title: Material Girl

text: Minimal elements of the song were included in the live performance of "Girl Gone Wild" on the MDNA Tour (2012). "Material Girl" was included in the final section of the Rebel Heart Tour (2015–16). For this section, Madonna worked with designer Jeremy Scott for party inspired costumes. She wanted a "Harlem-flapper-meets-Paris-in-the-Twenties" look, and Scott came up with the final dress adorned with thousands of Swarovski crystals. Following the jazz rendition of 2000 single "Music", Madonna's started performing "Material Girl", in a similar theme like the music video. Towards the end, Madonna changed the choreography, and made her dancers who posed as suitors, to fall down the stairs instead. The performance ended with the singer walking down the catwalk in a bridal veil and carrying a white bouquet, which she eventually throws into the crowd. Utilizing the stage as both stairs as well as video backdrop, the stairs rose up and down during the song. The performance of the song at the March 19–20, 2016 shows in Sydney's Allphones Arena was recorded and released in Madonna's fifth live album, "Rebel Heart Tour".


title: Material Girl

text: In June 2022, to accompany the remix album release, "" Madonna performed at Pride at the Women of the World Party in New York City. Madonna performed a mashup of "Material Girl" with Saucy Santana's hip hop song "Material Girl".


title: Material Girl

text: After the song's release, the phrase "material girl" became another nickname for Madonna. She often remarked that "Material Girl" is the song she most regrets recording, as it became a label that has been attached to her for decades. She also said if she had known this, she probably would never have recorded it. After making the video, Madonna said she never wanted to be compared to Monroe, despite posing as the Hollywood icon and recreating many of Marilyn's signature poses for various photos shoots, most notably a 1991 issue of "Vanity Fair". Reflecting on the song, Madonna told author J. Randy Taraborrelli:


title: Material Girl

text: Academics analyzed the usage of the term "material" as odd because, according to them, "materialistic" is the correct word. However, that would have posed problems of versification for Madonna and songwriter Brown. Guilbert commented that "material girl" designated a certain type of liberated women, thus deviating from its original coinage which meant a girl who is tangible and accessible. Cook said that the meaning and impact of "material girl" was no longer circumscribed by the video, rather by its lyrics. Its influence was seen later among such diverse groups such as female versus male, gay versus straight, and academic versus teenage.


title: Material Girl

text: In 1993, a conference was held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with the subject as "Madonna: Feminist Icon or Material Girl?". The conference pondered on the duality of Madonna as both of them and deduced that the question of Madonna's feminism is not easy to decide. Some of the feminists left the conference, citing that they had not been able to make up their minds. As New Age spirituality became popular in the U.S. in the late 1990s, Madonna tried to shun the "material girl" tag, and embarked on a spiritual quest of her own. Journals like "The Times" and "The Advocate" declared her as "the Ethereal Girl" and "Spiritual Girl" respectively.


title: Material Girl

text: In 2022, Madonna released a collaboration with American rapper Saucy Santana, titled "Material Gworrllllllll". The song is a mashup of "Material Girl" and Saucy Santana's 2019 same-titled single. "Material Gworrllllllll!" is a pop rap, bounce and electropop track with elements of Miami bass and trap.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad Caliphate (; or or from ) was a North African Berber Muslim empire founded in the 12th century. At its height, it controlled much of the Iberian Peninsula (Al Andalus) and North Africa (the Maghreb).


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad movement was founded by Ibn Tumart among the Berber Masmuda tribes, but the Almohad caliphate and its ruling dynasty were founded after his death by Abd al-Mu'min al-Gumi. Around 1120, Ibn Tumart first established a Berber state in Tinmel in the Atlas Mountains. Under Abd al-Mu'min (r. 1130–1163) they succeeded in overthrowing the ruling Almoravid dynasty governing Morocco in 1147, when he conquered Marrakesh and declared himself caliph. They then extended their power over all of the Maghreb by 1159. Al-Andalus soon followed, and all of Muslim Iberia was under Almohad rule by 1172.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The turning point of their presence in the Iberian Peninsula came in 1212, when Muhammad III, "al-Nasir" (1199–1214) was defeated at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena by an alliance of the Christian forces from Castile, Aragon and Navarre. Much of the remaining territories of al-Andalus were lost in the ensuing decades, with the cities of Córdoba and Seville falling to the Christians in 1236 and 1248 respectively.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohads continued to rule in Africa until the piecemeal loss of territory through the revolt of tribes and districts enabled the rise of their most effective enemies, the Marinids, from northern Morocco in 1215. The last representative of the line, Idris al-Wathiq, was reduced to the possession of Marrakesh, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269; the Marinids seized Marrakesh, ending the Almohad domination of the Western Maghreb.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad movement originated with Ibn Tumart, a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribal confederation of the Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco. At the time, Morocco, western Algeria and Spain (al-Andalus), were under the rule of the Almoravids, a Sanhaja Berber dynasty. Early in his life, Ibn Tumart went to Spain to pursue his studies, and thereafter to Baghdad to deepen them. In Baghdad, Ibn Tumart attached himself to the theological school of al-Ash'ari, and came under the influence of the teacher al-Ghazali. He soon developed his own system, combining the doctrines of various masters. Ibn Tumart's main principle was a strict unitarianism ("tawhid"), which denied the independent existence of the attributes of God as being incompatible with His unity, and therefore a polytheistic idea. Ibn Tumart represented a revolt against what he perceived as anthropomorphism in Muslim orthodoxy. His followers would become known as the "al-Muwaḥḥidūn" ("Almohads"), meaning those who affirm the unity of God.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: After his return to the Maghreb c. 1117, Ibn Tumart spent some time in various Ifriqiyan cities, preaching and agitating, heading riotous attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of laxity. He laid the blame for the latitude on the ruling dynasty of the Almoravids, whom he accused of obscurantism and impiety. He also opposed their sponsorship of the Maliki school of jurisprudence, which drew upon consensus ("ijma") and other sources beyond the Qur'an and Sunnah in their reasoning, an anathema to the stricter Zahirism favored by Ibn Tumart. His antics and fiery preaching led fed-up authorities to move him along from town to town. After being expelled from Bejaia, Ibn Tumart set up camp in Mellala, in the outskirts of the city, where he received his first disciples – notably, al-Bashir (who would become his chief strategist) and Abd al-Mu'min (a Zenata Berber, who would later become his successor).


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In 1120, Ibn Tumart and his small band of followers proceeded to Morocco, stopping first in Fez, where he briefly engaged the Maliki scholars of the city in debate. He even went so far as to assault the sister of the Almoravid emir ʿAli ibn Yusuf, in the streets of Fez, because she was going about unveiled, after the manner of Berber women. After being expelled from Fez, he went to Marrakesh, where he successfully tracked down the Almoravid emir Ali ibn Yusuf at a local mosque, and challenged the emir, and the leading scholars of the area, to a doctrinal debate. After the debate, the scholars concluded that Ibn Tumart's views were blasphemous and the man dangerous, and urged him to be put to death or imprisoned. But the emir decided merely to expel him from the city.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Ibn Tumart took refuge among his own people, the Hargha, in his home village of Igiliz (exact location uncertain), in the Sous valley. He retreated to a nearby cave, and lived out an ascetic lifestyle, coming out only to preach his program of puritan reform, attracting greater and greater crowds. At length, towards the end of Ramadan in late 1121, after a particularly moving sermon, reviewing his failure to persuade the Almoravids to reform by argument, Ibn Tumart 'revealed' himself as the true Mahdi, a divinely guided judge and lawgiver, and was recognized as such by his audience. This was effectively a declaration of war on the Almoravid state.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: On the advice of one of his followers, Omar Hintati, a prominent chieftain of the Hintata, Ibn Tumart abandoned his cave in 1122 and went up into the High Atlas, to organize the Almohad movement among the highland Masmuda tribes. Besides his own tribe, the Hargha, Ibn Tumart secured the adherence of the Ganfisa, the Gadmiwa, the Hintata, the Haskura, and the Hazraja to the Almohad cause. Around 1124, Ibn Tumart erected the ribat of Tinmel, in the valley of the Nfis in the High Atlas, an impregnable fortified complex, which would serve both as the spiritual center and military headquarters of the Almohad movement.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: For the first eight years, the Almohad rebellion was limited to a guerilla war along the peaks and ravines of the High Atlas. Their principal damage was in rendering insecure (or altogether impassable) the roads and mountain passes south of Marrakesh – threatening the route to all-important Sijilmassa, the gateway of the trans-Saharan trade. Unable to send enough manpower through the narrow passes to dislodge the Almohad rebels from their easily defended mountain strong points, the Almoravid authorities reconciled themselves to setting up strongholds to confine them there (most famously the fortress of Tasghîmût that protected the approach to Aghmat, which was conquered by the Almohads in 1132), while exploring alternative routes through more easterly passes.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Ibn Tumart organized the Almohads as a commune, with a minutely detailed structure. At the core was the "Ahl ad-dār" ("House of the Mahdi:), composed of Ibn Tumart's family. This was supplemented by two councils: an inner Council of Ten, the Mahdi's privy council, composed of his earliest and closest companions; and the consultative Council of Fifty, composed of the leading "sheikh"s of the Masmuda tribes. The early preachers and missionaries ("ṭalaba" and "huffāẓ") also had their representatives. Militarily, there was a strict hierarchy of units. The Hargha tribe coming first (although not strictly ethnic; it included many "honorary" or "adopted" tribesmen from other ethnicities, e.g. Abd al-Mu'min himself). This was followed by the men of Tinmel, then the other Masmuda tribes in order, and rounded off by the black fighters, the "ʻabīd". Each unit had a strict internal hierarchy, headed by a "mohtasib", and divided into two factions: one for the early adherents, another for the late adherents, each headed by a "mizwar" (or "amzwaru"); then came the "sakkakin" (treasurers), effectively the money-minters, tax-collectors, and bursars, then came the regular army ("jund"), then the religious corps – the muezzins, the "hafidh" and the "hizb" – followed by the archers, the conscripts, and the slaves. Ibn Tumart's closest companion and chief strategist, al-Bashir, took upon himself the role of "political commissar", enforcing doctrinal discipline among the Masmuda tribesmen, often with a heavy hand.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In early 1130, the Almohads finally descended from the mountains for their first sizeable attack in the lowlands. It was a disaster. The Almohads swept aside an Almoravid column that had come out to meet them before Aghmat, and then chased their remnant all the way to Marrakesh. They laid siege to Marrakesh for forty days until, in April (or May) 1130, the Almoravids sallied from the city and crushed the Almohads in the bloody Battle of al-Buhayra (named after a large garden east of the city). The Almohads were thoroughly routed, with huge losses. Half their leadership was killed in action, and the survivors only just managed to scramble back to the mountains.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Ibn Tumart died shortly after, in August 1130. That the Almohad movement did not immediately collapse after such a devastating defeat and the death of their charismatic Mahdi, is likely due to the skills of his successor, Abd al-Mu'min. Ibn Tumart's death was kept a secret for three years, a period which Almohad chroniclers described as a "ghayba" or "occultation". This period likely gave Abd al-Mu'min time to secure his position as successor to the political leadership of the movement. Although a Zenata Berber from Tagra (Algeria), and thus an alien among the Masmuda of southern Morocco, Abd al-Mu'min nonetheless saw off his principal rivals and hammered wavering tribes back to the fold. In an ostentatious gesture of defiance, in 1132, if only to remind the emir that the Almohads were not finished, Abd al-Mu'min led an audacious night operation that seized Tasghîmût fortress and dismantled it thoroughly, carting off its great gates back to Tinmel. Three years after Ibn Tumart's death he was officially proclaimed "Caliph".


