Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no surplus. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices. Tony Waters, a professor of Sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace".

Despite the self-sufficiency in subsistence farming,  most subsistence farmers also participate in trade to some degree. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with modern complex markets, they use these markets mainly to obtain goods, not to generate income for food; these goods are typically not necessary for survival and may include sugar, iron roofing-sheets, bicycles, used clothing, and so forth.  Many have important trade contacts and trade items that they can produce because of their special skills or special access to resources valued in the marketplace.

Most subsistence farmers today operate in developing countries. Subsistence agriculture generally features: small capital/finance requirements, mixed cropping, limited use of agrochemicals (e.g. pesticides and fertilizer), unimproved varieties of crops and animals, little or no surplus yield for sale, use of crude/traditional tools (e.g. hoes, machetes, and cutlasses), mainly the production of crops, small scattered plots of land, reliance on unskilled labor (often family members), and (generally) low yields.

History
Subsistence agriculture was the dominant mode of production in the world until recently, when market-based capitalism became widespread.

Subsistence agriculture largely disappeared in Europe by the beginning of the twentieth century.  It began to decrease in North America with the movement of sharecroppers and tenant farmers out of the American South and Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s. In Central and Eastern Europe, semi-subsistence agriculture reappeared within the transition economy after 1990 but declined in significance (or disappeared) in most countries by the accession to the EU in 2004 or 2007.

Contemporary practices
Subsistence farming continues today in large parts of rural Africa, and parts of Asia and Latin America.  In 2015, about 2 billion people (slightly more than 25% of the world's population) in 500 million households living in rural areas of developing nations survive as "smallholder" farmers, working less than 2 hectares (5 acres) of land.  Around 98% of China's farmers work on small farms, and China accounts for around half of the total world farms. In India, 80% of the total farmers are smallholder farmers; Ethiopia and Asia have almost 90% being small; while Mexico and Brazil recorded having 50% and 20% being small.

Areas where subsistence farming is largely practiced today, such as India and other regions in Asia, have seen a recent decline in the practice. This is due to processes such as urbanization, the transformation of land into rural areas, and integration of capitalist forms of farming. In India, the increase in industrialization and decrease in rural agriculture has led to rural unemployment and increased poverty for those in lower caste groups. Those that are able to live and work in urbanized areas are able to increase their income while those that remain in rural areas take large decreases, which is why there was no large decline in poverty.  This effectively widens the income gap between lower and higher castes and makes it harder for those in rural areas to move up in caste ranking. This era has marked a time of increased farmer suicides and the "vanishing village".

Adaptation to global warming
Most subsistence agriculture is practiced in developing countries located in tropical climates. Effects on crop production brought about by climate change will be more intense in these regions as extreme temperatures are linked to lower crop yields. Farmers have been forced to respond to increased temperatures through things such as increased land and labor inputs which threaten long-term productivity. Coping measures in response to variable climates can include reducing daily food consumption and selling livestock to compensate for the decreased productivity. These responses often threaten the future of household farms in the following seasons as many farmers will sell draft animals used for labor and will also consume seeds saved for planting. Measuring the full extent of future climate change impacts is difficult to determine as smallholder farms are complex systems with many different interactions. Different locations have different adaptation strategies available to them such as crop and livestock substitutions. Rates of production for cereal crops, such as wheat, oats, and maize have been declining largely due to heat's effects on crop fertility. This has forced many farmers to switch to more heat tolerant crops to maintain levels of productivity. Substitution of crops for heat tolerant alternatives limits the overall diversity of crops grown on smallholder farms. As many farmers farm to meet daily food needs, this can negatively impact nutrition and diet among many families practicing subsistence agriculture.

Types of subsistence farming

Shifting agriculture

In this type of farming, a patch of forest land is cleared by a combination of felling (chopping down) and burning, and crops are grown. After 2–3 years the fertility of the soil begins to decline, the land is abandoned and the farmer moves to clear a fresh piece of land elsewhere in the forest as the process continues. While the land is left fallow the forest regrows in the cleared area and soil fertility and biomass is restored. After a decade or more, the farmer may return to the first piece of land. This form of agriculture is sustainable at low population densities, but higher population loads require more frequent clearing which prevents soil fertility from recovering, opens up more of the forest canopy, and encourages scrub at the expense of large trees, eventually resulting in deforestation and soil erosion. Shifting cultivation is called dredd in India, ladang in Indonesia and jhumming in North East India.

Sedentary farming
While shifting agriculture's slash-and-burn technique may describe the method for opening new land, commonly the farmers in question have in existence at the same time smaller fields, sometimes merely gardens, near the homestead there they practice intensive "non-shifting" techniques. These farmers pair this with  "slash and burn" techniques to clear additional land and (by the burning) provide fertilizer (ash). Such gardens near the homestead often regularly receive household refuse. The manure of any household chickens or goats are initially thrown into compost piles just to get them out of the way. However, such farmers often recognize the value of such compost and apply it regularly to their smaller fields. They also may irrigate part of such fields if they are near a source of water.

In some areas of tropical Africa, at least, such smaller fields may be ones in which crops are grown on raised beds. Thus farmers practicing "slash and burn" agriculture are often much more sophisticated agriculturalists than the term "slash and burn" subsistence farmers suggests.

Nomadic herding
In this type of farming people migrate along with their animals from one place to another in search of fodder for their animals. Generally they rear cattle, sheep, goats, camels and/or yaks for milk, skin, meat and wool. This way of life is common in parts of central and western Asia, India, east and southwest Africa and northern Eurasia. Examples are the nomadic Bhotiyas and Gujjars of the Himalayas. They carry their belongings, such as tents, etc., on the backs of donkeys, horses, and camels. In mountainous regions, like Tibet and the Andes, yak and llama are reared. Reindeer are the livestock in arctic and sub-arctic areas. Sheep, goats, and camels are common animals, and cattle and horses are also important.

Intensive subsistence farming
In intensive subsistence agriculture, the farmer cultivates a small plot of land using simple tools and more labour. Climate with large number of days with sunshine and fertile soils, permits growing of more than one crop annually on the same plot. Farmers use their small land holdings to produce enough for their local consumption, while remaining produce is used for exchange against other goods. It results in much more food being produced per acre compared to other subsistence patterns. In the most intensive situation, farmers may even create terraces along steep hillsides to cultivate rice paddies.  Such fields are found in densely populated parts of Asia, such as in the Philippines. They may also intensify by using manure, artificial irrigation and animal waste as fertilizer. Intensive subsistence farming is prevalent in the thickly populated areas of the monsoon regions of south, southwest, and southeast Asia.

Poverty alleviation
Subsistence agriculture can be used as a poverty alleviation strategy, specifically as a safety net for food-price shocks and for food security. Poor countries are limited in fiscal and institutional resources that would allow them to contain rises in domestic prices as well as to manage social assistance programs, which is often because they are using policy tools that are intended for middle- and high-income countries. Low-income countries tend to have populations in which 80% of poor are in rural areas and more than 90% of rural households have access to land, yet a majority of these rural poor have insufficient access to food. Subsistence agriculture can be used in low-income countries as a part of policy responses to a food crisis in the short and medium term, and provide a safety net for the poor in these countries.

Agriculture is more successful over non-agricultural jobs in combating poverty in countries that have a larger population of people without education or that are unskilled. However, there are levels of poverty to be aware of to target agriculture towards the right audience. Agriculture is better at reducing poverty in those that have an income of $1 per day than those that have an income of $2 per day in Africa.  People who make less income are more likely to be poorly educated and have fewer opportunities; therefore, they work more labor-intensive jobs, such as agriculture. People who make $2 have more opportunities to work in less labor-intensive jobs in non-agricultural fields.

See also

 Back-to-the-land movement
 Cash crop
 Commercial agriculture
 Extensive agriculture
 Hoe-farming
 Industrial agriculture
 Opium replacement
 Subsistence economy
 Subsistence fishing
 Urban agriculture
 Allotment (gardening)
 Permaculture
 Smallholding

References

Further reading
 Charles Sellers (1991). The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press.
  Sir Albert Howard (1943). An Agricultural Testament. Oxford University Press.
  Tony Waters (2010). "Farmer Power: The continuing confrontation between subsistence farmers and development bureaucrats"/
 Marvin P Miracle (May 1968). "Subsistence Agriculture: Analytical Problems and Alternative Concepts", American Journal of Agricultural Economics, pp. 292–310.

Agriculture by type
Tropical agriculture
Agricultural labor
Agricultural economics
Simple living

Subsistence agriculture


Germain Burton (born 29 January 1995) is an English racing cyclist from London, who currently rides for .

Germain Burton is the son of Mia and Maurice Burton, who was the first black British champion in cycling. He rides for a team sponsored by his father's bike shop, De Ver Cycles, based in Streatham, South London. He began cycling at the age of 12, joining in with the weekend club runs, and soon decided to take the sport seriously after some encouragement from his father.

He won the under 16 British National Circuit Race Championships in 2010. Burton represented Britain at the UCI Juniors Road World Championships in 2012, finishing 36th.

On 8 August 2013, at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow, Burton competed at the UCI Juniors Track World Championships. He was part of Britain's Team Pursuit squad which also included Ollie Wood, Jake Ragan and Tao Geoghegan Hart. They finished fourth, losing the bronze medal to Russia in the final.

In May 2016 British Cycling confirmed that Burton had decided to leave their Olympic Development Programme.

