title: Kennewick Man

text: The discovery of Kennewick Man, along with other ancient skeletons, has furthered scientific debate over the exact origin and history of early Native American people. One hypothesis holds that a single source of migration occurred, consisting of hunters and gatherers following large herds of game who wandered across the Bering land bridge. An alternative hypothesis is that more than one source population was involved in migration immediately following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which occurred ~22k to ~18k years BP, and that the land migration through Beringia was either preceded by or roughly synchronous with a waterborne migration from coastal Asia.


title: Kennewick Man

text: The similarity of some ancient skeletal remains in the Americas, such as Kennewick Man, to coastal Asian phenotypes is suggestive of more than one migration source. Classification of DNA from ancient skeletons such as Kennewick Man and others of similar phenotype may or may not reveal genetic affiliation between them, with either Beringian or coastal Asian source populations.


title: Kennewick Man

text: Regardless of the debate over whether there were more than one source of migration following the LGM, Kennewick Man has yielded insight into the marine lifestyle and mobility of early coastal migrants.


title: Kennewick Man

text: In 2012, Burke Museum archeologists voiced concern and criticism of the Owsley team's findings. First, it was noted that no one outside of Owsley's team had an opportunity to examine the Smithsonian's data to see how the team reached its conclusions.


title: Kennewick Man

text: Second, the absence of peer-reviewed articles published prior to Owsley unveiling the bones' secrets was criticized. Standard procedure in the academic world is for scientists to submit articles to scholarly journals, have other experts review the articles prior to publication, and have experts debate results after publication. While Owsley consulted extensively with his group of experts, he has yet to publish a scholarly article on Kennewick Man. "He's never published any scientific results of his studies. There's no place for anyone to look at the actual data. You have to have a higher amount of scrutiny in the scientific process," said Peter Lape, the curator of archaeology at the Burke Museum and an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Washington.


title: Kennewick Man

text: Third, Owsley's non-Native argument hinged on the assumption that Kennewick Man's skull was a reliable means of assessing ancestry. This was a "nineteenth-century skull science paradigm", said David Hurst Thomas, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. Skulls are no longer used as the basis for classifying remains, as DNA evidence is more accurate and reliable.


title: Kennewick Man

text: According to NAGPRA, if human remains are found on federal lands and their cultural affiliation to a Native American tribe can be established, the affiliated tribe may claim them. The Umatilla tribe requested custody of the remains and wanted to bury them according to tribal tradition. Their claim was contested by researchers hoping to study the remains.


title: Kennewick Man

text: The Umatilla argued that their oral history goes back 10,000 years and say that their people have been present on their historical territory since the dawn of time.


title: Kennewick Man

text: Robson Bonnichsen and seven other anthropologists sued the United States for the right to conduct tests on the skeleton. On February 4, 2004, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel rejected the appeal brought by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Umatilla, Colville, Yakama, Nez Perce, and other tribes on the grounds that they were unable to show any evidence of kinship. The presiding judge found that the US government had acted in bad faith and awarded attorney’s fees of $2,379,000 to the plaintiffs.


title: Kennewick Man

text: On April 7, 2005, during the 109th Congress, United States senator John McCain introduced an amendment to NAGPRA, which (section 108) would have changed the definition of "Native American" from being that which "is indigenous to the United States" to "is or was indigenous to the United States". However, the 109th Congress concluded without enacting the bill. By the bill's definition, Kennewick Man would have been classified as Native American regardless of whether any link to a contemporary tribe could be found.


title: Kennewick Man

text: Proponents argue that it agrees with current scientific understanding, which is that it is not in all cases possible for prehistoric remains to be traced to current tribal entities, partly because of social upheaval, forced resettlement, and extinction of entire ethnicities caused by disease and warfare. Passage of this bill would not resolve the controversy related to Kennewick Man, as there would have to be a determination of which Native American group should take possession of the remains if he could not be definitively linked with a current tribe. To be of practical use in a historical and prehistorical context, some argue further that the phrase "Native American" should be applied so that it spans the entire range from the Clovis culture (which cannot be positively assigned to any contemporary tribal group) to the Métis, a group of mixed ancestry who developed as an ethnic group as a consequence of European contact, yet constitute distinct cultural entity.


