title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: The available Mauthausen inmate statistics from the spring of 1943, shows that there were 2,400 prisoners below the age of 20, which was 12.8% of the 18,655 population. By late March 1945, the number of juvenile prisoners in Mauthausen increased to 15,048, which was 19.1% of the 78,547 Mauthausen inmates. The number of imprisoned children increased 6.2 times, whereas the total number of adult prisoners during the same period multiplied by a factor of only four.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: These numbers reflected the increasing use of Polish, Czech, Soviet, and Balkan teenagers as slave labour as the war continued. Statistics showing the composition of juvenile inmates shortly before their liberation reveal the following major child/prisoner sub-groups: 5,809 foreign civilian labourers, 5,055 political prisoners, 3,654 Jews, and 330 Russian POWs. There were also 23 Romani children, 20 so-called "anti-social elements", six Spaniards, and three Jehovah's Witnesses.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Mauthausen was one of the most brutal and severe of the Nazi concentration camps. The inmates suffered not only from malnutrition, overcrowded huts and constant abuse and beatings by the guards and kapos, but also from exceptionally hard labour.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: The work in the quarries – often in unbearable heat or in temperatures as low as  – led to exceptionally high mortality rates. The food rations were limited, and during the 1940–1942 period, an average inmate weighed . It is estimated that the average energy content of food rations dropped from about a day during the 1940–1942 period, to between a day during the next period. In 1945 the energy content was even lower and did not exceed a day – less than a third of the energy needed by an average worker in heavy industry. The reduced rations led to the starvation of thousands of inmates.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: The inmates of Mauthausen, Gusen I, and Gusen II had access to a separate part of the camp for the sick – the so-called "Krankenlager". Despite the fact that (roughly) 100 medics from among the inmates were working there, they were not given any medication and could offer only basic first aid. Thus the "hospital camp "– as it was called by the German authorities – was, in fact, a "hospital" only in name.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: The rock quarry in Mauthausen was at the base of the "Stairs of Death". Prisoners were forced to carry roughly-hewn blocks of stone – often weighing as much as  – up the 186 stairs, one prisoner behind the other. As a result, many exhausted prisoners collapsed in front of the other prisoners in the line, and then fell on top of the other prisoners, creating a domino effect; the first prisoner falling onto the next, and so on, all the way down the stairs. In the quarry, prisoners were forced to carry the boulders from morning until night, whipped by Nazi guards.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Such brutality was not accidental. Former prisoner Edward Mosberg said: "If you stopped for a moment, the SS either shot you or pushed you off the cliff to your death." The SS guards would often force prisoners – exhausted from hours of hard labour without sufficient food and water – to race up the stairs carrying blocks of stone. Those who survived the ordeal would often be placed in a line-up at the edge of a cliff known as "The Parachutists Wall" (). At gun-point each prisoner would have the option of being shot or pushing the prisoner in front of him off the cliff. Other common methods of extermination of prisoners who were either sick, unfit for further labour or as a means of collective responsibility or after escape attempts included beating the prisoners to death by the SS guards and Kapos, starving to death in bunkers, hangings and mass shootings.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: At times the guards or Kapos would either deliberately throw the prisoners on the 380 volt electric barbed wire fence, or force them outside the boundaries of the camp and then shoot them on the pretence that they were attempting to escape. Another method of extermination were icy showers – some 3,000 inmates died of hypothermia after having been forced to take an icy cold shower and then left outside in cold weather. A large number of inmates were drowned in barrels of water at Gusen II.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: The Nazis also performed pseudo-scientific experiments on the prisoners. Among the doctors to organise them were Sigbert Ramsauer, Karl Josef Gross, Eduard Krebsbach and Aribert Heim. Heim was dubbed "Doctor Death" by the inmates; he was in Gusen for seven weeks, which was enough to carry out his experiments.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Hans Maršálek estimated that an average life expectancy of newly arrived prisoners in Gusen varied from six months between 1940 and 1942, to less than three months in early 1945. Paradoxically, with the growth of forced labour industry in various subcamps of Mauthausen, the situation of some of the prisoners improved significantly. While the food rations were increasingly limited every month, the heavy industry necessitated skilled specialists rather than unqualified workers and the brutality of the camp's SS and Kapos was limited. While the prisoners were still beaten on a daily basis and the Muselmänner were still exterminated, from early 1943 on some of the factory workers were allowed to receive food parcels from their families (mostly Poles and Frenchmen). This allowed many of them not only to evade the risk of starvation, but also to help other prisoners who had no relatives outside the camps – or who were not allowed to receive parcels.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: In February 1945, the camp was the site of Nazi war crime Mühlviertler Hasenjagd ("hare hunt") where around 500 escaped prisoners (mostly Soviet officers) were mercilessly hunted down and murdered by SS, local law enforcement and civilians.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: The Germans destroyed much of the camp's files and evidence and often allocated newly arrived prisoners the camp numbers of those who had already been killed, so the exact death toll of Mauthausen and its subcamps is impossible to calculate. The matter is further complicated due to some of the inmates of Gusen being murdered in Mauthausen, and at least 3,423 were sent to Hartheim Castle, away. Also, several thousands were killed in mobile gas chambers, without any mention of the exact number of victims in the remaining files. Overall, more than 90,000 of the 190,000 people deported to Mauthausen died there or in one of its subcamps.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: SS Captain Albert Sauer presided over the initial establishment of the camp on 1 August 1938 and remained camp commandant until 17 February 1939. Franz Ziereis assumed control as commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp from 1939 until the camp was liberated by the American forces in 1945. The infamous Death's- Head Unit or SS-Totenkopfverbände charged with guarding the camp perimeter in addition to work detachments was headed by Georg Bachmayer, a captain in the SS. Further records of camp leadership were destroyed by Nazi officials in effort to cover up war atrocities and those involved.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Several Norwegian Waffen SS volunteers worked as guards or as instructors for prisoners from Nordic countries, according to senior researcher Terje Emberland at the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: During the final months before liberation, the camp's commander Franz Ziereis prepared for its defence against a possible Soviet offensive. The remaining prisoners were rushed to build a line of granite anti-tank obstacles to the east of Mauthausen. The inmates unable to cope with the hard labour and malnutrition were exterminated in large numbers to free space for newly arrived evacuation transports from other camps, including most of the subcamps of Mauthausen located in eastern Austria. In the final months of the war, the main source of dietary energy, the parcels of food sent through the International Red Cross, stopped and food rations became catastrophically low. The prisoners transferred to the "Hospital Subcamp" received one piece of bread per 20 inmates and roughly half a litre of weed soup a day. This made some of the prisoners, previously engaged in various types of resistance activity, begin to prepare plans to defend the camp in case of an SS attempt to exterminate all the remaining inmates.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: On 3 May the SS and other guards started to prepare for evacuation of the camp. The following day, the guards of Mauthausen were replaced with unarmed "Volkssturm" soldiers and an improvised unit formed of elderly police officers and fire fighters evacuated from Vienna. The police officer in charge of the unit accepted the "inmate self-government" as the camp's highest authority and Martin Gerken, until then the highest-ranking kapo prisoner in the Gusen's administration (in the rank of "Lagerälteste", or the "Camp's Elder"), became the new "de facto" commander. He attempted to create an International Prisoner Committee that would become a provisional governing body of the camp until it was liberated by one of the approaching armies, but he was openly accused of co-operation with the SS and the plan failed.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: All work in the subcamps of Mauthausen stopped and the inmates focused on preparations for their liberation – or defence of the camps against a possible assault by the SS divisions concentrated in the area. The remnants of several German divisions indeed assaulted the Mauthausen subcamp, but were repelled by the prisoners who took over the camp. Of the main subcamps of Mauthausen, only Gusen III was to be evacuated. On 1 May the inmates were rushed on a death march towards Sankt Georgen, but were ordered to return to the camp after several hours. The operation was repeated the following day, but called off soon afterwards. The following day, the SS guards deserted the camp, leaving the prisoners to their fate.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: On 5 May 1945 the camp at Mauthausen was approached by a squad of US Army soldiers of the 41st Reconnaissance Squadron of the US 11th Armored Division, 3rd US Army. The reconnaissance squad was led by Staff Sergeant Albert J. Kosiek. His troop disarmed the policemen and left the camp. By the time of its liberation, most of the guards in Mauthausen had fled; around 30 of those who remained were killed by the prisoners. A similar number were killed in Gusen II. By 6 May all the remaining subcamps of Mauthausen, with the exception of the two camps in the Loibl Pass, were also liberated by American forces.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Among the inmates liberated from the camp was Lieutenant Jack Taylor, an officer of the Office of Strategic Services. He had managed to survive with the help of several prisoners and was later a key witness at the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials carried out by the Dachau International Military Tribunal. Another of the camp's survivors was Simon Wiesenthal, an engineer who spent the rest of his life hunting Nazi war criminals. Future Medal of Honor recipient Tibor "Ted" Rubin was imprisoned there as a young teenager; a Hungarian Jew, he vowed to join the US Army upon his liberation and later did just that, distinguishing himself in the Korean War as a corporal in the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Francesc Boix, a photographer and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, was imprisoned at the camp for four years. During his time working in the photography lab of the camp, he smuggled 3,000 negatives out of the camp and later used this photographic evidence to testify at the Nuremberg trials.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Following the capitulation of Germany, Mauthausen fell within the Soviet sector of occupation of Austria. Initially, the Soviet authorities used parts of the Mauthausen and Gusen I camps as barracks for the Red Army. At the same time, the underground factories were being dismantled and sent to the USSR as a war reparations. After that, between 1946 and 1947, the camps were unguarded and many furnishings and facilities of the camp were dismantled, both by the Red Army and by the local population. In the early summer of 1947, the Soviet forces had blown up the tunnels and were then withdrawn from the area, while the camp was turned over to Austrian civilian authorities.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: Mauthausen was declared a national memorial site in 1949. Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor of Austria, officially opened the Mauthausen Museum on 3 May 1975, 30 years after the camp's liberation. A visitor centre was inaugurated in 2003, designed by the architects Herwig Mayer, Christoph Schwarz, and Karl Peyrer-Heimstätt, covering an area of .