Major results

2010
1st British National Circuit Race Championships – Under 16
1st Bec CC Hill-climb

2011
1st Bec CC Hill-climb

2012
1st Stage 2 Sint-Martinusprijs Kontich

2013
1st Stage 2b Junior Peace Race

2014
1st  British National Team Pursuit Championships (with Christopher Latham, Christopher Lawless and Oliver Wood)

2015
1st  British National Team Pursuit Championships (with Jake Kelly, Mark Stewart and Oliver Wood)
2nd Individual pursuit, British National Track Championships
3rd Team pursuit, Round 3, Cali, 2014–15 UCI Track Cycling World Cup (with Matt Gibson, Christopher Latham and Mark Stewart)

References

External links

1995 births
Living people
Cyclists from Greater London
British male cyclists
English male cyclists
Black British sportsmen
English people of Jamaican descent

Germain Burton


Kiryat HaMemshala (, lit. Government complex), also known as Kiryat Ben-Gurion, (lit. Ben-Gurion complex) is the government precinct of the State of Israel. It is located in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem.

History

In December 1949, the Israeli cabinet, then headed by David Ben-Gurion, voted to move most of the country's official government institutions from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Construction work began in 1950. The original plans were drawn up by the architectural firms of Munio Gitai Weinraub and Al Mansfeld, but they were not implemented. The complex was designed by architects Richard Kauffmann, Joseph Klarwein and Heinz Rau.

The Knesset is located in Kiryat HaMemshala, as are the Supreme Court of Israel, the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Finance, as well as the Bank of Israel.

See also
 Kiryat HaMemshala (East Jerusalem)
 Kiryat Haleom

References

1950 establishments in Israel
Buildings and structures in Jerusalem
20th century in Jerusalem

Kiryat HaMemshala


Harmonia is the Greek goddess of harmony and concord.

Harmonia may also refer to:

Mythology
 Harmonia (nymph), lover of god Ares and mother of the Amazons

Antiquity
 Harmonia (philosophy), a concept in Pythagoreanism
 Harmonia (Gelo) (3rd. ct.), daughter of Gelo, the son of Hieron II, king of Syracuse

Art
 Harmonia (comics), a DC Comics character based on the Greek goddess
 Harmonia (sculpture), a 1996 outdoor sculpture by Achim Kühn in Turku, Finland
 Harmonia (video game), a 2016 visual novel by Key

Astronomy and geography
 40 Harmonia, an asteroid
 Harmonia, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Biology

 Harmonia (beetle), a genus of lady beetles
 Harmonia (plant), a genus of tarweeds
 Harmonia Tiger-wing, a species of butterfly

Music
 Harmonia (band), a 1970s German band
 Harmonia Ensemble, an Italian chamber music group
 Harmonia Sacra, an 1832 music textbook
 Harmonia, an early music radio show produced by WFIU
 Harmonia, 2005 album by Broken Dog
 Harmonia, 2008 album by Lô Borges
 Harmonia (album), a 2009 album by Akiko Shikata
 "Harmonia", song by ChouCho
 "Harmonia" (song), a 2003 song by Rythem
 "Harmonia", song by Cass McCombs from Catacombs
 composition by Hans-Joachim Roedelius

See also
Wiay, Inner Hebrides

List of shipwrecks in July 1869
 Harmony (disambiguation)

Harmonia (disambiguation)


Sigurd Lewerentz (29 July 1885 – 29 December 1975) was a Swedish architect.

Biography

Lewerentz was born at Sandö in the parish of Bjärtrå in Västernorrland County, Sweden. He was the son of Gustaf Adolf Lewerentz and Hedvig Mathilda Holmgren.
He  initially trained as a mechanical engineer at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg (1905–8). Later he took up an architectural apprenticeship in Germany. He studied with Westman, Östberg and Tengbom.

He first opened his own architectural office in Stockholm in 1911  and became associated with the architect Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940).
Together they made a winning entry for the Stockholm South (Woodland) Cemetery (Skogskyrkogården) competition of 1914–15. This project was implemented initially by both architects, however, the latter stages were done by Asplund alone. He and Asplund were appointed as the main architects for the Stockholm International Exhibition (1930) but afterward, Lewerentz became disillusioned, turning away from architecture for many years; from 1940 he ran a factory producing windows and other architectural fittings of his own design.

Between 1933 and 1944 Lewerentz, together with his colleagues Erik Lallerstedt and David Helldén, created what is regarded of one of the masterpieces of functionalist architecture, Malmö Opera and Music Theatre (Malmö Opera och Musikteater). The foyer is considered of particular beauty, with its open surfaces and beautiful marble staircases and it is adorned with a number of works of art by artists such as Carl Milles and Isaac Grünewald. He was awarded the Prince Eugen Medal for architecture in 1950.

In the last decade of his life he designed two churches, St. Mark's at Björkhagen in Stockholm (1956) and St. Peter's at Klippan in Scania (1963–66), which revived his career in architecture. St. Peter's at Klippan sits in a suburban setting on the periphery of this small town in southern Sweden. The orientation of the church is correct, with the altar standing opposite the west doors. It is square in shape, suggesting a more intimate ritual in the tradition of circonstantes (standing in a circle), which harkens back to early Christianity. This was the religious equivalent of the search for the essential and the primitive, strongly evident in both of Lewerentz's later churches. These characteristics are expressed beautifully in the detailing of the buildings, the choice of materials, the quality of light and the spatial articulation.

He continued to work at competition proposals and furniture designs until shortly before his death  in Lund, Sweden during 1975.

His total output was small but of very high quality. In an obituary published in The Architectural Review, James Codrington praises Lewerentz's buildings for their "daring, often rugged use of materials" and their "indefinable atmosphere" and "sense of place."

References

Bibliography

Books

 Björkquist, Karin and Sébastien Corbari, editors (2021). Sigurd Lewerentz, Pure Aesthetics. St Mark's Church. Zürich: Park Books AG, 2021. (ISBN 9783038602439)

 Foote, Jonathan, Hansjörg Göritz, Matthew Hall and Nathan Matteson, editors (2021). Lewerentz Fragments. Barcelona: ACTAR, 2021. (ISBN 9781638400028)

 Long, Kieran, Johan Örn, and Mikael Andersson, editors (2021). Sigurd Lewerentz. Architect of Death and Life. Zürich: Park Books AG, 2021. (ISBN 9783038602323)

 Flora, Nicola, Paolo Giardiello and Gennaro Postiglione, editors (2002). Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885-1975. Milan: Electa Architecture, 2002. (ISBN 9781904313052)

 Blundell Jones, Peter (2002). Modern Architecture through case studies. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2002. (ISBN 9780750638050)

 Constant, Caroline (1994). The Woodland Cemetery: Toward a Spiritual Landscape. Stockholm: Byggförlaget, 1994. (ISBN 9789179880606)

 Ahlin, Janne. (1985) Sigurd Lewerentz, architect 1885-1975. Stockholm: Byggförlaget, 1985. (ISBN 9789185194636). Reedited in: Ahlin, Janne. (2014) Sigurd Lewerentz, architect 1885-1975. Zürich: Park Books AG, 2014. (ISBN 9783906027487)

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

 Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2016). The Separating and Connecting Nature of Architectural Limits: Sigurd Lewerentz and Site. Esempi di Architettura 3/1 (2016): 41-51. ISSN 2035-7982.

  Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2015). Equality in Death: Sigurd Lewerentz and the Planning of Malmö Eastern Cemetery 1916-1973. Planning Perspectives 30/4: 639-657 ISSN 1460-1176 DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2015.1048524.

 Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2015).  From Tradition to Innovation: Lewerentz's Designs of Ritual Spaces in Sweden, 1914-1966. The Journal of Architecture 20/1 (2015): 73-91. . DOI:10.1080/13602365.2015.1009483.

 Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2015).  Malmö Eastern Cemetery and Lewerentz's Critical Approach to Monumentality. Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 35/4 (2015):328-344. ISSN 1460-1176. DOI: 10.1080/14601176.2015.1079422.

 Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2015).  Construction as a Prototype: the Novel Approach by Sigurd Lewerentz to Using Building Materials, Especially in Walls and Windows, 1920-72. Construction History 30 Nov (2015): 67-86. ISSN 0267-7768.

 Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2013).  Less or More? The Construction of Lewerentz's Kiosk in the Malmö Cemetery. Progreso, Proyecto, Arquitectura 8 (2013): 132-147. ISSN 2171-6897. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2013.i8.09

 Recording drawings by Raphael Zuber and Helena Brobäck with photographs by Hans Cogne and text by Christoph Wieser in Werk, Bauen + Wohnen 9/2005

 Hart, Vaughan (1996). 'Sigurd Lewerentz and the 'Half-Open Door'', Architectural History: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, vol.36, pp.181-196.

Doctoral Theses

  Campo Ruiz, Ingrid. Lewerentz in Malmo: Intersections between Architecture and Landscape. (2015). Doctoral Thesis, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
  Fernández Elorza, Héctor. Asplund versus Lewerentz. (2014). Doctoral Thesis, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
 Ridderstedt, Lars. (1998). Adversus populum: Peter Celsings och Sigurd Lewerentz sakralarkitektur 1945-1975 : (the religious architecture of Peter Celsing and Sigurd Lewerentz 1945-1975). Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1998.

Exhibitions
 Sigurd Lewerentz. Architect of Death and Life. 1 October 2021 - 28 August 2022, ArkDes, Stockholm

 Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885 - 1975. Stockholm: Arkitektuurmuseet, 1985.