title: Kennewick Man

text: As of 2014, the remains were at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, where they were deposited in October 1998. The Burke Museum was the court-appointed neutral repository for the remains and did not exhibit them. They were then still legally the property of the US Army Corps of Engineers, as they were found on land under its custody. The tribes still wanted the remains to be reburied. The Corps of Engineers continued to deny scientists' requests to conduct additional studies of the skeleton. In light of the findings that Kennewick Man is related to present-day Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, public officials such as Governor Jay Inslee and Senator Patty Murray called on the Corps of Engineers, who retained possession of Kennewick Man, to return the remains to Native American tribes.


title: Kennewick Man

text: The early 2000s technologies and techniques were insufficient in producing meaningful results of the ancient DNA (aDNA). With changes in technology, additional DNA testing of remains has been conducted by an analytical laboratory in Denmark. A 2013 e-mail from the laboratory to the US Corps of Engineers stated their belief, based on preliminary results of analysis, that the specimen contained Native American DNA. The laboratory was not ready to release final results or discuss the conclusions. In June 2015 the study team announced they had concluded their DNA analysis, finding that "Kennewick Man is closer to modern Native Americans than to any other population worldwide," and that "genetic comparisons show "continuity with Native North Americans". The same study confirmed the mitochondrial haplogroup X2a and the Y-chromosome haplogroup Q-M3 of Kennewick Man; both lineages are found almost exclusively among modern Native Americans.


title: Kennewick Man

text: Reporter Jack Hitt wrote in 2005 that "racial preferences color" the controversy about the genetic origin and ancestry of Kennewick Man. James Chatters, the first anthropologist to examine the skull of Kennewick man, said that it lacked the "definitive characteristics of the classic Mongoloid stock to which modern Native Americans belong", adding that many of the characteristics of the skull "are definitive of modern-day Caucasoid peoples". In 1998, Chatters reconstructed the facial features of the skull. Observers said that Kennewick Man resembled British actor Patrick Stewart.


title: Kennewick Man

text: The use of the word "Caucasoid" in Chatters' report and his facial reconstruction were taken by many to mean that Kennewick Man was "Caucasian", European, and "white" rather than an ancestor of present-day Native Americans, although the term "Caucasoid" had also been applied to the Ainu of northern Japan, and an Ainu genetic connection would have been more plausible here. In 1998, "The New York Times" reported "White supremacist groups are among those who used Kennewick Man to claim that Caucasians came to America well before Native Americans." Additionally, Asatru Folk Assembly, a racialist neopagan organization, sued to have the bones genetically tested before it was adjudicated that Kennewick Man was an ancestor of present-day Native Americans. Native American tribes asserted that the claims that Kennewick Man was of European origin were an attempt to evade the law governing ownership and burial of ancient bones. The Corps of Engineers and federal government supported the Native American claim in what became a long-running lawsuit.


title: Kennewick Man

text: The results of genetic investigations published in 2015 strongly pointed toward a Native American ancestry of Kennewick Man. The genetic evidence adds to evidence that ancestors of the New World's aboriginal peoples originated in Siberia and migrated across a land mass that spanned the Bering Strait during the last ice age, and disputes alternative theories that some early migrants arrived from Southeast Asia or even Europe. (See also Solutrean hypothesis)


title: Kennewick Man

text: In September 2016, the US House and Senate passed legislation to return the ancient bones to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes for reburial according to their traditions. The coalition includes the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, and the Wanapum Band of Priest Rapids.


title: Kennewick Man

text: The remains of Kennewick Man were cataloged and removed from the Burke Museum on 17 February 2017. The following day, more than 200 members of five Columbia Plateau tribes were present at a burial of the remains.


The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality is a metropolitan municipality that manages the local governance of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is divided into several branches and departments in order to expedite services for the city. Zulu is the most spoken home language at 23.4% followed by English at 20.1%.


title: City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality

text: Johannesburg is a divided city: the poor mostly live in the southern suburbs or on the peripheries of the far north, and the middle- and upper class live largely in the suburbs of the central and north. As of 2012, unemployment is near 25% and most young people are out of work. Around 20% of the city lives in abject poverty in informal settlements that lack proper roads, electricity, or any other kind of direct municipal service. Another 40% live in inadequate housing with insufficient municipal housing.


