title: Density matrix

text: can be described as having right or left circular polarization, described by the orthogonal quantum states formula_38 and formula_39 or a superposition of the two: it can be in any state formula_40 (with formula_41), corresponding to linear, circular, or elliptical polarization. Consider now a vertically polarized photon, described by the state formula_42. If we pass it through a circular polarizer which allows either only formula_38 polarized light, or only formula_39 polarized light, half of the photons are absorbed in both cases. This may make it "seem" like half of the photons are in state formula_38 and the other half in state formula_39, but this is not correct: if we pass formula_47 through a linear polarizer there's no absorption whatsoever, but if we pass either state formula_38 or formula_39 half of the photons are absorbed.


title: Density matrix

text: Unpolarized light (such as the light from an incandescent light bulb) cannot be described as "any" state of the form formula_40 (linear, circular, or elliptical polarization). Unlike polarized light, it passes through a polarizer with 50% intensity loss whatever the orientation of the polarizer; and it cannot be made polarized by passing it through any wave plate. However, unpolarized light "can" be described as a statistical ensemble, e. g. as each photon having either formula_38 polarization or formula_39 polarization with probability 1/2. The same behavior would occur if each photon had either vertical polarization formula_53 or horizontal polarization formula_54 with probability 1/2. These two ensembles are completely indistinguishable experimentally, and therefore they are considered the same mixed state. For this example of unpolarized light, the density operator equals


title: Density matrix

text: There are also other ways to generate unpolarized light: one possibility is to introduce uncertainty in the preparation of the photon, for example, passing it through a birefringent crystal with a rough surface, so that slightly different parts of the light beam acquire different polarizations. Another possibility is using entangled states: a radioactive decay can emit two photons traveling in opposite directions, in the quantum state formula_56. The joint state of the two photons "together" is pure, but the density matrix for each photon individually, found by taking the partial trace of the joint density matrix, is completely mixed.


title: Density matrix

text: A given density operator does not uniquely determine which ensemble of pure states gives rise to it; in general there are infinitely many different ensembles generating the same density matrix. Those cannot be distinguished by any measurement. The equivalent ensembles can be completely characterized: let formula_57 be an ensemble. Then for any complex matrix formula_58 such that formula_59 (a partial isometry), the ensemble formula_60 defined by


title: Density matrix

text: A closely related fact is that a given density operator has infinitely many different purifications, which are pure states that generate the density operator when a partial trace is taken. Let


title: Density matrix

text: be the density operator generated by the ensemble formula_57, with states formula_1 not necessarily orthogonal. Then for all partial isometries formula_58 we have that


title: Density matrix

text: is a purification of formula_67, where formula_68 is an orthogonal basis, and furthermore all purifications of formula_67 are of this form.


title: Density matrix

text: Let formula_70 be an observable of the system, and suppose the ensemble is in a mixed state such that each of the pure states formula_71 occurs with probability formula_2. Then the corresponding density operator equals


title: Density matrix

text: The expectation value of the measurement can be calculated by extending from the case of pure states:


title: Density matrix

text: where formula_75 denotes trace. Thus, the familiar expression formula_76 for pure states is replaced by


title: Density matrix

text: where formula_80 is the projection operator into the eigenspace corresponding to eigenvalue formula_81, the post-measurement density operator is given by


title: Density matrix

text: when outcome "i" is obtained. In the case where the measurement result is not known the ensemble is instead described by


title: Density matrix

text: If one assumes that the probabilities of measurement outcomes are linear functions of the projectors formula_80, then they must be given by the trace of the projector with a density operator. Gleason's theorem shows that in Hilbert spaces of dimension 3 or larger the assumption of linearity can be replaced with an assumption of non-contextuality. This restriction on the dimension can be removed by assuming non-contextuality for POVMs as well, but this has been criticized as physically unmotivated.


title: Density matrix

text: The von Neumann entropy formula_85 of a mixture can be expressed in terms of the eigenvalues of formula_67 or in terms of the trace and logarithm of the density operator formula_67. Since formula_67 is a positive semi-definite operator, it has a spectral decomposition such that formula_89, where formula_90 are orthonormal vectors, formula_91, and formula_92. Then the entropy of a quantum system with density matrix formula_67 is


title: Density matrix

text: This definition implies that the von Neumann entropy of any pure state is zero. If formula_95 are states that have support on orthogonal subspaces, then the von Neumann entropy of a convex combination of these states,


title: Density matrix

text: is given by the von Neumann entropies of the states formula_95 and the Shannon entropy of the probability distribution formula_98:


title: Density matrix

text: When the states formula_95 do not have orthogonal supports, the sum on the right-hand side is strictly greater than the von Neumann entropy of the convex combination formula_67.


title: Density matrix

text: Given a density operator formula_67 and a projective measurement as in the previous section, the state formula_103 defined by the convex combination


title: Density matrix

text: which can be interpreted as the state produced by performing the measurement but not recording which outcome occurred, has a von Neumann entropy larger than that of formula_67, except if formula_106. It is however possible for the formula_103 produced by a "generalized" measurement, or POVM, to have a lower von Neumann entropy than formula_67.


title: Density matrix

text: Just as the Schrödinger equation describes how pure states evolve in time, the von Neumann equation (also known as the Liouville–von Neumann equation) describes how a density operator evolves in time. The von Neumann equation dictates that


title: Density matrix

text: This equation only holds when the density operator is taken to be in the Schrödinger picture, even though this equation seems at first look to emulate the Heisenberg equation of motion in the Heisenberg picture, with a crucial sign difference:


title: Density matrix

text: where formula_111 is some "Heisenberg picture" operator; but in this picture the density matrix is "not time-dependent", and the relative sign ensures that the time derivative of the expected value formula_112 comes out "the same as in the Schrödinger picture".


title: Density matrix

text: For a more general Hamiltonian, if formula_114 is the wavefunction propagator over some interval, then the time evolution of the density matrix over that same interval is given by


title: Density matrix

text: The density matrix operator may also be realized in phase space. Under the Wigner map, the density matrix transforms into the equivalent Wigner function,


title: Density matrix

text: The equation for the time evolution of the Wigner function, known as Moyal equation, is then the Wigner-transform of the above von Neumann equation,


title: Density matrix

text: where formula_118 is the Hamiltonian, and formula_119 is the Moyal bracket, the transform of the quantum commutator.


title: Density matrix

text: The evolution equation for the Wigner function is then analogous to that of its classical limit, the Liouville equation of classical physics. In the limit of vanishing Planck's constant formula_120, formula_121 reduces to the classical Liouville probability density function in phase space.


title: Density matrix

text: Density matrices are a basic tool of quantum mechanics, and appear at least occasionally in almost any type of quantum-mechanical calculation. Some specific examples where density matrices are especially helpful and common are as follows:


title: Density matrix

text: It is now generally accepted that the description of quantum mechanics in which all self-adjoint operators represent observables is untenable. For this reason, observables are identified with elements of an abstract C*-algebra "A" (that is one without a distinguished representation as an algebra of operators) and states are positive linear functionals on "A". However, by using the GNS construction, we can recover Hilbert spaces which realize "A" as a subalgebra of operators.


title: Density matrix

text: Geometrically, a pure state on a C*-algebra "A" is a state which is an extreme point of the set of all states on "A". By properties of the GNS construction these states correspond to irreducible representations of "A".


title: Density matrix

text: The states of the C*-algebra of compact operators "K"("H") correspond exactly to the density operators, and therefore the pure states of "K"("H") are exactly the pure states in the sense of quantum mechanics.


title: Density matrix

text: The C*-algebraic formulation can be seen to include both classical and quantum systems. When the system is classical, the algebra of observables become an abelian C*-algebra. In that case the states become probability measures.


title: Density matrix

text: The formalism of density operators and matrices was introduced in 1927 by John von Neumann and independently, but less systematically, by Lev Landau and later in 1946 by Felix Bloch. Von Neumann introduced the density matrix in order to develop both quantum statistical mechanics and a theory of quantum measurements. The name density matrix itself relates to its classical correspondence to a phase-space probability measure (probability distribution of position and momentum) in classical statistical mechanics, which was introduced by Wigner in 1932.


title: Density matrix

text: In contrast, the motivation that inspired Landau was the impossibility of describing a subsystem of a composite quantum system by a state vector.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Middle East, interchangeable with the Near East, is home to one of the Cradles of Civilization and has seen many of the world's oldest cultures and civilizations. The region's history started from the earliest human settlements and continues through several major pre- and post-Islamic Empires to today's nation-states of the Middle East.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Sumerians became the first people to develop complex systems that were to be called "civilization" as far back as the 5th millennium BC. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh. Mesopotamia was home to several powerful empires that came to rule almost all of Middle East, particularly the Assyrian Empires of 1365–1076 BC and the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911–609 BC. From the early 7th century BC and onward, the Iranian Medes, followed by the Achaemenid Empire and other subsequent Iranian states and empires, dominated the region. In the 1st century BC, the expanding Roman Republic absorbed the whole Eastern Mediterranean, which included much of the Near East. The Eastern Roman Empire, now commonly known as the Byzantine Empire, ruled from the Balkans to the Euphrates, became increasingly defined by and dogmatic about Christianity and gradually creating religious rifts between the doctrines dictated by the establishment in Constantinople and believers in many parts of the Middle East. From the 3rd century to the course of the 7th century AD, the entire Middle East was dominated by the Byzantines and the Sasanian Empire. From the 7th century, a new power was rising in the Middle East, that of Islam. The dominance of the Arabs came to a sudden end in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq dynasty. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders, the armies of the Mongol Empire, mainly Turkic, swept through the region. By the early 15th century, a new power had arisen in western Anatolia, the Ottoman emirs, who were linguistically Turkic and religiously Islamic and in 1453 captured the Christian Byzantine capital of Constantinople and made themselves sultans.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Large parts of the Middle East became a warground between the Ottomans and the Iranian Safavid dynasty for centuries, starting in the early 16th century. By 1700, the Ottomans had been driven out of the Kingdom of Hungary and the balance of power along the frontier had shifted decisively in favor of the Western world. The British Empire also established effective control of the Persian Gulf, and the French colonial empire extended its influence into Lebanon and Syria. In 1912, the Kingdom of Italy seized Libya and the Dodecanese islands, just off the coast of the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia. In the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, Middle Eastern rulers tried to modernize their states to compete more effectively with the European powers. A turning point in the region's history came when oil was discovered, first in Persia in 1908 and later in Saudi Arabia (in 1938) and the other Persian Gulf states, and also in Libya and Algeria. A Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil and the decline of British influence led to a growing American interest in the region.