External links
 Sigurd Lewerentz Arkitekt. Online catalog of works and architecture map guide

Other Links
 St. Mark's, Björkhagen

1885 births
1975 deaths
Swedish architects
Recipients of the Prince Eugen Medal
People from  Västernorrland County
Chalmers University of Technology alumni
20th-century Swedish people

Sigurd Lewerentz


The lex Gabinia (Gabinian Law), lex de uno imperatore contra praedones instituendo (Law establishing a single commander against raiders) or lex de piratis persequendis (Law on pursuing the pirates) was an ancient Roman special law passed in 67 BC, which granted Pompey the Great proconsular powers in any province within 50 miles of the Mediterranean Sea without holding a properly elected magistracy for the purpose of combating piracy. It also gave Pompey the power to appoint many legates and significant financial resources. The law was proposed and passed by the tribune Aulus Gabinius.

Passage and immediate impact

Pompey enjoyed huge popularity amongst the plebeians of Rome on account of his previous successes against Sertorius and the allies of Gaius Marius, but the Roman Senate was wary of him and his growing power. The Senate was reluctant to give massive powers to any one man, especially one as popular as Pompey, fearing it would allow another dictator to seize power as Sulla had done just fifteen years before. The people, however, were unconcerned about vague abstractions of tyranny. They were concerned about the material effects of the pirates' raids and resulting disruption of the grain supply. In 68 BC, pirates set ablaze Rome's port at Ostia, destroyed the consular war fleet, and kidnapped two prominent senators, along with their retinue. Pompey, seeing a political opportunity, arranged for Aulus Gabinius to introduce what would become lex Gabinia.

The command came with a substantial fleet and army to fight the growing problems of pirates disrupting trade in the Mediterranean Sea. Appian, in his Roman History, estimated it at 270 warships, 120,000 infantry, and 4,000 cavalry. Others estimate these at 500 warships, 120,000 infantry and around 5,000 cavalry. He was also granted 144 million sesterces, disposal of the state treasury, and the authority to appoint 25 legates of praetorian rank. He was given an unprecedented term of three years to solve the problem.

Pompey managed to defeat the pirates in just three months.

Because most Roman territory was within the 50-mile limit around the Mediterranean, the law gave Pompey, who was then just 39, power over almost every province. In fact, this led to a dispute in 67 BC with the proconsul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, when the Cretans attempted to obtain better terms from Pompey than they were receiving from Metellus, who was charged with pacifying Crete.

Legacy
The main impact of the lex Gabinia was not its direct impact on Roman trade, though this was considerable. Rather, it created a clear vision of the unity of the Republic's empire under the control of one man.

While Sulla, during his dictatorship, had intended to strengthen the senate and weaken the popular assemblies, Pompey's career and preceding consulship in 70 BC showed clearly that the Sullan constitutional reforms were not working. The senate was not empowered; power was not being shared among the aristocracy. The elevation of a person who, until his election to the highest office in the state was not even a senator, to a military command over an immense swath of the Republic's empire, established the precedent of extreme centralisation of military authority that could become central to the constitutional arrangements of the Principate.

During the Roman Empire, the law served as precedent for Augustus' receipt of greater proconsular authority over the entire empire in the constitutional settlement of 23 BC. The provision allowing Pompey to appoint various legates with propraetorian authority was a forerunner to the legati Augusti who served as the emperor's deputies in his provinces. That it occurred during the Republic allowed Augustus room to claim that his actions were not out of line with the mos maiorum (the ways of the ancestors) lending him credibility in claiming the restoration of the Republic and the sovereignty of the Roman people.

See also

Roman law
List of Roman laws

References

External links
The Roman Law Library, incl. Leges

Roman law
67 BC
1st century BC in law
1st century BC in the Roman Republic
Pompey
Piracy law

Lex Gabinia de piratis persequendis


Lupus, or Lupus erythematosus, is a disease of the immune system. It is chronic, which means it does not go away. It is an autoimmune disease, where the person's immune system attacks their own body.

The immune system is partly made up of white blood cells in your body that fight off disease. In lupus, these white blood cells think that the healthy cells of the body around them are diseased, so they end up attacking healthy parts of the body. Lupus can be deadly. It causes swelling and tissue damage, and can attack any part of the body. It most commonly affects the heart, joints, skin, lungs, blood vessels, kidneys and the brain/nervous system. Some symptoms include: fatigue, fever with no cause, hair loss, mouth sores, sensitivity to sunlight, a skin disease, and Raynaud's syndrome. There is treatment for lupus, called immunosuppression, which is medicine that stops the white blood cells from damaging healthy cells for a while. After a while, this medicine wears off, and then the white blood cells go back to hurting healthy parts of the body again. For the disease of lupus, there is no cure that stops the white blood cells from attacking healthy parts of the body forever, but doctors are not giving up on finding a cure.

Lupus takes its name from the Latin word "lupus", meaning wolf. This is because a lupus-caused rash on a person's face makes the person's face look like the face of a wolf. In the United States alone, there may be 270,000 to 1.5 million (1,500,000) people with lupus. Worldwide, it is estimated (not known for sure, but a good guess) that over 5 million (5,000,000) people living with lupus. The disease mainly affects young women, but men can be affected as well.

Famous people with lupus
Disney Star Selena Gomez was diagnosed with lupus in 2013.
The pop singer Michael Jackson was diagnosed with systemic lupus in 1986.
Toni Braxton has systemic lupus.
British singer-songwriter Seal has had scarring on his face due to lupus since the age of 23.

References

Autoimmune diseases

Lupus


James Hoyer, P.A. (James Hoyer) is a Tampa, Florida-based law firm that focuses on whistleblower (qui tam) cases as well as consumer class action lawsuits. In 2015, the firm was named Whistleblower Lawyers of the Year by the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund. The firm was founded in 1992 by former State Attorney for Hillsborough County Bill James, former federal prosecutors, and retired FBI agents. Since its founding, James Hoyer has helped return more than $3 billion to consumers and taxpayers who were victims of fraud. The St. Petersburg Times once called James Hoyer one of Tampa's most successful law firms.

Members of the James Hoyer firm operate the Consumer Warning Network.

Notable Cases

In 1994, MetLife agreed to pay $42.75 million in refunds to 18,000 customers after James Hoyer, along with co-counsel, brought suit against the company for using misleading tactics to sell life insurance as a retirement or savings plan. MetLife also agreed to pay a $20-million fine to insurance regulators across the country in relation to the lawsuit. The 18,000 MetLife customers received an average of about $2,200 in refunds and interest, for a total payout by Met Life of $39,600,000. The attorney's fees paid by Met Life for the multi-year litigation, approved by the Court, was $2.75 million, according to the New York Times article. Met Life also agreed to change the fraudulent practices it had been accused of.

In 2000, James Hoyer helped negotiate a $206 million class action settlement with insurer American General Corp., on behalf of thousands of African American customers who were systematically overcharged due to their race for small "burial" policies.

In 2005, James Hoyer helped secure $52 million in new funding for Florida's elderly in nursing homes. The firm fully funded all the costs of the litigation and donated all of the legal time. James Hoyer received the Chair's Honor Award from the Elder Law Section of the Florida Bar for the firm's efforts.

In 2006, James Hoyer helped secure a class action settlement in which Allstate Insurance Co. agreed to change the way it uses credit reports in setting auto and homeowners insurance policies.

In 2008, James Hoyer was recognized by the Florida Bar for securing a $295,000 cy pres award for The Florida Bar Foundation. The Florida Bar Foundation is the only statewide organization in Florida that provides funding for Legal Aid and promotes improvements in addressing the civil legal needs of the poor.

In 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported on the firm's use of social media to connect with students of Westwood College, a for-profit school which the firm was pursuing litigation. The Journal also reported that Westwood College had filed a suit against James Hoyer, alleging defamation through "new media Internet weapons".

In 2012, James Hoyer represented one of four whistleblowers in a qui tam case against WellCare Health Plans, Inc that resulted in a $137.5 million settlement. The lawsuits alleged a number of schemes to submit false claims to Medicare and various Medicaid programs.

In 2013, a Las Vegas Review-Journal article profiled the case of a military whistleblower represented by James Hoyer. The case of Lt. Col. Timothy Ferner vs. giant defense contractor SAIC resulted in a nearly $6 million settlement.

In 2014, James Hoyer represented a whistleblower in a qui tam case against Endo Pharmaceuticals that resulted in a $193 million settlement  with the Department of Justice. The lawsuit alleged that the makers of the Lidoderm Patch were marketing the pain reliever for unapproved uses. James Hoyer's client was found to be the sole relator entitled to share in the award by District Judge Robert Kelly in June 2014. In July 2015, Judge Kelly ordered the government to pay James Hoyer's client 1% less than the 25% maximum for her "extraordinary" efforts during the decade long litigation.

In 2015, James Hoyer represented a whistleblower in a qui tam/False Claims Act case against Education Management Corporation (EDMC), which was part of a global settlement for $99.5 million with the Department of Justice. EDMC is the second largest for-profit education company in the United States and was accused of unlawfully recruiting students using deceptive and misleading practices.

In 2016, the firm represented a whistleblower who filed a lawsuit under the False Claims Act has led to an $18 million settlement with two of Indiana's largest health care providers, Indiana University (IU) Health and HealthNet. The settlement covered three areas: inappropriate billing when Certified Nurse Midwives, instead of doctors, cared for high risk pregnant women, in violation of Indiana Medicaid rules; kickback claims, regarding various financial schemes between IU Health and HealthNet, which improperly induced referrals; and false claims for "wrap around" payments, which are payments made to FQHCs to supplement their care to the poor.