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: The Mauthausen site remains largely intact, but much of what constituted the subcamps of Gusen I, II and III is now covered by residential areas built after the war.


title: Mauthausen concentration camp

text: A memorial to Mauthausen stands amongst the various memorials to concentration camps in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a proposed class of nuclear fission reactors, smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, which can be built in one location (such as a factory), then shipped, commissioned, and operated at a separate site. The term SMR refers to the size, capacity and modular construction only, not to the reactor type and the nuclear process which is applied. Designs range from scaled down versions of existing designs to generation IV designs. Both thermal-neutron reactors and fast-neutron reactors have been proposed, along with molten salt and gas cooled reactor models.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs are typically anticipated to have an electrical power output of less than 300 MW (electric) or less than 1000 MW (thermal). Many SMR proposals rely on a manufacturing-centric model, requiring many deployments to secure economies of unit production large enough to achieve economic viability. Some SMR designs, typically those using Generation IV technologies, aim to secure additional economic advantage through improvements in electrical generating efficiency from much higher temperature steam generation. Ideally, modular reactors will reduce on-site construction, increase containment efficiency, and are claimed to enhance safety. The greater safety should come via the use of passive safety features that operate without human intervention, a concept already implemented in some conventional nuclear reactor types. SMRs should also reduce staffing versus conventional nuclear reactors, and are claimed to have the ability to bypass financial and safety barriers that inhibit the construction of conventional reactors.


title: Small modular reactor

text: While there are dozens of modular reactor designs and yet unfinished demonstration projects, the floating nuclear power plant Akademik Lomonosov (operating in Pevek in Russia's Far East) is, as of October 2022, the first and only operating prototype in the world. Construction of the world's first land-based SMR began in July 2021 with the Chinese power plant Linglong One (); this prototype is due to commence generation by the end of 2026.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs differ in terms of staffing, security and deployment time. US government studies to evaluate SMR-associated risks have slowed licensing. One concern with SMRs is preventing nuclear proliferation.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Economic factors of scale mean that nuclear reactors tend to be large, to such an extent that size itself becomes a limiting factor. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster caused a major set-back for the nuclear industry, with worldwide suspension of development, cutting down of funding, and closure of reactor plants.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In response, a new strategy was introduced aiming at building smaller reactors, which are faster to realize, safer, and at lower cost for a single reactor. Despite the loss of scale advantages and considerably less power output, funding was expected to be easier thanks to the introduction of modular construction and projects with expected shorter timescales. The generic SMR proposal is to swap the economies of unit scale for the economies of unit mass production.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Proponents claim that SMRs are less expensive due to the use of standardized modules that can be produced off-site. SMRs do, however, also have some economic disadvantages. Several studies suggest that the overall costs of SMRs are comparable with those of conventional large reactors. Moreover, extremely


title: Small modular reactor

text: limited information about SMR modules transportation has been published. Critics say that modular building will only be cost-effective at high quantities of the same types, given the still remaining high costs for each SMR. A high market share is needed to obtain sufficient orders.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Proponents say that nuclear energy with proven technology is safe; the nuclear industry contends that smaller size will make SMRs even safer than conventional plants. Critics say that more small reactors pose a higher risk, requiring more transportation of nuclear fuel and increased generation of waste. SMRs require new designs with new technology, the safety of which has yet to be proven.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Until 2020, no truly modular SMRs had been built. In May 2020, the first prototype of a floating nuclear power plant with two 30 MW reactors - the type "KLT-40" - started operation in Pevek, Russia. This concept is based on the design of nuclear icebreakers. The operation of the first commercial land-based, 125 MW demonstration reactor "ACP100" (Linglong One) is due to start in China by the end of 2026.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Once the first unit of a given design is licensed, licensing subsequent units should be drastically simpler, assuming that all units operate identically.


title: Small modular reactor

text: A future power station using SMRs can begin with a single module and expand by adding modules as demand grows. This reduces startup costs associated with conventional designs.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Some SMRs have a load-following design such that they can produce less electricity when demand is low.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs will require much less land, e.g., the 470 MWe 3-loop Rolls-Royce SMR reactor takes , 10% of that needed for a traditional plant. This unit is too large to meet the definition of a small modular reactor and will require more on-site construction, which calls into question the claimed benefits of SMRs. The firm is targeting a 500-day construction time.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Electricity needs in remote locations are usually small and variable, making them suitable for a smaller plant. The smaller size may also reduce the need for a grid to distribute their output.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs offer significant advantages over conventional style nuclear reactors due to the flexibility of their modular design. Flexibility in the capabilities of SMRs offers advantages, incremental load capacity, ability for adaptation to current nuclear powerplant sites, utilization for industrial applications, improved operating time, and the ability to be “grid independent”.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Containment is more efficient, and proliferation concerns are much less. For example, a pressure release valve may have a spring that can respond to increasing pressure to increase coolant flow. "Inherent" safety features require no moving parts to work, depending only on physical laws. Another example is a plug at the bottom of a reactor that melts away when temperatures are too high, allowing the reactor fuel to drain out of the reactor and lose critical mass.


title: Small modular reactor

text: A report by the German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) considering 136 different historical and current reactors and SMR concepts stated: "Overall, SMRs could potentially achieve safety advantages compared to power plants with a larger power output, as they have a lower radioactive inventory per reactor and aim for a higher safety level especially through simplifications and an increased use of passive systems. In contrast, however, various SMR concepts also favour reduced regulatory requirements, for example, with regard to the required degree of redundancy or diversity in safety systems. Some developers even demand that current requirements be waived, for example in the area of internal accident management or with reduced planning zones, or even a complete waiver of external emergency protection planning. Since the safety of a reactor plant depends on all of these factors, based on the current state of knowledge it is not possible to state, that a higher safety level is achieved by SMR concepts in principle."


title: Small modular reactor

text: Many SMRs are designed to use unconventional fuels that allow for higher burnup and longer fuel cycles. Longer refueling intervals can decrease proliferation risks and lower chances of radiation escaping containment. For reactors in remote areas, accessibility can be troublesome, so longer fuel life can be helpful.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs are envisioned in multiple designs. Some are simplified versions of current reactors, others involve entirely new technologies. All proposed SMRs use nuclear fission with designs including thermal-neutron reactors and fast-neutron reactors.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Thermal-neutron reactors rely on a moderator to slow neutrons and generally use as fissile material. Most conventional operating reactors are of this type.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Fast reactors don't use moderators. Instead they rely on the fuel to absorb higher speed neutrons. This usually means changing the fuel arrangement within the core, or using different fuels. E.g., is more likely to absorb a high-speed neutron than .


title: Small modular reactor

text: Fast reactors can be breeder reactors. These reactors release enough neutrons to transmute non-fissionable elements into fissionable ones. A common use for a breeder reactor is to surround the core in a "blanket" of , the most easily found isotope. Once the undergoes a neutron absorption reaction, it becomes , which can be removed from the reactor during refueling, and subsequently used as fuel.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Conventional reactors typically use water as a coolant. SMRs may use water, liquid metal, gas and molten salt as coolants. Coolant type is determined based on the reactor type, reactor design, and the chosen application. Large-rated reactors primarily use light water as coolant, allowing for this cooling method to be easily applied to SMRs. Helium is often elected as a gas coolant for SMRs because it yields a high plant thermal efficiency and supplies a sufficient amount of reactor heat. Sodium, lead, and lead-bismuth are common liquid metal coolants of choice for SMRs. There was a large focus on sodium during early work on large-rated reactors which has since carried over to SMRs to be a prominent choice as a liquid metal coolant. SMRs have lower cooling water requirements, which expands the number of places a SMR could be built, including remote areas typically incorporating mining and desalination.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Some gas-cooled reactor designs could drive a gas-powered turbine, rather than boiling water, such that thermal energy can be used directly. Heat could also be used in hydrogen production and other commercial operations, such as desalination and the production of petroleum products (extracting oil from oil sands, creating synthetic oil from coal, etc.).