title: History of the Middle East

text: During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Syria and Egypt made moves towards independence. The British, the French, and the Soviets departed from many parts of the Middle East during and after World War II (1939–1945). The Arab–Israeli conflict in Palestine culminated in the 1947 United Nations plan to partition Palestine. Later in the midst of Cold War tensions, the Arabic-speaking countries of Western Asia and Northern Africa saw the rise of pan-Arabism. The departure of the European powers from direct control of the region, the establishment of Israel, and the increasing importance of the petroleum industry, marked the creation of the modern Middle East. In most Middle Eastern countries, the growth of market economies was inhibited by political restrictions, corruption, cronyism, overspending on arms and prestige projects and overdependence on oil revenues. The wealthiest economies in the region per capita are the small oil-rich countries of Persian Gulf: Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.


title: History of the Middle East

text: A combination of factors—such as the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1970s energy crisis beginning with the 1973 OPEC oil embargo in response to US support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the concurrent Saudi-led popularization of Salafism/Wahhabism, and the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution—promoted the increasing rise of Islamism and the ongoing Islamic revival ("Tajdid"). The Fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought a global security refocus from the Cold War to a War on Terror. Starting in the early 2010s, a revolutionary wave that is popularly known as the Arab Spring brought major protests, uprisings, and revolutions to several Middle Eastern and Maghreb countries. Clashes in western Iraq on 30 December 2013 were preliminary to the Sunni pan-Islamist ISIL uprising.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The term "Near East" can be used interchangeably with "Middle East", but in a different context, especially in discussing ancient history, it may have a limited meaning, namely the northern historically-Aramaic-speaking Semitic people area and adjacent Anatolian territories, marked in the two maps below.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Geographically, the Middle East can be thought of as Western Asia with the addition of Egypt (which is the non-Maghreb region of Northern Africa) and with the exclusion of the Caucasus. The Middle East was the first to experience a Neolithic Revolution (c. the 10th millennium BCE), as well as the first to enter the Bronze Age (c. 3300–1200 BC) and Iron Age (c. 1200–500 BC).


title: History of the Middle East

text: Historically human populations have tended to settle around bodies of water, which is reflected in modern population density patterns. Irrigation systems were extremely important for the agricultural Middle East: for Egypt that of the lower Nile River, and for Mesopotamia that of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Levantine agriculture depended on precipitation rather than on the river-based irrigation of Egypt and Mesopotamia, resulting in preference for different crops. Since travel was faster and easier by sea, civilizations along the Mediterranean, such as Phoenicia and later Greece, participated in intense trade. Similarly, Ancient Yemen, much more conducive to agriculture than the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, sea traded heavily with the Horn of Africa, some of which it lingually Semitized. The Adnanite Arabs, inhabiting the drier desert areas of the Middle East, were all nomadic pastoralists before some began settling in city states, with the geo-linguistic distribution today being divided between Persian Gulf, the Najd and the Hejaz in the Peninsula, as well as the Bedouin areas beyond the Peninsula.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Since ancient times the Middle East has had several lingua franca: Akkadian ( 14th–8th century BC), Aramaic ( 8th century BC – 8th century AD), Greek ( 4th century BC – 8th century AD), and Arabic ( 8th century AD – present). Familiarity with English is not uncommon among the middle and upper classes. Arabic is not commonly spoken in Turkey, Iran, and Israel, and some varieties of Arabic lack mutual intelligibility, thus qualifying as distinct languages by this linguistic criterion.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Middle East was the birthplace of the Abrahamic, Gnostic, and most Iranian religions. Initially the ancient inhabitants of the region followed various ethnic religions, but most of those began to be gradually replaced at first by Christianity (even before the 313 AD Edict of Milan) and finally by Islam (after the spread of the Muslim conquests beyond the Arabian Peninsula in 634 AD). To this day, however, the Middle East has, in particular, some sizable, ethnically distinct Christian minority groups, as well as Jews, concentrated in Israel, and followers of Iranian religions, such as Yazdânism and Zoroastrianism. Some of the smaller ethnoreligious minorities include the Shabak people, the Mandaeans and the Samaritans. It is somewhat controversial whether the Druze religion is a distinct religion in its own right or merely a part of the Ismailist branch of Shia Islam.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Arabian Tectonic Plate was part of the African Plate during much of the Phanerozoic Eon (Paleozoic–Cenozoic), until the Oligocene Epoch of the Cenozoic Era. Red Sea rifting began in the Eocene, but the separation of Africa and Arabia occurred in the Oligocene, and since then the Arabian Plate has been slowly moving toward the Eurasian Plate.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The collision between the Arabian Plate and Eurasia is pushing up the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Because the Arabian Plate and Eurasia plate collide, many cities are in danger such as those in south eastern Turkey (which is on the Arabian Plate). These dangers include earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The earliest human migrations out of Africa occurred through the Middle East, namely over the Levantine corridor, with the pre-modern "Homo erectus" about 1.8 million years BP. One of the potential routes for early human migrations toward southern and eastern Asia is Iran.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Haplogroup J-P209, the most common human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup in the Middle East today, is believed to have arisen in the region 31,700±12,800 years ago. The two main current subgroups, J-M267 and J-M172, which now comprise between them almost all of the population of the haplogroup, are both believed to have arisen very early, at least 10,000 years ago. Nonetheless, Y-chromosomes F-M89* and IJ-M429* were reported to have been observed in the Iranian plateau.


title: History of the Middle East

text: There is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishermen was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 6000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River, where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Neolithic agriculturalists, who may have resided in Northeast Africa and the Near East, may have been the source population for lactase persistence variants, including –13910*T, and may have been subsequently supplanted by later migrations of peoples. The Sub-Saharan West African Fulani, the North African Tuareg, and European agriculturalists, who are descendants of these Neolithic agriculturalists, share the lactase persistence variant –13910*T. While shared by Fulani and Tuareg herders, compared to the Tuareg variant, the Fulani variant of –13910*T has undergone a longer period of haplotype differentiation. The Fulani lactase persistence variant –13910*T may have spread, along with cattle pastoralism, between 9686 BP and 7534 BP, possibly around 8500 BP; corroborating this timeframe for the Fulani, by at least 7500 BP, there is evidence of herders engaging in the act of milking in the Central Sahara.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The ancient Near East was the first to practice intensive year-round agriculture and currency-mediated trade (as opposed to barter), gave the rest of the world the first writing system, invented the potter's wheel and then the vehicular and mill wheel, created the first centralized governments and law codes, served as birthplace to the first city-states with their high degree of division of labor, as well as laying the foundation for the fields of astronomy and mathematics. However, its empires also introduced rigid social stratification, slavery, and organized warfare.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The earliest civilizations in history were established in the region now known as the Middle East around 3500 BC by the Sumerians, in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), widely regarded as the cradle of civilization. The Sumerians and the Akkadians—who extended their empire to northern Mesopotamia (now northern Syria)—and later Babylonians and Assyrians all flourished in this region.


title: History of the Middle East

text: "In the course of the fourth millennium BC, city-states developed in southern Mesopotamia that were dominated by temples whose priests represented the cities' patron deities. The most prominent of the city-states was Sumer, which gave its language to the area, [presumably the first written language,] and became the first great civilization of mankind. About 2340 BC, Sargon the Great (c. 2360–2305 BC) united the city-states in the south and founded the Akkadian dynasty, the world's first empire."


title: History of the Middle East

text: During this same time period, Sargon the Great appointed his daughter, Enheduanna, as High Priestess of Inanna at Ur. Her writings, which established her as the first known author in world history, also helped cement Sargon's position in the region.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Soon after the Sumerian civilization began, the Nile valley of Lower and Upper Egypt was unified under the Pharaohs approximately around 3150 BC. Since then, Ancient Egypt experienced 3 high points of civilization, the so-called "Kingdom" periods:


title: History of the Middle East

text: The history of Ancient Egypt is concluded by the Late Period (664–332 BC), immediately followed by the history of Egypt in Classical Antiquity, beginning with Ptolemaic Egypt.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Thereafter, civilization quickly spread through the Fertile Crescent to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and throughout the Levant, as well as to ancient Anatolia. Ancient Levantine kingdoms and city states included Ebla City, Ugarit City, Kingdom of Aram-Damascus, Kingdom of Israel, Kingdom of Judah, Kingdom of Ammon, Kingdom of Moab, Kingdom of Edom, and the Nabatean kingdom. The Phoenician civilization, encompassing several city states, was a maritime trading culture that established colonial cities in the Mediterranean Basin, most notably Carthage, in 814 BC.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Mesopotamia was home to several powerful empires that came to rule almost the entire Middle East—particularly the Assyrian Empires of 1365–1076 BC and the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911–605 BC. The Assyrian Empire, at its peak, was the largest the world had seen. It ruled all of what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, and Bahrain—with large swathes of Iran, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Sudan, and Arabia.