In 2018, James Hoyer represented a whistleblower who was instrumental in achieving a $65 million settlement between the government and the 5th largest for-profit hospital system in the country, Prime Healthcare.  The settlement resolved allegations that 14 Prime hospitals in California knowingly submitted false claims to Medicare by admitting patients who required only less costly, outpatient care and by billing for more expensive patient diagnoses than the patients had (a practice known as "up-coding").

References

External links
James Hoyer Website
dwpersonalinjurylaw
Law Office of Allen E. Schwartz

Law firms based in Florida
Law firms established in 1992

James, Hoyer, Newcomer & Smiljanich, P.A.


Kadavu Province is a province in Fiji. It is in the Eastern Division. It has Kadavu Island, Ono Island, Galoa Island, Dravuni Island, Matanuku Island, Buliya Island, Nagigia Island, and a few other islands.

Kadavu has a total land area of 478 square kilometers. About 11,000 people lived there in 2017. There are 9 districts.

Kadavu is home to the second-largest living organism on Earth, the Great Astrolabe Reef.

Provinces of Fiji

Kadavu Province


Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was  and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945). Dubbed the Beast of Belsen by camp inmates, he was a German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. He was detained by the British Army after the Second World War, convicted of war crimes, and hanged on the gallows in the prison at Hamelin by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

Early life
Josef Kramer, an only child, was born and raised in Munich in a middle-class family. His parents, Theodore and Maria Kramer, brought him up as a "strict Roman Catholic". In 1915, the family moved from Munich to Augsburg, where Josef Kramer attended school. He began an apprenticeship as an electrician in 1920. From 1925 to 1933, except for working in a department store and as an accountant, he was mostly unemployed.

Career
He joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and the SS in 1932. His SS training led him into work as a prison guard and, after the outbreak of war, as a concentration camp guard.

In 1934, Kramer was assigned as a guard at Dachau. His promotion was rapid, obtaining senior posts at Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps. Kramer became assistant to Rudolf Höss, the Commandant at Auschwitz in 1940. He accompanied Höss to inspect Auschwitz as a possible site for a new synthetic oil and rubber plant, which was a vital industry for Nazi Germany, given its shortage of oil.

Natzweiler-Struthof
Kramer was named Commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in April 1941. Natzweiler-Struthof was the only concentration camp established by the Nazis on present-day French territory, though there were French-run transit camps, such as the one at Drancy. At the time, the Alsace-Lorraine area in which it was established had been annexed by Nazi Germany.

As commandant at Natzweiler-Struthof, Kramer personally carried out the gassings of 80 Jewish men and women, part of a group of 87 selected at Auschwitz to become anatomical specimens in a proposed Jewish skull collection to be housed at the Anatomy Institute at the Reich University of Strasbourg under the direction of August Hirt.

Ultimately, the 87 inmates were transported to Natzweiler-Struthof; 46 of these individuals were originally from Thessaloniki, Greece. The deaths of 86 of these inmates were, in the words of Hirt, "induced" in an improvised gassing facility at Natzweiler-Struthof, and their corpses, 57 men and 29 women, were sent to Strasbourg. One male victim was shot as he fought to keep from being gassed.

Auschwitz
Kramer was promoted to the rank of Hauptsturmführer (Captain) in 1942 and, in May 1944, was transferred to become the Lagerführer (camp commander) in charge of operations at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the main centre used to kill inmates within the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944. He was brought to Auschwitz to manage the gassings of new transports in May 1944, according to the Prosecution Judge Advocate at the War Crimes tribunal that convicted him of being responsible for the deaths committed at Auschwitz. There were a number of witnesses who said that he took an active part in the selection parades in that, for instance, he loaded people into the trucks and beat them when they resisted.
At Auschwitz, Kramer soon became known among his subordinates as a harsh taskmaster. One of the defendants at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Dr. Franz Lucas, testified that he tried to avoid assignments given to him by Kramer by pleading stomach and intestinal disorders. When Lucas saw that his name had been added to the list of selecting physicians for a large group of inmates transferred from Hungary, he objected strenuously. Kramer reacted sharply: "I know you are being investigated for favouring prisoners. I am now ordering you to go to the ramp, and if you fail to obey an order, I shall have you arrested on the spot."

Belsen

In December 1944, SS-Hauptsturmführer Kramer was transferred from Birkenau to Bergen Belsen, near the village of Bergen. Belsen had originally served as a temporary camp for those leaving Germany, but during the war it had been expanded to serve as a convalescent depot for the ill and displaced people from across north-west Europe. Although it had no gas chambers, Kramer's rule was so harsh that he became known as the "Beast of Belsen".

As Nazi Germany collapsed, administration of the camp broke down, but Kramer remained devoted to bureaucracy. On 1 March 1945, he filed a report asking for help and resources, stating that of the 42,000 inmates in his camp, 250–300 died each day from typhus. On 19 March, the number of inmates rose to 60,000 as the Germans continued to evacuate camps that were soon to be liberated by the Allies. As late as the week of 13 April, some 28,000 additional prisoners were brought in.

With the collapse of administration and many guards fleeing to escape retribution, roll calls were stopped, and the inmates were left to their own devices. Corpses rotted everywhere, and rats attacked the living too weak to fight them off. Kramer remained even when the British, led by Major Brian Urquhart, arrived to liberate the camp, and took them on a tour of the camp to inspect the "scenes". Piles of corpses lay all over the camp, mass graves were filled in, and the huts were filled with prisoners in every stage of emaciation and disease.

Ranks and promotions

Trial and execution

Kramer was imprisoned at the prison in Hamelin. Along with 44 other camp staff, Kramer was tried in the Belsen Trial by a British military court at Lüneburg. The trial lasted several weeks from September to November 1945. During the trial Anita Lasker testified that Kramer had taken part in selections for the gas chamber at Auschwitz.

Kramer was sentenced to death on 17 November 1945, for crimes both at Auschwitz and at Bergen-Belsen, and was hanged at Hamelin Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 13 December 1945, aged 39.

References

Sources and external links
 Straubenzee V. A. (2005). The gate of Hell, The Daily Telegraph, retrieved on December 22, 2006.
 What Was Belsen? Josef Kramer, Durham County Record Office The Learning Zone, retrieved on December 23, 2006.

1906 births
1945 deaths
Auschwitz concentration camp personnel
Belsen trial executions
Executed German mass murderers
Executed Nazi concentration camp commandants
Executed people from Bavaria
Holocaust perpetrators in Poland
Military personnel from Munich
Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp personnel
People from the Kingdom of Bavaria
Schutzhaftlagerführer
SS-Hauptsturmführer
Waffen-SS personnel

Josef Kramer


A résumé, sometimes spelled resume (or alternatively resumé), is a document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons, but most often they are used to secure new employment.

A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education. The résumé is usually one of the first items, along with a cover letter and sometimes an application for employment, which a potential employer sees regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview.

The curriculum vitae used for employment purposes in the UK (and in other European countries) is more akin to the résumé—a shorter, summary version of one's education and experience—than to the longer and more detailed CV that is expected in U.S. academic circles.

In South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, biodata is often used in place of a résumé.

History
The word "résumé" comes from the French word  meaning 'to summarize'. Leonardo da Vinci is sometimes credited with the first résumé, though his "résumé" takes the form of a letter written about 1481–1482 to a potential employer, Ludovico Sforza. For the next 450 years, the résumé continued to be simply a description of a person, including abilities and past employment. In the early 1900s, résumés included information like weight, height, marital status, and religion. By 1950, résumés were considered mandatory and started to include information like personal interests and hobbies. It was not until the 1970s, the beginning of the Digital Age, that résumés took on a more professional look in terms of presentation and content. The start of the 21st century saw a further evolution for résumés on the internet as social media helped people spread résumés faster. In 2003 LinkedIn was launched, which allowed users to post their resumes and skills online. Other than LinkedIn, several other SaaS companies are now helping job seekers with free online  résumé builders. These usually provide templates to insert credentials and experience and create a résumé to download or an online portfolio link to share via social media. With the launch of YouTube in 2006, Video résumés became common, and more and more high school students began to send them to different colleges and universities.

Description
In many contexts, a résumé is typically limited to one or two pages of size A4 or letter-size, highlighting only those experiences and qualifications that the author considers most relevant to the desired position. Many résumés contain keywords or skills that potential employers are looking for via applicant tracking systems, make heavy use of active verbs, and display content in a flattering manner. Acronyms and credentials after the applicant's name should be spelled out fully in the appropriate section of the résumé to increase the likelihood they are found in a computerized keyword scan.

A résumé is a marketing document in which the content should be adapted to suit each individual job application or applications aimed at a particular industry. In late 2002, job seekers and students started making interactive résumés such as résumés having links, clickable phone numbers and email addresses. With the launch of YouTube in 2006, job seekers and students also started to create multimedia and video résumés. Job seekers were able to circumvent the application for employment process and reach employers through direct email contact and résumé blasting, a term meaning the mass distribution of résumés to increase personal visibility within the job market. However, the mass distribution of résumés to employers can often have a negative effect on the applicant's chances of securing employment as the résumés tend not to be tailored for the specific positions the applicant is applying for. It is usually, therefore, more sensible to optimize the résumé for each position applied for and its keywords. In order to keep track of all experiences, keeping a "master résumé" document is recommended, providing job seekers with the ability to customize a tailored résumé while making sure extraneous information is easily accessible for future use if needed.

The complexity or simplicity of various résumé formats tends to produce results varying from person to person, for the occupation, and the industry. Résumés or CVs used by medical professionals, professors, artists, and people in other specialized fields may be comparatively longer. For example, an artist's résumé, typically excluding any non-art-related employment, may include extensive lists of solo and group exhibitions.

