplar, it hauds a few lanewirds frae Scots Gaelic, as weel as Norse sith it expanded intil airts whaur fowk ance spak Scottish Gaelic an intil the Eastern Hielans. But there's nae lanewirds frae Pictish, ither than in placenames, them beginnin wi "Pit-", in parteeclar.

As wi ither airts o Scotland, the traivelin fowk haed a distinct lexis o Doric, a fair bit o it recordit in Stanley Robertson's stories.

Origin o the name
At ae time, the wird "Doric" wis uised for aw byleids o Scots as a jocular reference tae the Dorian byleid o Greek.  The Greek Dorians bade in Sparta, a mair rural airt o Greece, an wis meant tae hae spoken laconicalie bi the ither ancient Greeks, uisin a wey o spikkan at wis thocht hersher in soond an mair auld farrant nor the Attic spoken in Athens.  Doric Greek wis uised for the verses spoken bi the chorus in Greek tragedy.

Uiss o the wird "Doric" in this wey micht cum aboot forby oot o a contrast wi the anglifeed claik o the Scots caipital, sin at ae time, Edinburgh wis bynamed 'The Athens o the North'. The upper/middle claiss wey o spikkan in Edinburgh wad tharefore be 'Attic', makkan the rural airts' claik, 'Doric'. Contrair regions like Lanrikshire, far chenge driven bi industrial novation wis kenspeckle, the shires o the Mearns, Aiberdeen, Banff an Moray bade affa landward in nature an keepit a strang sense o thair heirship an tradeetions.

The first Scot at gied the name Doric tae Scots-spikkin wis the makar Aulan Ramsay in 1721, associatan Scots wi the landward, peasantry or wirkin fowk: it wis anither wey o sayan kintra or teuchter spik; simple, pure, an plain-spikkin. But fowk cuman efter him files eesed the name in a derogator wey, makkin oot it wis auld-farrant or couthy ayont aa. Screivars in Ingland files cryed the spik o the peasantry o Ingland Doric an-aa.

Doric wis first eesed for tae descrive the byleid o North East Scots in 1792 fan it wis eesed bi the Banffshire-born academic Alexander Geddes.

Doric leeteratur
Nor-east Scots haes a muckle body o leeteratur, maistly poetry, ballads an sangs. Whan Doric kythes in prose, it is maistly as fowk spikkin, tho this isna as common as it wis. As is aften the case wi leids on the margin, local lealties haud tae in the written form, shawin the wey the variety differs frae staundart ("British") English as opposed tae the Scots "norm". This shaws itsel in the local media presentation o the leid e.g. Grampian Television an The Press and Journal. Thae local lealties, an the relative distance frae the Central Lawlands, gies the Doric spikkers their ain wey in mony things.

The Nor East haes been cried the "real hame o the ballad", an Les Wheeler seys, "91 oot o a gran total o (Child's) 305 ballads cam frae the North East - in fact frae Aiberdeenshire", makkin the uisual name o "Border Ballad" a misnomer pit aboot bi Sir Walter Scott.

Doric wis uised in a wheen o sae-caed, 'Kailyard' leeteratur, a genre at pents a sentimental, melodramatic pictur o the auld rural life, an is richt unfashionable ay noo. This negative association plagues Doric leeteratur til a degree yet, as weel as Scottish leeteratur in general.

The maist kenspeckle novelist tae uise Doric in his novels wis George MacDonald frae Huntly. He is aftimes conseedered ane o the faithers o the Fantasy genre, a influence on C.S. Lewis an Tolkien, an a freen o Mark Twain.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy taks place in the Mearns, an haes been the foond o a successful play an telly series. It is weel-likit aw throu Scotland, an tells the storie o Chrissie, a independent-myndit quine, maistly in a form o English wi strang influence frae the rhythms o the local claik.

A version o Aesop's Fables haes been published in Doric, as weel as sum sections o the Bible.