title: History of the Middle East

text: "The Assyrian empires, particularly the third, had a profound and lasting impact on the Near East. Before Assyrian hegemony ended, the Assyrians brought the highest civilization to the then known world. From the Caspian to Cyprus, from Anatolia to Egypt, Assyrian imperial expansion would bring into the Assyrian sphere nomadic and barbaric communities, and would bestow the gift of civilization upon them."


title: History of the Middle East

text: From the early 6th century BC onwards, several Persian states dominated the region, beginning with the Medes and non-Persian Neo-Babylonian Empire, then their successor the Achaemenid Empire known as the first Persian Empire, conquered in the late 4th century BC by the very short-lived Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, and then successor kingdoms such as Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid state in Western Asia.


title: History of the Middle East

text: After a century of hiatus, the idea of the Persian Empire was revived by the Parthians in the 3rd century BC—and continued by their successors, the Sassanids from the 3rd century AD. This empire dominated sizable parts of what is now the Asian part of the Middle East and continued to influence the rest of the Asiatic and African Middle East region, until the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia in the mid-7th century AD. Between the 1st century BC and the early 7th century AD, the region was completely dominated by the Romans and the Parthians and Sassanids on the other hand, which often culminated in various Roman-Persian Wars over the seven centuries. Eastern Rite, Church of the East Christianity took hold in Persian-ruled Mesopotamia, particularly in Assyria from the 1st century AD onwards, and the region became a center of a flourishing Syriac–Assyrian literary tradition.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In 66–63 BC, the Roman general Pompey conquered much of the Middle East. The Roman Empire united the region with most of Europe and North Africa in a single political and economic unit. Even areas not directly annexed were strongly influenced by the Empire, which was the most powerful political and cultural entity for centuries. Though Roman culture spread across the region, the Greek culture and language first established in the region by the Macedonian Empire continued to dominate throughout the Roman period. Cities in the Middle East, especially Alexandria, became major urban centers for the Empire and the region became the Empire's "bread basket" as the key agricultural producer. Ægyptus was by far the most wealthy Roman province.


title: History of the Middle East

text: As the Christian religion spread throughout the Roman and Persian Empires, it took root in the Middle East, and cities such as Alexandria and Edessa became important centers of Christian scholarship. By the 5th century, Christianity was the dominant religion in the Middle East, with other faiths (gradually including "heretical" Christian sects) being actively repressed. The Middle East's ties to the city of Rome were gradually severed as the Empire split into East and West, with the Middle East tied to the new Roman capital of Constantinople. The subsequent Fall of the Western Roman Empire therefore, had minimal direct impact on the region.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Eastern Roman Empire, today commonly known as the Byzantine Empire, ruling from the Balkans to the Euphrates, became increasingly defined by and dogmatic about Christianity, gradually creating religious rifts between the doctrines dictated by the establishment in Constantinople and believers in many parts of the Middle East. By this time, Greek had become the 'lingua franca' of the region, although ethnicities such as the Syriacs and the Hebrew continued to exist. Under Byzantine/Greek rule the area of the Levant met an era of stability and prosperity.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In the 5th century, the Middle East was separated into small, weak states; the two most prominent were the Sasanian Empire of the Persians in what is now Iran and Iraq, and the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and the Levant. The Byzantines and Sasanians fought with each other a reflection of the rivalry between the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire seen during the previous five hundred years. The Byzantine-Sasanian rivalry was also seen through their respective cultures and religions. The Byzantines considered themselves champions of Hellenism and Christianity. Meanwhile, the Sasanians thought themselves heroes of ancient Iranian traditions and of the traditional Persian religion, Zoroastrianism.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Arabian peninsula already played a role in the power struggles of the Byzantines and Sasanians. While Byzantium allied itself with the Kingdom of Aksum in the horn of Africa, the Sasanian Empire assisted the Himyarite Kingdom in what is now Yemen (southwest Arabia). Thus the clash between the kingdoms of Aksum and Himyar in 525 displayed a higher power struggle between Byzantium and Persia for control of the Red Sea trade. Territorial wars soon became common, with the Byzantines and Sasanians fighting over upper Mesopotamia and Armenia and key cities that facilitated trade from Arabia, India, and China. Byzantium, as the continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire, continued control of the latter's territories in the Middle East. Since 527, this included Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt. But in 603 the Sasanians invaded, conquering Damascus and Egypt. It was Emperor Heraclius who was able to repel these invasions, and in 628 he replaced the Sasanian Great King with a more docile one. But the fighting weakened both states, leaving the stage open to a new power.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The nomadic Bedouin tribes dominated the Arabian desert, where they worshiped idols and remained in small clans tied together by kinship. Urbanization and agriculture was limited in Arabia, save for a few regions near the coast. Mecca and Medina (then called Yathrib) were two such cities that were important hubs for trade between Africa and Eurasia. This commerce was central to city-life, where most inhabitants were merchants. Nevertheless, some Arabs saw it fit to migrate to the northern regions of the Fertile Crescent, a region so named for its place between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that offered it fertile land. This included entire tribal chiefdoms such as the Lakhmids in a less controlled area of the Sasanian Empire, and the Ghassanids in a similar area inside of Byzantine territory; these political units of Arab origin offered a surprising stability that was rare in the region and offered Arabia further connections to the outside world. The Lakhmid capital, Hira was a center for Christianity and Jewish craftsmen, merchants, and farmers were common in western Arabia as were Christian monks in central Arabia. Thus pre-Islamic Arabia was no stranger to Abrahamic religions or monotheism, for that matter.


title: History of the Middle East

text: While the Byzantine Roman and Sassanid Persian empires were both weakened by warfare (602–628), a new power in the form of Islam grew in the Middle East. In a series of rapid Muslim conquests, Arab armies, led by the Caliphs and skilled military commanders such as Khalid ibn al-Walid, swept through most of the Middle East, taking more than half of Byzantine territory and completely engulfing the Persian lands. In Anatolia, they were stopped in the Siege of Constantinople (717–718) by the Byzantines, who were helped by the Bulgarians.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Byzantine provinces of Roman Syria, North Africa, and Sicily, however, could not mount such a resistance, and the Muslim conquerors swept through those regions. At the far west, they crossed the sea taking Visigothic Hispania before being halted in southern France in the Battle of Tours by the Franks. At its greatest extent, the Arab Empire was the first empire to control the entire Middle East, as well three-quarters of the Mediterranean region, the only other empire besides the Roman Empire to control most of the Mediterranean Sea. It would be the Arab Caliphates of the Middle Ages that would first unify the entire Middle East as a distinct region and create the dominant ethnic identity that persists today. The Seljuq Empire would also later dominate the region.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Much of North Africa became a peripheral area to the main Muslim centres in the Middle East, but Iberia (Al-Andalus) and Morocco soon broke away from this distant control and founded one of the world's most advanced societies at the time, along with Baghdad in the eastern Mediterranean. Between 831 and 1071, the Emirate of Sicily was one of the major centres of Islamic culture in the Mediterranean. After its conquest by the Normans the island developed its own distinct culture with the fusion of Arab, Western, and Byzantine influences. Palermo remained a leading artistic and commercial centre of the Mediterranean well into the Middle Ages.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Africa was reviving, however, as more organized and centralized states began to form in the later Middle Ages after the Renaissance of the 12th century. Motivated by religion and conquest, the kings of Europe launched a number of Crusades to try to roll back Muslim power and retake the Holy Land. The Crusades were unsuccessful but were far more effective in weakening the already tottering Byzantine Empire. They also rearranged the balance of power in the Muslim world as Egypt once again emerged as a major power.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Religion always played a prevalent role in Middle Eastern culture, affecting learning, architecture, and the ebb and flow of cultures. When Muhammad introduced Islam, it jump-started Middle Eastern culture, inspiring achievements in architecture, the revival of old advances in science and technology, and the formation of a distinct way of life. Islam primarily consisted of the five pillars of belief, including confession of faith, the five prayers a day, to fast during the holy month of Ramadan, to pay the tax for charity (the zakāt), and the hajj, or the pilgrimage that a Muslim needed to take at least once in their lifetime, according to the five (or six) pillars of Islam. Islam also created the need for spectacularly built mosques which created a distinct form of architecture. Some of the more magnificent mosques include the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the former Mosque of Cordoba. Islam unified the Middle East and helped the empires there to remain stable. Missionaries and warriors spread the religion from Arabia to North and Sudanic Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Mesopotamia area. This created a mix of cultures, especially in Africa, and the mawali demographic. Although the mawali would experience discrimination from the Umayyad, they would gain widespread acceptance from the Abbasids and it was because of this that allowed for mass conversions in foreign areas. "People of the book" or dhimmi were always treated well; these people included Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians. However, the crusades started a new thinking in the Islamic empires, that non-Islamic ideas were immoral or inferior; this was primarily perpetrated by the ulama (علماء) scholars.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Arabian culture took off during the early Abbasid age, despite the prevalent political issues. Muslims saved and spread Greek advances in medicine, algebra, geometry, astronomy, anatomy, and ethics that would later find its way back to Western Europe. The works of Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Ptolemy, and Euclid were saved and distributed throughout the empire (and eventually into Europe) in this manner. Muslim scholars also discovered the Hindu–Arabic numeral system in their conquests of south Asia. The use of this system in Muslim trade and political institutions allowed for the eventual popularization of it around the world; this number system would be critical to the Scientific revolution in Europe. Muslim intellectuals would become experts in chemistry, optics, and mapmaking during the Abbasid Caliphate. In the arts, Abbasid architecture expanded upon Umayyad architecture, with larger and more extravagant mosques. Persian literature grew based on ethical values. Astronomy was stressed in art. Much of this learning would find its way to the West. This was especially true during the crusades, as warriors would bring back Muslim treasures, weapons, and medicinal methods.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The dominance of the Arabs came to a sudden end in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq Turks, migrating south from the Turkic homelands in Central Asia. They conquered Persia, Iraq (capturing Baghdad in 1055), Syria, Palestine, and the Hejaz. Egypt held out under the Fatimid caliphs until 1169, when it too fell to the Turks.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Despite massive territorial losses in the 7th century, the Christian Byzantine Empire continued to be a potent military and economic force in the Mediterranean, preventing Arab expansion into much of Europe. The Seljuqs' defeat of the Byzantine military in the Battle of Manzikert in the 11th century and settling in Anatolia effectively marked the end of Byzantine power. The Seljuks ruled most of the Middle East region for the next 200 years, but their empire soon broke up into a number of smaller sultanates.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Christian Western Europe staged a remarkable economic and demographic recovery in the 11th century since its nadir in the 7th century. The fragmentation of the Middle East allowed joined forces, mainly from England, France, and the emerging Holy Roman Empire, to enter the region. In 1095, Pope Urban II responded to pleas from the flagging Byzantine Empire and summoned the European aristocracy to recapture the Holy Land for Christianity. In 1099 the knights of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which survived until 1187, when Saladin, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, retook the city. Smaller crusader kingdoms and fiefdoms survived until 1291.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The conquest of Baghdad and the death of the caliph in 1258 officiated the end of the Abbasid Caliphate and annexed its territories to the Mongol Empire, excluding Mamluk Egypt and the majority of Arabia. When the Khagan (or Great Khan) of the Mongol Empire, Möngke Khan, died in 1259, any further expansion by Hulegu was halted, as he had to return to the Mongol capital Karakorum for the election of a new khagan. His absence resulted in the first defeat of the Mongols (by the Mamluk Egyptians) during the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. Issues began to arise when the Mongols grew increasingly unable to reach a consensus as to whom to elect khagan. Additionally, societal clashing occurred between traditionalists who wished to retain their nomadic culture and Mongols moving towards sedentary agriculture. All of this led to the fragmentation of the empire in 1260. Hulegu carved out his Middle Eastern territory into the independent Ilkhanate, which included most of Armenia, Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia, and Iran.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Mongols eventually retreated in 1335, but the chaos that ensued throughout the empire deposed the Seljuq Turks. In 1401, the region was further plagued by the Turko-Mongol, Timur, and his ferocious raids. By then, another group of Turks had arisen as well, the Ottomans. Based in Anatolia, by 1566 they would conquer the Iraq-Iran region, the Balkans, Greece, Byzantium, most of Egypt, most of north Africa, and parts of Arabia, unifying them under the Ottoman Empire. The rule of the Ottoman sultans marked the end of the Medieval (Postclassical) Era in the Middle East.