Styles
Résumés may be organized in different ways. The following are some of the more common résumé formats:

Reverse chronological résumé
A reverse chronological résumé lists a candidate's job experiences in chronological order (last thing first), generally covering the previous 10 to 15 years. Positions are listed with starting and ending dates. Current positions on a résumé typically list the starting date to the present. The reverse chronological résumé format is most commonly used by professionals who are making advancements in the same vertical. In using this format, the main body of the document becomes the Professional Experience section, starting from the most recent experience and moving chronologically backward through a succession of previous experience. The reverse chronological résumé works to build credibility through experience gained, while illustrating career growth over time and filling all gaps in a career trajectory. A chronological résumé is not recommended to job seekers with gaps in their career summaries. In the United Kingdom the chronological résumé tends to extend only as far back as the applicant's GCSE/Standard Grade qualifications.

Functional résumé
A functional résumé lists work experience and skills sorted by skill area or job function.

The functional résumé is used to focus on skills that are specific to the type of position being sought. This format directly emphasizes specific professional capabilities and utilizes experience summaries as its primary means of communicating professional competency. In contrast, the chronological résumé format will briefly highlight these competencies prior to presenting a comprehensive timeline of career growth through reverse chronological listings, with the most recent experience listed first. The functional résumé works well for those making a career change, having a varied work history, or with little work experience. A functional résumé is also preferred for applications to jobs that require very specific skills or clearly defined personality traits. A functional résumé is a good method for highlighting particular skills or experiences, especially when those particular skills or experiences may have derived from a role which was held some time ago. Rather than focus on the length of time that has passed, the functional résumé allows the reader to identify those skills quickly.

Online résumés
As the search for employment has become more electronic, it is common for employers to only accept résumés electronically, either out of practicality or preference. This has changed much about the manner in which résumés are written, read, and processed. Some career experts are pointing out that today  a paper-based résumé is an exception rather than the rule.

Many employers and hiring managers now find candidates' résumés through search engines, which makes it more important for candidates to use appropriate keywords when writing a résumé. Larger employers use Applicant Tracking Systems to search, filter, and manage high volumes of résumés. Job ads may direct applicants to email a résumé to a company or visit its website and submit a résumé in an electronic format.

Many employers, and recruitment agencies working on their behalf, insist on receiving résumés in a particular file format. Some require Microsoft Word documents, while others will only accept résumés formatted in HTML, PDF, or plain ASCII text sometimes.

Another consideration for electronic résumé documents is that they are parsed with natural language processors. Résumé parsers may correctly interpret some parts of the content of the résumé but no other parts. The best résumé parsers capture a high percentage of information regarding location, names, and titles, but are less accurate with skills, industries, and other less structured or rapidly changing data. Résumés written in a standard format is more likely to be correctly interpreted by résumé parsers and thereby may make the candidate more findable.

One advantage for the employers to online résumés is the significant cost saving compared to traditional hiring methods. Another is that potential employers no longer have to sort through massive stacks of paper.

AI-tools can be used to test résumé template.

Infographic, video and website résumés
As the Internet becomes more driven by multimedia, job-seekers have sought to take advantage of the trend by moving their résumés away from the traditional paper and email media to website résumés or e-résumés.

Video, infographic, and even Vine résumés have gained popularity recently, though mainly in the creative and media industries.

This trend has attracted criticism from human resources management professionals, who warn that this may be a passing fad and point out that multimedia-based résumés may be overlooked by recruiters whose workflow is designed only to accommodate a traditional résumé format.

Résumé evaluation
Keeping résumés online has become increasingly common for people in professions that benefit from the multimedia and rich detail that are offered by an HTML résumé, such as actors, photographers, graphic designers, developers, dancers, etc. Job seekers are finding an ever-increasing demand to have an electronic version of their résumé available to employers and professionals who use Internet recruiting. Online résumé distribution services have emerged to allow job seekers to distribute their résumés to numerous employers of their choice through email.

See also
 Background check
 Europass European Standardized model
 Federal resume
 Résumé fraud
 Curriculum vitae
 Cover letter
 Résumé parsing
 Video resume
 Ghost job

Notes

References

Bibliography

 Bennett, Scott A. The Elements of Résumé Style: Essential Rules and Eye-Opening Advice for Writing Résumés and Cover Letters that Work. AMACOM, 2005 .
 Whitcomb, Susan Britton. Resume Magic: Trade Secrets of a Professional Resume Writer, Third Edition. JIST Publishing, 2006. .
 Thiollet, Jean-Pierre.Euro CV, Paris, Top Editions, 1997.

Business documents

Résumé


Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (Knopf, 2007), by Gwyneth Cravens, is an introduction to the benefits of nuclear power and the science behind it. It is written for members of the lay public who want to learn more about nuclear power, environmentalists concerned about global warming due to fossil fuel combustion; and scientists and others who work in the nuclear world.

Synopsis
In the book, Cravens, a skeptic about nuclear energy who actively protested the plan to open Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island, New York, has a conversation about nuclear power while visiting friends in Albuquerque. One of them, Dr. Richard (Rip) Anderson, a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, listens to her beliefs about how deadly nuclear plants are and gently suggests that she is not quite correct by describing how nuclear power actually works. After more discussions, Anderson suggests that she accompany him and his wife on a tour of the United States visiting power plants, national laboratories and the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Cravens, after interviewing leading researchers, engineers, and experts in the fields of nuclear fission and radiation, public health, counterterrorism, and risk assessment, concludes that nuclear power is clean and safe. Exploration of the issues from multiple points of view and her own observations reveal to her that nuclear fission as a power source is being economically and cleanly harnessed in the U.S. She finds that in countries like France and Sweden, which both derive considerable energy from nuclear plants, the environment is far safer and cleaner than in those nations that continue to get most of their electricity from burning fossil fuels. She learns that in the worldwide energy industry - including wind and solar - nuclear power has by far the fewest deaths per terawatt-hour generated. She concludes that if we are to care for subsequent generations, embracing nuclear energy is an ethical imperative.

References

2007 non-fiction books
Alfred A. Knopf books
Books about nuclear issues
Nuclear history
Nuclear technology in the United States
Nuclear power in the United States

Power to Save the World


Benjamin Anzelevitz, known professionally as Ben Bernie (May 30, 1891 – October 23, 1943), was an American jazz violinist, bandleader, and radio personality, often introduced as "The Old Maestro". He was noted for his showmanship and memorable bits of snappy dialogue, being part of the first generation of "stars" of American popular music, alongside other artists such as Paul Whiteman (a fellow violinist and bandleader), Ted Lewis and Al Jolson.

Career

Early years
Bernie was born Bernard Anzelevitz (another source says Benjamin Anzelevitz) in Bayonne, New Jersey. He attended Columbia University and the New York College of Music. By the age of 15 he was teaching violin, but this experience apparently diminished his interest in the violin for a time.

Bernie performed in vaudeville, appearing with Charles Klass as The Fiddle Up Boys in 1912 and with Phil Baker as Baker and Bernie, but he met with little success until 1922 when he joined his first orchestra. Later, he had his own band, The Lads, seen in the early DeForest Phonofilm sound short, Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924–25), featuring pianist Oscar Levant. He toured with Maurice Chevalier in Europe.

Radio and other performances

Bernie and his orchestra were heard November 15, 1926, via a remote broadcast from the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City, on the first NBC broadcast. In 1928, he starred in the Broadway musical, Here's Howe, as Dan Danny.

His musical variety radio shows through the 1930s, usually titled, Ben Bernie, The Old Maestro received ratings that placed him among radio's top ten programs. He was heard on radio as early as 1923, broadcasting on WJZ and the NBC Blue Network in 1930–31, sponsored by Mennen. After a 1931–32 run on CBS, sponsored by Blue Ribbon Malt, which was acquired by Pabst Beer (during Prohibition, they sold malt syrup, the primary ingredient in brewing "homemade beer"), he was heard Tuesdays on NBC from 1932 to 1935, also with Pabst. His announcer during this period was Jimmy Wallington.

On the Blue Network from 1935 to 1937, Bernie's sponsor was the American Can Company. He returned to CBS in 1938, sponsored by U.S. Rubber. With Half-&-Half Tobacco as a sponsor, he hosted a musical quiz program from 1938 to 1940. From 1940 to 1941, Bromo-Seltzer was his sponsor on the Blue Network. Wrigley's Gum sponsored The Ben Bernie War Workers' Program (1941–43). He also made guest appearances on other radio shows. He appeared in four feature films Shoot the Works (1934), Stolen Harmony (1935),Wake Up and Live (1937), and Love and Hisses (1937)

His theme was "It's a Lonesome Old Town" and his signature trademark, "yowsah, yowsah, yowsah" (also spelled "yowsa" or "yowza"), became a national catchphrase. The term was memorably used by a character in the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Richie Cunningham in a 1976 episode of Happy Days, "They Shoot Fonzies, Don't They?" (1976), by the band Chic with their hit "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" (1977), Frank Zappa in his 1979 single "Dancin' Fool" and Ritch Brinkley as Cappy in 1994's comedy, Cabin Boy.

Announcers for Bernie's programs included Harlow Wilcox, Harry von Zell and Bob Brown. His radio shows featured comedy from Lew Lehr and Fuzzy Knight, and the line-up of vocalists included Buddy Clark, Little Jackie Heller, Scrappy Lambert, Pat Kennedy, Jane Pickens, Dinah Shore, and Mary Small.