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMR designs are generally expected to provide base load power; some proposed designs can adjust their output based on demand.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Another approach, especially for SMRs that can provide high temperature heat, is to adopt cogeneration, maintaining consistent output, while diverting otherwise unneeded heat to an auxiliary use. District heating, desalination and hydrogen production have been proposed as cogeneration options.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Overnight desalination requires sufficient freshwater storage to enable water to be delivered at times other than when it is produced. Membrane and thermal are the two principal categories of desalination technology. The membrane desalination process uses only electricity and is employed the most out of the two technologies. In the thermal process, the feed water stream is evaporated in different stages with continuous decreases in pressure between the stages. The thermal process primarily uses thermal energy and does not include the intermediate conversion of thermal power to electricity. Thermal desalination technology is further divided into two principal technologies: the Multi Stage Flash distillation (MSF) and the Multi Effect Desalination (MED).


title: Small modular reactor

text: One study reported that some types of SMR could produce more waste per unit of output than conventional reactors, in some cases more than 5x the spent fuel per kilowatt, and as much as 35x other waste products, such as active steel. Neutron leakage rates were estimated to be higher for SMRs, because in smaller reactor cores, emitted neutrons have fewer chances to interact with the fuel. Instead, they exit the core, where they are absorbed by the shielding, turning it radioactive. Reactor designs that use liquid metal coolants also become radioactive. Another potential issue is that a lower fraction of the fuel is consumed, increasing waste volumes. The potentially increased diversity of reactors may require accordingly diverse waste management systems.


title: Small modular reactor

text: A report by the German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management found that extensive interim storage and fuel transports would still be required for SMRs. A repository would still be required in any case.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Many SMR designs are fast reactors that have higher fuel burnup, reducing the amount of waste. At higher neutron energy more fission products can usually be tolerated. Breeder reactors "burn" , but convert fertile materials such as into usable fuels.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Some reactor designs utilise the thorium fuel cycle, which offers significantly reduced long-term waste radiotoxicity compared to the uranium cycle.


title: Small modular reactor

text: The traveling wave reactor immediately uses fuel that it breeds without requiring the fuel's removal and cleaning.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Some proposed SMRs use cooling systems that use thermoconvection – natural circulation – to eliminate cooling pumps that could break down. Convection can keep removing decay heat after reactor shutdown.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Negative temperature coefficients in the moderators and the fuels keep the fission reactions under control, causing the reaction to slow as temperature increases.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Some SMRs may need an active cooling system to back up the passive system, increasing cost. Additionally, SMR designs may have less need for containment structures.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs maintain core cooling with a passive safety system which eliminates the need for pressure injection systems. With a passive safety system, emergency AC power sourced from a diesel generator is not required for core cooling. A passive safety system is simpler, requires less testing, and does not lead to inadvertent initiation. SMRs do not require an active containment heat system due to passive heat rejection out of containment and a containment spray system is not required. An emergency feedwater system in not necessary for SMRs, allowing for core heat removal and enhancing safety.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs featuring water and sodium coolants increase reactor safety through their ability to withhold byproducts of the fissile fuel introduced into the coolants during a severe accident. This characteristic of a SMR allows for the ability of a SMR to mitigate the release of fissile material, contaminating the environment, in the event of a failure to maintain containment of nuclear material occurred.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Some SMR designs feature an integral design of which the primary reactor core, steam generator and the pressurizer are integrated within the sealed reactor vessel. This integrated design allows for the reduction of a possible accident as radiation leaks can easily be contained. In comparison to larger reactors having numerous components outside the reactor vessel, this feature drastically increases the safety by decreasing the chance of an uncontained accident. Furthermore, this feature allows many SMR designs bury the reactor and spent-fuel storage pools underground at the end of their service life therefore increasing the safety of waste disposal.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Small nuclear reactors, in comparison to conventional nuclear power generation plants, offer many advantages due to the flexibility of their modular construction. This flexibility in the modularity of a SMR system allows for additional units to be incrementally added in the event load on the grid increases. Additionally, this flexibility in a standardized SMRs design revolving around modularity allows for rapid production at a decreasing cost following the completion of the first reactor on site.


title: Small modular reactor

text: The hypothesised flexibility and modularity of SMR allows additional power generation capability to be installed at existing power plants. Modularity of a SMR plant allows for “a single site can have three or four SMRs, allowing one to go off-line for refueling while the other reactors stay online”.


title: Small modular reactor

text: The flexibility of SMRs provides additional opportunities for industrial usage through saving energy lost through the transfer of energy from thermal to electrical. Applications for a SMR under these conditions of direct energy transfer include “desalination, industrial processes, hydrogen production, oil shale recovery, and district heating” of which a conventional large reactor is not capable.


title: Small modular reactor

text: A key driver of interest in SMRs is the claimed economies of scale in production, as (by definition) they can be manufactured in an offsite factory. Some studies instead find the capital cost of SMRs to be equivalent to larger reactors. Substantial capital is needed to construct the factory - ameliorating that cost requires significant volume, estimated to be 40–70 units.


title: Small modular reactor

text: When comparing SMRs with Large Reactors, however, the unique characteristics of SMRs that should compensate for the lack of the economy of scale should also be considered, although no SMR design presents all of them. Given the lower capacity, these characteristics will increase the demand for construction sites to obtain the same power of a Large Reactor, but will in itself not increase the demand for nuclear power plants. Financial and economic issues can hinder SMR construction.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Construction costs per SMR reactor are claimed to be less than that for a conventional nuclear plant, while exploitation costs may be higher for SMRs due to low scale economics and the higher number of reactors. Staffing costs per unit output increase as reactor size decreases, due to fixed costs. SMR staff costs per unit output can be as much as 190% higher than the fixed operating cost of large reactors. Modular building is a very complex process and there is "extremely limited information about SMR modules transportation", according to a 2019 report.


title: Small modular reactor

text: A production cost calculation done by the German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE), taking into account economies of scale and learning effects from the nuclear industry, suggests that an average of 3,000 SMR would have to be produced before SMR production would be worthwhile. This is because the construction costs of SMRs are relatively higher than those of large nuclear power plants due to the low electrical output.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In 2017, an Energy Innovation Reform Project study of eight companies looked at reactor designs with capacity between 47.5 MWe and 1,648 MWe. The study reported average capital cost of $3,782/kW, average operating cost total of $21/MWh and levelized cost of electricity of $60/MWh.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Energy Impact Center founder Bret Kugelmass claimed that thousands of SMRs could be built in parallel, "thus reducing costs associated with long borrowing times for prolonged construction schedules and reducing risk premiums currently linked to large projects." GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Executive Vice President Jon Ball agreed, saying the modular elements of SMRs would also help reduce costs associated with extended construction times.


title: Small modular reactor

text: According to a 2014 study of electricity production in decentralized microgrids, compared to the total cost of offshore wind, solar thermal, biomass, and solar photovoltaic electricity generation plants, the total cost of using SMRs for electricity generation is significantly lower.


title: Small modular reactor

text: A major barrier to SMR adoption is the licensing process. It was developed for conventional, custom-built reactors, preventing the simple deployment of identical units at different sites. In particular, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission process for licensing has focused mainly on conventional reactors. Design and safety specifications, staffing requirements and licensing fees have all been geared toward reactors with electrical output of more than 700MWe. With a sizable focus on large reactors, it is probable that many countries will have to adapt their policies to coincide with SMRs, which can be a costly and time-consuming process. The International Atomic Energy Agency has placed emphasis on creating a central licensing system for SMRs to ensure proper guidelines in the interest of overall public safety.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMRs caused a reevaluation of the licensing process for nuclear reactors. One workshop in October 2009 and another in June 2010 considered the topic, followed by a Congressional hearing in May 2010. Multiple US agencies are working to define SMR licensing. However, some argue that weakening safety regulations to push the development of SMRs may offset their enhanced safety characteristics.


title: Small modular reactor

text: The U.S. Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program was expected to help license and build two prototype SMRs during the 2020s, with up to $4 billion of government funding.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Nuclear proliferation, or the use of nuclear materials to create weapons, is a concern for small modular reactors. As SMRs have lower generation capacity and are physically smaller, they are intended to be deployed in many more locations than conventional plants. SMRs are expected to substantially reduce staffing levels. The combination creates physical protection and security concerns.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Many SMRs are designed to address these concerns. Fuel can be low-enriched uranium, with less than 20% fissile . This low quantity, sub-weapons-grade uranium is less desirable for weapons production. Once the fuel has been irradiated, the mixture of fission products and fissile materials is highly radioactive and requires special handling, preventing casual theft.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Contrasting to conventional large reactors, SMRs can without difficulty be adapted to be installed in a sealed underground chamber; therefore, “reducing the vulnerability of the reactor to a terrorist attack or a natural disaster”. New SMR designs enhance the proliferation resistance, such as those from the reactor design company Gen4.These models of SMR offer a solution capable of operating sealed underground for the life of the reactor following installation.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Some SMR designs are designed for one-time fueling. This improves proliferation resistance by eliminating on-site nuclear fuel handling and means that the fuel can be sealed within the reactor. However, this design requires large amounts of fuel, which could make it a more attractive target. A 200 MWe 30-year core life light water SMR could contain about 2.5 tonnes of plutonium at end of life.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Furthermore, many SMRs offer the ability to go periods of greater than 10 years without requiring any form of refueling therefore improving the proliferation resistance as compared to conventional large reactors of which entail refueling every 18–24 months


title: Small modular reactor

text: Light-water reactors designed to run on thorium offer increased proliferation resistance compared to the conventional uranium cycle, though molten salt reactors have a substantial risk.


title: Small modular reactor

text: SMR are transported from the factories without fuel, as they are fueled on the ultimate site, except some microreactors.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In 2018, the Canadian province of New Brunswick announced it would invest $10 million for a demonstration project at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. It was later announced that SMR proponents Advanced Reactor Concepts and Moltex would open offices there.