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In order to neutralise the Masmudas, to whom he was a stranger, Abd al-Mumin relied on his tribe of origin, the Kumiyas (a berber tribe from Orania), which he integrated massively into the army and within the Almohad power. He thus appointed his son as his successor and his other children as governors of the provinces of the Caliphate. The Kumiyas would later form the bodyguard of Abd al Mumin and his successor. In addition, he also relied on Arabs, representatives of the great Hilalian families, whom he deported to Morocco to weaken the influence of the Masmuda sheikhs. These moves have the effect of advancing the Arabisation of the future Morocco.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Abd al-Mu'min then came forward as the lieutenant of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart. Between 1130 and his death in 1163, Abd al-Mu'min not only rooted out the Almoravids, but extended his power over all northern Africa as far as Egypt, becoming amir of Marrakesh in 1147.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Al-Andalus followed the fate of Africa. Between 1146 and 1173, the Almohads gradually wrested control from the Almoravids over the Moorish principalities in Iberia. The Almohads transferred the capital of Muslim Iberia from Córdoba to Seville. They founded a great mosque there; its tower, the Giralda, was erected in 1184 to mark the accession of Ya'qub I. The Almohads also built a palace there called Al-Muwarak on the site of the modern day Alcázar of Seville.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad princes had a longer and more distinguished career than the Almoravids. The successors of Abd al-Mumin, Abu Yaqub Yusuf (Yusuf I, ruled 1163–1184) and Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur (Yaʻqūb I, ruled 1184–1199), were both able men. Initially their government drove many Jewish and Christian subjects to take refuge in the growing Christian states of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. Ultimately they became less fanatical than the Almoravids, and Ya'qub al-Mansur was a highly accomplished man who wrote a good Arabic style and protected the philosopher Averroes. In 1190–1191, he campaigned in southern Portugal and won back territory lost in 1189. His title of ""al-Manṣūr"" ("the Victorious") was earned by his victory over Alfonso VIII of Castile in the Battle of Alarcos (1195).


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: From the time of Yusuf II, however, the Almohads governed their co-religionists in Iberia and central North Africa through lieutenants, their dominions outside Morocco being treated as provinces. When Almohad emirs crossed the Straits it was to lead a jihad against the Christians and then return to Morocco.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In 1212, the Almohad Caliph Muhammad 'al-Nasir' (1199–1214), the successor of al-Mansur, after an initially successful advance north, was defeated by an alliance of the four Christian kings of Castile, Aragón, Navarre, and Portugal, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. The battle broke the Almohad advance, but the Christian powers remained too disorganized to profit from it immediately.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Before his death in 1213, al-Nasir appointed his young ten-year-old son as the next caliph Yusuf II "al-Mustansir". The Almohads passed through a period of effective regency for the young caliph, with power exercised by an oligarchy of elder family members, palace bureaucrats and leading nobles. The Almohad ministers were careful to negotiate a series of truces with the Christian kingdoms, which remained more-or-less in place for next fifteen years (the loss of Alcácer do Sal to the Kingdom of Portugal in 1217 was an exception).


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In early 1224, the youthful caliph died in an accident, without any heirs. The palace bureaucrats in Marrakesh, led by the "wazir" Uthman ibn Jam'i, quickly engineered the election of his elderly grand-uncle, Abd al-Wahid I 'al-Makhlu', as the new Almohad caliph. But the rapid appointment upset other branches of the family, notably the brothers of the late al-Nasir, who governed in al-Andalus. The challenge was immediately raised by one of them, then governor in Murcia, who declared himself Caliph Abdallah al-Adil. With the help of his brothers, he quickly seized control of al-Andalus. His chief advisor, the shadowy Abu Zayd ibn Yujjan, tapped into his contacts in Marrakesh, and secured the deposition and assassination of Abd al-Wahid I, and the expulsion of the al-Jami'i clan.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: This coup has been characterized as the pebble that finally broke al-Andalus. It was the first internal coup among the Almohads. The Almohad clan, despite occasional disagreements, had always remained tightly knit and loyally behind dynastic precedence. Caliph al-Adil's murderous breach of dynastic and constitutional propriety marred his acceptability to other Almohad "sheikhs". One of the recusants was his cousin, Abd Allah al-Bayyasi ("the Baezan"), the Almohad governor of Jaén, who took a handful of followers and decamped for the hills around Baeza. He set up a rebel camp and forged an alliance with the hitherto quiet Ferdinand III of Castile. Sensing his greater priority was Marrakesh, where recusant Almohad "sheikh"s had rallied behind Yahya, another son of al-Nasir, al-Adil paid little attention to this little band of misfits.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In 1225, Abd Allah al-Bayyasi's band of rebels, accompanied by a large Castilian army, descended from the hills, besieging cities such as Jaén and Andújar. They raided throughout the regions of Jaén, Cordova and Vega de Granada and, before the end of the year, al-Bayyasi had established himself in the city of Cordova. Sensing a power vacuum, both Alfonso IX of León and Sancho II of Portugal opportunistically ordered raids into Andalusian territory that same year. With Almohad arms, men and cash dispatched to Morocco to help Caliph al-Adil impose himself in Marrakesh, there was little means to stop the sudden onslaught. In late 1225, with surprising ease, the Portuguese raiders reached the environs of Seville. Knowing they were outnumbered, the Almohad governors of the city refused to confront the Portuguese raiders, prompting the disgusted population of Seville to take matters into their own hands, raise a militia, and go out in the field by themselves. The result was a veritable massacre – the Portuguese men-at-arms easily mowed down the throng of poorly armed townsfolk. Thousands, perhaps as much as 20,000, were said to have been slain before the walls of Seville. A similar disaster befell a similar popular levy by Murcians at Aspe that same year. But Christian raiders had been stopped at Cáceres and Requena. Trust in the Almohad leadership was severely shaken by these events – the disasters were promptly blamed on the distractions of Caliph al-Adil and the incompetence and cowardice of his lieutenants, the successes credited to non-Almohad local leaders who rallied defenses.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: But al-Adil's fortunes were briefly buoyed. In payment for Castilian assistance, al-Bayyasi had given Ferdinand III three strategic frontier fortresses: Baños de la Encina, Salvatierra (the old Order of Calatrava fortress near Ciudad Real) and Capilla. But Capilla refused to hand them over, forcing the Castilians to lay a long and difficult siege. The brave defiance of little Capilla, and the spectacle of al-Bayyasi's shipping provisions to the Castilian besiegers, shocked Andalusians and shifted sentiment back towards the Almohad caliph. A popular uprising broke out in Cordova – al-Bayyasi was killed and his head dispatched as a trophy to Marrakesh. But Caliph al-Adil did not rejoice in this victory for long – he was assassinated in Marrakesh in October 1227, by the partisans of Yahya, who was promptly acclaimed as the new Almohad caliph Yahya "al-Mu'tasim".


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Andalusian branch of the Almohads refused to accept this turn of events. Al-Adil's brother, then in Seville, proclaimed himself the new Almohad caliph Abd al-Ala Idris I 'al-Ma'mun'. He promptly purchased a truce from Ferdinand III in return for 300,000 "maravedis", allowing him to organize and dispatch the greater part of the Almohad army in Spain across the straits in 1228 to confront Yahya.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: That same year, Portuguese and Leonese renewed their raids deep into Muslim territory, basically unchecked. Feeling the Almohads had failed to protect them, popular uprisings took place throughout al-Andalus. City after city deposed their hapless Almohad governors and installed local strongmen in their place. A Murcian strongman, Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Hud al-Judhami, who claimed descendance from the Banu Hud dynasty that had once ruled the old taifa of Saragossa, emerged as the central figure of these rebellions, systematically dislodging Almohad garrisons through central Spain. In October 1228, with Spain practically all lost, al-Ma'mun abandoned Seville, taking what little remained of the Almohad army with him to Morocco. Ibn Hud immediately dispatched emissaries to distant Baghdad to offer recognition to the Abbasid Caliph, albeit taking up for himself a quasi-caliphal title, 'al-Mutawwakil'.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The departure of al-Ma'mun in 1228 marked the end of the Almohad era in Spain. Ibn Hud and the other local Andalusian strongmen were unable to stem the rising flood of Christian attacks, launched almost yearly by Sancho II of Portugal, Alfonso IX of León, Ferdinand III of Castile and James I of Aragon. The next twenty years saw a massive advance in the Christian reconquista – the old great Andalusian citadels fell in a grand sweep: Mérida and Badajoz in 1230 (to Leon), Majorca in 1230 (to Aragon), Beja in 1234 (to Portugal), Cordova in 1236 (to Castile), Valencia in 1238 (to Aragon), Niebla-Huelva in 1238 (to Leon), Silves in 1242 (to Portugal), Murcia in 1243 (to Castile), Jaén in 1246 (to Castile), Alicante in 1248 (to Castile), culminating in the fall of the greatest of Andalusian cities, the ex-Almohad capital of Seville, into Christian hands in 1248. Ferdinand III of Castile entered Seville as a conqueror on December 22, 1248.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Andalusians were helpless before this onslaught. Ibn Hudd had attempted to check the Leonese advance early on, but most of his Andalusian army was destroyed at the battle of Alange in 1230. Ibn Hud scrambled to move remaining arms and men to save threatened or besieged Andalusian citadels, but with so many attacks at once, it was a hopeless endeavor. After Ibn Hud's death in 1238, some of the Andalusian cities, in a last-ditch effort to save themselves, offered themselves once again to the Almohads, but to no avail. The Almohads would not return.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: With the departure of the Almohads, the Nasrid dynasty (""Banū Naṣr"", ) rose to power in Granada. After the great Christian advance of 1228–1248, the Emirate of Granada was practically all that remained of old al-Andalus. Some of the captured citadels (e.g. Murcia, Jaen, Niebla) were reorganized as tributary vassals for a few more years, but most were annexed by the 1260s. Granada alone would remain independent for an additional 250 years, flourishing as the new center of al-Andalus.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In their African holdings, the Almohads encouraged the establishment of Christians even in Fez, and after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa they occasionally entered into alliances with the kings of Castile. They were successful in expelling the garrisons placed in some of the coast towns by the Norman kings of Sicily. The history of their decline differs from that of the Almoravids, whom they had displaced. They were not assailed by a great religious movement, but lost territories, piecemeal, by the revolt of tribes and districts. Their most effective enemies were the Banu Marin (Marinids) who founded the next dynasty. The last representative of the line, Idris II, 'al-Wathiq', was reduced to the possession of Marrakesh, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohads worked to suppress the influence of Maliki "fiqh—"even publicly burning copies of "Muwatta Imam Malik" and Maliki commentaries. They sought to disseminate the doctrine of Ibn Tumart, author of "E'az Ma Yutlab" ( "The Most Noble Calling"), "Muhadhi al-Muwatta'" ( "Counterpart of the Muwatta"'), and "Talkhis Sahih Muslim" ( "Compendium of Sahih Muslim").