To boost ratings, Walter Winchell and Bernie, who were good friends, staged a fake rivalry similar to the comedic conflict between Jack Benny and Fred Allen. This mutually beneficial "feud" was a running gag on their radio appearances and continued in two films in which they portrayed themselves: Wake Up and Live (1937) and Love and Hisses (1937). They are also caricatured in the Warner Bros. cartoons The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937) as "Ben Birdie" and "Walter Finchell" and The Coo-Coo Nut Grove (1936) as "Ben Birdie" and "Walter Windpipe".

Recordings
Bernie's orchestra recorded throughout the 1920s and 1930s on Vocalion (1922–25), Brunswick (1925–33), Columbia (1933), Decca (1936), and ARC (Vocalion and OKeh) (1939–40). In 1923 Bernie and the Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra recorded "Who's Sorry Now?".

In 1925 Ben Bernie and his orchestra recorded "Sweet Georgia Brown". Bernie was the co-composer of this jazz standard, which became the theme song of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Personal life

On December 24, 1915, Bernie married Rose Harris (maiden; 1893–1965) in Manhattan, New York.  They had a son, Jason H. Bernie (1918–1969).  Ben and Rose Bernie separated in September 1931 and divorced September 1935.  In October 1935, Ben Bernie remarried Dorothy P. Wesley (1908–1990) in Miami, Florida.

Bernie died from a pulmonary embolism in October 1943, aged 52, and was buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery, in Queens, New York.

Bernie has a star at 6280 Hollywood Boulevard in the Radio section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was dedicated February 8, 1960.

Selected discography
 "Sweet Georgia Brown" July 1925 (#1 hit for 5 weeks)
 "Sleepy Time Gal" March 1926 (#1 hit for 4 weeks)
 "Ain't She Sweet" May 1927 (#1 hit for 4 weeks)
 "Marching Along Together" August 21, 1933 (Columbia)
 "We Won't Have to Sell the Farm" (Columbia)
 "The Duke Is on a Bat Again" (Columbia)
 "Ain't That Marvelous" (Columbia)
 "This Is Romance" Voc. Frank Prince, Sept. 19, 1933 (Columbia)
 "You Gotta Be a Football Hero", Sept. 19, 1933 (Columbia)
 "Shanghai Lil", Sept. 26, 1933 (Columbia)
 "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf", Sept. 26, 1933 (Columbia)

References

Bibliography
 Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, Oxford University Press, 1998.

External links

Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924-25) made in Phonofilm by Lee DeForest
Ben Bernie recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings

1891 births
1943 deaths
Deaths from pulmonary embolism
Burials at Mount Hebron Cemetery (New York City)
American jazz bandleaders
American jazz violinists
American male musical theatre actors
American radio bandleaders
American radio personalities
Big band bandleaders
Vaudeville performers
Vocalion Records artists
Brunswick Records artists
Columbia Records artists
Decca Records artists
American male violinists
20th-century American violinists
American male jazz musicians
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American singers

Ben Bernie


The Attorney General of the Confederate States of America was a member of the Confederate cabinet. The office of Attorney General of the Confederate States was created by the statute which established the Department of Justice. By the establishing statute, it was "the duty of the Attorney General to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court, in which the Confederate States [was] concerned, and to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law, when required by the President of the Confederate States, or when requested by any of the heads of departments, touching any matters that may concern their departments on subjects before them." In this respect, his duties were the same as those of the United States Attorney General. But additionally, he had "supervisory power over the accounts of the marshals, clerks and officers of all the courts of the Confederate States, and all claims against the Confederate States." The Supreme Court was never established because of "fierce opposition" by white supremacists to a federal court that could abolish slavery.

Though the United States had established their office of Attorney General by the Judiciary Act of 1789, this act establishing the Confederate States Department of Justice predated and preceded the establishment of the United States Department of Justice by almost a decade, making it an earlier Department of Justice that was not in the United States and that failed to create a Supreme Court .

List of attorneys general

References

Bibliography

External links
Political Graveyard

Attorney General
1861 establishments in the Confederate States of America

Confederate States Attorney General


Dan Voorhees Stephens (November 4, 1868 – January 13, 1939) was a Nebraska Democratic politician.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, on November 4, 1868, Dan V. Stephens attended Valparaiso College in Indiana. He settled in Fremont, Nebraska, where he taught school and studied law. He became the superintendent of schools in Dodge County, Nebraska, from 1890 to 1894.  Stephens also authored several books, including Silas Cobb, Phelps and His Teacher and Passing of the Buffalo. He farmed, published, and worked in manufacturing and banking during this time.

Stephens served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1904, 1908, 1920, 1924, and 1932. When James P. Latta died in office, a special election was held and Stephens was elected to fill his seat in the Sixty-second Congress. He was reelected to the Sixty-third, Sixty-fourth, and Sixty-fifth Congresses serving from November 7, 1911, to March 3, 1919. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1918. Stephens resumed his former business pursuits in Nebraska. He went on to become a member of the State board of education of Nebraska from 1923 to 1926. Stephens also served as president of the Stephens National Bank; president of the Stephens-Hammond Company; and vice-president of the Nebraska State Building and Loan Association. He died in Fremont, Nebraska, on January 13, 1939, and his remains were cremated.

References

  at the Nebraska State Historical Society

American non-fiction writers
1868 births
1939 deaths
People from Fremont, Nebraska
Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Nebraska
People from Bloomington, Indiana
Writers from Indiana

Dan V. Stephens


Islamic culture or Muslim culture refers to the historic cultural practices that developed among the various peoples living in the Muslim world. These practices, while not always religious in nature, are generally influenced by aspects of Islam, particularly due to the religion serving as an effective conduit for the inter-mingling of people from different ethnic/national backgrounds in a way that enabled their cultures to come together on the basis of a common Muslim identity. The earliest forms of Muslim culture, from the Rashidun Caliphate to the Umayyad Caliphate and the early Abbasid Caliphate, was predominantly based on the existing cultural practices of the Arabs, the Byzantines, and the Persians. However, as the Islamic empires expanded rapidly, Muslim culture was further influenced and assimilated much from the Iranic, Caucasian, Turkic, Indian, Malay, Somali, Berber, and Indonesian cultures.

Owing to a variety of factors, there are variations in the application of Islamic beliefs in different cultures and traditions.

Language and literature

Arabic

Arabic literature ( / ALA-LC: al-Adab al-'Arabī) is the writing, both prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is "Adab", which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and which implies politeness, culture and enrichment.

Arabic literature emerged in the 5th century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an,(the holy book of Islam) widely regarded by people as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, but has remained vibrant to the present day, with poets and prose-writers across the Arab world, as well as rest of the world, achieving increasing success.

Persian/Iranic

Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and it is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia (such as Tajikistan) and South Asia where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language. For instance, Rumi, one of best-loved Persian poets born in Balkh (in what is now the modern-day Afghanistan) or Vakhsh (in what is now the modern-day Tajikistan), wrote in Persian and lived in Konya, then the capital of the Seljuks in Anatolia. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, the wider Caucasus, Turkey, western parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included. At the same time, not all literature written in Persian is written by ethnic Persians or Iranians, as Turkic, Caucasian, and Indic poets and writers have also used the Persian language in the environment of Persianate cultures.

Described as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which date back as far as 522 BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Arab conquest of Persia . After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Arab empire and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.

Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Sa'di, Hafiz, Attar, Nezami, Rumi and Omar Khayyam are also known in the West and have influenced the literature of many countries.

Indic

For a thousand years, since the invasion of India by the Ghaznavids, the Persian-Islamic culture of the eastern half of the Islamic world started to influence the Indian culture. Persian was the official language of most Indian empires such as the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate, the Bengal Sultanate, the Deccan Sultanates (such as the Qutb Shahi dynasty) and the Mughal Empire. Persian artistic forms in literature and poetry such as ghazals have come to significantly affect Urdu and other Indian literature.
More Persian literature was produced in India than in the Iranian world. As late as the 20th century, Allama Iqbal chose Persian for some of his major poetic works. The first Persian language newspaper was also published in India, given that printing machines were first implemented in India.

In Bengal, Muslim writers were exploring different themes through Islamic narratives and epics such as culture, cosmology, love and history. Starting from Shah Muhammad Saghir in the 14th century, Muslim writers began to enrich the Bengali language for over 600 years, often being actively supported and promoted by the rulers themselves. The early 20th century brought a new era for Bengali Islamic literature, with its most notable poet Kazi Nazrul Islam espousing intense rebellion against colonialism and oppression, in addition to writing a highly acclaimed collection of Bengali ghazals. Sultana's Dream by Begum Rokeya, an Islamic feminist, is one earliest works of feminist science fiction.

Turkic

From the 11th century, there was a growing body of Islamic literature in the Turkic languages. However, for centuries to come the official language in Turkish-speaking areas would remain Persian. In Anatolia, with the advent of the Seljuks, the practise and usage of Persian in the region would be strongly revived. A branch of the Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum, took Persian language, art and letters to Anatolia. They adopted Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans, which can "roughly" be seen as their eventual successors, took this tradition over. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire, though the lingua franca amongst common people from the 15th/16th century would become Turkish as well as having laid an active "foundation" for the Turkic language as early as the 4th century (see Turkification). After a period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish had developed towards a fully accepted language of literature, which was even able to satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. However, Turkish was proclaimed the official language of the Karamanids in the 17th century, though it didn't manage to become the official language in a wider area or larger empire until the advent of the Ottomans. With the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Turkish grew in importance in both poetry and prose becoming, by the beginning of the 18th century, the official language of the Empire. Unlike India, where Persian remained the official and principal literary language of both Muslim and Hindu states until the 19th century.