Preein o Doric

Gin I was God by Charles Murray

GIN I was God, sittin up there abeen,
Weariet nae doot noo a my darg was deen,
Deaved wi the harps an hymns oonendin ringin,
Tired o the flockin angels hairse wi singin,
To some clood-edge I'd daunder furth an, feth,
Look ower an watch hoo things were gyaun aneth.
Syne, gin I saw hoo men I'd made mysel
Had startit in to pooshan, sheet an fell,
To reive an rape, an fairly mak a hell
O my braw birlin Earth,--a hale week's wark--
I'd cast my coat again, rowe up my sark,
An or they'd time to lench a second ark,
Tak back my word an sen anither spate,
Droon oot the hale hypothec, dicht the sklate,
Own my mistak, an, aince I cleared the brod,
Start a'thing ower again, gin I was God.

References

Ye can aye see tae
 Ulster Scots
 Shetlandic

Fremmit airtins
 Technical description of Doric pronunciation
 Hear Doric spoken aloud
 The Doric Festival
 Scottish MSP takes oath in Doric
 Anglic Language Varieties of Northern Scotland
 List of Doric Words and English Translations
 Doric set to dae the business
 Hotel lands uplifting Doric voice

Doric dialect
Scots dialects
Scots leid

Doric


Albert Hofmann (11 January 1906 – 29 April 2008) was a Swiss scientist. He invented Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann wrote more than 100 scientific articles and a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child (1979).

Life
Hofmann was born in Baden, Switzerland. He studied chemistry at the University of Zürich. His main interest was the chemistry of plants and animals, and he studied about the chemical structure of the common animal substance chitin. Hofmann worked at the pharmaceutical-chemical department of Sandoz Laboratories in Basel.

Five years after its first synthesis, he discovered by accident the psychedelic effects of LSD, after absorbing some through his fingertips on April 16 1943. Three days later, he deliberately consumed 250 micrograms of LSD, and experienced far more intense effects. This was followed by a series of self-experiments. He first wrote about these experiments on April 22 of the same year.

He became director of the natural products department at Sandoz and went on studying hallucinogenic substances found in Mexican mushrooms and other plants used by the indigenous peoples. This led to the synthesis of psilocybin, the active agent of many magic mushrooms.

Hofmann called LSD "medicine for the soul".

He had a heart attack in his home in Burg im Leimental on April 29, 2008, and died at the age of 102.

Other websites
 Albert Hofmann (NNDB)
 Erowid: Albert Hofmann Vault
 Albert Hofmann Foundation
 MAPS ("Stanislav Grof interviews Dr. Albert Hofmann")

1906 births
2008 deaths
Swiss chemists
Swiss centenarians
Baden District, Aargau
People from Aargau

Albert Hofmann


Cupressus dupreziana, the Saharan cypress, or tarout, is a very rare coniferous tree native to the Tassili n'Ajjer mountains in the central Sahara desert, southeast Algeria, where it forms a unique population of trees hundreds of kilometres from any other trees. There are only 233 specimens of this endangered species, the largest about 22 m tall. The majority are estimated to be over 2000 years old, with very little regeneration due to the increasing desertification of the Sahara. Rainfall totals in the area are estimated to be about 30 mm annually.  The largest one is named Tin-Balalan is believed to be the oldest tarout tree with a circumference of 12 meters or 36 feet.

This species is distinct from the allied Cupressus sempervirens (Mediterranean cypress) in its much bluer foliage with a white resin spot on each leaf, the smaller shoots often being flattened in a single plane. It also has smaller cones, only 1.5–2.5 cm long. Cupressus atlantica (Moroccan cypress) is more similar, and is treated as a variety of the Saharan cypress (C. dupreziana var. atlantica) by some authors.

Probably as a result of its isolation and low population, the Saharan cypress has evolved a unique reproductive system of male apomixis whereby the seeds develop entirely from the genetic content of the pollen. There is no genetic input from the female "parent", which only provides nutritional sustenance. The Moroccan cypress does not share this characteristic.

The Saharan cypress is occasionally cultivated in southern and western Europe, in part for ex situ genetic conservation, but also as an ornamental tree.

An international arboretum is being established in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Australia within which will be established forests of rare and endangered species from throughout the world. One of these forests is dedicated to Cupressus dupreziana and 1300 of the trees have been propagated for planting in late 2007.