title: History of the Middle East

text: By the early 15th century, a new power had arisen in western Anatolia, the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman khans, who in 1453 captured the Christian Byzantine capitol of Constantinople and made themselves sultans. The Mamluks held the Ottomans out of the Middle East for a century, but in 1514 Selim the Grim began the systematic Ottoman conquest of the region. Syria was occupied in 1516 and Egypt in 1517, extinguishing the Mameluk line. Iraq was conquered almost in 40 years from the Iranian Safavids, who were successors of the Aq Qoyunlu.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Ottomans united the whole region under one ruler for the first time since the reign of the Abbasid caliphs of the 10th century, and they kept control of it for 400 years, despite brief intermissions created by the Iranian Safavids and Afsharids. By this time the Ottomans also held Greece, the Balkans, and most of Hungary, setting the new frontier between east and west far to the north of the Danube.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In the west, Europe was rapidly expanding, demographically, economically, and culturally. By 1700, the Ottomans had been driven out of Hungary. Although some areas of Ottoman Europe, such as Albania and Bosnia, saw many conversions to Islam, the area was never culturally absorbed into the Muslim world. From 1768 to 1918, the Ottomans gradually lost territory. By the 19th century, Europe had overtaken the Muslim world in wealth, population, and—most importantly—technology. The industrial revolution fueled a boom that laid the foundations for the growth of capitalism. During the 19th century, Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria claimed independence, and the Ottoman Empire became known as the "sick man of Europe", increasingly under the financial control of European powers. Domination soon turned to outright conquest: the French annexed Algeria in 1830 and Tunisia in 1878 and the British occupied Egypt in 1882, though it remained under nominal Ottoman sovereignty. In the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 the Ottomans were driven out of Europe altogether, except for the city of Constantinople and its hinterland.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The British also established effective control of the Persian Gulf, and the French extended their influence into Lebanon and Syria. In 1912, the Italians seized Libya and the Dodecanese islands, just off the coast of the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia. The Ottomans turned to Germany to protect them from the western powers, but the result was increasing financial and military dependence on Germany.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Middle Eastern rulers tried to modernize their states to compete more effectively with Europe. In the Ottoman Empire, the Tanzimat reforms re-invigorated Ottoman rule and were furthered by the Young Ottomans in the late 19th century, leading to the First Constitutional Era in the Empire that included the writing of the 1876 constitution and the establishment of the Ottoman Parliament. The authors of the 1906 revolution in Persia all sought to import versions of the western model of constitutional government, civil law, secular education, and industrial development into their countries. Throughout the region, railways and telegraph lines were constructed, schools and universities were opened, and a new class of army officers, lawyers, teachers, and administrators emerged, challenging the traditional leadership of Islamic scholars.


title: History of the Middle East

text: This first Ottoman constitutional experiment ended soon after it began, however, when the autocratic Sultan Abdul Hamid II abolished the parliament and the constitution in favor of personal rule. Abdul Hamid ruled by decree for the next 30 years, stirring democratic resentment. The reform movement known as the Young Turks emerged in the 1890s against his rule, which included massacres against minorities. The Young Turks seized power in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and established the Second Constitutional Era, leading to a pluralist and multiparty elections in the Empire for the first time in 1908. The Young Turks split into two parties, the pro-German and pro-centralization Committee of Union and Progress and the pro-British and pro-decentralization Freedom and Accord Party. The former was led by an ambitious pair of army officers, Ismail Enver Bey (later Pasha) and Ahmed Cemal Pasha, and a radical lawyer, Mehmed Talaat Bey (later Pasha). After a power struggle between the two parties of Young Turks, the Committee emerged victorious and became a ruling junta, with Talaat as Grand Vizier and Enver as War Minister, and established a German-funded modernisation program across the Empire.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Enver Bey's alliance with Germany, which he considered the most advanced military power in Europe, was enabled by British demands that the Ottoman Empire cede their formal capital Edirne (Adrianople) to the Bulgarians after losing the First Balkan War, which the Turks saw as a betrayal by Britain. These demands cost Britain the support of the Turks, as the pro-British Freedom and Accord Party was now repressed under the pro-German Committee for, in Enver's words, "shamefully delivering the country to the enemy" (Britain) after agreeing to the demands to give up Edirne.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In 1878, as the result of the Cyprus Convention, the United Kingdom took over the government of Cyprus as a protectorate from the Ottoman Empire. While the Cypriots at first welcomed British rule, hoping that they would gradually achieve prosperity, democracy and national liberation, they soon became disillusioned. The British imposed heavy taxes to cover the compensation they paid to the Sultan for conceding Cyprus to them. Moreover, the people were not given the right to participate in the administration of the island, since all powers were reserved to the High Commissioner and to London.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Meanwhile, the fall of the Ottomans and the partitioning of Anatolia by the Allies led to resistance by the Turkish population, under the Turkish National Movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Turkish victory against the invading powers during the Turkish War of Independence, and the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923. As the first President of Turkey, Atatürk embarked on a program of modernisation and secularisation. He abolished the caliphate, emancipated women, enforced western dress and the use of a new Turkish alphabet based on Latin script in place of the Arabic alphabet, and abolished the jurisdiction of the Islamic courts. In effect, Turkey, having given up rule over the Arab world, was now determined to secede from the Middle East and become culturally part of Europe.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Another turning point came when oil was discovered, first in Persia (1908) and later in Saudi Arabia (1938) as well as the other Persian Gulf states, Libya, and Algeria. The Middle East, it turned out, possessed the world's largest easily untapped reserves of crude oil, the most important commodity in the 20th century. The kings and emirs of these oil states became immensely wealthy exporting petroleum to the west, allowing them to consolidate their hold on power and giving them a stake in preserving western hegemony over the region.