Art

Public Islamic art is traditionally non-representational, except for the widespread use of plant forms, usually in varieties of the spiralling arabesque. These are often combined with Islamic calligraphy, geometric patterns in styles that are typically found in a wide variety of media, from small objects in ceramic or metalwork to large decorative schemes in tiling on the outside and inside of large buildings, including mosques. However, there is a long tradition in Islamic art of the depiction of human and animal figures, especially in painting and small anonymous relief figures as part of a decorative scheme. Almost all Persian miniatures (as opposed to decorative illuminations) include figures, often in large numbers, as do their equivalents in Arab, Mughal and Ottoman miniatures.  But miniatures in books or muraqqa albums were private works owned by the elite.  Larger figures in monumental sculpture are exceptionally rare until recent times, and portraiture showing realistic representations of individuals (and animals) did not develop until the late 16th century in miniature painting, especially Mughal miniatures.  Manuscripts of the Qur'an and other sacred texts have always been strictly kept free of such figures, but there is a long tradition of the depiction of Muhammad and other religious figures in books of history and poetry; since the 20th century Muhammad has mostly been shown as though wearing a veil hiding his face, and many earlier miniatures were overpainted to use this convention.

Depiction of animate beings

Some interpretations of Islam include a ban of depiction of animate beings, also known as aniconism. Islamic aniconism stems in part from the prohibition of idolatry and in part from the belief that creation of living forms is God's prerogative. Although the Quran does not explicitly prohibit visual representation of any living being, it uses the word musawwir (maker of forms, artist) as an epithet of God. The corpus of hadith (sayings attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad) contains more explicit prohibitions of images of living beings, challenging painters to "breathe life" into their images and threatening them with punishment on the Day of Judgment.  Muslims have interpreted these prohibitions in different ways in different times and places. Religious Islamic art has been typically characterized by the absence of figures and extensive use of calligraphic, geometric and abstract floral patterns. However, representations of Muhammad (in some cases, with his face concealed) and other religious figures are found in some manuscripts from lands to the east of Anatolia, such as Persia and India. These pictures were meant to illustrate the story and not to infringe on the Islamic prohibition of idolatry, but many Muslims regard such images as forbidden. In secular art of the Muslim world, representations of human and animal forms historically flourished in nearly all Islamic cultures, although, partly because of opposing religious sentiments, figures in paintings were often stylized, giving rise to a variety of decorative figural designs.

Calligraphy

Islamic calligraphy is the artistic practice of handwriting and calligraphy, based upon the alphabet in the lands sharing a common Islamic cultural heritage. It includes Arabic Calligraphy, Ottoman, and Persian calligraphy. It is known in Arabic as khatt Islami (), meaning Islamic line, design, or construction.

The development of Islamic calligraphy is strongly tied to the Qur'an; chapters and excerpts from the Qur'an are a common and almost universal text upon which Islamic calligraphy is based. However, Islamic calligraphy is not limited to strictly religious subjects, objects, or spaces. Like all Islamic art, it encompasses a diverse array of works created in a wide variety of contexts. The prevalence of calligraphy in Islamic art is not directly related to its non-figural tradition; rather, it reflects the centrality of the notion of writing and written text in Islam. It is noteworthy, for instance, that the Prophet Muhammad is related to have said: "The first thing God created was the pen."

Islamic calligraphy developed from two major styles: Kufic and Naskh. There are several variations of each, as well as regionally specific styles. Islamic calligraphy has also been incorporated into modern art beginning with the post-colonial period in the Middle East, as well as the more recent style of calligraffiti.

Architecture

Islamic architecture is the range of architectural styles of buildings associated with Islam. It encompasses both secular and religious styles from the early history of Islam to the present day. Early Islamic architecture was influenced by Roman, Byzantine, Persian and all other lands which the Muslims conquered in the 7th and 8th centuries.  Further east, it was also influenced by Chinese and Indian architecture as Islam spread to the Southeast Asia.  Later it developed distinct characteristics in the form of buildings, and the decoration of surfaces with Islamic calligraphy and geometric and interlace patterned ornament.  The principal Islamic architectural types for large or public buildings are: the Mosque, the Tomb, the Palace and the Fort. From these four types, the vocabulary of Islamic architecture is derived and used for other buildings such as public baths, fountains and domestic architecture.

Elements of Islamic style
Islamic architecture may be identified with the following design elements, which were inherited from the first mosque built by Muhammad in Medina, as well as from other pre-Islamic features adapted from churches and synagogues.
Large courtyards often merged with a central prayer hall (originally a feature of the Masjid al-Nabawi).
Minarets or towers (which were originally used as torch-lit watchtowers for example in the Great Mosque of Damascus; hence the derivation of the word from the Arabic nur, meaning "light"). The oldest standing minaret in the world is the minaret of the Great Mosque of Kairouan (in Tunisia); erected between the 2nd and the 3rd century, it is a majestic square tower consisting of three superimposed tiers of gradual size and decor.
A mihrab or niche on an inside wall indicating the direction to Mecca. This may have been derived from previous uses of niches for the setting of the torah scrolls in Jewish synagogues or Mehrab (Persian: مِهراب) of Persian Mitraism culture or the :wikt:haikal of Coptic churches.
Domes (the earliest Islamic use of which was in the 8th-century mosque of Medina).
Use of iwans to intermediate between different sections.
Use of geometric shapes and repetitive art (arabesque).
Use of decorative Arabic calligraphy.
Use of symmetry.
Ablution fountains.
Use of bright colour.
Focus on the interior space of a building rather than the exterior.

Theatre

Whilst theatre is permitted by Islam, Islam does not allow for any performances to depict God, Muhammad, his companions, the angels or matters detailed in the religion that are unseen.

The most popular forms of theatre in the medieval Islamic world were puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Live secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta'zieh theatre.

One of the oldest, and most enduring, forms of puppet theatre is the Wayang of Indonesia.  Although it narrates primarily pre-Islamic legends, it is also an important stage for Islamic epics such as the adventures of Amir Hamzah (pictured).  Islamic Wayang is known as Wayang Sadat or Wayang Menak.

Karagoz, the Turkish Shadow Theatre has influenced puppetry widely in the region. It is thought to have passed from China by way of India. Later it was taken by the Mongols from the Chinese and transmitted to the Turkish peoples of Central Russia. Thus the art of Shadow Theatre was brought to Anatolia by the Turkish people emigrating from Central Asia. Other scholars claim that shadow theatre came to Anatolia in the 16th century from Egypt. The advocates of this view claim that when Yavuz Sultan Selim conquered Egypt in 1517, he saw shadow theatre performed during an extacy party put on in his honour. Yavuz Sultan Selim was so impressed with it that he took the puppeteer back to his palace in Istanbul. There his 47-year-old son, later Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, developed an interest in the plays and watched them a great deal. Thus shadow theatre found its way into the Ottoman palaces.

In other areas the style of shadow puppetry known as khayal al-zill – an intentionally metaphorical term whose meaning is best translated as 'shadows of the imagination' or 'shadow of fancy' survives. This is a shadow play with live music .."the accompaniment of drums, tambourines and flutes...also..."special effects" – smoke, fire, thunder, rattles, squeaks, thumps, and whatever else might elicit a laugh or a shudder from his audience"

In Iran puppets are known to have existed much earlier than 1000, but initially only glove and string puppets were popular in Iran. Other genres of puppetry emerged during the Qajar era (18th–19th century) as influences from Turkey spread to the region. Kheimeh Shab-Bazi is a Persian traditional puppet show which is performed in a small chamber by a musical performer and a storyteller called a morshed or naghal. These shows often take place alongside storytelling in traditional tea and coffee-houses (Ghahve-Khave). The dialogue takes place between the morshed and the puppets. Puppetry remains very popular in Iran, the touring opera Rostam and Sohrab puppet opera being a recent example.

The Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman. It is considered to be the first opera house linking Islamic culture with classical music.

Following the independence of Pakistan in 1947, religion-based nationalism was strong and affected the theatre in both wings of the country. In East Pakistan (modern-day Bangladesh), playwrights emerged such as Ibrahim Khan (1894-1978), Ibrahim Khalil (b. 1916), Akbar ad-Din (1895-1978) and others. These playwrights would create plays related to the Islamic history of the subcontinent and Middle East, glorifying past Muslim rulers as well as the history of the Pakistan Movement.

Dance
Many forms of dancing arts are practised in Muslim cultures, both in religious  and secular contexts (such as folk and tribal dances, court dances, dances of celebration during weddings and festivals, belly dancing, etc.).

Some scholars of Islamic fiqh pronounced gender based rulings on dance, making it permissible for women within a female only environment, as is often performed at celebrations, but discouraging men to engage in it. Other classical authorities including Al-Ghazzali and Al-Nawawi allow it without this distinction, but criticised dancing which is "languid" or excites carnal lusts.

Most of the religious orders (tariqa) which dominate traditional Muslim religious life practice ritualised forms of dance in the context of dhikr ceremonies. Dhikr, "recollection" (of God) is a meditative form of worship different from ritual prayer where the seeker focuses all of his senses and thoughts on God in the hope of attaining maarifat (experiential knowledge of God) and triggering mystic states within him- or herself. Dhikr can be performed individually or with like-minded followers under the direction of a sheikh, and can involve silent meditation or repetition and visualisation of sacred words such as the 99 names of God or Quranic phrases, and may be done at rest or with rhythmic movements and controlling one's breath. Traditional Islamic orders have developed varied dhikr exercises including sometimes highly elaborate ritual dances accompanied by Sufi poetry and classical music.