Notes

References
 Stewart, P.J. 1969. Cupressus dupreziana, threatened conifer of the Sahara. Biological Conservation 2: 10–12.
 Pichot, C., Fady, B., & Hochu, I. 2000. Lack of mother tree alleles in zymograms of Cupressus dupreziana A. Camus embryos. Ann. For. Sci. 57: 17–22. Full article (pdf file)
 Pichot, C., El Maátaoui, M., Raddi, S. & Raddi, P. 2001. Surrogate mother for endangered Cupressus. Nature 412: 39.

External links

 Gymnosperm Database: Cupressus dupreziana
 Arboretum de Villardebelle - photos of trees in the Sahara
 saudiaramcoworld.com - A Cypress in the Sahara
 Conifers Around the World: Cupressus dupreziana - Tarout
 Cartoonist Michael Leunig's life as a guerrilla gardener on the curly and narrow "Talking Plants", Radio National, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

dupreziana
Endemic flora of Algeria
Flora of North Africa
Trees of Algeria
Trees of Africa
Trees of Mediterranean climate
Endangered flora of Africa
Plants described in 1926
Garden plants of Africa
Ornamental trees
Taxa named by Aimée Antoinette Camus

Cupressus dupreziana


Nu metal is a style of metal music that uses elements of hip hop and heavy metal music, as well as the usual heavy metal instruments such as guitars, drums and bass. Nu metal bands often include electronic instruments such as DJ decks and keyboards. Nu metal was very successful in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The most successful bands of this genre include Linkin Park (with more than 100 million records sold around the world), Korn (with 35 million), Deftones, Limp Bizkit (with 35 million) and Slipknot (around 15 million records).

Bands (selection)
 4LYN
 Crosscut
 Deftones
 Dope
 Emil Bulls
 Exilia
 Guano Apes
 Ill Niño
 Korn
 Limp Bizkit
 Linkin Park
 P.O.D.
 Sevendust
 Slipknot

Rock music
Heavy metal subgenres

Nu metal


An average is the "normal" number of a group of numbers made by mixing the group of numbers.

In math, an average is called a mean. It can be found by adding the numbers, then dividing the answer by the number of numbers there were. There are other kinds of mean, and other things that are sometimes thought of as "average" such as median or mode (statistics).

Sport

In some sports, such as cricket and baseball, averages are used to tell how good a player is (such as batting average). Sporting averages have special rules for how to find them.

Statistics

Average


A task manager is a computer program that is used to show information about the processes and programs running on a computer. Task managers also show the general status of the computer. They can be used to terminate (end) processes and programs, as well as change the processes priority. An example of a task manager is Windows Task Manager.

Software

Task manager


Adair Crawford FRS FRSE (174829 July 1795), a chemist and physician, was a pioneer in the development of calorimetric methods for measuring the specific heat capacity of substances and the heat of chemical reactions. In his influential 1779 book "Experiments and Observations on Animal Heat", Crawford presented new experiments proving that respiratory gas exchange in animals is a combustion (two years after Antoine Lavoisier's influential "On combustion in general").  Crawford also was involved in the discovery of the element strontium.

Life

Adair Crawford was born in Crumlin, Belfast, the son of Rev Thomas Crawford. He studied medicine at Glasgow and Edinburgh universities. He qualified MA in 1770 and then worked at St George's Hospital in London before qualifying MD in 1780. He was Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, London, and physician at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He died at Lymington in Hampshire.

It is no coincidence that the titles of his publications usually begin with the word experiments. Crawford let the details of his experiments and their plain results do the talking, and generally refrained from theorising and over-interpretation. He did maintain the later-discredited phlogiston hypothesis, but wasn't doctrinaire about it.

In 1785, Crawford was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and the following year, in 1786, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1787 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were John Playfair, James Hutton, and James Gregory.

He  died in Lymington in Hampshire on 29 July 1795.