title: Small modular reactor

text: On 1 December 2019, the Premiers of Ontario, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan signed a memorandum of understanding "committing to collaborate on the development and deployment of innovative, versatile and scalable nuclear reactors, known as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)." They were joined by Alberta in August 2020. With continued support from citizens and government officials have led to the execution of a selected SMR at the Canadian National Nuclear Laboratory.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In 2021, Ontario Power Generation announced they plan to build a BWRX-300 SMR at their Darlington site to be completed by 2028. A licence for construction still had to be applied for.


title: Small modular reactor

text: On 11 August 2022, Invest Alberta, the Government of Alberta’s crown corporation signed a MOU with Terrestrial Energy regarding IMSR in Western Canada through an interprovincial MOU it joined earlier.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In July 2019, China National Nuclear Corporation announced it would build an ACP100 SMR on the north-west side of the existing Changjiang Nuclear Power Plant at Changjiang, in the Hainan province by the end of the year. On 7 June 2021, the demonstration project, named the Linglong One, was approved by China's National Development and Reform Commission. In July, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) started the construction, and in October 2021, the containment vessel bottom of the first of two units was installed. Being the world's first commercial land-based SMR prototype, the commercial operation is due to start by the end of 2026.


title: Small modular reactor

text: Polish chemical company Synthos declared plans to deploy a Hitachi BWRX-300 reactor (300 MW) in Poland by 2030. A feasibility study was completed in December 2020 and licensing started with the Polish National Atomic Energy Agency.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In February 2022, NuScale Power and the large mining conglomerate KGHM Polska Miedź announced signing of contract to construct first operational reactor in Poland by 2029.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In 2016, it was reported that the UK Government was assessing Welsh SMR sites - including the former Trawsfynydd nuclear power station - and on the site of former nuclear or coal-fired power stations in Northern England. Existing nuclear sites including Bradwell, Hartlepool, Heysham, Oldbury, Sizewell, Sellafield, and Wylfa were stated to be possibilities. The target cost for a 470 MWe Rolls-Royce SMR unit is £1.8 billion for the fifth unit built. In 2020, it was reported that Rolls-Royce had plans to construct up to 16 SMRs in the UK. In 2019, the company received £18 million to begin designing the modular system. An additional £210 million was awarded to Rolls-Royce by the British government in 2021, complemented by a £195 million contribution from private firms. In November 2022 Rolls Royce announced that the sites at Trawsfynydd, Wylfa, Sellafield and Oldbury would be prioritised for assessment as potential locations for multiple SMRs.


title: Small modular reactor

text: In December 2019, the Tennessee Valley Authority was authorized to receive an Early Site Permit (ESP) by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for siting an SMR at its Clinch River site in Tennessee. This ESP is valid for 20 years, and addresses site safety, environmental protection and emergency preparedness. This ESP is applicable for any light-water reactor SMR design under development in the United States.


title: Small modular reactor

text: The Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) announced a partnership with Energy Northwest to explore siting a NuScale Power reactor in Idaho, possibly on the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory.


title: Small modular reactor

text: The Galena Nuclear Power Plant in Galena, Alaska was a proposed micro nuclear reactor installation. It was a potential deployment for the Toshiba 4S reactor.


title: Small modular reactor

text: On the occasion of 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, the state-owned Romanian nuclear energy company Nuclearelectrica and NuScale signed an agreement to build a power plant with six small-scale nuclear reactors on the site of a former coal power plant, located in the village of Doicești, Dâmbovița county, 90 km North of Bucharest. The project is estimated to be completed by 2026–2027, which will make the power plant the first of its kind in Europe. The power plant will generate 462 MWe, securing the consumption of about 46.000 households and will help avoid the release of 4 million tons of CO per year.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT, typically pronounced as the word "act") is a form of psychotherapy, as well as a branch of clinical behavior analysis. It is an empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies along with commitment and behavior-change strategies to increase psychological flexibility.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: This approach was originally termed "comprehensive distancing". Steven C. Hayes developed the treatment starting around 1982 in order to create an approach that integrated both key features of cognitive therapy and behavior analysis, especially behavior analytic data on the often negative effects of verbal rules and how they might be ameliorated.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: There are a variety of protocols for ACT, depending on the target behavior and setting. For example, in behavioral health areas, a brief version of ACT is called "focused acceptance and commitment therapy" (FACT).


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The objective of ACT is not elimination of difficult feelings; rather, it is to be present with what life brings and to "move toward valued behavior". Acceptance and commitment therapy invites people to open up to unpleasant feelings, learn not to overreact to them, and not avoid situations where they are invoked.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Its therapeutic effect aims to be a positive spiral where a greater understanding of one's emotions leads to a better understanding of the truth. In ACT, "truth" is measured through the concept of "workability", or what works to take another step toward what matters (e.g., values, meaning).


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: ACT is developed within a pragmatic philosophy called functional contextualism. ACT is based on relational frame theory (RFT), a comprehensive theory of language and cognition that is derived from behavior analysis. Both ACT and RFT are based on B. F. Skinner's philosophy of radical behaviorism.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: ACT differs from some other kinds of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in that rather than trying to teach people to better control their thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories and other private events, ACT teaches them to "just notice," accept, and embrace their private events, especially previously unwanted ones. ACT helps the individual get in contact with a transcendent sense of self known as self-as-context—the you who is always there observing and experiencing and yet distinct from one's thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories. ACT aims to help the individual clarify their personal values and to take action on them, bringing more vitality and meaning to their life in the process, increasing their psychological flexibility.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: While Western psychology has typically operated under the "healthy normality" assumption which states that by their nature, humans are psychologically healthy, ACT assumes, rather, that psychological processes of a normal human mind are often destructive. The core conception of ACT is that psychological suffering is usually caused by experiential avoidance, cognitive entanglement, and resulting psychological rigidity that leads to a failure to take needed behavioral steps in accord with core values. As a simple way to summarize the model, ACT views the core of many problems to be due to the concepts represented in the acronym, FEAR:


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Correlational evidence has found that absence of psychological flexibility predicts many forms of psychopathology. A 2005 meta-analysis showed that the six ACT principles, on average, account for 16–29% of the variance in psychopathology (general mental health, depression, anxiety) at baseline, depending on the measure, using correlational methods. A 2012 meta-analysis of 68 laboratory-based studies on ACT components has also provided support for the link between psychological flexibility concepts and specific components.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The website of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science states that there were over 900 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of ACT, over 300 meta-analyses/systematic reviews, and 60 mediational studies of the ACT literature as of May 2022.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Organizations that have stated that acceptance and commitment therapy is empirically supported in certain areas or as a whole according to their standards include (as of March 2022):


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: In 2006, only about 30 randomized clinical trials and controlled time series evaluating ACT were known, but in 2011 the number had approximately doubled. A 2008 meta-analysis concluded that the evidence was still too limited for ACT to be considered a supported treatment. A 2009 meta-analysis found that ACT was more effective than placebo and "treatment as usual" for most problems (with the exception of anxiety and depression), but not more effective than CBT and other traditional therapies. A 2012 meta-analysis was more positive and reported that ACT outperformed CBT, except for treating depression and anxiety. A 2015 review found that ACT was better than placebo and typical treatment for anxiety disorders, depression, and addiction. Its effectiveness was similar to traditional treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The authors also noted that research methodologies had improved since the studies described in the 2008 meta-analysis.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: In 2020, a review of meta-analyses examined 20 meta-analyses that included 133 studies and 12,477 participants. The authors concluded ACT is efficacious for all conditions examined, including anxiety, depression, substance use, pain, and transdiagnostic groups. Results also showed that ACT was generally superior to inactive controls, treatment as usual, and most active intervention conditions.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: In 2020–2021, after three RCTs of ACT by the World Health Organization (WHO), WHO released an ACT-based self-help course for "groups of up to 30 people who have lived through or are living through adversity".


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: In 2022, a systematic review of meta-analyses about interventions for depressive symptoms in people living with chronic pain concluded that ACT for general chronic pain "showed the most robust effects and can be prioritized for implementation in clinical practice".


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science is committed to research and development in the area of ACT, RFT, and contextual behavioral science more generally. As of 2021 it had over 9,000 members worldwide, about half outside of the United States. It holds annual "world conference" meetings each summer, with the location alternating between North America and Europe.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) has a special interest group for practitioner issues, behavioral counseling, and clinical behavior analysis ABA:I. ABAI has larger special interest groups for autism and behavioral medicine. ABAI serves as the core intellectual home for behavior analysts. ABAI sponsors three conferences/year—one multi-track in the U.S., one specific to Autism and one international.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) also has an interest group in behavior analysis, which focuses on clinical behavior analysis. ACT work is commonly presented at ABCT and other mainstream CBT organizations.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) has a large special interest group in ACT, with over 1,200 members.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Doctoral-level behavior analysts who are psychologists belong to the American Psychological Association's (APA) Division 25—Behavior analysis. ACT has been called a "commonly used treatment with empirical support" within the APA-recognized specialty of behavioral and cognitive psychology.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: ACT, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and other acceptance- and mindfulness-based approaches have been grouped by Steven Hayes under the name "the third wave of cognitive behavior therapy". However, this classification has been criticized and not everyone agrees with it. For example, David Dozois and Aaron T. Beck argued that there is no "new wave" and that there are a variety of extensions of cognitive therapy; for example, Jeffrey Young's schema therapy came after Beck's cognitive therapy but Young did not name his innovations "the third wave" or "the third generation" of cognitive behavior therapy.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: According to Hayes' classification, the first wave, behaviour therapy, commenced in the 1920s based on Pavlov's classical (respondent) conditioning and operant conditioning that was correlated to reinforcing consequences. The second wave emerged in the 1970s and included cognition in the form of irrational beliefs, dysfunctional attitudes or depressogenic attributions. In the late 1980s empirical limitations and philosophical misgivings of the second wave gave rise to Steven Hayes' ACT theory which modified the focus of abnormal behaviour away from the content or form towards the context in which it occurs. People's rigid ideas about themselves, their lack of focus on what is important in their life, and their struggle to change sensations, feelings or thoughts that are troublesome only serve to create greater distress.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: ACT has also been adapted to create a non-therapy version of the same processes called "acceptance and commitment training". This training process, oriented towards the development of mindfulness, acceptance, and valued skills in non-clinical settings such as businesses or schools, has also been investigated in a handful of research studies with good preliminary results.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The emphasis of ACT on ongoing present moment awareness, valued directions and committed action is similar to other psychotherapeutic approaches that, unlike ACT, are not as focused on outcome research or consciously linked to a basic behavioral science program, including approaches such as Gestalt therapy, Morita therapy, and others. Hayes and colleagues themselves stated in their book that introduced ACT that "many or even most of the techniques in ACT have been borrowed from elsewhere—from the human potential movement, Eastern traditions, behavior therapy, mystical traditions, and the like".