Al-Ghazzali discussed the use of music and dancing in dhikr and the mystical states it induces in worshippers, as well as regulating the etiquette attached to these ceremonies, in his short treatise on Islamic spirituality The Alchemy of Happiness and in his highly influential work The Revival of the Religious Sciences. Al-Ghazzali emphasized how the practices of music and dance are beneficial to religious seekers, as long as their hearts are pure before engaging in these practices.

Notable examples include the Mevlevi Order founded by Jalaluddin Rumi, which was the main Sunni order of the Ottoman Empire, and its sama ritual (known in the West as "the whirling dervishes"). The Mevlevi order, its rituals and Ottoman classical music has been banned in Turkey through much of the 20th century as part of the country's drive towards secular "modernisation", and the order's properties have been expropriated and the country's mosques put out of its control, which has radically diminished its influence in modern Turkey. In 2008, UNESCO confirmed the "Mevlevi Sama Ceremony" of Turkey as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, and the practice is now regaining interest.

In Egypt and the Levant, the Mevlevi form of sama is known as tannoura and has been adopted (with some modifications) by other Sufi orders as well.

The Chishti order, traditionally the dominant Islamic institution in Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent and the most ancient of the major Sufi orders, also practices forms of sama similar to the Mevlevis, as well as other forms of devotional dance. The order is strongly associated with the development of Hindustani classical music and semi-classical devotional genres such as qawwali through famed pioneer figures such as Amir Khusrow. The Chishti order remains one of the largest and strongest Muslim religious orders in the world by far, retaining a vast influence on the spirituality and culture of around 500 million Muslims living in the Indian subcontinent.

Other examples of devotional dance are found in the Maghreb where it is associated with gnawa music, as well as Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. The Naqshbandi order, predominant among Iran's Sunni minority, is a notable exception in that they do not use music and dancing in the context of dhikr.

In addition to these strictly religious forms of dance, colourful dancing processions traditionally take place in Muslim communities during weddings and public celebrations such as Mawlid, Eid el-Adha, and so on. Many Islamic cultures have also developed classical forms of dance in the context for instance of Mughal, Ottoman, Persian and Javanese court cultures, as well as innumerable local folk and tribal dances (for instance amongst Bedouin, Tuareg and Pashto peoples), and other forms of dance used for entertainment or sometimes healing such as belly dancing (principally associated with Egyptian culture).

Although tariqas and their rituals have been an omnipresent part of Muslim life for most of Islam's history and were largely responsible for the spread of Islam throughout the world, their following and influence has sharply declined since the late 19th century, having been vigorously opposed and combated in turns by the French and British colonial administrations and by Muslim modernists and secularists like Kemal Atatürk, and in recent decades have been the target of vocal opposition by the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect promoted by Saudi Arabia (where most of the heritage associated with Sufism and tariqa was physically destroyed by the state in the 1930s). Wahhabi militant groups such as ISIS and the Taliban are repeatedly targeting dhikr ceremonies in terrorist attacks, notably in Egypt and Pakistan.

Music

Many Muslims are very familiar to listening to music.
The classic heartland of Islam is Arabia as well as other parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Because Islam is a multicultural religion, the musical expression of its adherents is diverse.

 Arab classical music
 Religious music in Iran
 Hindustani classical music
 Qawwali music

The Seljuk Turks, a nomadic tribe that converted to Islam, conquered Anatolia (now Turkey), and held the Caliphate as the Ottoman Empire, also had a strong influence on Islamic music. See Turkish classical music.

Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Malay Archipelago also have large Muslim populations, but these areas have had less influence than the heartland on the various traditions of Islamic music.  For South India, see: Mappila Songs, Duff Muttu.

All these regions were connected by trade long before the Islamic conquests of the 7th century and later, and it is likely that musical styles travelled the same routes as trade goods. However, lacking recordings, we can only speculate as to the pre-Islamic music of these areas. Islam must have had a great influence on music, as it united vast areas under the first caliphs, and facilitated trade between distant lands. Certainly the Sufis, brotherhoods of Muslim mystics, spread their music far and wide.

See articles on Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Ashurah (see also Hosay and Tabuik), Mawlid, Lailat al Miraj and Shab-e-baraat.

Family life

In a Muslim family, the birth of a child is attended with some religious ceremonies. Immediately after the birth, the words of Adhan is pronounced in the right ear of the child. In the seventh day, the aquiqa ceremony is performed, in which an animal is slaughtered and its meat is distributed among the poor. The head of the child is also shaved, and an amount of money equaling the weight of the child's hair is donated to the poor. Apart from fulfilling the basic needs of food, shelter, and education, the parents or the elderly members of family also undertake the task of teaching moral qualities, religious knowledge, and religious practices to the children. Marriage, which serves as the foundation of a Muslim family, is a civil contract which consists of an offer and acceptance between two qualified parties in the presence of two witnesses. The groom is required to pay a bridal gift (mahr) to the bride, as stipulated in the contract. With Muslims coming from diverse backgrounds including 49 Muslim-majority countries, plus a strong presence as large minorities throughout the world there are many variations on Muslim weddings. Generally in a Muslim family, a woman's sphere of operation is the home and a man's corresponding sphere is the outside world. However, in practice, this separation is not as rigid as it appears.

Certain religious rites are performed during and after the death of a Muslim. Those near a dying man encourage him to pronounce the Shahada as Muslims want their last word to be their profession of faith. After the death, the body is appropriately bathed by the members of the same gender and then enshrouded in a threefold white garment called kafan. Placing the body on a bier, it is first taken to a mosque where funeral prayer is offered for the dead person, and then to the graveyard for burial.

Etiquette and diet

Many practices fall in the category of adab, or Islamic etiquette. This includes greeting others with "as-salamu 'alaykum" ("peace be unto you"), saying bismillah ("in the name of God") before meals, and using only the right hand for eating and drinking. Islamic hygienic practices mainly fall into the category of personal cleanliness and health. Circumcision of male offspring is also practiced in Islam. Islamic burial rituals include saying the Salat al-Janazah ("funeral prayer") over the bathed and enshrouded dead body, and burying it in a grave. Muslims are restricted in their diet. Prohibited foods include pork products, blood, carrion, and alcohol. All meat must come from a herbivorous animal slaughtered in the name of God by a Muslim, Jew, or Christian, with the exception of game that one has hunted or fished for oneself. Food permissible for Muslims is known as halal food. In verses of Quran, there goes these lines about meat that a Muslim can eat: " O ye who believe! Avoid suspicion as much (as possible): for suspicion in some cases is a sin: And spy not on each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, ye would abhor it...But fear Allah. For Allah is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful." (Sura al-Hucurat, 12) "He has only forbidden you ˹to eat˺ carrion, blood, swine, and what is slaughtered in the name of any other than Allah. But if someone is compelled by necessity—neither driven by desire nor exceeding immediate need—then surely Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful." (Sura al-Nahl, 115) "Tell them (O Muhammad!): 'I do not find in what has been revealed to me anything forbidden for anyone who wants to eat unless it is carrion, outpoured blood and the flesh of swine, all of which is unclean; or that which is profane having been slaughtered in a name other than that of Allah.121 But whosoever is constrained to it by necessity - neither desiring to disobey nor exceeding the limit of necessity - your Lord is surely AllForgiving, All-Compassionate." (Sura al-An'am, 145) "Forbidden to you is that which dies of itself, and blood, and flesh of swine, and that on which any other name than that of Allah has been invoked, and the strangled (animal) and that beaten to death, and that killed by a fall and that killed by being smitten with the horn, and that which wild beasts have eaten, except what you slaughter, and what is sacrificed on stones set up (for idols) and that you divide by the arrows; that is a transgression. This day have those who disbelieve despaired of your religion, so fear them not, and fear Me. This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favor on you and chosen for you Islam as a religion; but whoever is compelled by hunger, not inclining willfully to sin, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful." (Sura al-Maidah, 3) These verses clearly show that Islam forbids to eat flesh, drink blood and certain meats.

Martial arts

 Pahlavani – Iran
 Yağlı güreş – Turkey
 Gatka – Pakistan
 Kurash – Central Asia
 Istunka – Somalia
 Nuba fighting – Sudan
 Tahtib – Egypt
 Laamb Wrestling – Senegal
 Dambe – Nigeria
 Boli Khela – Bangladesh
 Lathi Khela – Bangladesh
 Sqay – India
 Pencak silat – Indonesia
 Bakti Negara – Indonesia
 Perisai Diri – Indonesia
 Kuntao – Indonesia
 Tarung Derajat – Indonesia
 Silat – Indonesia
 Silat Melayu – Malaysia
 Seni Gayung Fatani – Malaysia
 Seni Gayong – Malaysia
 Tomoi – Malaysia
 Lian padukan – Malaysia
 Furusiyya – West Asian

See also
 Cultural Muslim
 Islamicate
Islam in South Asia
Islamic advice literature
 Islamic literature
 Muslim meme

References

Works cited

Further reading
 Rosenthal, Franz (1977). The Classical Heritage in Islam, in series, Arabic Thought and Culture.  from the German by Emilie and Jenny Marmorstein. [Pbk. ed.]. London: Routledge, 1992. xx, 298 p., sparsely ill. N.B.: "First published in English in 1975 by Routledge & Kegan, Paul" in the hardcover ed. .

External links

Islamic culture