title: History of the Middle East

text: A Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil and the decline of British influence led to a growing American interest in the region. Initially, the Western oil companies established a dominance over oil production and extraction. However, indigenous movements towards nationalizing oil assets, oil sharing, and the advent of OPEC ensured a shift in the balance of power towards the Arab oil states. Oil wealth also had the effect of suffocating whatever economic, political, or social reform might have emerged in the Arab world under the influence of the Kemalist revolution in Turkey.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In 1914, Enver Pasha's alliance with Germany led the Ottoman Empire into the fatal step of joining Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I, against Britain and France. The British saw the Ottomans as the weak link in the enemy alliance, and concentrated on knocking them out of the war. When a direct assault failed at Gallipoli in 1915, they turned to fomenting revolution in the Ottoman domains, exploiting the awakening force of Arab, Armenian, and Assyrian nationalism against the Ottomans.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The British found an ally in Sharif Hussein, the hereditary ruler of Mecca (and believed by Muslims to be a descendant of Muhammad), who led an Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule, after being promised independence.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The Allies, led by Britain, won the war and seized most of the Ottoman territories; Turkey just managed to survive. The war transformed the region in terms of increased British and French involvement; the creation of the Middle Eastern state system as seen in Turkey and Saudi Arabia; the emergence of explicitly more nationalist politics, as seen in Turkey and Egypt; and the rapid growth of the Middle Eastern oil industry.


title: History of the Middle East

text: When the Ottoman Empire was defeated by an Arab uprising and the British forces after the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in 1918, the Arab population did not get what it wanted. Islamic activists of more recent times have described it as an Anglo-French betrayal. British and French governments concluded a secret treaty (the Sykes–Picot Agreement) to partition the Middle East between them. The British in 1917 announced the Balfour Declaration promised the international Zionist movement their support in re-creating the historic Jewish homeland in Palestine.


title: History of the Middle East

text: When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed an independent state in Damascus, but were too weak, militarily and economically, to resist the European powers for long, and Britain and France soon established control and re-arranged the Middle East to suit themselves.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Syria became a French protectorate as a League of Nations mandate. The Christian coastal areas were split off to become Lebanon, another French protectorate. Iraq and Palestine became British mandated territories. Iraq became the "Kingdom of Iraq" and one of Sharif Hussein's sons, Faisal, was installed as the King of Iraq. Iraq incorporated large populations of Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmens, many of whom had been promised independent states of their own.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Britain was granted a Mandate for Palestine on 25 April 1920 at the San Remo Conference, and, on 24 July 1922, this mandate was approved by the League of Nations. Palestine became the "British Mandate of Palestine" and was placed under direct British administration. The Jewish population of Palestine which numbered less than 8 percent in 1918 was given free rein to immigrate, buy land from absentee landlords, set up a shadow government in waiting and establish the nucleus of a state under the protection of the British Army which suppressed a Palestinian revolt in 1936. The Territory East of the Jordan River was added to the British Mandate by the Transjordan Memorandum, which was a British memorandum passed by the Council of the League of Nations on 16 September 1922. Most of the Arabian peninsula fell to another British ally, Ibn Saud. Saud created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.


title: History of the Middle East

text: During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Syria and Egypt made moves towards independence. In 1919, Egypt's Saad Zaghloul orchestrated mass demonstrations in Egypt known as the First Revolution. While Zaghloul would later become Prime Minister, the British repression of the anticolonial riots led to around 800 deaths. In 1920, Syrian forces were defeated by the French in the Battle of Maysalun and Iraqi forces were defeated by the British when they revolted. In 1922, the (nominally) independent Kingdom of Egypt was created following the British government's issuance of the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Although the Kingdom of Egypt was technically "neutral" during World War II, Cairo soon became a major military base for the British and the country was occupied. The British cited the 1936 treaty that allowed it to station troops on Egyptian soil to protect the Suez Canal. In 1941, the Rashīd `Alī al-Gaylānī coup in Iraq led to the British to invade, leading to the Anglo-Iraqi War. This was followed by the Allied invasion of Syria–Lebanon and the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In Palestine, conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and Zionism created a situation the British could neither resolve nor extricate themselves from. The rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler had created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to immigrate to Palestine and create a Jewish state. A Palestinian state was also an attractive alternative to the Arab and Persian leaders, instead of the de facto British, French, and perceived Jewish colonialism or imperialism, under the logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".


title: History of the Middle East

text: The British, French, and Soviets departed from many parts of the Middle East during and after World War II. Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the states in the Arabian Peninsula generally kept their boundaries. After the war, however, seven Middle East states gained (or regained) their independence:


title: History of the Middle East

text: The struggle between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine culminated in the 1947 United Nations plan to partition Palestine. This plan sought to create an Arab state and a separate Jewish state in the narrow space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The Jewish leaders accepted it, but the Arab leaders rejected this plan.


title: History of the Middle East

text: On 14 May 1948, when the British Mandate expired, the Zionist leadership declared the State of Israel. In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War which immediately followed, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia intervened and were defeated by Israel. About 800,000 Palestinians fled from areas annexed by Israel and became refugees in neighbouring countries, thus creating the "Palestinian problem", which has troubled the region ever since. Approximately two-thirds of 758,000–866,000 of the Jews expelled or who fled from Arab lands after 1948 were absorbed and naturalized by the State of Israel.


title: History of the Middle East

text: On August 16, 1960, Cyprus gained its independence from the United Kingdom. Archbishop Makarios III, a charismatic religious and political leader, was elected its first independent president, and in 1961 it became the 99th member of the United Nations.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The modern Middle East was shaped by three things: departure of European powers, the founding of Israel, and the growing importance of the oil industry. These developments eventually led to increased U.S. involvement in the region. The United States was the ultimate guarantor of the region's stability as well as the dominant force in the oil industry after the 1950s. When revolutions brought radical anti-Western regimes to power in Egypt (1954), Syria (1963), Iraq (1968), and Libya (1969), the Soviet Union, seeking to open a new arena of the Cold War, allied itself with Arab socialist rulers like Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.


title: History of the Middle East

text: These regimes gained popular support with promises to destroy the state of Israel and other "western imperialists", and to bring prosperity to the Arab masses. When the Six-Day War of 1967 ended with an overwhelming Israeli victory, many viewed the defeat as the failure of Arab socialism. This represents a turning point when "fundamental and militant Islam began to fill the political vacuum created".


title: History of the Middle East

text: The United States, in response, felt obliged to defend its remaining allies, the monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, and the Persian Gulf emirates, whose methods of rule were often almost as unattractive in western eyes as those of the anti-western regimes. Iran in particular became a key U.S. ally, until a revolution led by the Shi'a clergy overthrew the monarchy in 1979 and established a theocratic state that proved to be far more anti-western than the secular regimes in Iraq or Syria. The list of Arab-Israeli wars includes a great number of major wars such as 1948 Arab–Israeli War, 1956 Suez War, 1967 Six-Day War, 1967-1970 War of Attrition, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, as well as a number of lesser conflicts of lower intensity.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In Cyprus between 1955 and 1974, conflict arising between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots led to Cypriot intercommunal violence and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The Cyprus dispute remains unresolved.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In the mid-to-late 1960s, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar took power in both Iraq and Syria. Iraq was first ruled by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, but was succeeded by Saddam Hussein in 1979, and Syria was ruled first by a Military Committee led by Salah Jadid, and later Hafez al-Assad until 2000, when he was succeeded by his son, Bashar al-Assad.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In 1979, Egypt under Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel, ending the prospects of a united Arab military front. From the 1970s the Palestinians, led by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, resorted to a prolonged campaign of violence against Israel and against American, Jewish, and western targets generally, as a means of weakening Israeli resolve and undermining western support for Israel. The Palestinians were supported in this, to varying degrees, by the regimes in Syria, Libya, Iran, and Iraq. The high point of this campaign came in the 1975 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as a form of racism and the reception given to Arafat by the United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 3379 was revoked in 1991 by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 4686.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Due to many of the frantic events of the late 1970s in the Middle East it culminated in the Iran–Iraq War between neighbouring Iran and Iraq. The war, started by Iraq, who invaded Iranian Khuzestan in 1980 at the behest of the latter's chaotic state of country due to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, eventually turned into a stalemate with hundreds of thousands of dead on both sides.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism in the early 1990s had several consequences for the Middle East. It allowed large numbers of Soviet Jews to emigrate from Russia and Ukraine to Israel, further strengthening the Jewish state. It cut off the easiest source of credit, armaments, and diplomatic support to the anti-western Arab regimes, weakening their position. It opened up the prospect of cheap oil from Russia, driving down the price of oil and reducing the west's dependence on oil from the Arab states. It discredited the model of development through authoritarian state socialism, which Egypt (under Nasser), Algeria, Syria, and Iraq had followed since the 1960s, leaving these regimes politically and economically stranded. Rulers such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein increasingly relied on Arab nationalism as a substitute for socialism.


title: History of the Middle East

text: Saddam Hussein led Iraq into a prolonged and costly war with Iran from 1980 to 1988, and then into its fateful invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman province of Basra before 1918, and thus in a sense part of Iraq, even though Iraq had recognized its independence in 1961. In response, the United States formed a coalition of allies with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, gained UN approval, and evicted Iraq from Kuwait by force in the Gulf War. President George H. W. Bush did not, however, attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein, which the United States later came to regret. The Gulf War led to a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, particularly in Saudi Arabia, which offended many Muslims, and was a reason often cited by Osama bin Laden as justification for the September 11 attacks.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The worldwide change of governance in Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and parts of Africa following the dissolution of the Soviet Union did not occur in the Middle East. In the whole region, only Israel, Turkey and to some extent Lebanon and the Palestinian territories were considered to be democracies. Some countries had legislative bodies, but these were said to have little power. In the Persian Gulf states the majority of the population could not vote because they were guest workers rather than citizens.