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Literary production continued despite the devastating effect the Almohad reforms had on cultural life in their domain. Almohad universities continued the knowledge of preceding Andalusi scholars as well as ancient Greco-Roman writers; contemporary literary figures included Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Hafsa bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya, Ibn Tufail, Ibn Zuhr, Ibn al-Abbar, Ibn Amira and many more poets, philosophers, and scholars. The abolishment of the "dhimmi" status further stifled the once flourishing Jewish Andalusi cultural scene; Maimonides went east and many Jews moved to Castillian-controlled Toledo.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: According to the research of Muhammad al-Manuni, there were 400 paper mills in Fes under the reign of Sutlan Yaqub al-Mansur in the 12th century.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad ideology preached by Ibn Tumart is described by Amira Bennison as a "sophisticated hybrid form of Islam that wove together strands from Hadith science, Zahiri and Shafi'i "fiqh", Ghazalian social actions ("hisba"), and spiritual engagement with Shi'i notions of the imam and "mahdi"". This contrasted with the highly orthodox or traditionalist Maliki school ("maddhab") of Sunni Islam which predominated in the region up to that point. Central to his philosophy, Ibn Tumart preached a fundamentalist or radical version of "tawhid" – referring to a strict monotheism or to the "oneness of God". This notion gave the movement its name: "al"-"Muwaḥḥidūn" (), meaning roughly "those who advocate "tawhid"", which was adapted to "Almohads" in European writings. Ibn Tumart saw his movement as a revolutionary reform movement much as early Islam saw itself relative to the Christianity and Judaism which preceded it, with himself as its "mahdi" and leader.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In terms of Muslim jurisprudence, the state gave recognition to the Zahiri () school of thought, though Shafi'ites were also given a measure of authority at times. While not all Almohad leaders were Zahirites, quite a few of them were not only adherents of the legal school but also well-versed in its tenets. Additionally, all Almohad leaders – both the religiously learned and the laymen – were hostile toward the Malikite school favored by the Almoravids. During the reign of Abu Yaqub, chief judge Ibn Maḍāʾ oversaw the banning of all religious books written by non-Zahirites; when Abu Yaqub's son Abu Yusuf took the throne, he ordered Ibn Maḍāʾ to undertake the actual burning of such books.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: In terms of Islamic theology, the Almohads were Ash'arites, their Zahirite-Ash'arism giving rise to a complicated blend of literalist jurisprudence and esoteric dogmatics. Some authors occasionally describe Almohads as heavily influenced by Mu'tazilism. Scholar Madeline Fletcher argues that while one of Ibn Tumart's original teachings, the "murshida"s (a collection of sayings memorized by his followers), holds positions on the attributes of God which might be construed as moderately Mu'tazilite (and which were criticized as such by Ibn Taimiyya), identifying him with Mu'tazilites would be an exaggeration. She points out that another of his main texts, the "'aqida" (which was likely edited by others after him), demonstrates a much clearer Ash'arite position on a number of issues.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Nonetheless, the Almohads, particularly from the reign of Caliph Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur onward, embraced the use of logical reasoning as a method of validating the more central Almohad concept of "tawhid". This effectively provided a religious justification for philosophy and for a rationalist intellectualism in Almohad religious thought. Al-Mansur's father, Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, had also shown some favour towards philosophy and kept the philosopher Ibn Tufayl as his confidant. Ibn Tufayl in turn introduced Ibn Rush (Averroes) to the Almohad court, to whom Al-Mansur gave patronage and protection. Although Ibn Rushd (who was also an Islamic judge) saw rationalism and philosophy as complimentary to religion and revelation, his views failed to convince the traditional Maliki "ulema", with whom the Almohads were already at odds. After the decline of Almohadism, Maliki Sunnism ultimately became the dominant official religious doctrine of the region. By contrast, the teachings of Ibn Rushd and other philosophers like him were far more influential for Jewish philosophers – including Maimonides, his contemporary – and Christian Latin scholars – like Thomas Aquinas – who later promoted his commentaries on Aristotle.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad dynasty embraced a style of cursive Maghrebi script known today as "Maghrebi thuluth" as an official style used in manuscripts, coinage, documents, and architecture. However, the more angular Kufic script was still used, albeit in a reworked form in Qur'an epigraphy, and was seen detailed in silver in some colophons. The Maghrebi thuluth script, frequently written in gold, was used to give emphasis when standard writing, written in rounded Maghrebi mabsūt script, was considered insufficient. Maghrebi mabsūt of the al-Andalus region during the 12th to 14th centuries was characterized by elongated lines, stretched out curves, and the use of multiple colors for vocalizations, as derived from the people of Medina.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Scribes and calligraphers of the Almohad period also started to illuminate words and phrases in manuscripts for emphasis, using gold leaf and lapis lazuli. While much of the script was written in black or brown ink, the use of polychromy for diacritical text and vocalizations also marked a departure from previous caliphates' calligraphic styles. Blue dots were used to indicate elif, orange dots denoted hamza, and yellow semicircles to marked shaddah. Separate sets of verses were denoted by various medallions, with distinctive designs for each set. For example, sets of five verses were ended with bud-like medallions while sets of ten were marked by circular medallions, all of which were typically painted in gold. Manuscripts attributed to this caliphate were characterized by interlacing geometric or recti-curvilinear illuminations, and abstract vegetal artwork and large medallions were often present in the margins and as thumbnails. Composite floral finials were also frequently used in decorating the margins and corners of the page. Color schemes focused on primarily using gold, white, and blue, with accentuating elements in red or pink.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: During the Almohad dynasty, the act of bookbinding itself took on great importance, with a notable instance of the Almohad caliph Abd al-Mu'min bringing in artisans for a celebration of the binding of a Qur'an imported from Cordoba. Books were most frequently bound in goatskin leather and decorated with polygonal interlacing, goffering, and stamping. The primary materials used for the pages were goat or sheep vellum. However, the Almohad dynasty also saw industrial advancements in the spread of paper mills in Seville and Marrakesh, leading to the introduction of paper for Qur'an manuscripts, illuminated doctrine books, and official documents. Most Qur'anic manuscripts were close to square-shaped, though other religious texts were typically vertically oriented. With the exception of a few large-scale Qur'ans, most were modestly sized, ranging from 11 centimenters to 22 centimeters on each side, with 19 to 27 lines of script each page. In contrast, large-sized Qur'ans were typically approximately 60 centimeters by 53 centimeters and had an average of five to nine lines of script to a page, typically in Maghrebi thuluth.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Hadith Bayāḍ wa Riyāḍ, the love story of Bayad and Riyad, is one of the few remaining illustrated manuscripts dated to 13th century Almohad caliphate. Its use of miniatures displays a clear connection with previous illustrated tradition from the eastern Islamic world. However, it deviates in its depictions of the frontispiece, interior, and teaching scenes, which show similarities to scientific manuscripts from the central Islamic world, typically considered to have consisted of the Arabian peninsula, northeast modern Iran, and the Fertile Crescent. Depictions of architecture specific to the Almohad caliphate are also evident in several places in the manuscript.The penultimate Almohad caliph, Abu Hafs al-Murtada, was a notable calligrapher in his own right and composed poems and copied Qur'ans. A known bibliophile, he frequently endowed books to madrasas and mosques and established the first public manuscript transcription center in Marrakesh. One of the large Qur'ans that he copied has been preserved in Marrakesh and is the oldest surviving example in the western Islamic world of a Qur'an personally produced by a sovereign ruler. The 10-volume tome is written on parchment and bound with a leather cover decorated with a geometric motif, exhibiting the first dated use of gold tooling on a manuscript binding. The verses are written in Maghrebi mabsūt script and the end of each verse is marked by a gold circle divided into eight uniform segments. Using large Maghrebi script, there are five to 10 lines to a page, with relatively few words to each line. There is lavish use of gold, and this Qur'an, as with other Qur'ans of this size, was likely intended for court use.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohads initially eschewed the production of luxury textiles and silks, but eventually they too engaged in this production. Almohad textiles, like earlier Almoravid examples, were often decorated with a grid of roundels filled with ornamental designs or Arabic epigraphy. However, textiles produced by Almohad workshops used progressively less figural decoration than previous Almoravid textiles, in favour of interlacing geometric and vegetal motifs.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: One of the best-known Almohad textiles is the "Las Navas de Tolosa Banner", so-called because it was once thought to be a spoil won by Alfonso VIII at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. More recent studies have determined that it was actually a spoil won some years later by Ferdinand III. The banner was then donated to the Monastery of Santa Maria la Real de Huelgas in Burgos, where it remains today. The banner is richly designed and features blue Arabic inscriptions and white decorative patterns on a red background. The central motif features an eight-pointed star framed by a circle inside a larger square, with smaller motifs filling the bands of the frame and the corner spaces. This central design is surrounded on four sides by Arabic inscriptions in Naskhi script featuring Qur'anic verses ("Surah" 61: 10–12), and another horizontal inscription in the banner's upper part which praises God and Muhammad. The banner's design bears similarities with later 14th-century Marinid banners captured at the Battle of Rio Salado. A study by Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga has argued that the banner is actually of Marinid origin, due to its similarities with captured Marinid banners kept at the Cathedral of Toledo. This argument has been endorsed by Amira Bennison.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The French historian Henri Terrasse described al-Qarawiyyin's bronze grand chandelier, commissioned by Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir, as "the largest and most beautiful chandelier in the Islamic world." The chandelier consists of a 12-sided copula on top of which is mounted a large cone crowned around its sides with nine levels of candlesticks. The visible surfaces of the chandelier are carved and pierced with intricate floral arabesque motifs as well as Kufic Arabic inscriptions. The chandelier is now the oldest surviving chandelier in the western Islamic world, and it likely served as a model for the later and nearly equally famous Marinid chandelier in the Great Mosque of Taza.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Another important piece, the so-called Monzón Lion, also dates from the Almohad period during the 12 or 13th century and is held in the Louvre Museum today. It is an example of figural bronze sculpture from al-Andalus that continues in the tradition of earlier objects such as the 11th-century Pisa Griffin (kept at the Cathedral Museum of Pisa) and the 10th-century Stag of Córdoba made in Madinat al-Zahra (now kept at the Archeological Museum of Córdoba). It was found in Monzón, near Palencia, but it is not known where exactly in the Iberian Peninsula it was made. As Palencia was outside the Almohad realm, it may have been made by Andalusi craftsman for a Christian patron. The lion, which served as a fountainhead, is sculpted in a highly stylized manner and its articulated tail is adjustable. Its surface is covered in incised decoration consisting of tapestry-like motifs, and a broad Kufic inscription on its side features well-wishes for its owner.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Other surviving metalwork objects from the Almohad period include a series of braziers and lamps discovered in Córdoba and now kept at the Archeological Museum of Córdoba. One of them, a hexagonal brazier, features both incised and pierced decoration. Along with prominent decorative Kufic inscriptions, it has an architectural motif of merlons resembling the decorative sawtooth-shaped merlons found along the tops of Moorish and Moroccan buildings of the same period.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Jonathan Bloom cites the white and green glazed tiles on the minaret of the Kutubiyya Mosque, dating from the mid-12th century in the early Almohad period, as the earliest reliably-dated example of "zellij" in Morocco. The tiles currently installed on the minaret are modern reproductions of the original decoration, but some of the original tiles were preserved in a collection kept at the Badi Palace. The same collection has also preserved fragments of the original tile decoration on the minaret of the Kasbah Mosque, including fragments of a Kufic inscription which is no longer present on the minaret today. These latter fragments are also the earliest surviving example of "cuerda seca" tilework (a technique originating in al-Andalus) being used in an architectural context.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Kutubiyya Mosque's minaret in Marrakesh originally had polychrome painted decoration around the windows and blind arches on its exterior façades, featuring a mix of geometric and vegetal arabesque motifs. In Seville, some Almohad-era houses have been excavated in various locations in the city, particularly on the site of the present-day cathedral. At least one of these excavations have revealed the remains of mural decoration featuring interlacing geometric decoration. Decorations of a hammam dating back to the Almohad period were uncovered in a bar in Seville during renovations in 2020. The decorations feature red ochre paintings of concave hexadecagons and eightfold rosettes on engraved white lime mortar in a pattern that fits the hammam's geometric skylight holes.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Along with the Almoravid period preceding it, the Almohad period is considered one of the most formative stages of Moroccan and Moorish architecture, establishing many of the forms and motifs that were refined in subsequent centuries. The main sites of Almohad architecture and art include Fes, Marrakesh, Rabat and Seville. In general, Almohad architecture was built mostly in rammed earth and brick rather than stone. These two materials were relatively cheap, readily available at most sites, and already widely used in the preceding centuries. Almohad architects refined both the manufacturing process of these materials and their on-site assembly, making the execution of numerous and ambitious construction projects possible. According to scholar Felix Arnold, during the Almohad period "construction became an industry on a scale not seen since Roman times."