text: Following the end of the apartheid era, in April 1991 the Central Witwatersrand Metropolitan Chamber was formed as a "people-based" negotiating forum prior to holding a democratic election and the formation of a new administration for the Johannesburg area. Following the 1993 "Local Government Transition Act", the Greater Johannesburg Negotiating Forum was created, and this forum in September 1994 reached an agreement which entailed regrouping the suburbs into new municipal structures, the metropolitan local councils (MLCs), and the overarching Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, also known as the "Transitional Metropolitan Council" for the city.


text: The government of Johannesburg's metropolitan area evolved over a seven-year period from 1993, when no metropolitan government existed under apartheid, to the establishment in December 2000 of today's Metropolitan Municipality. An "interim phase" commenced with the 1993 Constitution. This saw the establishment at the metropolitan level of the Transitional Metropolitan Council (TMC) and several urban-level councils under and neighbouring the TMC. In February 1997 the final constitution replaced the interim constitution and its transitional councils with the final system of local government which defined the current category A, B and C municipalities. Today's City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality was created accordingly as a category A municipality, giving it exclusive executive and legislative power over its area.


text: The new post-apartheid administration was the "Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council" (GJMC), also known as the "Transitional Metropolitan Council", created in 1995. The council adopted the slogan "One City, One Taxpayer" to highlight its primary goal of addressing unequal tax revenue distribution. To this end, revenue from wealthy, traditionally white areas would pay for services needed in poorer, black areas. The City Council was divided initially into seven municipal substructures (MSSs), rationalized within a year to four MSSs, each with a substantially autonomous authority or "Metropolitan Local Council" (MLC) that was to be overseen by the central metropolitan council. Furthermore, the municipal boundaries were expanded to include wealthy satellite towns like Sandton and Randburg, poorer neighbouring townships such as Soweto and Alexandra, and informal settlements like Orange Farm. The four MLCs were: the Southern MLC covering Ennerdale, most of Soweto, parts of Diepmeadow and the old Johannesburg City and Lenasia; the Northern MLC covering Randburg and Randburg CBD, and parts of Soweto, Diepmeadow and the old Johannesburg City; the Eastern MLC covering Sandton, Alexandra, and part of the old Johannesburg City; the Western MLC covering Roodepoort, Dobsonville and parts of Soweto, Diepmeadow.


text: However, the new post-apartheid City Council ran into problems in part due to inexperienced management and political pressure, which contributed to over-ambitious revenue projections, over-spending, wasted expenditures and out-right fraud. In the newly combined metropole services were unnecessarily duplicated. But, by far, the biggest financial drain was the failure to collect revenues for services, which ranged from rent (rates) to utilities. Part of this failure was a result of the anti-apartheid boycott of paying the government.


text: In 1999, Johannesburg appointed a city manager to reshape the city's ailing financial situation. The manager, together with the Municipal Council, drew up a blueprint called "iGoli 2002". This was a restructuring plan to be completed in 2002, that called upon the government to sell non-core assets, restructure certain utilities, and required that all others become self-sufficient. The plan was strongly opposed by unions who feared a loss of jobs.


text: In 1999 the Municipal Demarcation Board conducted a study of metropolitan areas and other large councils, and found that Johannesburg should be declared as a "category A" municipality. The following Local Government Municipal Systems Act no. 32 of 2000 replaced the GJMC, its four MLCs and also the neighbouring Midrand Local Authority, with the new "City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality" from 6 December 2000. The iGoli 2002 plan went into effect and returned some sectors into "cash cows" that helped support the city in general. Although some jobs were lost, there were no mass firings, as agencies used attrition to remove excess staff. The plan took the city from near insolvency to an operating surplus of R 153 million (US$23.6 million).


text: Following the relative success of iGoli 2002, the city undertook a number of initiatives both to help equalise municipal services benefits, such as the water utility's Free Basic Water policy, and to curb fraud and increase payment percentages, such as the water utility's Operation Gcin'amanzi to repipe areas to eliminate siphonage and to install water meters for excess use.