title: History of the Middle East

text: In most Middle Eastern countries, the growth of market economies was said to be limited by political restrictions, corruption, and cronyism, overspending on arms and prestige projects and over-dependence on oil revenues. The successful economies were countries that had oil wealth and low populations, such as Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, where the ruling emirs allowed some political and social liberalization, but without giving up any of their own power. Lebanon also rebuilt a fairly successful economy after a prolonged civil war in the 1980s.


title: History of the Middle East

text: At the beginning of the 21st century, all these factors intensified conflict in the Middle East, which affected the entire world. Bill Clinton's failed attempt to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine at the Camp David Summit in 2000 led directly to the election of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister of Israel and to the Second Intifada, which conducted suicide bombings on Israeli civilians. This was the first major outbreak of violence since the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993.


title: History of the Middle East

text: At the same time, the failures of most of the Arab governments and the bankruptcy of secular Arab radicalism led a section of educated Arabs (and other Muslims) to embrace Islamism, promoted both by Iran's Shi'a clerics as well as by Saudi Arabia's powerful Wahhabist sect. Many of the militant Islamists gained their military training while fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Many of the Afghan jihadists, though supposedly none of the Arab volunteers, were funded by the United States under Operation Cyclone as part of the Reagan Doctrine, one of the longest and most expensive CIA covert operations ever.


title: History of the Middle East

text: One of these Arab militants was a wealthy Saudi Arabian named Osama bin Laden. After fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, he formed the al-Qaida organization, which was responsible for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the USS "Cole" bombing and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The September 11 attacks led the George W. Bush administration to invade Afghanistan in 2001 to overthrow the Taliban regime, which had been harbouring Bin Laden and al-Qaida. The United States and its allies described this operation as part of a global "War on Terror".


title: History of the Middle East

text: In 2002, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld developed a plan to invade Iraq, remove Saddam from power, and turn Iraq into a democratic state with a free-market economy, which they hoped would serve as a model for the rest of the Middle East. The United States and its principal allies—Britain, Italy, Spain, and Australia—could not secure United Nations approval for the execution of the numerous UN resolutions, so they launched an invasion of Iraq and deposed Saddam without much difficulty in April 2003.


title: History of the Middle East

text: The advent of a new western army of occupation in a Middle Eastern capital marked a turning point in the history of the region. Despite successful elections (although boycotted by large portions of Iraq's Sunni population) held in January 2005, much of Iraq had all but disintegrated, due to a post-war insurgency which morphed into persistent ethnic violence that the American army was initially unable to quell. Many of Iraq's intellectual and business elite fled the country, and many Iraqi refugees left as a result of the insurgency, further destabilizing the region. A responsive surge in U.S. forces in Iraq was largely successful in controlling the insurgency and stabilizing the country. U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq by December 2011.


title: History of the Middle East

text: By 2005, President George W. Bush's Road map for peace between Israel and the Palestinians was stalled, although this situation had begun to change with Yasser Arafat's death in 2004. In response, Israel moved towards a unilateral solution, pushing ahead with the Israeli West Bank barrier to protect Israel from Palestinian suicide bombers and proposed unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. In 2006 a new conflict erupted between Israel and Hezbollah Shi'a militia in southern Lebanon, further setting back any "prospects for peace".


title: History of the Middle East

text: In the early 2010s, a revolutionary wave popularly known as the Arab Spring brought major protests, uprisings, and revolutions to several Middle Eastern countries, followed by prolonged civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. In 2014, a terrorist group and self-proclaimed caliphate calling itself the Islamic State made rapid territorial gains in western Iraq and eastern Syria, prompting international military intervention. At its peak, the group controlled an area containing an estimated 2.8 to 8 million people, 98% of which was lost by December 2017.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: Friends with benefits relationships (FWB or FWBR) is a term commonly used to reference a relationship that is sexual without being romantic. Typically, these relationships can be between people that consider themselves non-platonic and friends without pressure. These non-committal relationships can be short term, or evolve into serious romantic relationships. FWB relationships are enjoyed by both women and men, which is in contrast to casual sexual encounters, more prevalent among men.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: The parties involved in FWB relationships enter it with the understanding that the relationship will end at some point in time. This differs from romantic relationships in that the unsaid goal of a romantic relationship is for the parties involved to stay in the relationship long term.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: However, as FWB relationships continue to evolve, individuals involved often have changing motivations for why they continue the FWB relationships. The motivation for many of these relationships is typically companionship, and after time the affection for the partners involved often becomes genuine.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: Unlike more casual relationships (i.e. sexting, one night stands, and other brief sexual encounters), FWBs continue to have a sexual relationships and romance. Although it seems similar, FWB relationships differ from casual sex relationships in that FWB relationships are a commitment to continuous casual sex. One-night stands are brief encounters with limited information exchanged. The parties involved typically part the next day without any additional communication. Booty calls are between people that are already acquainted, but not necessarily friends. Booty calls are usually recurring and do not develop into anything more. Sugaring involves exchanging gifts or money for companionship.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: FWB relationships include friendship and sexual interactions without romance. In some ways, the success of this type of relationship is rooted in avoidance. Even with the rise in popularity in friends with benefits relationships, there is not a high success rate of continued friendship at the end of a friends with benefits relationship. Although these relationships are established to safely connect with a partner without the emotions, often these relationships are not genuine. Research on deceptive affection shows that people often hide their honest feelings because of concern that they will not be mutual or well received. Deceptive affection ends up being used as a tool to protect personal feelings so that no one gets hurt. Ultimately, these relationships continue to be complex despite the attempt to be void of emotions, the lines become blurred and feelings are sometimes developed by one partner that are not always well received by the other.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: The origin of the term "friends with benefits" is difficult to trace, although it is regularly used and practiced in today's society. The earliest known use of the term is documented in Alanis Morissette's 1995-1996 song "Head over Feet" when she says, "you're my best friend, best friend with benefits". (The ironic part of Morissette's use of it is that she is describing a long-term relationship, in which her lover is also her best friend, unlike the standard conception of friends with benefits.)


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: According to research, women often report that they do not feel their needs are being met in FWB relationships. Third wave feminism is the evolution of second-wave feminism. Third-wave feminism is the belief that "young women should not be inhibited either by traditional norms of sexuality that stigmatize female sexual experimentation in non-committed relationships, nor by a sense that one form of sexual practice is more "feminist" than another (Williams & Jovanovic, pp. 158)." Third-wave feminism is often described in comparison to its past versions as “more evolved and sexually expressive, and third wave feminists defy the expectation that women's sexuality is simplistic.” Third-wave feminists also reject the notion that young women engaging in casual sex, FWB relationships, etc. should be labeled as "sluts". Arguments can be made by third wave feminists on both sides about the positives and negatives of FWB relationships. On the one hand, FWB relationships allow women to explore their sexuality in an affaire de coeur that can be considered "safe", even if it is non-committal, giving them the space to communicate their needs. On another hand, FWB relationships may not help women navigate the full extent of their sexual agency without exploitation.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: In 2011, the film "Friends with Benefits", starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, was released which depicted a friends with benefits relationship between the two co-stars. Within the same year, the film "No Strings Attached", starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher was also released. It as well depicted a friends with benefits relationship between its own two co-stars. Since then, the concept has become a phenomenon that is frequently referenced in popular culture and adopted by society.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: In an era of increased sexual liberation, casual sexual relationships continue to become more prominent. Studies show that an increasing number of college students, both male and female, report having a friends with benefits relationship at some point. Men tend to view FWB relationships as casual, while women tend to view them as friendships. Men are also more likely to have sexual relations with someone that they are not in a romantic relationship with.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: Themes that emerged from one study on FWB at a university in southern California included "(1) FWB relationships as empowering to young women, (2) FWB relationships as not empowering to young women, (3) FWB relationships as providing a safe option in place of hook-ups, and (4) control and power in FWB relationships" (Williams & Jovanovic, pp. 167)."


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: Another study proved that individuals who avoid attachment experience less sexual satisfaction in relationships. This study also found a correlation between attachment anxiety and sexual satisfaction.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: As FWB relationships continue to be a topic of interest, research on the subject is starting to lose its negative connotation. FWB relationships continue to grow in popularity amongst young people and older people without young children.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: Affection exchange theory states "individuals need to give and receive affection in order to survive and procreate." When individuals are not a part of healthy relationships that allow them to show affection without question, then they have less anxiety in relationships. Although some FWB relationships can withhold affection, some FWB relationships can give individuals the opportunity to receive affection even if they are not in a committed relationship. Post sex communication like pillow talk, cuddling, and kissing can have positive outcomes. When this does not happen, individuals can harbor hostility. Research shows that relationships that do not have healthy communication post sex (like some FWB relationships) can experience attachment avoidance due to lack of affectionate communication. In order for individuals to feel sexual satisfaction, it is important to understand the attachment needs of the parties involved in the sexual relationship.


title: Friends with benefits relationships

text: Stein et al. claim that part of the allure of friends with benefits relationships ties into self-determination theory (SDT) (pp. 318). SDT delves into the human need to continuously search for new challenges. FWB relationships attract so many people because of the allure of the easy going non-committal relationship. The root of SDT is the need to have goals that are either approach focused, or avoidance focused. Approach focused goals are centered on what an individual can gain from a relationship, in a FWB situation this can be sex. Avoidance focused goals look at failures that can be avoided. In the case of FWB relationships, an individual can avoid a romantic relationship ending with a negative outcome.