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Compared to the earlier Almoravid period and the Taifas or Caliphal period in al-Andalus, early Almohad architecture was much more restrained in its ornamentation, focusing its attention on overall architectural forms rather than on detailed surface decoration. In addition to continuing the integration of Moroccan and Andalusi artistic traditions, some currents in Almohad architecture may also reflect influences from Algeria and Tunisia (Ifriqiya). Some Almohad elements, such as polylobed arches, have their earliest precedents in Fatimid architecture in Ifriqiya and Egypt and had also appeared in Andalusi architecture such as the Aljaferia palace. In the Almohad period, this type of arch was further refined for decorative functions while horseshoe arches continued to be standard elsewhere. The decoration around "mihrab" arches inside mosques also evolved into richer and more monumental forms in the great ceremonial stone gates of Almohad architecture such as Bab Agnaou in Marrakesh and Bab Oudaia and Bab er-Rouah in Rabat. These gates employed varying decorative motifs arranged in concentric semi-circles around the arch of the gate, all of which was in turn framed inside an outer rectangular band with other motifs. This style remained evident in Marinid gateways (e.g. the main gate of Chellah) and in later Moroccan gateways.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad Kutubiyya and Tinmal mosques are often considered the prototypes of later Moroccan and Andalusi mosques, although the Great Mosque of Taza (later modified by the Marinids) is the oldest surviving Almohad mosque (begun in 1142). Like earlier mosques in the region, Almohad mosques have interiors consisting of large hypostyle halls divided by rows of arches that create a repetitive visual effect. However, the aisle or "nave" leading towards the "mihrab" (niche symbolizing the "qibla" in the southern/southeastern wall) and the aisle running along the qibla wall itself were usually wider than the others and were highlighted with distinctive arches and greater decoration. This layout, already present in Almoravid mosques, is often referred to as the "T-plan" by art historians (because the aisle running parallel to the "qibla" wall and the aisle leading to the "mihrab", perpendicular to it, form a "T" shape), and became standard in mosques of the region for centuries. The minarets of Almohad mosques also established the standard form and style of subsequent minarets in the region, with a square base and two-tiered shaft covered in polylobed arch and "darj wa ktaf" motifs. The minaret of the Kasbah Mosque of Marrakesh was particularly influential and set a style that was repeated, with minor elaborations, in the following Marinid period. The most famous minarets of this time, however, are the minarets of the Kutubiyya Mosque (begun in 1147 by Abd al-Mu'min but subsequently rebuilt before 1195), the Giralda of Seville (part of a Great Mosque begun in 1171 by Abu Ya'qub Yusuf), and the unfinished "Hassan Tower" of Rabat (part of a huge mosque begun by Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur in 1191 but never completed).


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohads were also prolific builders of fortifications and forts across their realm. They were responsible for building (or rebuilding) the city walls of Cordoba, Seville, Fes, and Taza, as well as many smaller forts and castles across Morocco and southern Spain and Portugal. In Rabat, Abd al-Mu'min built most of the current Kasbah of the Udayas in 1150–1151 (after having destroyed an earlier Almoravid "ribat" there), while Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur embarked on the construction of a vast new capital and citadel on its south side called "Ribat al-Fath" (for which the enormous unfinished mosque of the Hassan Tower was also intended). While never finished, this project created the current outer walls of the historic center of Rabat, along with multiple gates such as Bab er-Rouah and the ceremonial main gate of the Kasbah of the Udayas. Al-Mansur also created the Kasbah of Marrakesh, a large royal citadel and palace complex to house the caliph's family and administration. The main public entrance of this kasbah was the ornamental gate of Bab Agnaou. In Seville, the Almohads built the Torre del Oro, a defensive tower on the shores of the Guadalquivir River which dates from 1220 to 1221 and remains a landmark of the city today. Likewise, the Calahorra Tower in Cordoba is believed to be an originally Almohad structure designed to defend the river and the city's old bridge.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohad caliphs also constructed multiple country estates just outside the main cities where they resided, continuing a tradition that existed under the Almoravids. The best-known examples of these estates were centered around large water basins or reservoirs that sustained orchards of fruit trees and other plants. Some of them are referred to as "al-Buḥayra" ("little sea") in Arabic sources, likely in reference to these artificial lakes. Small palaces or pleasure pavilions were built on the edge of the reservoirs. In Marrakesh, the present-day Agdal and Menara gardens both developed from such Almohad creations. In Seville, the remains of the "al-Buḥayra" garden, founded in 1171, were excavated and partly restored in the 1970s. A similar garden estate was also created in Rabat but has not been found by archaeologists. The Alcázar Genil (originally called "al-Qaṣr as-Sayyid") in Granada, created in the late Almohad period and later remodeled by the Nasrids, stood next to an enormous pool on the outskirts of the city. A small ribat, consisting of a square hall covered by a sixteen-sided dome on squinches, was built nearby at the same time and has been preserved today as a Christian hermitage. Sunken gardens were also part of Almohad palace architecture. In some cases the gardens were divided symmetrically into four parts, much like a "riyad" garden. Examples of these have been found in several courtyards in the Alcázar of Seville, where former Almohad palaces once stood.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The Almohads had taken control of the Almoravid Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147. The Almohads rejected the mainstream Islamic doctrine that established the status of "dhimmi", a Non-Muslim resident of a Muslim country who was allowed to practice his religion on condition of submission to Muslim rule and payment of "jizya".