Calorimetric work

Crawford's book "Experimental Enquiry into the Effects of Tonics and Other Medicinal Substances on the Cohesion of Animal Fibre", written near the end of his life, offers a very readable presentation of his way of doing chemistry. Here's an example:

With a view to determine the changes which animal fibre might undergo by exposing it to the action of Port wine, six portions of the small intestines of a kitten were taken. Three of these were introduced into a phial, which was nearly filled with Port wine, and closed with a cork; and the remaining three were immersed in water, as a standard. Being placed in a cool situation during three days, the portions in contact with the wine were found to have greater firmness than those that were immersed in the water. The sum of the weights required to break the former was 9 lb. 0 oz.; the sum of those required to break the latter was 7 lb. 4 oz. .... With a view to guard against error in trials of this nature, it is of importance that the portions of the intestine should be as nearly as possible of the same length. They should likewise have nearly the same degree of curvature. For a very curved portion of the intestine is more easily broken than a straight one.... If the trials be frequently repeated, results will be obtained that approach near to the truth.... From the foregoing trials, it appears, that the firmness, elasticity, and strength of the intestines of a kitten are considerably increased by immersing them three days in Port wine. I have found, however, that a much less time than this is sufficient for the wine to produce its full effect. In several experiments a manifest increase of cohesion appeared to have taken place in less than an hour; and after ten hours have elapsed, I believe no farther augmentation is produced.

Discovery of strontium

In 1790, along with his colleague William Cruickshank at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, London, Crawford noted the distinctiveness of strontianite from barium minerals, and may thereby be said to be the discoverer of strontium.  However, it could also be claimed that the honour should go to Humphry Davy who, in 1808, became the first to isolate the pure element.

Selected writings

 (Second edition 1788)

Honours

 Fellow of the Royal Society (1786)

References

Further reading

External links

1748 births
1795 deaths
British chemists
Discoverers of chemical elements
Ulster Scots people
Fellows of the Royal Society
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Scientists from Belfast

Adair Crawford


Démografi nyaéta élmu ngeunaan dinamika populasi manusa, nu ngawengku panalungtikan ukuran, struktur, jeung sébaran populasi, sarta kumaha parobahan populasi sajalan jeung nyérélékna waktu ku ayana nu babar, maot, migrasi, jeung nambahna umur. Analisis démografis bisa nujul ka masarakat sagemblengna atawa ka golongan nu ditangtukeun ku kritéria kayaning atikan, bangsa, ageman, atawa suku.

Data jeung métode

Démografi mercayakeun kana ngagunakeun data baréa-réa, kaasup sénsus kalahiran, pernikahan jeung tilar dunya. The éarliest modérn census was carried out in Britain in 1801. See also demographic statistics.

In many countries, particularly in the third world, reliable demographic data are still difficult to obtain. For example, during the 1980s the population of Nigeria was widely estimated to be around 110 million, before it was established to be as little as 89 million (without adjustment for undercounting) in a census carried out in 1991.

Konsép-konsép penting

Konsép-konsép nu penting dina démografi di antarana:
 laju babar kasar, jumlah nu babar per saréwu jalma per taun
 laju kasuburan umum, jumlah nu babar per saréwu wanoja umur subur (biasana dianggap antara umur 15-49 taun, atawa nepi ka 44 taun) per taun
 laju kasuburan spésifik-umur, jumlah nu babar per saréwu wanoja nu umurna digolong-golongkeun (biasana umur 15-19, 20-24 jst.) per taun
 The crude déath rate, the annual number of déaths per 1000 péople.
 The infant mortality rate, the annual number of déaths of children less than 1 yéar old per thousand live births.
 The expectation of life (or life expectancy), the number of yéars which an individual at a given age can expect to live at present mortality levels.
 The total fertility rate, the number of live births per woman completing her reproductive life, if her childbéaring at éach age reflected current age-specific fertility rates.
 The gross reproduction rate, the number of daughters who would be born to a woman completing her reproductive life at current age-specific fertility rates.
 The net reproduction rate is the number of daughters who would be born to a woman according to current age-specific fertility and mortality rates.

Note that the crude déath rate as defined above and applied to a whole population can give a misléading impression. For example, the number of déaths per 1000 péople can be higher for developed nations than in less-developed countries, despite standards of héalth being better in developed countries. This is because developed countries have relatively more older péople, who are more likely to die in a given yéar, so that the overall mortality rate can be higher even if the mortality rate at any given age is lower. A more complete picture of mortality is given by a life table which summarises mortality separately at éach age. A life table is necessary to give a good estimate of life expectancy.

History

Among the éarliest contributions to demography were the works of Thomas Malthus. Malthus concluded that, if unchecked, populations would be subject to exponential growth. He féared that population growth would tend to outstrip growth in food production, léading to ever incréasing famine and poverty (see Malthusian catastrophe). Later more sophisticated and réalistic modéls were presented by e.g. Gompertz and Verhulst.