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Wilson, Hayes & Byrd explored at length the compatibilities between ACT and the 12-step treatment of addictions and argued that, unlike most other psychotherapies, both approaches can be implicitly or explicitly integrated due to their broad commonalities. Both approaches endorse acceptance as an alternative to unproductive control. ACT emphasizes the hopelessness of relying on ineffectual strategies to control private experience, similarly the 12-step approach emphasizes the acceptance of powerlessness over addiction. Both approaches encourage a broad life-reorientation, rather than a narrow focus on the elimination of substance use, and both place great value on the long-term project of building of a meaningful life aligned with the clients' values. ACT and 12-step both encourage the pragmatic utility of cultivating a transcendent sense of self (higher power) within an unconventional, individualized spirituality. Finally they both openly accept the paradox that acceptance is a necessary condition for change and both encourage a playful awareness of the limitations of human thinking.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: The textbook "Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis" provides criticisms of third-wave behaviour therapies including ACT from the perspectives of other systems of psychotherapy.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: In 2016, William O'Donohue and coauthors cited a skeptical blog post by James Coyne in a paper on "the design, manufacture, and reporting of weak and pseudo-tests" and added that while "no doubt there are studies of ACT that are quite good", they had examined some trials of ACT that were "weakened and thus made easier to pass", and they listed over 30 ways that such ACT trials were "weak or pseudo-tests". Drawing on concepts from Karl Popper's philosophy of science and Popper's critique of psychoanalysis as impossible to falsify, O'Donohue and colleagues argued that the weakened ACT trials produced false positive results, and they advocated for Popperian severe testing instead.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: In 2013, psychologist Jonathan W. Kanter said that Hayes and colleagues "argue that empirical clinical psychology is hampered in its efforts to alleviate human suffering and present "contextual behavioral science" (CBS) to address the basic philosophical, theoretical and methodological shortcomings of the field. CBS represents a host of good ideas but at times the promise of CBS is obscured by excessive promotion of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT) and demotion of earlier cognitive and behavior change techniques in the absence of clear logic and empirical support." Nevertheless, Kanter concluded that "the ideas of CBS, RFT, and ACT deserve serious consideration by the mainstream community and have great potential to shape a truly progressive clinical science to guide clinical practice".


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: A 2013 paper comparing ACT to cognitive therapy (CT) concluded that "although preliminary research on ACT is promising, we suggest that its proponents need to be appropriately humble in their claims. In particular, like CT, ACT cannot yet make strong claims that its unique and theory-driven intervention components are active ingredients in its effects." The authors of the paper suggested that many of the assumptions of ACT and CT "are pre-analytical, and cannot be directly pitted against one another in experimental tests."


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: In 2012, ACT appeared to be about as effective as standard CBT, with some meta-analyses showing small differences in favor of ACT and others not. For example, a meta-analysis published by Francisco Ruiz in 2012 looked at 16 studies comparing ACT to standard CBT. ACT failed to separate from CBT on effect sizes for anxiety, however modest benefits were found with ACT compared to CBT for depression and quality of life. The author did find separation between ACT and CBT on the "primary outcome" – a heterogeneous class of 14 separate outcome measures that were aggregated into the effect size analysis. This analysis however is limited by the highly heterogeneous nature of the outcome variables used in the analysis, which has the tendency to increase the number needed to treat (NNT) to replicate the effect size reported. More limited measures, such as depression, anxiety and quality of life decrease the NNT, making the analysis more clinically relevant, and on these measures ACT did not outperform CBT. A 2012 clinical trial by Forman et al. found that Beckian CBT obtained better results than ACT.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Several concerns, both theoretical and empirical, have arisen in response to the ascendancy of ACT. One major theoretical concern was that the primary authors of ACT and of the corresponding theories of human behavior, relational frame theory (RFT) and functional contextualism (FC), recommended their approach as the proverbial holy grail of psychological therapies. In 2012, in the preface to the second edition of "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy", the authors clarified that "ACT has not been created to undercut the traditions from which it came, nor does it claim to be a panacea."


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: A meta-analysis by Öst in 2008 concluded that ACT did not yet qualify as an "empirically supported treatment", that the research methodology for ACT was less stringent than cognitive behavioral therapy, and that the mean effect size was moderate. Supporters of ACT challenged those conclusions by showing that the quality difference in Öst's review was accounted for by the larger number of funded trials in the CBT comparison group. A 2015 review noted that research methodologies had improved since the studies described in the 2008 meta-analysis by Öst.


title: Acceptance and commitment therapy

text: Some published articles in clinical psychology have argued that ACT is not different from other interventions. In 2007, Stefan Hofmann argued that ACT is similar to the much older Morita therapy and to other old holistic and humanistic therapies.


title: Hyrax

text: Hyraxes (), also called dassies, are small, thickset, herbivorous mammals in the order Hyracoidea. Hyraxes are well-furred, rotund animals with short tails. Typically, they measure between long and weigh between . They are superficially similar to pikas and marmots, but are more closely related to elephants and sea cows.


title: Hyrax

text: Hyraxes have a life span from 9 to 14 years. Five extant species are recognised: the rock hyrax ("Procavia capensis") and the yellow-spotted rock hyrax ("Heterohyrax brucei"), which both live on rock outcrops, including cliffs in Ethiopia and isolated granite outcrops called koppies in southern Africa; the western tree hyrax ("Dendrohyrax dorsalis"), southern tree hyrax ("D. arboreus"), and eastern tree hyrax ("D. validus"). Their distribution is limited to Africa, except for "P. capensis", which is also found in the Middle East.


title: Hyrax

text: Hyraxes retain or have redeveloped a number of primitive mammalian characteristics; in particular, they have poorly developed internal temperature regulation, for which they compensate by behavioural thermoregulation, such as huddling together and basking in the sun.


title: Hyrax

text: Unlike most other browsing and grazing animals, they do not use the incisors at the front of the jaw for slicing off leaves and grass; rather, they use the molar teeth at the side of the jaw. The two upper incisors are large and tusk-like, and grow continuously through life, similar to those of rodents. The four lower incisors are deeply grooved "comb teeth". A diastema occurs between the incisors and the cheek teeth. The dental formula for hyraxes is .


title: Hyrax

text: Although not ruminants, hyraxes have complex, multichambered stomachs that allow symbiotic bacteria to break down tough plant materials, but their overall ability to digest fibre is lower than that of the ungulates. Their mandibular motions are similar to chewing cud, but the hyrax is physically incapable of regurgitation as in the even-toed ungulates and the merycism of some of the macropods. This behaviour is referred to in a passage in the Bible which describes hyraxes as "chewing the cud". This chewing behaviour may be a form of agonistic behaviour when the animal feels threatened.


title: Hyrax

text: The hyrax does not construct dens, as most rodents and rodent-like mammals do, but over the course of its lifetime rather seeks shelter in existing holes of great variety in size and configuration.


title: Hyrax

text: Hyraxes inhabit rocky terrain across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Their feet have rubbery pads with numerous sweat glands, which may help the animal maintain its grip when quickly moving up steep, rocky surfaces. Hyraxes have stumpy toes with hoof-like nails; four toes are on each front foot and three are on each back foot. They also have efficient kidneys, retaining water so that they can better survive in arid environments.


title: Hyrax

text: Female hyraxes give birth to up to four young after a gestation period of 7–8 months, depending on the species. The young are weaned at 1–5 months of age, and reach sexual maturity at 16–17 months.


title: Hyrax

text: Hyraxes live in small family groups, with a single male that aggressively defends the territory from rivals. Where living space is abundant, the male may have sole access to multiple groups of females, each with their own range. The remaining males live solitary lives, often on the periphery of areas controlled by larger males, and mate only with younger females.


title: Hyrax

text: Hyraxes share several unusual characteristics with mammalian orders Proboscidea (elephants and their extinct relatives) and Sirenia (manatees and dugongs), which have resulted in their all being placed in the taxon Paenungulata. Male hyraxes lack a scrotum and their testicles remain tucked up in their abdominal cavity next to the kidneys, as do those of elephants, manatees, and dugongs. Female hyraxes have a pair of teats near their armpits (axilla), as well as four teats in their groin (inguinal area); elephants have a pair of teats near their axillae, and dugongs and manatees have a pair of teats, one located close to each of the front flippers. The tusks of hyraxes develop from the incisor teeth as do the tusks of elephants; most mammalian tusks develop from the canines. Hyraxes, like elephants, have flattened nails on the tips of their digits, rather than the curved, elongated claws usually seen on mammals.