text: For the first six years the city was administered in eleven numbered regions, which were: "Region 1": Diepsloot, Kya Sand; "Region 2": Midrand, Ivory Park; "Region 3": Sandton, Rosebank, Fourways, Sunninghill, Woodmead, Strijdom Park; "Region 4": Northcliff, Rosebank, Parktown; "Region 5": Roodepoort, Northgate, Constantia Kloof; "Region 6": Doornkop, Soweto, Dobsonville, Protea Glen; "Region 7": Alexandra, Wynberg, Bruma; "Region 8": Inner City (Johannesburg CBD); "Region 9": Johannesburg South, South Gate, Aeroton, City Deep; "Region 10": Diepkloof, Meadowlands; "Region 11": Ennerdale, Orange Farm, Lenasia.


text: The present day City of Johannesburg was created from eleven existing local authorities, seven of which were white and four black or coloured. The white authorities were 90% self-sufficient from property tax and other local taxes, and produced and spent R 600 (US$93) per person in municipal services, while the black authorities were only 10% self-sufficient, spending R 100 (US$15) per person in municipal services. Although Johannesburg was divided into eleven administrative regions, these new divisions did not correspond to the areas governed by the former local authorities. Later, in 2006, the number of administrative regions was consolidated, from eleven to seven (see ). The reason given was "to separate powers between the legislative and executive bodies of the City."


text: Nonetheless, according to the opposition party, fraud, theft and non-payment still remained problems . In fiscal year 2011, the city's audit had R 45,796 million chalked up to fraudulent activities. In 2013, the city admitted that it would be unable to collect two-thirds of the R 18 billion in outstanding billings.


text: The first undertaking of the newly created City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, as mapped out by the "Igoli 2002" plan, was to restructure Metro Gas, Rand Airport, and some sports stadiums as stand-alone corporate entitites. The city bus service, the Johannesburg Zoo, the Civic Theatre, the Fresh Produce Market, and the city's property holdings were turned into corporations with the city as the single shareholder. Each was run as a business, with management hired on performance contracts.


text: In 2010/11 the municipality faced a qualified audit from the Auditor-General following a large number of billing issues, as the result of the flawed implementation of a SAP system. The city's call centre also experienced a crisis at the same time, with staff refusing to work.


text: The municipality covers an area of , stretching from Orange Farm in the south to Midrand in the north, and contains two big urban centres, Johannesburg and Midrand, and eleven more smaller urban centres, namely Roodepoort, Diepsloot, Killarney, Melrose Arch, Randburg, Rosebank, Sandton, Soweto, and Sunninghill.


text: The 2011 census divided the municipality into the following main places (unchanged from the 2001 census):


text: Each province determines the structure of local government in its region. Gauteng province, run by the African National Congress, has opted for a Mayor–council government. The first Mayor of Johannesburg was Amos Mosondo since the establishment of the current structure.


text: The administration of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality was decentralised initially into eleven regions, named simply Region 1 to Region 11, which were largely unrelated to the 11 former apartheid administrations. The new numbered regions were subsequently consolidated, in the summer of 2006, to seven regions named Region A to Region G. The current regions are:


text: Each region is operationally responsible for the delivery of health care, housing, sports and recreation, libraries, social development, and other local community-based services, and each region has a People's Centre where any city-related transaction can be dealt with. Residents can lodge complaints, report service problems, and perform council-related business more quickly.


text: After the end of apartheid allowed the consideration of the entire city of Johannesburg as one without consideration of race, it was determined that the previous structure of the city was wasteful and that there was much duplication of functions. Furthermore, some suburbs were affluent with well-established amenities while neighbouring areas lacked even the most basic of services. The new regions are presently smaller than previous mega-suburbs with each being home to about 300,000 people. The idea is that smaller regions are able to stay in closer contact with local communities.


text: The regions are no longer seen as part of the core administration, but instead take on a role as contractors to the central government. The relationship is similar to that of the larger utilities and agencies, such as City Power, and is designed to maximise efficiency.


text: The closeness of the new regional administrations with their communities enables them to be more responsive to differing local needs. For instance, the needs of a high-income commercial centre such as Sandton will be very different from the needs of a low-income area such as Orange Farm.


text: Local Integrated Development Plans (LIDPs) are plans for the development of a specific area. A LIDP guides a region's future development. For this reason, the LIDP zones closely follow the boundaries of the regions. However, in certain cases where suburbs are cut in half by the new region boundaries, the entire suburb may be covered in only one of the regions.