The demographic transition

Contrary to Malthus' predictions, natural population growth in most developed countries has diminished to close to zero, without being held in check by famine or lack of resources, as péople in developed nations have shown a tendency to have fewer children. The fall in population growth has occurred despite large rises in life expectancy in these countries.

Similar trends are now becoming visible in ever more developing countries, so that far from spiralling out of control, world population growth is expected to slow markedly in the next century, coming to an eventual standstill. The change is likely to be accompanied by major shifts in the proportion of world population in particular regions.

This pattern of population growth, with slow growth in preindustrial societies, followed by fast growth as the society develops and industrialises, followed by slow growth again as it becomes more affluent, is known as the demographic transition.

The term demographics is often used erronéously for demography, but refers rather to selected population characteristics as used in marketing or opinion reséarch.

Tumbu kaluar

 The Population Reference Bureau  has two introduction to demography texts on line. "Population Handbook" and "Population: A Lively Introduction".
 Brief review of world basic demographic trends Review of world changes in population and growth, infant mortality, fertility and age distributions.
 Brief review of world socio-demographic trends Review of world changes in urbanization, education and ethnolinguistic fractionalization.
 Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth. Moscow: URSS, 2006 .

Démografi

Démografi


The mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument is the part which the player blows into.

Single-reed instruments
On single-reed instruments like a clarinet or saxophone the mouthpiece is shaped like a wedge. The reed is placed near the player's bottom lip. This area is called the table. When the player blows, the reed vibrates. This is then made louder by the instrument.

The shape of the inside of the mouthpiece can change the sound very much. The sound made by a mouthpiece that is large and round will be very different from the sound made by a mouthpiece that is small and square.

The space between the end of the reed and the end of the mouthpiece is called the tip opening.

The facing (or lay) is the part of the reed that starts to curve around the end of the mouthpiece. The length of the facing can change the response of the instrument.

The ligature is what holds the reed onto the mouthpiece. Anything that can hold the reed onto the mouthpiece can be called a ligature. Most ligatures are made from metal or plastic. Some people like to use ordinary string to hold the reed onto the mouthpiece.

Related pages
 Mouthpiece (brass), a mouthpiece used for brass instruments.

Woodwind instruments
Musical instrument construction

Mouthpiece (woodwind)


The Battle of Cana was fought between Greek Seleucid under king Antiochus XII Dionysus of Syria, and the Arab Nabataean Kingdom. Cana is an unknown village; scholars place it somewhere south or southwest of the Dead Sea.

After the Nabataeans ambushed the Judaean Hasmoneans in a steep valley, they gained new territories, and the Greek Seleucids stationed in Damascus felt threatened by the rising power of the Nabataeans to their south.

Antiochus was slain during the combat and the battle became a decisive Nabataean victory. Antiochus's demoralized army fled and perished from starvation in the desert afterwards.

Background

The Port of Gaza was the last stop for spices that were carried by trade caravans from Eudaemon, in today's Yemen, across the Arabian peninsula, passing through Petra and ending up in the Gaza for shipment to European markets. The Nabataean Kingdom had generated considerable wealth from the passing of this trading route through their territory and had considerable influence over the Gazans. The Hasmonean King of Judaea, Alexander Jannaeus, had besieged the city of Gaza around 100 BC. This came after the Gazans had favoured the Ptolemaic Kingdom over the Judaeans in their recent battles. Gaza was occupied and its inhabitants put to the sword by Jannaeus.

The capture of Gaza posed a threat to the Nabataean trade business and altered their previous neutral relationship with the Hasmoneans. The Hasmoneans under Jannaeus launched a campaign that captured several territories in Transjordan north of Nabataea, along the road to Damascus, including northern Moab and Gilead. Although these areas were not under direct control of the Nabataeans, the presence of the Judaeans posed a threat to Nabataean interests as they cut the communications and trade routes to Damascus which was then controlled by the Seleucid Empire. The Nabataean King, Obodas I, with the support of the Seleucid King Demetrius III, fought to restore these areas. Obodas managed to defeat Jannaeus during the Battle of Gadara around 93 BC, when he ambushed him and his forces in a steep valley where Jannaeus "was lucky to escape alive".