title: Hyrax

text: All modern hyraxes are members of the family Procaviidae (the only living family within Hyracoidea) and are found only in Africa and the Middle East. In the past, however, hyraxes were more diverse and widespread. The order first appears in the fossil record at a site in the Middle East in the form of "Dimaitherium", 37 million years ago. For many millions of years, hyraxes, proboscideans, and other afrotherian mammals were the primary terrestrial herbivores in Africa, just as odd-toed ungulates were in North America.


title: Hyrax

text: Through the middle to late Eocene, many different species existed. The smallest of these were the size of a mouse but others were much larger than any extant relatives. "Titanohyrax" could reach or even as much as over . "Megalohyrax" from the upper Eocene-lower Oligocene was as huge as tapir. During the Miocene, however, competition from the newly developed bovids, which were very efficient grazers and browsers, displaced the hyraxes into marginal niches. Nevertheless, the order remained widespread and diverse as late as the end of the Pliocene (about two million years ago) with representatives throughout most of Africa, Europe, and Asia.


title: Hyrax

text: The descendants of the giant "hyracoids" (common ancestors to the hyraxes, elephants, and sirenians) evolved in different ways. Some became smaller, and evolved to become the modern hyrax family. Others appear to have taken to the water (perhaps like the modern capybara), ultimately giving rise to the elephant family and perhaps also the sirenians. DNA evidence supports this hypothesis, and the small modern hyraxes share numerous features with elephants, such as toenails, excellent hearing, sensitive pads on their feet, small tusks, good memory, higher brain functions compared with other similar mammals, and the shape of some of their bones.


title: Hyrax

text: Hyraxes are sometimes described as being the closest living relative of the elephant, although whether this is so is disputed. Recent morphological- and molecular-based classifications reveal the sirenians to be the closest living relatives of elephants. While hyraxes are closely related, they form a taxonomic outgroup to the assemblage of elephants, sirenians, and the extinct orders Embrithopoda and Desmostylia.


title: Hyrax

text: The extinct meridiungulate family Archaeohyracidae, consisting of seven genera of notoungulate mammals known from the Paleocene through the Oligocene of South America, is a group unrelated to the true hyraxes.


title: Hyrax

text: In the 2000s, taxonomists reduced the number of recognized species of hyraxes. In 1995, they recognized 11 species or more, but as of 2013, only four were recognized, with the others all considered as subspecies of one of the recognized four. Over 50 subspecies and species are described, many of which are considered highly endangered.


title: Hyrax

text: The most recently identified species is "Dendrohyrax interfluvialis", which is a tree hyrax living between the Volta and Niger rivers but makes a unique barking call that is distinct from the shrieking vocalizations of hyraxes inhabiting other regions of the African forest zone.


title: Hyrax

text: References are made to hyraxes in the Hebrew Bible (; ; ; ). In Leviticus they are described as lacking a split hoof and therefore not being kosher. It also describes the hyrax as chewing its cud; this is inaccurate as the hyrax does not regurgitate its food to chew it again. The Hebrew phrase in question (מַעֲלֵה גֵרָה) means "bringing up cud". Some of the modern translations refer to them as rock hyraxes.


title: Hyrax

text: The words "rabbit", "hare", "coney", or "daman" appear as terms for the hyrax in some English translations of the Bible. Early English translators had no knowledge of the hyrax, so no name for them, though "badger" or "rock-badger" has also been used more recently in new translations, especially in "common language" translations such as the Common English Bible (2011).


title: Hyrax

text: One of the proposed etymologies for "Spain" is that it may be a derivation of the Phoenician "I-Shpania", meaning "island of hyraxes", "land of hyraxes", but the Phoenecian-speaking Carthaginians are believed to have used this name to refer to rabbits, animals with which they were unfamiliar. Roman coins struck in the region from the reign of Hadrian show a female figure with a rabbit at her feet, and Strabo called it the "land of the rabbits".


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The Caliphate of Córdoba (; transliterated "Khilāfat Qurṭuba"), also known as the Cordoban Caliphate was an Islamic state ruled by the Umayyad dynasty from 929 to 1031. Its territory comprised Iberia and parts of North Africa, with its capital in Córdoba. It succeeded the Emirate of Córdoba upon the self-proclamation of Umayyad emir Abd ar-Rahman III as caliph in January 929. The period was characterized by an expansion of trade and culture, and saw the construction of masterpieces of al-Andalus architecture.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The caliphate disintegrated in the early 11th century during the Fitna of al-Andalus, a civil war between the descendants of caliph Hisham II and the successors of his "hajib" (court official), Al-Mansur. In 1031, after years of infighting, the caliphate fractured into a number of independent Muslim "taifa" (kingdoms).


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Abd ar-Rahman I became emir of Córdoba in 756 after six years in exile after the Umayyads lost the position of caliph in Damascus to the Abbasids in 750. Intent on regaining power, he defeated the area's existing Islamic rulers and united various local fiefdoms into an emirate. Raids then increased the emirate's size; the first to go as far as Corsica occurred in 806.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The emirate's rulers used the title "emir" or "sultan" until the 10th century. In the early 10th century, Abd ar-Rahman III faced a threatened invasion from North Africa by the Fatimid Caliphate, a rival Shiite Islamic empire based in Ifriqiya. Since the Fatimids also claimed the caliphate, in response Abd ar-Rahman III claimed the title of caliph himself. Prior to Abd ar-Rahman's proclamation as the caliph, the Umayyads generally recognized the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad as being the rightful rulers of the Muslim community. Even after repulsing the Fatimids, he kept the more prestigious title. Although his position as caliph was not accepted outside of al-Andalus and its North African affiliates, internally the Spanish Umayyads considered themselves as closer to Muhammad, and thus more legitimate, than the Abbasids.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The caliphate enjoyed increased prosperity during the 10th century. Abd ar-Rahman III united al-Andalus and brought the Christian kingdoms of the north under control by force and through diplomacy. Abd ar-Rahman III stopped the Fatimid advance into Morocco and al-Andalus in order to prevent a future invasion. The plan for a Fatimid invasion was thwarted when Abd ar-Rahman III secured Melilla in 927, Ceuta in 931, and Tangier in 951. In 948, the Idrisid emir Abul-Aish Ahmad recognised the caliphate, although he refused to allow them to occupy Tangier. The Umayyads besieged Tangier in 949 and defeated Abul-Aish, forcing him to retreat. The Umayyads then occupied the rest of northern Morocco. Although another Fatimid invasion of Morocco occurred in 958 under their general, Jawhar. Al-Hassan II had to recognise the Fatimids. The Umayyads responded by invading Idrisid Morocco in 973 with their general, Ghalib. By 974, Al-Hassan II was taken to Cordoba, and the remaining Idrisids recognised Umayyad rule. This period of prosperity was marked by increasing diplomatic relations with Berber tribes in North Africa, Christian kings from the north, and with France, Germany and Constantinople. The caliphate became very profitable during the reign of Abd ar-Rahman III, by increasing the public revenue to 6,245,000 dinars from Abd ar-Rahman II. The profits made during this time were divided into three parts: the payment of the salaries and maintenance of the army, the preservation of public buildings, and the needs of the caliph. The death of Abd ar-Rahman III led to the rise of his 46-year-old son, Al-Hakam II, in 961. Al-Hakam II continued his father's policy toward Christian kings and North African rebels. Al-Hakam's reliance on his advisers was greater than his father's because the previous prosperity under Abd ar-Rahman III allowed al-Hakam II to let the caliphate run by itself. This style of rulership suited al-Hakam II since he was more interested in his scholarly and intellectual pursuits than ruling the caliphate. The caliphate was at its intellectual and scholarly peak under al-Hakam II.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The death of al-Hakam II in 976 marked the beginning of the end of the caliphate. Before his death, al-Hakam named his only son Hisham II successor. Although the 10-year-old child was ill-equipped to be caliph, Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir (top adviser to al-Hakam, also known as Almanzor), who had sworn an oath of obedience to Hisham II, pronounced him caliph. In 996, Almanzor sent an invasion force to Morocco. After three months of struggle, his forces retreated to Tangier. Almanzor then sent a powerful reinforcement under his son Abd al-Malik. The armies clashed near Tangier. The Umayyads would enter Fes on 13 October 998 once the gates of the city were opened. Almanzor had great influence over Subh, the mother and regent of Hisham II. Almanzor, along with Subh, isolated Hisham in Córdoba while systematically eradicating opposition to his own rule, allowing Berbers from Africa to migrate to al-Andalus to increase his base of support. While Hisham II was caliph, he was merely a figurehead. The power nominally held by Caliph Hisham was retained by Almanzor's sons, Abd al-Malik al-Muzaffar, who died in 1008, and Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo. However, while Abd al-Rahman was leading a raid on the Christian north, a revolt tore through Córdoba and deposed him, and he was killed when he tried to restore himself to power.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The title of caliph became symbolic, without power or influence. The death of Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo in 1009 marked the beginning of the Fitna of al-Andalus, with rivals claiming to be the new caliph, violence sweeping the caliphate, and intermittent invasions by the Hammudid dynasty. Beset by factionalism, the caliphate crumbled in 1031 into a number of independent "taifas", including the Taifa of Córdoba, Taifa of Seville and Taifa of Zaragoza. The last Córdoban Caliph was Hisham III (1027–1031).