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The treatment and persecution of Jews under Almohad rule was a drastic change. Prior to Almohad rule during the Caliphate of Córdoba, Jewish culture experienced a Golden Age. María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in Iberian literature at Yale University, has argued that "tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society", and that the Jewish "dhimmi"s living under the Caliphate, while allowed fewer rights than Muslims, were still better off than in Christian Europe. Many Jews migrated to "al-Andalus", where they were not just tolerated but allowed to practice their faith openly. Christians had also practiced their religion openly in Córdoba, and both Jews and Christians lived openly in Morocco as well.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: The first Almohad ruler, Abd al-Mumin, allowed an initial seven-month grace period. Then he forced most of the urban "dhimmi" population in Morocco, both Jewish and Christian, to convert to Islam. In 1198, the Almohad emir Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur decreed that Jews must wear a dark blue garb, with very large sleeves and a grotesquely oversized hat; his son altered the colour to yellow, a change that may have influenced Catholic ordinances some time later. Those who converted had to wear clothing that identified them as Jews since they were not regarded as sincere Muslims. Cases of mass martyrdom of Jews who refused to convert to Islam are recorded. The treatment and persecution of Christians under Almohad rule was a drastic change as well.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Many of the conversions were superficial. Maimonides urged Jews to choose the superficial conversion over martyrdom and argued, "Muslims know very well that we do not mean what we say, and that what we say is only to escape the ruler's punishment and to satisfy him with this simple confession." Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164), who himself fled the persecutions of the Almohads, composed an elegy mourning the destruction of many Jewish communities throughout Spain and the Maghreb under the Almohads. Many Jews fled from territories ruled by the Almohads to Christian lands, and others, like the family of Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim lands. However, a few Jewish traders still working in North Africa are recorded.


title: Almohad Caliphate

text: Idris al-Ma'mun, a late Almohad pretender (ruled 1229–1232 in parts of Morocco), renounced much Almohad doctrine, including the identification of Ibn Tumart as the Mahdi, and the denial of "dhimmi" status. He allowed Jews to practice their religion openly in Marrakesh and even allowed a Christian church there as part of his alliance with Castile. In Iberia, Almohad rule collapsed in the 1200s and was succeeded by several "Taifa" kingdoms, which allowed Jews to practice their religion openly.


title: Keddie murders

text: The Keddie murders are an unsolved quadruple homicide which took place over the night of April 1112, 1981, in Keddie, California, United States. The victims were Glenna Susan "Sue" Sharp (née Davis; born March 29, 1945); daughter Tina Louise Sharp (born July 22, 1968); son, John Steven Sharp (born November 16, 1965); and John's friend, Dana Hall Wingate (born February 8, 1964).


title: Keddie murders

text: The murders took place in house No. 28 of the Keddie Resort. The bodies of Sue, John, and Dana were found on the morning of April 12 by Sue's 14-year-old daughter, Sheila, who had been sleeping at a friend's house. Sue's two younger sons, Rick and Greg, as well as their friend Justin Smartt, were also in the house but were unharmed. Tina was missing from the scene.


title: Keddie murders

text: Tina remained a missing person until April 1984, when her skull and several other bones were recovered at Camp Eighteen, California, near Feather Falls in Butte County. Multiple leads and suspects were examined in the intervening years, though no charges were filed. Several new leads were announced in the 21st century, including the discovery of a hammer in a pond in 2016, as well as announcements regarding the discovery of new DNA evidence.


title: Keddie murders

text: In July 1979, Glenna Susan "Sue" Sharp (née Davis; born March 29, 1945 in Springfield, Massachusetts), along with her five children, left her home in Connecticut after separating from her abusive husband, James Sharp. She decided to relocate to northern California, where her brother Don was residing at the time. Upon arriving in California, she began renting a small trailer formerly occupied by her brother at the Claremont Trailer Village in Quincy. The following fall, she moved to house #28 in the rural Sierra Nevada resort town of Keddie. The house was much larger than the trailer, and had become available when Plumas County's then-sheriff, Sylvester Douglas Thomas, moved out. There, she resided with her 15-year-old son, John (born November 16, 1965); 14-year-old daughter Sheila; 12-year-old daughter Tina (born July 22, 1968); and two younger sons, Rick (age 10) and Greg (age 5).


title: Keddie murders

text: On April 11, 1981, around 11:30 am, Sue, Sheila, and Greg drove from the residence of their friends, the Meeks family, to pick up Rick, who was attending baseball tryouts at Gansner Field in Quincy. They happened upon John and his friend, Dana Hall Wingate (born February 8, 1964), hitchhiking at the mouth of the canyon from Quincy to Keddie and picked them up, then driving about away to Keddie. Two hours later, around 3:30 pm, John and Dana hitchhiked back to Quincy, where they may have had plans to visit friends. Around this time, the two were seen in the city's downtown area.


title: Keddie murders

text: That same evening, Sheila had plans to spend the night with the Seabolt family, who lived in an adjacent home, while Sue remained at home with Rick, Greg, and the boys' young friend, Justin Smartt. Sheila departed house #28 shortly after 8:00 pm, leaving her mother alone with the younger children. Tina, who had been watching television at the Seabolt residence, returned home to #28 around 9:30 pm, after Sheila arrived at the Seabolts' to spend the night.


title: Keddie murders

text: Around 7:00 am on the morning of April 12, Sheila returned to #28 and discovered the dead bodies of Sue, John, and Dana in the house's living room. All three had been bound with medical tape and electrical cords. Tina was absent from the home, while the three younger childrenRick, Greg, and Justinwere unharmed in an adjacent bedroom. Initial reports stated that the three young boys had slept through the incident, though this was later contradicted. Upon discovering the scene, Sheila rushed back to the Seabolts' house, whereupon Jamie Seabolt retrieved Rick, Greg, and Justin through the bedroom window. He later admitted to having briefly entered the home through the back door to see if anyone was still alive, potentially contaminating evidence in the process.


title: Keddie murders

text: The murders of Sue, John, and Dana were notably vicious: two bloodied knives and one hammer were found at the scene, and one of the knives (a steak knife later determined to have been used in the murders) had been bent at roughly 30 degrees. Blood spatter evidence from inside the house indicated that the murders of Sue, John, and Dana had all taken place in the living room.


title: Keddie murders

text: Sue was discovered lying on her side near the living room sofa, nude from the waist down and gagged with a blue bandana and her own underwear, which had been secured with tape. She had been stabbed in the chest, her throat was stabbed horizontally, the wound going through her larynx and nicking her spine, and on the side of her head was an imprint matching the butt of a Daisy 880 Powerline BB/pellet rifle. John's throat was slashed. Dana had multiple head injuries and had been manually strangled to death. John and Dana suffered blunt-force trauma to their heads caused by a hammer or hammers. Autopsies determined that Sue and John died from the knife wounds and blunt-force trauma, and Dana died by asphyxiation.


title: Keddie murders

text: Sheila and the Seabolt family (with whom Sheila had spent the night in the neighboring home) heard no commotion during the night; a couple living in nearby house #16 was awakened at 1:15 am by what sounded like muffled screaming. Tina's jacket, shoes and a toolbox containing various tools were missing from the house, which showed no indication of forced entry. The house's telephone had been taken off the hook and the cord cut from the outlet, and the drapes were closed.


title: Keddie murders

text: Martin Smartt, a neighbor and main suspect, claimed that a claw hammer had inexplicably gone missing from his home. Plumas County Sheriff Sylvester Thomas, who presided over the case, later stated that Martin had provided "endless clues" in the case that seemed to "throw the suspicion away from him." In addition to interviewing the Smartts, detectives interviewed numerous other locals and neighbors; several, including members of the Seabolt family, recalled seeing a green van parked at the Sharps' house around 9:00 pm.


title: Keddie murders

text: Justin gave conflicting stories of the evening, including that he had dreamed details of the murders, though he later claimed to have actually witnessed them. In his later account of events, told under hypnosis, he claimed to have awoken to sounds coming from the living room while asleep in the bedroom with Rick and Greg. Investigating these sounds, he saw Sue with two men: one with a mustache and short hair, the other clean-shaven with long hair; both wore glasses. According to Justin, John and Dana then entered the home and began heatedly arguing with the men. A fight ensued, after which Tina entered the room and was taken out of the cabin's back door by one of the men.


title: Keddie murders

text: Based on Justin's descriptions, composite sketches of the two unknown men were produced by Harlan Embry, a man with no artistic ability and no training in forensic sketching. It was never explained why, with access to the Justice Department's and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) top forensic artists, law enforcement chose to use an amateur who sometimes volunteered to help local police. In press releases accompanying the sketches, the suspects were described as being in their late 20s to early 30s; one stood between to tall with dark-blonde hair, and the other between and with black, greased hair. Both wore gold-framed sunglasses.


title: Keddie murders

text: Rumors regarding the crimes being ritualistic or motivated by drug trafficking were dismissed by Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas, who stated in the week following the murders that no drug paraphernalia or illegal drugs were found in the home. Carla McMullen, a family acquaintance, later told detectives that Dana Wingate had recently stolen an unknown quantity of LSD from local drug dealers, though she was unable to provide proof of this claim. About 4,000 man-hours were spent working the case, which Thomas described as "frustrating". In December 1983, detectives ruled out serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole as potential suspects.


title: Keddie murders

text: Tina's disappearance was initially investigated by the FBI as a possible abduction, though it was reported on April 29, 1981, that the FBI had "backed off" the search as the California State Department of Justice was doing an "adequate job" and "made the FBI's presence unnecessary." A grid pattern search of the area covering a radius around the house was conducted with police canines, but the efforts were fruitless.


title: Keddie murders

text: On April 22, 1984, three years and eleven days after the murders, a bottle collector discovered the cranium portion of a human skull and part of a mandible at Camp Eighteen near Feather Falls in neighboring Butte County, roughly from Keddie. Shortly after announcing the discovery, the Butte County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous call that identified the remains as belonging to Tina, but the call was not documented in the case. A recording of this call was found at the bottom of an evidence box at some point after 2013 by a deputy who was assigned the case. The remains were confirmed by a forensic pathologist to be those of Tina in June 1984. Near the remains, detectives also discovered a blue nylon jacket, a blanket, a pair of Levi Strauss jeans with a missing back pocket, and an empty medical tape dispenser.


title: Keddie murders

text: In a 2008 documentary on the murders, Marilyn Smartt claimed that she suspected her husband Martin and his friend John "Bo" Boubede (erroneously reported as "John Boudee" by author Robert Scott) were responsible for the murders. Marilyn claimed that on the evening of April 11, 1981, she had left Martin and Boubede at a local bar around 11:00 pm and returned home to go to sleep. Around 2:00 am on April 12, she stated she awoke to find the two burning an unknown item in the wood stove. Additionally, she alleged that Martin "hated Johnny Sharp with a passion". However, in the 2008 documentary, Sheriff Doug Thomas said he had personally interviewed Martin and that he had passed a polygraph examination.