title: Miller index

text: Miller indices form a notation system in crystallography for lattice planes in crystal (Bravais) lattices.


title: Miller index

text: In particular, a family of lattice planes of a given (direct) Bravais lattice is determined by three integers "h", "k", and "ℓ", the "Miller indices". They are written (hkℓ), and denote the family of (parallel) lattice planes (of the given Bravais lattice) orthogonal to formula_1, where formula_2 are the basis or primitive translation vectors of the reciprocal lattice for the given Bravais lattice. (Note that the plane is not always orthogonal to the linear combination of direct or original lattice vectors formula_3 because the direct lattice vectors need not be mutually orthogonal.) This is based on the fact that a reciprocal lattice vector formula_4 (the vector indicating a reciprocal lattice point from the reciprocal lattice origin) is the wavevector of a plane wave in the Fourier series of a spatial function (e.g., electronic density function) which periodicity follows the original Bravais lattice, so wavefronts of the plane wave are coincident with parallel lattice planes of the original lattice. Since a measured scattering vector in X-ray crystallography, formula_5 with formula_6 as the outgoing (scattered from a crystal lattice) X-ray wavevector and formula_7 as the incoming (toward the crystal lattice) X-ray wavevector, is equal to a reciprocal lattice vector formula_4 as stated by the Laue equations, the measured scattered X-ray peak at each measured scattering vector formula_9 is marked by "Miller indices". By convention, negative integers are written with a bar, as in for −3. The integers are usually written in lowest terms, i.e. their greatest common divisor should be 1. Miller indices are also used to designate reflections in X-ray crystallography. In this case the integers are not necessarily in lowest terms, and can be thought of as corresponding to planes spaced such that the reflections from adjacent planes would have a phase difference of exactly one wavelength (2π), regardless of whether there are atoms on all these planes or not.


title: Miller index

text: Miller indices were introduced in 1839 by the British mineralogist William Hallowes Miller, although an almost identical system ("Weiss parameters") had already been used by German mineralogist Christian Samuel Weiss since 1817. The method was also historically known as the Millerian system, and the indices as Millerian, although this is now rare.


title: Miller index

text: The Miller indices are defined with respect to any choice of unit cell and not only with respect to primitive basis vectors, as is sometimes stated.


title: Miller index

text: There are two equivalent ways to define the meaning of the Miller indices: via a point in the reciprocal lattice, or as the inverse intercepts along the lattice vectors. Both definitions are given below. In either case, one needs to choose the three lattice vectors a, a, and a that define the unit cell (note that the conventional unit cell may be larger than the primitive cell of the Bravais lattice, as the examples below illustrate). Given these, the three primitive reciprocal lattice vectors are also determined (denoted b, b, and b).


title: Miller index

text: Then, given the three Miller indices h, k, ℓ, (hkℓ) denotes planes orthogonal to the reciprocal lattice vector:


title: Miller index

text: That is, (hkℓ) simply indicates a normal to the planes in the basis of the primitive reciprocal lattice vectors. Because the coordinates are integers, this normal is itself always a reciprocal lattice vector. The requirement of lowest terms means that it is the "shortest" reciprocal lattice vector in the given direction.


title: Miller index

text: Equivalently, (hkℓ) denotes a plane that intercepts the three points a/"h", a/"k", and a/"ℓ", or some multiple thereof. That is, the Miller indices are proportional to the "inverses" of the intercepts of the plane, in the basis of the lattice vectors. If one of the indices is zero, it means that the planes do not intersect that axis (the intercept is "at infinity").


title: Miller index

text: Considering only (hkℓ) planes intersecting one or more lattice points (the "lattice planes"), the perpendicular distance "d" between adjacent lattice planes is related to the (shortest) reciprocal lattice vector orthogonal to the planes by the formula: formula_11.


title: Miller index

text: That is, it uses the direct lattice basis instead of the reciprocal lattice. Note that [hkℓ] is "not" generally normal to the (hkℓ) planes, except in a cubic lattice as described below.


title: Miller index

text: For the special case of simple cubic crystals, the lattice vectors are orthogonal and of equal length (usually denoted "a"), as are those of the reciprocal lattice. Thus, in this common case, the Miller indices (hkℓ) and [hkℓ] both simply denote normals/directions in Cartesian coordinates.


title: Miller index

text: For cubic crystals with lattice constant "a", the spacing "d" between adjacent (hkℓ) lattice planes is (from above)


title: Miller index

text: Because of the symmetry of cubic crystals, it is possible to change the place and sign of the integers and have equivalent directions and planes:


title: Miller index

text: For face-centered cubic and body-centered cubic lattices, the primitive lattice vectors are not orthogonal. However, in these cases the Miller indices are conventionally defined relative to the lattice vectors of the cubic supercell and hence are again simply the Cartesian directions.


title: Miller index

text: With hexagonal and rhombohedral lattice systems, it is possible to use the Bravais-Miller system, which uses four indices ("h" "k" "i" "ℓ") that obey the constraint


title: Miller index

text: Here "h", "k" and "ℓ" are identical to the corresponding Miller indices, and "i" is a redundant index.


title: Miller index

text: This four-index scheme for labeling planes in a hexagonal lattice makes permutation symmetries apparent. For example, the similarity between (110) ≡ (110) and (10) ≡ (110) is more obvious when the redundant index is shown.


title: Miller index

text: In the figure at right, the (001) plane has a 3-fold symmetry: it remains unchanged by a rotation of 1/3 (2π/3 rad, 120°). The [100], [010] and the [0] directions are really similar. If "S" is the intercept of the plane with the [0] axis, then


title: Miller index

text: There are also "ad hoc" schemes (e.g. in the transmission electron microscopy literature) for indexing hexagonal "lattice vectors" (rather than reciprocal lattice vectors or planes) with four indices. However they don't operate by similarly adding a redundant index to the regular three-index set.


title: Miller index

text: For example, the reciprocal lattice vector (hkℓ) as suggested above can be written in terms of reciprocal lattice vectors as formula_14. For hexagonal crystals this may be expressed in terms of direct-lattice basis-vectors a, a and a as


title: Miller index

text: Hence zone indices of the direction perpendicular to plane (hkℓ) are, in suitably normalized triplet form, simply formula_16. When "four indices" are used for the zone normal to plane (hkℓ), however, the literature often uses formula_17 instead. Thus as you can see, four-index zone indices in square or angle brackets sometimes mix a single direct-lattice index on the right with reciprocal-lattice indices (normally in round or curly brackets) on the left.


title: Miller index

text: Crystallographic directions are lines linking nodes (atoms, ions or molecules) of a crystal. Similarly, crystallographic planes are "planes" linking nodes. Some directions and planes have a higher density of nodes; these dense planes have an influence on the behavior of the crystal:


title: Miller index

text: Ordinarily, Miller indices are always integers by definition, and this constraint is physically significant. To understand this, suppose that we allow a plane (abc) where the Miller "indices" "a", "b" and "c" (defined as above) are not necessarily integers.


title: Miller index

text: If "a", "b" and "c" have rational ratios, then the same family of planes can be written in terms of integer indices (hkℓ) by scaling "a", "b" and "c" appropriately: divide by the largest of the three numbers, and then multiply by the least common denominator. Thus, integer Miller indices implicitly include indices with all rational ratios. The reason why planes where the components (in the reciprocal-lattice basis) have rational ratios are of special interest is that these are the lattice planes: they are the only planes whose intersections with the crystal are 2d-periodic.


title: Miller index

text: For a plane (abc) where "a", "b" and "c" have irrational ratios, on the other hand, the intersection of the plane with the crystal is "not" periodic. It forms an aperiodic pattern known as a quasicrystal. This construction corresponds precisely to the standard "cut-and-project" method of defining a quasicrystal, using a plane with irrational-ratio Miller indices. (Although many quasicrystals, such as the Penrose tiling, are formed by "cuts" of periodic lattices in more than three dimensions, involving the intersection of more than one such hyperplane.)


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: In cryptography, a nonce is an arbitrary number that can be used just once in a cryptographic communication. It is often a random or pseudo-random number issued in an authentication protocol to ensure that old communications cannot be reused in replay attacks. They can also be useful as initialization vectors and in cryptographic hash functions.


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: A nonce is an arbitrary number used only once in a cryptographic communication, in the spirit of a nonce word. They are often random or pseudo-random numbers. Many nonces also include a timestamp to ensure exact timeliness, though this requires clock synchronisation between organisations. The addition of a client nonce ("cnonce") helps to improve the security in some ways as implemented in digest access authentication. To ensure that a nonce is used only once, it should be time-variant (including a suitably fine-grained timestamp in its value), or generated with enough random bits to ensure a insignificantly low chance of repeating a previously generated value. Some authors define pseudo-randomness (or unpredictability) as a requirement for a nonce.


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: Nonce is a word dating back to Middle English for something only used once or temporarily (often with the construction "for the nonce"). It descends from the construction "then anes" ("the one [purpose]"). A false etymology claiming it to mean "number used once" is incorrect. In Britain the term may be avoided as "nonce" in modern British English means a paedophile.


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: Authentication protocols may use nonces to ensure that old communications cannot be reused in replay attacks. For instance, nonces are used in HTTP digest access authentication to calculate an MD5 digest of the password. The nonces are different each time the 401 authentication challenge response code is presented, thus making replay attacks virtually impossible. The scenario of ordering products over the Internet can provide an example of the usefulness of nonces in replay attacks. An attacker could take the encrypted information and—without needing to decrypt—could continue to send a particular order to the supplier, thereby ordering products over and over again under the same name and purchase information. The nonce is used to give 'originality' to a given message so that if the company receives any other orders from the same person with the same nonce, it will discard those as invalid orders.