text: LIDPs deal with city development, management and growth over a five to 10-year period. While they deal with local issues, they take an integrated approach to issues such as transportation, housing and environmental management. An overall Metropolitan IDP looks at the bigger picture and ensures that LIDPs don't conflict or lead to wasted resources. LIDPs will be revised annually so as to respond to changing conditions both locally and at a city level.


text: As of the August 2016 municipal elections, the municipal council consists of 270 City Councillors in Johannesburg elected by mixed-member proportional representation. The Councillors are divided into two kinds: (a) 135 Ward councillors who have been elected by first-past-the-post voting in 135 wards; and (b) 135 councillors elected from party lists (so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received).


text: Ward Councillors have more local responsibilities, including setting up Ward Committees in their wards to raise local issues, commenting on town planning and other local matters in their ward, and liaising with local ratepayers' and residents' associations. PR Councillors are usually allocated to more political tasks within their party structures and within the city.


text: In the election of 1 November 2021 the African National Congress (ANC) won the largest share of the seats on the council with 91 but once again did not achieve a majority.


text: The DA won the speaker and mayoral position during the council meeting held on the 22 November 2021. Vasco da Gama (council speaker) and Mpho Phalatse were elected respectively. The city is currently led by a majority coalition government consisting of the Democratic Alliance, ActionSA, Inkatha Freedom Party, Freedom Front Plus, Patriotic Alliance, Congress of the People and African Christian Democratic Party.


text: The city management team head office is the Metro Centre Complex in Braamfontein, which is responsible for overall administration, financial control, supply of services, and collection of revenues. The fire department and ambulances, the metropolitan police and traffic control, museums, art galleries, and heritage sites are all controlled by separate departments.


text: Some of the key city service functions are supplied by separate, self-contained entities, each run on business lines with its own CEO.


text: There are 10 utilities, including electricity which is run by City Power Johannesburg, water and sanitation which is run by Johannesburg Water, and solid waste management, also known as Pikitup. Utilities are registered companies, run on business lines. They must be self-funding, receiving no annual grants from the city. They provide billable services direct to individual households.


text: Agencies include Johannesburg Roads Agency, City Parks and Johannesburg Development Agency. Each of these performs a service to the public at large – there are no direct charges to individual consumers. These are also structured as separate companies, but they are reliant on the council for funding.


text: The zoo, Civic Theatre, bus service, fresh produce market and property company each compete in the open market to "sell" their wares to individual consumers who choose to pay for their services. These departments have been "corporatised" into separate businesses, run by new managements on performance contracts, and tasked to cut their subsidy levels by R100-million in the next five years.


title: Pippin Parker

text: Pippin Parker (born June 22, 1969, in Syracuse, New York) is an American playwright and theatre director. He is Dean of The New School for Drama.


title: Pippin Parker

text: Parker is an American playwright and director. He is the Dean of the School of Writing, Acting, and Directing program at The New School. He is one of the co-founding members of Naked Angels, a theater company in New York City where he was Artistic Director. Along with Nicole Burdette, Frank Pugliese and Kenneth Lonergan, he is a member of a writer's group for dramatic and fiction authors.


title: Pippin Parker

text: His short play "A Gift" was produced in New York and Los Angeles and a later radio adaptation was featured on NPR’s "The Next Big Thing". Naked Angels and New York Stage and Film have both produced his play "Assisted Living".


title: Pippin Parker

text: His television work includes writing episodes of the animated series "The Tick" and Doug, as well as the CTW educational music show for children, "Jam Inn".


title: Pippin Parker

text: He directed the production of George Packer's first play "Betrayed" at The Culture Project, New York which won the 2008 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play.


title: Elizabeth Zimmerman

text: Elizabeth Abellana Zimmerman (born April 14, 1948) is the former wife of Rodrigo Duterte, the 16th President of the Philippines, and the mother of incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte.


title: Elizabeth Zimmerman

text: Elizabeth Abellana Zimmerman was born on in the then-Province of Davao. Her parents are from Hilongos, Leyte and Tuburan, Cebu. According to Rodrigo Duterte, she is of patrilineal Jewish descent, with her father having fled to the Philippines from Nazi Germany. She attended the Ateneo de Davao and subsequently worked as a flight stewardess for Philippine Airlines.