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The separation between the temporal power, held by Almanzor, and the spiritual, in the hands of Hisham as Caliph, increased the importance of military force, a symbol – along with the new majesty of the chamberlain's court, rival of that of the caliph himself – of the power of Almanzor, and an instrument to guarantee the payment of taxes.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Almanzor successfully continued the military reforms begun by Al-Hakam and his predecessors, covering many aspects. On one hand, he increased the professionalization of the regular army, necessary both to guarantee his military power in the capital and to ensure the availability of forces for his numerous campaigns, one of the sources of his political legitimacy. This policy de-emphasized levies and other non-professional troops, which he replaced with taxes used to support the professional troops—often "saqalibas" or Maghrebis—which freed the natives of al-Andalus from military service. Recruitment of "saqalibas" and Berbers was not new, but Almanzor expanded it. On the other hand, he created new units, unlike the regular army of the Caliphate, that were faithful primarily to himself and served to control the capital. Emir Abd al-Rahman I had already used Berbers and "saqalibas" for a permanent army of forty thousand to end the conflicts that hitherto had plagued the emirate. At the time of Emir Muhammad I, the army reached thirty-five to forty thousand combatants, half of them Syrian military contingents. This massive hiring of mercenaries and slaves meant that, according to Christian chroniclers, "ordinarily the Saracen armies amount to 30, 40, 50, or 60,000 men, even when in serious occasions they reach 100, 160, 300 and even 600,000 fighters." In fact, it has been argued that, in Almanzor's time, the Cordovan armies could muster six hundred thousand laborers and two hundred thousand horses "drawn from all provinces of the empire."