title: Keddie murders

text: According to a 2016 article published by "The Sacramento Bee", Martin had left Keddie and driven to Reno, Nevada, shortly after the murders; from there, he sent a letter to Marilyn ruminating on personal struggles in their marriage, which he concluded with: "I've paid the price of your love & now I've bought it with four people's lives." In a 2016 interview, Gamberg stated that the letter was "overlooked" in the initial investigation and never admitted as evidence. He later criticized the quality of the initial investigation, saying: "You could take someone just coming out of the academy and they'd have done a better job." A counselor whom Martin regularly visited also alleged that he had admitted to the murders of Sue and Tina, but claimed, "I didn't have anything to do with [the boys]." He allegedly told the counselor that Tina was killed to prevent her from identifying him, as she had "witnessed the whole thing."


title: Keddie murders

text: Martin Smartt died of cancer in Portland, Oregon, in June 2000. John Boubede, who allegedly had ties to organized crime in Chicago, died there in 1988.


title: Keddie murders

text: On March 24, 2016, a hammer matching the description of the hammer Martin claimed to have lost was discovered in a local pond and taken into evidence by Plumas County Special Investigator Mike Gamberg. Plumas County Sheriff Hagwood, who was sixteen years old at the time of the murders and knew the Sharp family personally, stated: "the location it was found... It would have been intentionally put there. It would not have been accidentally misplaced." Gamberg also stated that at that time, six potential suspects were being examined.


title: Keddie murders

text: In April 2018, Gamberg stated that DNA evidence recovered from a piece of tape at the crime scene matched that of a known living suspect.


title: Hydrox

text: Hydrox is a cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookie currently owned and manufactured by Leaf Brands. It debuted in the United States in 1908, and was manufactured by Sunshine Biscuits for over 90 years. Hydrox was largely discontinued in 1999, three years after Sunshine was acquired by Keebler, which was later acquired by Kellogg's. In September 2015, the product was reintroduced by Leaf Brands.


title: Hydrox

text: Oreo was created in 1912 as an imitation of Hydrox. Oreo eventually exceeded Hydrox in popularity, which resulted in the Hydrox cookies being perceived as an Oreo off-brand. Compared to Oreos, Hydrox cookies have a less sweet filling and a crunchier cookie shell that is reportedly less soggy in milk.


title: Hydrox

text: In 1908, the cookie's creation was inspired by "purity and goodness", with a name derived from the hydrogen and oxygen elements within the water molecule.


title: Hydrox

text: Sunshine Biscuits was purchased by Keebler in 1996, and in 1999, Keebler replaced Hydrox with a similar but reformulated product called "Droxies". Keebler was acquired by Kellogg's in 2001, and Kellogg's removed Droxies from the market in 2003. Kellogg's then marketed a similar chocolate sandwich cookie under the Famous Amos brand, along with sandwich cookies of other flavors, but has also discontinued the line.


title: Hydrox

text: On the cookie's 100th anniversary, Kellogg's resumed distribution of Hydrox under the Sunshine label, with the first batches shipped in late August 2008. Fans had issued 1,300 phone calls to Kellogg's, an online petition with 1,000 signatures, a Hydrox fan website with the essay "Noncomformists don't eat Oreos", and dozens of forum posts, asking that production resume. The cookies were available nationally for a limited time, and less than one year later Kellogg's had removed Hydrox from their web site.


title: Hydrox

text: The Carvel ice cream franchise sold ice-cream goods manufactured with Hydrox cookie crumbs until 2012. Carvel used the cookie's all-kosher status as a selling point, because the original Oreo recipe used lard. The cookies were not specifically mentioned by name on the Carvel website, but they were identified as "hydrox" (lower-case "h") on the in-store posters. Carvel currently uses Oreo cookies in its ice cream goods.


title: Hydrox

text: In 2014, Leaf Brands registered the "Hydrox" trademark, which had been abandoned by former owner Kellogg's. Leaf began production of its version of Hydrox on September 4, 2015, at the company’s facility in Vernon, California.


title: Hydrox

text: In 2017, the recipe was changed to remove artificial flavors that had been used for 50 years. and the company obtained non-GMO certification.


title: Hydrox

text: Leaf Brands filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission in 2018 against Mondelez International, maker of Oreo cookies, for hiding Hydrox cookies from customers on store shelves.


title: John Volanthen

text: John Paul Volanthen, (born June 1971) is a British cave diver who undertakes cave rescues through the Cave Rescue Organisation, South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue, and the British Caving Association. In 2018, he played a leading role in the Tham Luang cave rescue.


title: John Volanthen

text: He cave-dives as a hobby and conducts rescues as a volunteer. He works as an IT consultant in Bristol.


title: John Volanthen

text: Volanthen was born in June 1971, and grew up in Brighton, England. Volanthen's surname is an anglicised spelling of the Swiss surname "Von Lanthen" — his paternal grandfather was Swiss. He attended Longhill High School in Rottingdean, and later De Montfort University in Leicester where he studied electronics.


title: John Volanthen

text: Volanthen's interest in caving began when he was a scout. He began cave diving through a social club when he attended college.


title: John Volanthen

text: He was part of a team that attempted a cave rescue of Eric Establie in 2010, in the Dragonnière Gaud Cave near Labastide-de-Virac in the Ardèche region of France, which was ultimately unsuccessful. In 2011, Volanthen assisted in the recovery of the body of Polish cave diver Artur Kozłowski from a cave in Kiltartan, Ireland. Norwegian authorities asked him to assist in recovering the bodies of two Finnish divers from Jordbrugrotta in 2014, but after diving down to the site he and his colleagues assessed the operation to be too risky. The bodies were subsequently recovered by Finnish and Norwegian divers.


title: John Volanthen

text: In 2018, he helped locate a youth football team in the Tham Luang cave rescue; he and Stanton were the first to make contact with them. Poor visibility, cave and rescue debris, and low temperatures were all obstacles to cave diving in search of the team. Volanthen placed guidelines in the cave to assist others in navigation.


title: John Volanthen

text: After he ran out of line, he swam to the surface - there he found the missing team and the adult coach. Volanthen's voice is that heard on a widely broadcast video of the first contact with the football team, asking "How many of you?" When he learned that all the missing people were accounted for, he replied, "Brilliant." He and Stanton did not have any food to offer the team when they encountered them, but they gave them a light. When they left the team, Volanthen promised them that he would come back, doing so by assisting in delivering food.


title: John Volanthen

text: Volanthen disputed the notion that encountering the team was due to luck, saying that he and Stanton systematically surfaced at every airspace in the flooded cave passages to shout and listen for a response, as well as to smell for any indicators of human waste signifying the current or past presence of the team. They smelled the team before they saw them. Volanthen also assisted in rescuing members of the team; the children were enclosed in bags with handles on the backs for the divers to hold onto, and clipped to the divers. Parts of the cave were so narrow that the children were pushed in front of the divers. At other times, the children were held close to the chest or out to the side. Volanthen said that the children were held as if carrying a "shopping bag."


title: John Volanthen

text: In a BBC interview after the rescue, Volanthen was asked, "Can you see that what you did was fairly remarkable?" He responded, "I can see it was a first, how's that?"


title: John Volanthen

text: In 2004, Volanthen and Stanton set a record for the greatest depth achieved in a British cave, diving at Wookey Hole in Somerset. In 2010, Volanthen, Stanton, Jason Mallinson, and René Houben set a world record for the longest cave penetration dive, reaching in the Pozo Azul cave system in the Rudrón Valley in Spain.


title: John Volanthen

text: Volanthen designs and constructs some of his own diving equipment, and has been called a "technical guru." He designed a mapping device that collects information while diving.


title: John Volanthen

text: Volanthen was awarded the Royal Humane Society's bronze medal in 2012 for a rescue attempt of a diver in a French cave, and for the discovery of the diver's body.


title: John Volanthen

text: In September 2018, he was given the Bronze Cross, The Scout Association's highest honour, awarded for "heroism or action in the face of extraordinary risk."


title: John Volanthen

text: In November 2018, Volanthen and five other members of the British cave rescue team were given the Pride of Britain 2018 award for "Outstanding Bravery" for the Tham Luang incident. The rescued children attended the award ceremony, in London.


title: John Volanthen

text: In the 2019 New Year Honours, Volanthen and Stanton were awarded the George Medal (GM) for their roles at Tham Luang. Three other members of their team were made Members of the Order of the British Empire and two were awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal. Volanthen was also awarded the Royal Humane Society's Stanhope Medal for his role in the rescue.


title: John Volanthen

text: As a hobby, Volanthen runs marathons and ultramarathons. He is also a volunteer scout leader with the Somerset Scouts, taking children on cave excursions. He was formerly married to Annabelle Richards.


title: Lita Grey

text: Lita Grey (born Lillita Louise MacMurray, April 15, 1908 – December 29, 1995), who was known for most of her life as Lita Grey Chaplin, was an American actress and the second wife of Charlie Chaplin.


title: Lita Grey

text: She was born in Hollywood, California, to Lillian Carrillo Curry Grey, and christened Lillita Louise MacMurray. Her father was of Scottish descent, and her mother's family was descended from an illustrious ninth-generation Californian Spanish family, whose luminaries included Antonio Maria Lugo. The Lugos were from Andalusia, Spain, and were one of the first families to bring horses to the country. In a 1993 interview, Grey claimed to be a grandniece of former California governor Henry Gage.


title: Lita Grey

text: Grey married four times. By her own account she first met Charlie Chaplin at the age of eight at a Hollywood café, and first worked with him at the age of 12 in the part of the "flirting angel" in "The Kid". She appeared briefly as a maid in "The Idle Class". Her one-year contract was not renewed. At the age of 15, she met Chaplin again when she heard he was testing brunettes for his next film "The Gold Rush". She was initially cast as the leading lady in the film, and began an affair with the then-35-year-old Chaplin.


title: Lita Grey

text: She soon became pregnant, and since Chaplin could have been imprisoned for having sexual relations with a minor, they married that November in secret in Empalme, Sonora, Mexico, to avoid a scandal. She alleged in her divorce complaint that he "sought to have her undergo an illegal operation to prevent the birth of their first child".