title: Elizabeth Zimmerman

text: Zimmerman ran for city councilor of Davao City in 2001 but lost. She joined the "Biyaheng DU30" bus caravan which went around the Visayas and Mindanao, in support of her former husband's presidential bid in 2016.


title: Elizabeth Zimmerman

text: Zimmerman was married to Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte (who later became the President of the Philippines) for over 25 years. She has three children with him, named Paolo, Sara and Baste. She filed for a civil annulment in 1998, and for a few months, lived with her brother in Metro Manila, occasionally visiting Davao City since her children were still studying there. Duterte has admitted that Zimmerman had left him after she caught him in adultery. The civil annulment was granted in 2000. After the annulment, Zimmerman remained friends with her former husband. She chose to continue using "Duterte" as part of her surname despite the annulment, saying that her marriage with Duterte has never been declared null by the Catholic Church. She has eleven grandchildren: five from her son Paolo, three from her daughter Sara, and three from youngest son, Baste. She also has two great-grandchildren.


title: Elizabeth Zimmerman

text: In August 2015, Zimmerman was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, but was declared fully recovered in October 2016. Her recovery then led to her becoming a breast cancer advocate. “Because God gave me a second chance in life," she said in an interview, "I should advocate for this very noble cause, to become a source of awareness, support and hope to others who are suffering the same as I did.”


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: "Ḫu-ur-ri"; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern Mesopotamia. The largest and most influential Hurrian nation was the kingdom of Mitanni, its ruling class perhaps being Indo-Aryan speakers. The population of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia included a large population of Hurrians, and there is significant Hurrian influence in Hittite mythology. By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples. The state of Urartu later covered some of the same area.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrian language is closely related to the Urartian language, the language of the ancient kingdom of Urartu. Together they form the Hurro-Urartian language family. The external connections of the Hurro-Urartian languages are disputed. There exist various proposals for a genetic relationship to other language families (e.g. the Northeast Caucasian languages), but none of these are generally accepted.


title: Hurrians

text: From the 21st century BC to the late 18th century BC, Assyria controlled colonies in Anatolia, and the Hurrians, like the Hattians or Lullubis, adopted the Assyrian Akkadian cuneiform script for their own language about 2000 BC. Texts in the Hurrian language in cuneiform have been found at Hattusa, Ugarit (Ras Shamra), as well as in one of the longest of the Amarna letters, written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was the only long Hurrian text known until a multi-tablet collection of literature in Hurrian with a Hittite translation was discovered at Hattusa in 1983.


title: Hurrians

text: The Khabur River valley became the heart of the Hurrian lands for a millennium. The first known Hurrian kingdom emerged around the city of Urkesh (modern Tell Mozan) during the third millennium BC. There is evidence that they were initially allied with the east Semitic Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia, indicating they had a firm hold on the area by the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2254–2218 BC). This region hosted other rich cultures (see Tell Halaf and Tell Brak). The city-state of Urkesh had some powerful neighbors.


title: Hurrians

text: Hurrian names occur sporadically in northwestern Mesopotamia and the area of Kirkuk in modern Iraq by the Middle Bronze Age. Their presence was attested at Nuzi, Urkesh and other sites. They eventually infiltrated and occupied a broad arc of fertile farmland stretching from the Khabur River valley in the west to the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in the east. I. J. Gelb and E. A. Speiser believed East Semitic speaking Assyrians/Subarians had been the linguistic and ethnic substratum of northern Mesopotamia since earliest times, while Hurrians were merely late arrivals. However, Subarians are now believed to have been a Hurrian, or at least a Hurro-Urartian, people.


title: Hurrians

text: At some point in the early second millennium BC, the Northwest Semitic speaking Amorite kingdom of Mari to the south subdued Urkesh and made it a vassal state. In the continuous power struggles over Mesopotamia, another Amorite dynasty had usurped the throne of the Old Assyrian Empire, which had controlled colonies in Hurrian, Hattian and Hittite regions of eastern Anatolia since the 21st century BC. The Assyrians then made themselves masters over Mari and much of north east Amurru (Syria) in the late 19th and early 18th centuries BC. Shubat-Enlil (modern Tell Leilan), was made the capital of this Old Assyrian empire by Shamshi Adad I at the expense of the earlier capital of Assur.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrians also migrated further west in this period. By 1725 BC they are found also in parts of northern Syria, such as Alalakh. The mixed Amorite–Hurrian kingdom of Yamhad is recorded as struggling for this area with the early Hittite king Hattusilis I around 1600 BC. Hurrians also settled in the coastal region of Adaniya in the country of Kizzuwatna, southern Anatolia. Yamhad eventually weakened vis-a-vis the powerful Hittites, but this also opened Anatolia for Hurrian cultural influences. The Hittites were influenced by both the Hurrian and Hattian cultures over the course of several centuries.