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: In order to eliminate a possible threat to his power and to improve military efficiency, Almanzor abolished the system of tribal units that had been in decline due to lack of Arabs and institution of pseudo-feudalism on the frontiers, in which the different tribes each had their own commander and that had caused continuous clashes, and replaced it with mixed units without clear loyalty under orders from Administration officials. The nucleus of the new army, however, was formed increasingly by Maghrebi Berber forces. The ethnic rivalries among Arabs, Berbers and Slavs within the Andalusian army were skillfully used by Almanzor to maintain his own power—for example, by ordering that every unit of the army consist of diverse ethnic groups so that they would not unite against him; and thus preventing the emergence of possible rivals. However, once their centralizing figure disappeared, these units were one of the main causes of the 11th-century civil war called the "Fitna of al-Andalus". Berber forces were also joined by contingents of well-paid Christian mercenaries, who formed the bulk of Almanzor's personal guard and participated in his campaigns in Christian territories. Almanzor's completion of this reform, begun by his predecessors, fundamentally divided the population into two unequal groups: a large mass of civilian taxpayers and a small professional military caste, generally from outside the peninsula.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The increase in military forces and their partial professionalization led to an increase in financial expenses to sustain them. This represented an additional incentive to carry out campaigns, which produced loot and land with which to pay the troops. These lands, when handed over to the soldiers as payment, were thereafter subject to tribute and ceased to operate under a system of border colonization. The Caliphal army was funded by the taxpaying farmers in exchange for military exemptions, and consisted of local recruits as well as foreign mercenaries – Berber militias, Slav and Black slaves, mercenary Christian companies and jihadi volunteers. At that time al-Andalus was known as "Dar Jihad", or "country of jihad", and attracted many volunteers, and though these were relatively few compared to the total army, their zeal in combat more than compensated for this.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: According to modern studies, these mercenary contingents made it possible to increase the total size of the Caliphal army from thirty or fifty thousand troops in the time of Abd al-Rahman III to fifty or ninety thousand. Others, like Évariste Lévi-Provençal, argue that the Cordoban armies in the field with the Almanzor were between thirty-five thousand and seventy or seventy-five thousand soldiers. Contemporary figures are contradictory: some accounts claim that their armies numbered two hundred thousand horsemen and six hundred thousand foot soldiers, while others talk about twelve thousand horsemen, three thousand mounted Berbers and two thousand "sūdān", African light infantry. According to the chronicles, in the campaign that swept Astorga and León, Almanzor led twelve thousand African and five thousand Al Andalus horsemen, and forty thousand infantry. It is also said that, in his last campaigns, he mobilized forty-six thousand horsemen, while another six hundred guarded the train, twenty-six thousand infantry, two hundred scouts or 'police' and one hundred and thirty drummers. or that the garrison of Cordoba consisted of 10,500 horsemen and many others kept the northern border in dispersed detachments. However, it is much more likely that the leader's armies, even in their most ambitious campaigns, may not have exceeded twenty thousand men. It can be argued that until the eleventh century no Muslim army on campaign exceeded thirty thousand troops, while during the eighth century the trans-Pyrenean expeditions totaled ten thousand men and those carried out against Christians in the north of the peninsula were even smaller.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: In the time of Emir Al-Hakam I, a palatine guard of 3000 riders and 2000 infantry was created, all Slavic slaves. This proportion between the two types of troops was maintained until Almanzor's reforms. The massive incorporation of North African horsemen relegated the infantry to sieges and fortress garrisons. This reform led to entire tribes, particularly Berber riders, being moved to the peninsula.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The main weapon of the peninsular campaigns, which required speed and surprise, was the light cavalry. To try to counteract them, the Castilians created the role of "villain knights" – ennobling those free men who were willing to keep a horse to increase the mounted units – through the "Fuero de Castrojeriz" of 974. For similar reasons, the Barcelonan count Borrell II created the figure of the "homes of paratge"- who obtained privileged military status by fighting against the Cordobans armed on horseback – after losing their capital in the fall of 985. In contrast to the prominent role the navy had played in previous decades under Abd al-Rahman III, under Almanzor it served only as a means of transporting ground troops, such as between the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula, or Alcácer do Sal's ships in the campaign against Santiago de Compostela in 997.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: During this time, military industry flourished in factories around Córdoba. It was said to be able to produce a thousand bows and twenty thousand arrows monthly, and 1300 shields and three thousand campaign stores annually.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: As for the fleet, its network of ports was reinforced with a new base in the Atlantic, in Alcácer do Sal, which protected the area of Coimbra, recovered in the 980s, and served as the origin of the units that participated in the campaign against Santiago. On the Mediterranean shore, the naval defense was centered at the base of al-Mariya, now Almería. The dockyards of the fleet had been built in Tortosa in 944.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Initially the maritime defense of the Caliphate was led by Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Rumahis, a veteran admiral who had served Al-Hakam II and was Qadi of Elvira and Pechina. He repulsed raids by "al-Magus" (idolaters) or "al-Urdumaniyun" ('men of the north', vikings), in the west of al-Andalus in mid-971; at the end of that year, when they tried to invade Al Andalus, the admiral left Almería and defeated them off the coast of Algarve. In April 973, he transported the army of Ghalib from Algeciras to subdue the rebellious tribes of the Maghreb and end Fatimid ambitions in that area. As in 997, when the Al Andalus fleet hit the Galician coast, in 985 it had ravaged the Catalans. During the Catalan campaign, Gausfred I, Count of Empurias and Roussillon, tried to gather an army to help the locals but then several flotillas of Berber pirates threatened their coasts, forcing them to stay to defend their lands.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: To ensure control of the military, Almanzor eliminated the main figures who could have opposed his reforms: in addition to the death of Ghalib, the participation of the governor of Zaragoza in the plot of his eldest son served as a justification to replace him with another, more amenable, member of the same clan, the Banu Tujib. The admiral of the fleet, who maintained a significant budget, was poisoned in January 980 and replaced by a man faithful to Almanzor.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: As in the Army he encouraged the recruitment of Berbers faithful to him, so in the Administration he favored the "saqalibas" to the detriment of native officials, again with the aim of surrounding himself with personnel loyal only to him.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Land transport routes were dotted with strongholds, since ancient Al Andalus dignitaries sought to control communications. Messengers were bought in Sudan and specially trained to handle Almanzor's messages and to transmit the official reports that his foreign ministries wrote about the annual campaigns.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The Caliphate ruled by Almanzor was a rich and powerful state. According to Colmeiro, it is estimated that in a pre-industrial society, for every million inhabitants, ten thousand soldiers could be mustered. Even assuming the chronicles exaggerated tenfold the real numbers – these speak of eight hundred thousand soldiers – the caliphate could have had eight million inhabitants. Those who use more bullish criteria estimate between seven and ten million, but the population was probably much fewer. Traditionally speaking, around the year 1000, the caliphate occupied four hundred thousand square kilometers and was populated by three million souls. By comparison, the Iberian Christian states comprised one hundred and sixty thousand square kilometers and half a million people. By the 10th century, 75% of the population under the Umayyads had converted to Islam, a number reaching 80% two centuries later. By comparison, at the time of the Muslim invasion, Spain had about four million inhabitants, although there is no shortage of historians who would raise that estimate to seven or eight million.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: His realm also had large cities like Córdoba, which surpassed one hundred thousand inhabitants; Toledo, Almería and Granada, which were around thirty thousand; and Zaragoza, Valencia and Málaga, all above fifteen thousand. This contrasted sharply with the Christian north of the peninsula, which lacked large urban centers.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Córdoba was the cultural and intellectual centre of al-Andalus, with translations of ancient Greek texts into Arabic, Latin and Hebrew. During the reign of al-Hakam II, the royal library possessed an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 volumes. For comparison, the Abbey of Saint Gall in Switzerland contained just over 100 volumes. Advances in science, history, geography, philosophy, and language occurred during the Caliphate. Al-Andalus's prosperity and the caliph's patronage attracted travelers, diplomats and scholars. They continued the legacy of figures such as Ziryab in the 9th century by bringing in new styles of art, music, and literature from the eastern Islamic world. Cordoba also became a center of culture and high society in its own right. Poets sought the patronage of its court, as with the example of Ibn Darraj al-Qastali, who served as court poet for Abd al-Rahman III, Al-Hakam II, and Almanzor. Other poets, such as Yusuf al-Ramadi, composed works on nature and love. "Muwashshah", a form of Andalusi verncular poetry combining vernacular Arabic and the vernacular Romance language, grew more popular during this period. Writers also began to compose histories devoted to the Umayyad dynasty of Al-Andalus, such as Ahmad al-Razi's "History of the Rulers of al-Andalus" (). These histories also provided information on the land and its people. Many ideas and myths concerning the history of al-Andalus – including stories about its initial Muslim conquest in the 8th century – began to appear in this period.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Christians and Jews contributed to the intellectual and cultural spheres of al-Andalus, although this required that they publicly respect the higher status of the Arabic language and of the Islamic religion. Hasdai ibn Shaprut was one of the most well-known Jewish figures of this time. In addition to serving in the caliph's court and being highly versed in Arabic culture, Hasdai was also a patron of Hebrew scholarship. He was determined to establish the Jewish community of al-Andalus as independent from the Jewish academies of Baghdad and the Middle East, which helped bring about the Golden Age of Jewish culture in the region. By contrast, Latin culture within Al-Andalus declined as local Christians became increasingly Arabized. The Latin language was retained in liturgy. However, Andalusi Christians did journey to and from the Christian-controlled territories to the north and in the rest of Europe, contributing to the transmission of knowledge from al-Andalus to the rest of Europe.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Some upper-class women also had the resources to receive education and participate in high culture in the domains of poetry and even religion. Examples include 'Aisha ibn Ahmad, who was born from a noble family and wrote poetry, copied the Qur'an, and founded libraries. Lubna, a slave in the service of al-Hakam II, served as one of the caliph's scribes (or secretaries) and a librarian. Although religious domains were still dominated by men, Fatima bint Yahya al-Maghami was a well-known "faqih" (expert on Islamic law and jurisprudence) who taught both men and women.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The caliph's official workshops, such as those at Madinat al-Zahra, fabricated luxury products for use at court or as gifts for guests, allies, and diplomats, which stimulated artistic production. Many objects produced in the caliph's workshops later made their way into the collections of museums and Christian cathedrals in Europe. Among the most famous objects of this period are ivory boxes which are carved with vegetal, figurative, and epigraphic motifs. Notable surviving examples include the Pyxis of al-Mughira, the Pyxis of Zamora, and the Leyre Casket. The caliphal workshops also produced fine silks, including "tiraz" textiles, ceramics, and leatherwork. Metalwork objects were also produced, of which the most famous surviving piece is the so-called "Cordoba Stag", a bronze fountain spout carved in the form of a stag which was made at Madinat al-Zahra and preserved by the Archeological Museum of Cordoba. Two other bronze examples of similar craftsmanship, shaped like deers, are kept at the National Archeological Museum in Madrid and the Islamic Art Museum in Doha. While the production of ivory and silk objects largely stopped after the Caliphate's collapse, production in other mediums like leather and ceramic continued in later periods.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Marble was also carved for decorative elements in some buildings, such as wall paneling and window grilles. One of the most prolific types of marble craftsmanship were capitals, which continued the general configuration of Roman Corinthian capitals but were deeply carved with Islamic vegetal motifs (known as "ataurique" in Spanish) in a distinctive style associated with the caliphal period. These capitals later became prized spolia and can be found in later buildings across the region built under the Almoravids and Almohads. Another notable example is a marble basin, now kept at the Dar Si Said Museum in Marrakesh, which was crafted at Madinat al-Zahra between 1002 and 1007 to serve as an ablutions basin and dedicated to 'Abd al-Malik, the son of al-Mansur, before being shipped to Morocco and re-used in new buildings.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Abd ar-Rahman III marked his political ascendancy with the creation of a vast and lavish palace-city called Madinat al-Zahra (also spelled and pronounced today as "Medina Azahara"), located just outside Cordoba. Construction began in 936–940 and continued in multiple phases throughout his reign and the reign of his son son, Al-Hakam II (r. 961–976). The new city included ceremonial reception halls, a congregational mosque, administrative and government offices, aristocratic residences, gardens, a mint, workshops, barracks, service quarters, and baths.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: He also expanded the courtyard ("sahn") of Cordoba's Great Mosque and built its first true minaret (a tower from which the call to prayer was issued). The minaret, with a square floor plan, set another precedent that was followed in the architecture of other mosques in the region. Abd ar Rahman III's cultured successor, al-Hakam II, further expanded the mosque's prayer hall, starting in 962. He endowed it with some of its most significant architectural flourishes and innovations, which included interlacing multifoil arches, decorative ribbed domes, and a richly-ornamented "mihrab" (niche symbolizing the direction of prayer) with Byzantine-influenced gold mosaics.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: A much smaller but historically notable work from the late caliphate period is the Bab al-Mardum Mosque (later known as the Church of San Cristo de la Luz) in Toledo, which features a variety of ribbed domes resting on horseshoe arches and an exterior façade with Arabic inscriptions carved in brick. Other monuments from the Caliphate period in al-Andalus include several of Toledo's old city gates, the former mosque (and later monastery) of Almonaster la Real, the Castle of Tarifa, the Castle of Baños de la Encina (near Seville), the Caliphal Baths of Cordoba, and, possibly, the Baths of Jaen.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: In the 10th century much of northern Morocco also came directly within the sphere of influence of the Cordoban Caliphate, with competition from the Fatimid Caliphate further east. Early contributions to Moroccan architecture from this period include expansions to the Qarawiyyin and Andalusiyyin mosques in Fes and the addition of their square-shafted minarets, carried out under the sponsorship of Abd ar-Rahman III and following the example of the minaret he built for the Great Mosque of Cordoba.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The economy of the caliphate was diverse and successful, with trade predominating. Muslim trade routes connected al-Andalus with the outside world via the Mediterranean. Industries revitalized during the caliphate included textiles, ceramics, glassware, metalwork, and agriculture. The Arabs introduced crops such as rice, watermelon, banana, eggplant and hard wheat. Fields were irrigated with water wheels. Some of the most prominent merchants of the caliphate were Jews. Jewish merchants had extensive networks of trade that stretched the length of the Mediterranean Sea. Since there was no international banking system at the time, payments relied on a high level of trust, and this level of trust could only be cemented through personal or family bonds, such as marriage. Jews from al-Andalus, Cairo, and the Levant all intermarried across borders. Therefore, Jewish merchants in the caliphate had counterparts abroad that were willing to do business with them. The Cordoban economy was also exceptionally active in part due to its robust system of coinage, which was maintained and improved upon form the Abbasid rule.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Cordoba was one of the major centers in the mediterranean slave trade. This was in part due to its geographical location and in part to its own reliance on the practice. Geographically, Cordoba is in the southern central region of Spain, with access to the sea via the Guadalquivir river. It used this location to its advantage as its main suppliers of Christian slaves were the Northern European lands and the buyers of these same slaves were in the Muslim lands, regions with which it had already had trade connections. The slave trade in Cordoba also thrived because of the administration's reliance on slaves. These slaves were owned by the caliph and held important positions within the household and the military. Slavs in particular made up a significant portion of the caliphate's army.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: The caliphate had an ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse society. A minority of ethnic Muslims of Arab descent occupied the priestly and ruling positions, another Muslim minority were primarily soldiers and muladi converts were found throughout society. Jews comprised about ten percent of the population: little more numerous than the Arabs and about equal in numbers to the Berbers. They were primarily involved in business and intellectual occupations. The Christian minority (Mozarabs) professed by and large the Visigothic rite. The Mozarabs were in a lower strata of society, heavily taxed with few civil rights and culturally influenced by the Muslims. Ethnic Arabs occupied the top of the social hierarchy; Muslims had a higher social standing than Jews, who had a higher social standing than Christians. Christians and Jews were considered "dhimmis", required to pay jizya (a protection tax).


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: Half of the population in Córdoba is reported to have been Muslim by the 10th century, with an increase to 70 percent by the 11th century. That was due less to local conversion than to Muslim immigration from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Christians saw their status decline from their rule under the Visigoths, meanwhile the status of Jews improved during the Caliphate. While Jews were persecuted under the Visigoths, Jewish communities benefited from Umayyad rule by obtaining more freedom, affluence and a higher social standing.


title: Caliphate of Córdoba

text: According to Thomas Glick, "Despite the withdrawal of substantial numbers during the drought and famine of the 750s, fresh Berber migration from North Africa was a constant feature of Andalusi history, increasing in tempo in the tenth century. Hispano-Romans who converted to Islam, numbering six or seven millions, comprised the majority of the population and also occupied the lowest rungs on the social ladder." It is also estimated that the capital city held around 450,000 people, making it the second largest city in Europe at the time.