title: Lita Grey

text: They had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin, born within ten months of each other in May 1925 and March 1926, respectively.


title: Lita Grey

text: The marriage was troubled from the start. The two had few interests in common, and Chaplin spent as much time as he could away from home, working on "The Gold Rush", and later, "The Circus". They divorced on August 22, 1927, due to his alleged numerous affairs with other women, and he was ordered to pay over US$600,000 ($ million in dollars) and US$100,000 ($ million in dollars) in trust for each child, the largest divorce settlement at the time. Copies of her lengthy divorce complaint, which made scandalous sexual claims against Chaplin, were published, and publicly sold, and the divorce became a sensational media event.


title: Lita Grey

text: She later married Henry Aguirre and Arthur Day. The 1940 United States Census states that Lita and Arthur lived at 38 East 50th Street in New York City, and that in 1935 she had lived in England. The census listed her occupation as "singer", and Arthur's as "manager personal". Lita and Arthur adopted a baby boy in 1940, whom they named Robert. When they split up in 1946, Bobby went to live with his paternal grandmother, and Lita had little contact with him after that. She married her fourth husband, Patsy Pizzolongo (aka Pat Longo), on September 22, 1956, in Los Angeles, California. They were divorced in June 1966.


title: Lita Grey

text: In the 1970s and 1980s, she worked as a clerk at Robinson's Department Store in Beverly Hills. She wrote two autobiographical volumes covering her life with Chaplin. "My Life with Chaplin" (1966) was, by her own admission, largely a work of exaggeration and fabrication. She claimed to tell the story as it really was in her second memoir "Wife of the Life of the Party" (1998). She is portrayed by Deborah Moore in the 1992 film "Chaplin", but Grey was depicted on screen for less than a minute in the final film.


title: Lita Grey

text: She died of cancer on December 29, 1995, in Los Angeles, aged 87, and was buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood, California.<ref name="nytimes/1995/12/30"></ref>


title: Leonard Lake

text: Leonard Thomas Lake (October 29, 1945June 6, 1985), also known as Leonard Hill and a variety of other aliases, was an American serial killer. During the mid-1980s, he and his accomplice, British Hong Kong-born Charles Ng, raped, tortured and murdered an estimated eleven to twenty-five victims at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, located 150 miles east of San Francisco. After his 1985 arrest on unrelated charges, Lake swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothing and died four days later. Human remains, videotapes, and journals found at Lake's cabin later confirmed Ng's involvement, and were used to convict Ng on eleven counts of capital murder.


title: Leonard Lake

text: Leonard Lake was born in San Francisco, California. When he was six years old, his parents separated, whereupon he and his siblings moved in with their maternal grandmother. Lake was reportedly a bright child, but after habitually photographing his sisters nude, which his grandmother apparently encouraged, he became obsessed with pornography. He then reportedly extorted his sisters to perform sexual acts. Lake also collected mice and killed them by dissolving them in chemicals, in the same manner he would later dispose of his human victims' corpses.


title: Leonard Lake

text: After attending Balboa High School, Lake enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1964. He served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a radar electronics technician. During this period, Lake was first diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. After what was termed a "delusional breakdown" in Da Nang, he received psychotherapy and, in 1971, a medical discharge.


title: Leonard Lake

text: Lake settled in San Jose and enrolled at San Jose State University, but dropped out after one semester upon becoming enamored of the hippie lifestyle in San Francisco. He moved to a commune there, and married briefly in 1975. The marriage dissolved after his wife discovered that he was making and appearing in amateur pornographic movies, usually involving bondage or sadomasochism.


title: Leonard Lake

text: For the next eight years, Lake lived at the Greenfield Ranch, a 5,600 acre back-to-the-land settlement near Calpella, north of Ukiah, California. There, he met and eventually married Claralyn Balazs — nicknamed "Cricket" — who became involved in Lake's fantasies and appeared in many of his pornographic films. Lake's growing fear of impending nuclear holocaust prompted him to begin construction of a "bunker" on the settlement grounds, until the owner of the property became aware of the project and ordered it halted.


title: Leonard Lake

text: Lake met fellow former Marine Charles Ng, originally from Hong Kong, through a survivalist magazine advertisement he placed in 1981. In 1984, Ng was dishonorably discharged after serving time for theft and desertion, and Lake invited him to share a cabin near Wilseyville that had belonged to Balazs's family. Next to the cabin, Lake had built a structure described in his journals as a "dungeon". He probably had already murdered his brother Donald and his friend and best man Charles Gunnar, stealing their money and Gunnar's identity.


title: Leonard Lake

text: Over the next year, Lake and Ng began a pattern of rape, torture, and murder. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng are confirmed to have murdered at least eleven people and because of the massive amount of burned, shattered bone fragments found at Lake’s cabin are thought to have killed as many as fourteen others. Their victims included their neighbor Lonnie Bond, his girlfriend Brenda O'Connor, their infant son Lonnie Jr., and Harvey and Deborah Dubs and their young son Sean. According to court records, they killed the men and infants immediately but kept the women alive, raping and torturing them, before killing them or allowing them to die from their injuries. Other known victims included relatives and friends who came looking for Bond and O'Connor, two gay men (one of whom survived), and some workmates of Ng. Three transients who San Francisco police say are now missing and had contact with Lake or Ng at one time.


title: Leonard Lake

text: Lake and Ng targeted women but were not hesitant to abduct entire families. After killing the men and children to get them out of the way, they would hold the women captive in a custom-built room in a bunker at Lake's ranch, tie them up and torture and rape them, videotaping each other while doing so. Sometimes they also lured men to the compound with promises of work and robbed them, after which Lake stole their identities. After killing the victims by either strangling or shooting them, they would often bury them in shallow graves on the property, though there is evidence that some were also dismembered and burned and their remains shattered.


title: Leonard Lake

text: On June 2, 1985, Ng was caught shoplifting a vise from a hardware store in South San Francisco and fled the scene. Lake later drove to the store and attempted to pay for the vise, but by then police had arrived. Officers noticed that Lake bore no resemblance to the photo on his driver's license, which carried the name of Robin Scott Stapley, a San Diego man reported missing by his family several weeks earlier. Lake was arrested after a gun equipped with a prohibited silencer was found in the trunk of his vehicle, a 1980 Honda Prelude, and was later positively identified via a fingerprint search. While in custody, he swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothes, and died four days later.


title: Leonard Lake

text: The license plate on Lake's vehicle was registered to him, but the Honda itself was registered to Paul Cosner, who had disappeared from San Francisco in November 1984. Lake's auto registration led detectives under the command of San Francisco Police Homicide Lieutenant Gerald McCarthy to the property in Wilseyville, where they found Stapley's truck and Bond's car, and the dungeon. In a makeshift burial site nearby, police unearthed roughly forty pounds of burned and crushed human bone fragments corresponding to a minimum of eleven bodies.


title: Leonard Lake

text: Two bodies, later identified as Bond and Stapley, had been gagged and executed by gunshots to the head. Police also found a hand-drawn "treasure map", leading them to two buried five-gallon buckets. One contained an assortment of ID papers and personal possessions, suggesting that the total victim count could be as high as twenty-five. In the other were Lake's handwritten journals for the years 1983 and 1984, and two videotapes documenting their torture of Brenda O'Connor and Deborah Dubs. In one of the tapes, Ng is seen telling O'Connor, "You can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won't do any good. We are pretty ... cold-hearted, so to speak." In the other, Dubs is shown being assaulted so severely that she "could not have survived".


title: Leonard Lake

text: Lake's wife, Claralyn Balazs, cooperated with investigators and received legal immunity from prosecution. Court records stated that Balazs turned over weapons and other material to authorities during the investigation. She was called as a key witness in Ng's trial in 1999. Yet in a surprise move, Ng's lawyer, William Kelley, dismissed Balazs without asking any questions. Kelley later declined to explain his actions. Balazs was on the witness stand for a few minutes as Kelley read sections of her immunity agreement. Balazs had been expected to shed light on what happened inside the mountain cabin that her parents owned.


title: Leonard Lake

text: Ng, who had never legally obtained U.S. citizenship, was captured in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for shoplifting and wounding a security guard in 1985. He served four and a half years in prison there, and tried to fight extradition to the United States on the grounds that he would be subject to capital punishment. In 1991 he was extradited to California, where he was indicted on twelve counts of first-degree murder. Despite the video evidence, and the detailed information in Lake's diaries, Ng maintained that he was merely an observer and that Lake planned and committed all of the kidnaps, rapes, and murders unassisted.