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: A nonce may be used to ensure security for a stream cipher. Where the same key is used for more than one message and then a different nonce is used to ensure that the keystream is different for different messages encrypted with that key; often the message number is used.


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: Secret nonce values are used by the Lamport signature scheme as a signer-side secret which can be selectively revealed for comparison to public hashes for signature creation and verification.


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: Nonces are used in proof-of-work systems to vary the input to a cryptographic hash function so as to obtain a hash for a certain input that fulfils certain arbitrary conditions. In doing so, it becomes far more difficult to create a "desirable" hash than to verify it, shifting the burden of work onto one side of a transaction or system. For example, proof of work, using hash functions, was considered as a means to combat email spam by forcing email senders to find a hash value for the email (which included a timestamp to prevent pre-computation of useful hashes for later use) that had an arbitrary number of leading zeroes, by hashing the same input with a large number of values until a "desirable" hash was obtained.


title: Cryptographic nonce

text: Similarly, the bitcoin blockchain hashing algorithm can be tuned to an arbitrary difficulty by changing the required minimum/maximum value of the hash so that the number of bitcoins awarded for new blocks does not increase linearly with increased network computation power as new users join. This is likewise achieved by forcing bitcoin miners to add nonce values to the value being hashed to change the hash algorithm output. As cryptographic hash algorithms cannot easily be predicted based on their inputs, this makes the act of blockchain hashing and the possibility of being awarded bitcoins something of a lottery, where the first "miner" to find a nonce that delivers a desirable hash is awarded bitcoins.


title: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

text: "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" is the debut single by Edison Lighthouse. The song reached the number one spot on the UK Singles Chart on the week ending 31 January 1970, where it remained for a total of five weeks.


title: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

text: It also became the first number one single of the 1970s (not counting Rolf Harris's "Two Little Boys" which was a holdover from 1969).


title: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

text: "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" was written by Tony Macaulay and Barry Mason and was first recorded by Tony Burrows with session musicians. "Love Grows" entered the UK top 40 at No. 12 on 24 January 1970 – an unusually high new entry for a debut act. A week later, the track climbed eleven places to No. 1, becoming the first new UK chart-topper of the 1970s. After a five-week stay at the top, "Love Grows" dropped to No. 4, replaced by "Wand'rin' Star" by Lee Marvin. Whilst at No. 1, Edison Lighthouse held off strong competition from Peter, Paul and Mary ("Leaving on a Jet Plane") and Canned Heat ("Let's Work Together"). Eventually, after a 12-week run, "Love Grows" left the UK top 40 on 18 April 1970.


title: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

text: When "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" became a hit, a group needed to be assembled rapidly to perform the song on "Top of the Pops". The pair found a group called Greenfield Hammer, who a week later appeared on "Top of the Pops" as 'Edison Lighthouse' to mime to the fastest-climbing number-one hit record in history. Burrows sang the song on the programme on four separate weeks in January and February 1970 and on each show he also appeared singing lead for either Brotherhood of Man ("United We Stand") or White Plains ("My Baby Loves Lovin'"), who also had hits during that same month-long stretch.


title: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

text: In the U.S., the Edison Lighthouse version of "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" came close to facing competition from a cover version that ABC-Dunhill Records wished to cut with well-established top 40 hitmakers the Grass Roots; however, the latter group passed on the song, reportedly because Grass Roots frontman Rob Grill balked at singing a love song that might be presumed to reference co-member Warren Entner's wife Rosemarie Frankland. Issued in the U.S. in February 1970, "Love Grows" by Edison Lighthouse entered the top 40 of the "Billboard" Hot 100 dated 28 February 1970 at No. 68, to reach a peak position of No. 5 on 28 March, remaining there for two weeks. After a 12-week run, "Love Grows" exited the US top 40 on 23 May.


title: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

text: "Love Grows" reached number 3 on the Canadian "RPM" Top Singles chart and number 3 in South Africa in February 1970.


title: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

text: Toward the end of 2021, the song saw a massive resurgence due to it becoming popular on TikTok. Between December 25, 2021 and January 3, 2022, the song saw a growth of 1,490% in its on-demand audio streams, and moved onto Spotify's U.S. Top 200 Chart.


title: Gunship

text: A gunship is a military aircraft armed with heavy aircraft guns, primarily intended for attacking ground targets either as airstrike or as close air support.


title: Gunship

text: In modern usage the term "gunship" refers to fixed-wing aircraft having laterally-mounted heavy armaments (i.e. firing to the side) to attack ground or sea targets. These gunships are configured to circle the target instead of performing strafing runs. Such aircraft have their armament on one side harmonized to fire at the apex of an imaginary cone formed by the aircraft and the ground when performing a pylon turn (banking turn). The term "gunship" originated in the mid-19th century as a synonym for gunboat and also referred to the heavily armed ironclad steamships used during the American Civil War.


title: Gunship

text: During 1942 and 1943, the lack of a usable escort fighter for the United States Army Air Forces in the European Theatre of Operations led to experiments in dramatically increasing the armament of a standard Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress, and later a single Consolidated B-24D Liberator, to each have 14 to 16 Browning AN/M2 .50 cal machine guns as the Boeing YB-40 Flying Fortress and Consolidated XB-41 Liberator respectively. These were to accompany regular heavy bomber formations over occupied Europe on strategic bombing raids for long-range escort duties as "flying destroyer gunships". The YB-40 was sometimes described as a gunship, and a small 25-aircraft batch of the B-17-derived gunships were built, with a dozen of these deployed to Europe; the XB-41 had problems with stability and did not progress.


title: Gunship

text: During World War II, the urgent need for hard-hitting attack aircraft led to the development of the heavily armed gunship versions of the North American B-25 Mitchell. For use against shipping in the Pacific 405 B-25Gs were armed with a 75 mm (2.95 in) M4 cannon and a thousand B-25Hs followed. The H models, delivered from August 1943, moved the dorsal turret forward to just behind the cockpit and were armed with the lighter 75mm T13E1 cannon. The B-25J variant removed the 75mm gun but carried a total of eighteen 0.50 cal (12.7 mm) AN/M2 Browning machine guns, more than any other contemporary American aircraft: eight in the nose, four in under-cockpit conformal flank-mount gun pod packages, two in the dorsal turret, one each in the pair of waist positions, and a pair in the tail, giving a maximum of fourteen guns firing forward in strafing runs. Later the B-25J was armed with eight 5 in. (130 mm) high velocity aircraft rockets (HVARs).


title: Gunship

text: The British also made large numbers of twin-engined fighter bombers. The de Havilland Mosquito FB.VI had a fixed armament of four 20 mm Hispano Mk.II cannon and four .303 (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns, together with up to 4,000 pounds of bombs in the bomb bay and on racks housed in streamlined fairings under each wing, or up to eight "60lb" RP-3 rockets. De Havilland also produced seventeen Mosquito FB Mk XVIIIs armed with a 57 mm QF 6-pdr anti-tank gun with autoloader, which were used against German ships and U-boats.


title: Gunship

text: The Germans also made a sizable number of heavy fighter types ("Zerstörer"—"destroyer") armed with heavy guns ("Bordkanone"). Dedicated "tankbuster" aircraft such as the Ju 87Gs ("Kanonenvogel") were armed with two BK 37mm autocannon in underwing gun pods. The Ju 88P gunships were armed with 37mm, 50mm and 75mm guns, and were used as tankbusters and as bomber destroyers. The Hs 129 could carry a 30 mm (1.181 in) MK 101 cannon or MK 103 cannon in a conformally mounted gun pod (B-2/R-2). The Me 410 "Hornisse" were armed with the same BK 50mm autocannon as the Ju 88P-4, but were only used as bomber destroyers. None of the German twin-engine heavy fighters types were produced or converted in large numbers.


title: Gunship

text: In the more modern, post-World War II fixed-wing aircraft category, a gunship is an aircraft having laterally-mounted heavy armaments (i.e. firing to the side) to attack ground or sea targets. These gunships were configured to circle the target instead of performing strafing runs. Such aircraft have their armament on one side harmonized to fire at the apex of an imaginary cone formed by the aircraft and the ground when performing a pylon turn (banking turn).


title: Gunship

text: The Douglas AC-47 Spooky was the first notable modern gunship. In 1964, during the Vietnam War, the popular Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport was successfully modified into a gunship by the United States Air Force with three side-firing Miniguns for circling attacks. At the time the aircraft was known as a "Dragonship", "Puff, the Magic Dragon" or "Spooky" (officially designated FC-47, later corrected to AC-47). Its three 7.62 mm miniguns could selectively fire either 50 or 100 rounds per second. Cruising in an overhead left-hand orbit at 120 knots air speed at an altitude of , the gunship could put a bullet or glowing red tracer (every fifth round) into every square yard of a football field–sized target in potentially less than 10 seconds. And, as long as its 45-flare and 24,000-round basic load of ammunition held out, it could do this intermittently while loitering over the target for hours.


title: Gunship

text: The lesser known Fairchild AC-119G Shadow and AC-119K Stingers were twin-engine piston-powered gunships developed by the United States during the Vietnam War. Armed with four 7.62 mm GAU-2/A Miniguns (and two 20 mm (0.787 in) M61 Vulcan six-barrel rotary cannons in the AC-119K version), they replaced the Douglas AC-47 Spooky and operated alongside the early versions of the AC-130 Spectre gunship.