Battle
The Nabataeans exploited divisions in the Hasmonean kingdom for their benefit. Janneus had to cede the territories to Obodas in order to dissuade him from supporting his opponents. With these areas now under direct Nabataean control, the Greek Seleucids, at the time in terminal decline, felt threatened and launched two campaigns against the Arabs under Seleucid King Antiochus XII. During the second of them, Antiochus marched along the coast of Judae in order to surprise the Nabataeans.

Although initially successful, the young king was caught in a melee and killed by an Arab soldier. Upon his death the Syrian army fled to an unknown village known as Cana and mostly perished in the desert; the location of the settlement is unknown but many scholars propose a place south of the Dead Sea. Having gained a decisive victory, the Nabateans soon after conquered Damascus.

Aftermath

After Obodas's victories over the Hasmoneans and the Seleucids, he became the first Nabataean king to be worshipped as a god by the Nabataean people. Avdat was a temple built in the Negev desert by the Nabataeans for commemorating Obodas where inscriptions have been found referring to "Obodas the god".

See also
Antigonid–Nabataean confrontations

References

Cana
Wars involving the Nabataean Kingdom
80s BC conflicts
87 BC

Battle of Cana


The Order of Ikkos is a medallion award for coaching made available to all individual U.S. Olympic and Paralympic medalists as representing the athletes' achievement as an Olympic or Paralympic Medalist, in recognition of countless hours training America's athletes to achieve the dream of an Olympic medal. Each U.S. medal-winning team receives one Order of Ikkos medal to present to a single coach. The medalists can present the award to one coach or mentor. The award is presented as part of each U.S. Olympic medalist's victory tour. The victory tour takes place 24–36 hours after a U.S. athlete wins an Olympic or Paralympic medal. The award was established by the United States Olympic Committee prior to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and continued at the 2010 Olympic Games.

The Order of Ikkos name comes from Ikkos of Tarentum (Taranto), who was first Olympic coach in ancient Greece. It provides the opportunity for athletes to recognize their coaches for their leadership and inspiration to achieve world-class performance.

External links
 Team USA site about the Order of Ikkos

United States at the Olympics
United States at the Paralympics

Order of Ikkos


The naitional banner o Latvie wis uised bi independent Latvie frae 1918 till the kintra wis occupied bi the Soviet Union in 1940. Its uise wis suppressed durin Soviet rule. Efter regainin its unthrildom, Latvie re-adoptit on Februar 27, 1990 the same reid-white-red banner.
Tho offeecially adoptit in 1922, the Latvian banner wis in uise as early as the 13t century.  The reid colour is whiles describit as seembolisin the readiness o the Latvians tae gie the bluid frae thair herts for freedom an thair willinness tae defend thair leeberty. An alternative interpretation, accordin tae ane legend, is that a Latvian leader wis woundit in battle, an the edge o the white sheet in which he wis wrapped wur stained bi his bluid. The white stripe mey staund for the sheet that wrapped him. This story is seemilar tae the legend o the oreegins o the banner o Austrick.

Naitional seembols o Latvie
Latvie

Banner o Latvie


Crotalus is a genus of venomous pit vipers found only in the Americas from southern Canada to northern Argentina. The name comes from the Greek word krotalon, which means "rattle", referring to the rattle on the end of the tail. There are currently 29 species recognized.

Description
Members of this genus range in size from only 50–60 cm to over 150 cm. Adult males are slightly larger than females. Compared to most snakes they are heavy-bodied, although some African vipers are much thicker. They are recognized by the rattle on their tail though some species do not have tails.

Feeding
Small species eat mainly lizards, while larger species first eat lizards when young, then start eating mammals when they become adults, like rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, gophers, rats and mice, some also eat birds, other snakes and amphibians.

Predators
Humans are a threat to Crotalus, but other snakes like the Kingsnake, the Coachwhip, the Indigo Snake and the Racer are also threats. Birds like the hawk, the eagle, the owl, the raven and the roadrunner, and mammals like the coyote, the fox, the wildcat, the badger and the skunk are also threats

Venom
Almost all Crotalus venoms are hemotoxic, meaning that the venom destroys red blood cells, stops blood clotting,and damages tissue. Hemotoxic is very painful, and people who are bitten by a snake with hemotoxic don't always make a full recovery. Some species like Crotalus Scutalatus and Crotalus Tigris have a nuerotoxic venom, while neurotoxins are less painful they kill more quicker. Neurotoxins are also found in the venom of Cobras and mambas. The eastern diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus Adamanteus) in some parts of its range may have a nuerotoxin in their venom as well as a hemotoxins.