title: Leonard Lake

text: In February 1999, Ng was convicted of eleven of the twelve homicides — six men, three women, and two male infants. Jurors deadlocked on the twelfth charge, but Ng was sentenced to death. The presiding judge noted, "Mr. Ng was not under any duress, nor does the evidence support that he was under the domination of Leonard Lake." , Ng was still incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. The last execution in California was in 2006. In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on the death penalty in California.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Bobby Joseph Wagner (born June 27, 1990) is an American football inside linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Utah State, and was drafted in the second round of the 2012 NFL Draft by the Seattle Seahawks, who he played for until the end of the season.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner attended Colony High School in Ontario, California, where he played high school football for the Titans. In 2007, he registered 125 tackles (92 solo, 33 assists), including four sacks as a senior. He also played tight end, tallying 37 catches for 595 yards with 11 touchdowns. He received all-CIF Central Division honors as well as all-Mount Baldy League accolades. He earned second-team California Division 2 all-state honors after helping lead the Titans to a CIF division title and was named to the All-San Bernardino County team.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Considered only a two-star recruit by "Rivals.com", Wagner's only offer came from Utah State, which he accepted.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner attended Utah State University from 2008 to 2011. A four-year starter, he recorded 445 tackles, 4.5 sacks, and four interceptions during his career. As a senior in 2011, Wagner was the WAC Defensive Player of the Year after recording 147 tackles, four sacks, and two interceptions.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On January 14, 2012, it was announced that Wagner had accepted his invitation to play in the 2012 Senior Bowl. He became the first Utah State player to play in the game since Chris Cooley in 2004. On January 28, 2012, Wagner played in the Senior Bowl and recorded 22 combined tackles and an interception for Minnesota Vikings' head coach Leslie Frazier's North team that defeated the South 23–13. He was named the Senior Bowl MVP and was also named the North's Most Outstanding Player. Wagner received an invitation to the NFL Scouting Combine, but was unable to attend after coming down with pneumonia. On March 30, 2012, Wagner attended Utah State's pro day and impressed scouts and team representatives after performing all of the combine drills. He displayed his versatility and athleticism throughout his workout and helped solidify himself as a top linebacker. His 40-yard dash and broad jump would've finished first among all linebackers in at the NFL combine and his vertical would've tied with Cal's Mychal Kendricks for first. His broad jump was five inches better than any linebacker at the combine and would've finished third among all positions. At the conclusion of the pre-draft process, Wagner was projected to be a second round pick by NFL draft experts and scouts. He was ranked the fourth best outside linebacker in the draft by NFLDraftScout.com.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: The Seattle Seahawks selected Wagner in the second round (47th overall) of the 2012 NFL Draft. He is the 11th highest player selected in the NFL draft from Utah State and the highest since Rulon Jones in 1980. The Seattle Seahawks also drafted his Utah State teammate Robert Turbin in the fourth round.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On May 7, 2012, the Seattle Seahawks signed Wagner to a four-year, $4.30 million contract that includes $2.51 million guaranteed and a signing bonus of $1.57 million.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner entered training camp competing for the vacant starting middle linebacker role against Barrett Ruud and Matt McCoy. Although Ruud was initially supposed to replace David Hawthorne, an injury sidelined him during organized team activities, giving Wagner valuable time with the first team defense. Head coach Pete Carroll named Wagner the starting middle linebacker, along with outside linebackers K. J. Wright and Leroy Hill, to start the regular season.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: He made his professional regular season debut and first career start in the Seattle Seahawks' season-opener at the Arizona Cardinals and recorded four combined tackles during their 20–16 loss. In Week 5, Wagner recorded five combined tackles and made his first career sack on Cam Newton in the Seahawks' 16–12 victory. The next week, he made a season-high 14 combined tackles in a 24–23 victory against the New England Patriots. On November 25, 2012, Wagner recorded nine combined tackles, two pass deflections, and intercepted his first career pass off Miami Dolphins' quarterback Ryan Tannehill during a 24–21 loss. On December 9, 2012, he collected eight combined tackles, two pass deflections, and intercepted two passes off of John Skelton in a 58–0 routing against the Arizona Cardinals. Wagner finished his rookie season with 140 combined tackles (87 solo), four pass deflections, three interceptions. and two sacks in 16 games and 15 starts. Pro Football Focus ranked him the second best inside linebacker in 2012 and the best rookie linebacker during the season.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: The Seattle Seahawks finished second in the NFC West with an 11–5 record and received a playoff berth. On January 6, 2013, Wagner started in his first career playoff game and recorded nine combined tackles during a 24–14 victory at the Washington Redskins in the NFC . They were eliminated by the Atlanta Falcons in the .


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner remained the starting middle linebacker to start the 2013 regular season under new defensive coordinator Dan Quinn. On September 22, 2013, he recorded nine combined tackles, deflected a pass, and intercepted Chad Henne as the Seahawks defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars and Seattle's former defensive coordinator Gus Bradley 45–17, who became the Jaguars head coach in 2013. Wagner missed the first two games of his career (Weeks 6–7) after suffering a high ankle sprain. In Week 9, Wagner collected 11 combined tackles and was credited with 1.5 sacks on Mike Glennon during a 27–24 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. On December 29, 2013, he made a season-high 12 combined tackles during a 27–9 victory against the St. Louis Rams. He finished the season with 120 combined tackles (72 solo), seven pass deflections, five sacks, and two interceptions in 14 games and 14 starts. Pro Football Focus ranked Wagner the 61st best player in the league in 2013, regardless of position.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: The Seattle Seahawks finished the season atop their division with a 13–3 record. On January 19, 2014, Wagner started in the and recorded 15 combined tackles during a 23–17 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. On February 2, 2014, Wagner started in his first career Super Bowl and made ten combined tackles as the Seahawks routed the Denver Broncos 43–8 and won Super Bowl XLVIII.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner, K. J. Wright, and Bruce Irvin returned as the starting linebacker corps in 2014. Wagner started the Seattle Seahawks' season-opener against the Green Bay Packers and recorded a season-high 14 combined tackles during a 36–16 victory on "Thursday Night Football". Unfortunately, he missed five games (Weeks 7–11) after suffering turf toe. On December 14, 2014, Wagner recorded his fourth game with at least ten combined tackles and sacked Colin Kaepernick during a 17–7 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. Wagner finished the season with 104 combined tackles (67 solo), nine tackles for a loss, three pass deflections, and two sacks in 11 games and 11 starts. Even though he missed five games, he was voted into his first Pro Bowl and was named First Team All-Pro. For the third straight season, the Seattle Seahawks' defense finished first in the NFL in points allowed, making Wagner a key starter on the top defense every year of his career so far. For his efforts that season, he received a single MVP vote from Tony Dungy, largely due to the Seahawks allowing 20.4 points per game without Wagner and 6.5 points per game in the six games after he returned from an injury.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On February 1, 2015, the Seattle Seahawks played in Super Bowl XLIX after defeating the Carolina Panthers in the and then the Green Bay Packers in the . Wagner recorded 12 combined tackles, deflected a pass, and intercepted a pass attempt by Tom Brady in the Seahawks 28–24 last-second loss to the New England Patriots. Wagner made the NFL Top 100 Players for the first time in his career after he garnered enough votes from his NFL peers to finish ranked 69th in the "NFL Top 100 Players of 2015".


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On August 2, 2015, the Seattle Seahawks signed Wagner to a four-year, $43 million contract extension that includes $19.97 million guaranteed and a signing bonus of $8 million.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Irvin, Wright, and Wagner remained the starters under new defensive coordinator Kris Richard to begin 2015. On October 11, 2015, Wagner recorded seven combined tackles, a pass deflection and a fumble recovery, and scored his first career touchdown during a 27–24 overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Defensive end Michael Bennett caused Bengals' running back Rex Burkhead to fumble in the third quarter, which Wagner recovered and returned it 23 yards for a touchdown. Wagner missed the Seahawks' Week 6 loss to the Carolina Panthers with a pectoral strain. In Week 10, Wagner collected 11 combined tackles, deflected a pass, recovered a fumble, and scored his second touchdown of the season, as the Seahawks lost to the Arizona Cardinals, 39–32. In the fourth quarter of that game, linebacker K. J. Wright sacked quarterback Carson Palmer for a nine-yard loss and jarred the ball loose resulting in a fumble. Wagner recovered the fumble and returned it for a 22-yard touchdown. On November 29, 2015, he tied his season-high of 12 combined tackles and deflected a pass in Seattle's 39–30 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: He finished the season with 114 combined tackles (67 solo) and seven pass deflections, and was credited with only half a sack in 15 games and 15 starts. This marked his first and only season without a solo sack. Wagner finished second on the team in tackles, falling two behind leader K. J. Wright. He was voted to the 2016 Pro Bowl and was named to The Associated Press All-Pro second team. Pro Football Focus ranked Wagner the 30th-best linebacker in 2015. His teammate K. J. Wright was ranked the sixth-best linebacker by PFF and Bruce Irvin was ranked 15th.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: The Seattle Seahawks finished second in the NFC West with a 10–6 record. They went on to defeat the Minnesota Vikings, 10–9, in the NFC and then lost, 31–24, to the Carolina Panthers in the as Wagner recorded 13 combined tackles. On January 31, 2016, Wagner played in his first Pro Bowl game and recorded ten combined tackles to help Team Irvin defeat Team Rice, 49–27, and win the 2016 Pro Bowl.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner and Wright returned to their respective starting roles in 2016 and were joined by Mike Morgan, who was chosen to replace Bruce Irvin following his departure in free agency to the Oakland Raiders.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On September 25, 2016, Wagner recorded six combined, two pass deflections, and intercepted a pass by Blaine Gabbert during a 37–18 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. In Week 9, Wagner made a career-high 16 combined tackles in Seattle's 31–25 win against the Buffalo Bills. During a Week 16 matchup against the Arizona Cardinals, he set the single-season franchise record in combined tackles after he surpassed Terry Beeson's record of 153 tackles. On January 1, 2017, Wright recorded 12 combined tackles, a pass deflection, and sacked Colin Kaepernick twice in a 25–23 victory at the San Francisco 49ers. Wagner finished the season as the Seahawks' leading tackler for the third consecutive season with a career-high 167 combined tackles (85 solo), 4.5 sacks, three pass deflections, and an interception in 16 games and 16 starts. He led the NFL in tackles, was named to his third consecutive Pro Bowl, and was voted First-team All-Pro. The Seahawks finished with a 10–5–1 record and won the NFC West. In the against the Detroit Lions, he had ten total tackles in the 26–6 victory. In the loss to the Atlanta Falcons, he had eight combined tackles. He was ranked 39th by his peers on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2017. Pro Football Focus gave Wagner an overall grade of 90.8 in 2016, finishing third among linebackers behind Jerrell Freeman (93.9) and Luke Kuechly (93.1).


title: Bobby Wagner

text: On September 17, 2017, he recorded seven combined tackles, deflected two passes, and made his first interception of the season off of a pass by Brian Hoyer during a 12–9 win over the San Francisco 49ers. On November 5, 2017, Wagner recorded a season-high 12 combined tackles, deflected a pass, and sacked Washington Redskins' quarterback Kirk Cousins for the first safety of his career in the Seahawks' 17–14 loss. He finished the season with 133 combined tackles (97 solo), six pass deflections, two interceptions, 1.5 sacks, and a safety in 16 games and 16 starts. On December 19, 2017, Wagner was named to his fourth straight Pro Bowl. The Seattle Seahawks finished second in the NFC West with a 9–7 record and for that did not qualify for the playoffs for the first time during Wagner's time with the team. Pro Football Focus gave Wagner an overall grade of 96.7 which was ranked the best grade among all linebackers. He earned First Team All-Pro and Pro Bowl nominations for the 2017 season. He was ranked No. 21 by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2018.


title: Bobby Wagner

text: Wagner was the recipient of the 2017 Steve Largent Award, which is given annually to the team contributor best exemplifying the spirit, dedication, and integrity of former Seahawk wide receiver Steve Largent.