Species
 Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, C. adamanteus
 Querétaro dusky rattlesnake, C. aquilus
 Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, C. atrox
 Mexican west coast rattlesnake, C. basiliscus
 Santa Catalina rattlesnake, C. catalinensis
 Sidewinder, C. cerastes
 Cascabel, C. durissus
 Great Basin rattlesnake,   C.   lutosus
 Hopi rattlesnake,  C.  nuntius
 Yellow rattlesnake,   C.  concolor
 Grand Cayon rattlesnake,   C.  abyssus
 Southern Pacific rattlesnake,   C.  helleri
 Desert rattlesnake,   C.  dahli
 Brazilian rattlesnake,  C.  terrificus
 Aruba Island rattlesnake,   C.  unicolor
 South American rattlesnake,   C.   cumanensis
 Black spotted rattlesnake,   C. vegrandis
 Baja California rattlesnake, C. enyo
 Timber rattlesnake, C. horridus
 Mexican small-headed rattlesnake, C. intermedius
 Autlán rattlesnake, C. lannomi
 Banded  rattlesnake, C. lepidus
 Speckled rattlesnake, C. mitchellii
 Black-tailed rattlesnake, C. molossus
 Northern Pacific  rattlesnake, C. oreganus
 Mexican lance-headed rattlesnake, C. polystictus
 Twin-spotted rattlesnake, C. pricei
 Tancitaran dusky rattlesnake, C. pusillus
 Red diamondback  rattlesnake, C. ruber
 Mohave rattlesnake, C. scutulatus
 Neotropical rattlesnake, C. simus
 Long-tailed rattlesnake, C. stejnegeri
 Tiger rattlesnake, C. tigris
 Tortuga island diamondback  rattlesnake, C. tortugensis
 Totonacan rattlesnake, C. totonacus
 Cross-banded mountain rattlesnake, C. transversus
 Mexican  rattlesnake, C. triseriatus
 Prairie rattlesnake, C. viridis
 Ridge-nosed rattlesnake, C. willardi

References

Vipers

Crotalus


Archimedes (287 B.C. – 212 B.C.) wis a Greek philosopher, astronomer, pheesicist, ingineer an a fine mathemateecian born in the Greek seaport colonie o Syracuse. He is conseedert bi some maths historians tae be ane o history's bestest mathemateecians, alang wi the likes o Newton, Gauss, an Euler.

Diskiveries an inventions
Archimedes becam a weel-likit withie as an affcome o his involvement in the defence o Syracuse conter the Roman siege in the First an Seicont Punic Weirs. He is reputit tae hae hauden the Romans aff wi weir machines o his ain design; tae hae been able tae muive a fou-bouk gailey stappit fou wi wi crew an fraucht bi pullin an aesome raip; tae hae diskivered the preenciples o density an buoyancy that's kent as Archimedes' preenciple an aw, whan haein a bath (syne taein tae the toun nakit heuchterin "eureka" - "A hae fund it!"); an tae hae cleckit the irrigation luim cried the Archimedean feeze.

Anither weel kent Archimedes storie tells that a king thocht he wis bein cheatit o his siller, sin he thocht his croun wisna richt gowd. Archimedes uised a theory aboot watter displacement caused bi wecht for tae finnd oot that the croun did hae siller in't, atho the keeng haed peyed for richt gowd.

287 BC births
212 BC daiths
3rd-century BC Greek fowk
3rd-century BC writers
Fowk frae Syracuse, Sicily
Auncient Greek ingineers
Auncient Greek inventors
Auncient Greek mathematicians
Auncient Greek pheesicists
Hellenistic-era filosofers
Doric Greek writers
Sicilian Greeks
Sicilian mathematicians
Sicilian scientists
Murthert scientists
Geometers
Auncient Greeks wha wur muthered
Auncient Syracusians
Fluid deenamicists

Archimedes