title: Hurrians

text: The Mitanni Empire was a strong regional power limited by the Hittites to the north, Egyptians to the east, Kassites to the south, and later by the Assyrians to the west. At its maximum extent Mitanni ranged as far as west as Kizzuwatna by the Taurus mountains, Tunip in the south, Arraphe in the east, and north to Lake Van. Their sphere of influence is shown in spread Hurrian place names, personal names. Eventually, after an internal succession crisis, Mitanni fell to the Hittites, later to fall under the control of the Assyrians.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrian entity of Mitanni, which first rose to power before 1550 BC, was first mentioned in the records of Egyptian pharaohs Thutmose I (1506–1493 BC) and Thutmose III (1479 – 1425 BC), the later most notably associated with the Battle of Megiddo in that pharoahs 22 regnal year. Most of the time Egyptians referred to the kingdom as Naharin. Later, Mitanni and Hanigailbat are mention in the Amarna Letters during the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten (1353–1336 BC). Domestically, Mitanni records have been found at a number of places in the region including several Hittite sites as well as Tell Bazi, Alalakh, Nuzi, Mardaman, Kemune, and Müslümantepe among others.


title: Hurrians

text: Another Hurrian kingdom also benefited from the demise of Babylonian power in the sixteenth century BC. Hurrians had inhabited the region northeast of the river Tigris, around the modern Kirkuk. This was the kingdom of Arrapha. Excavations at Yorgan Tepe, ancient Nuzi, proved this to be one of the most important sites for our knowledge about the Hurrians. Hurrian kings such as Ithi-Teshup and Ithiya ruled over Arrapha, yet by the mid-fifteenth century BC they had become vassals of the Great King of Mitanni. The kingdom of Arrapha itself was destroyed by the Assyrians in the mid 14th century BC and thereafter became an Assyrian city.


title: Hurrians

text: By the 13th century BC all of the Hurrian states had been vanquished by other peoples, with the Mitanni kingdom destroyed by Assyria. The heartlands of the Hurrians, the Khabur river valley and south eastern Anatolia, became provinces of the Middle Assyrian Empire (1366–1020 BC) which came to rule much of the Near East and Asia Minor. It is not clear what happened to these early Hurrian people at the end of the Bronze Age. Some scholars have suggested that Hurrians lived on in the country of Nairi north of Assyria during the early Iron Age, before this too was conquered by Assyria. The Hurrian population of northern Syria in the following centuries seems to have given up their language in favor of the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian, and later, Aramaic.


title: Hurrians

text: However, a power vacuum was to allow a new and powerful state whose rulers spoke Urartian, similar to old Hurrian, to arise. The Middle Assyrian Empire, after destroying the Hurro-Mitanni Empire, the Hittite Empire, defeating the Phrygians and Elamites, conquering Babylon, the Arameans of Syria, northern Ancient Iran and Canaan and forcing the Egyptians out of much of the near east, itself went into a century of relative decline from the latter part of the 11th century BC. The Urartians were thus able to impose themselves around Lake Van and Mount Ararat, forming the powerful Kingdom of Urartu. During the 11th and 10th centuries BC, the kingdom eventually encompassed a region stretching from the Caucasus Mountains in the north, to the borders of northern Assyria and northern Ancient Iran in the south, and controlled much of eastern Anatolia.


title: Hurrians

text: Assyria began to once more expand from circa. 935 BC, and Urartu and Assyria became fierce rivals. Urartu successfully repelled Assyrian expansionism for a time, however from the 9th to 7th century BC it progressively lost territory to Assyria. It was to survive until the 7th century BC, by which time it was conquered fully into the Neo Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC).


title: Hurrians

text: The Assyrian Empire collapsed from 620 to 605 BC, after a series of brutal internal civil wars weakened it to such an extent that a coalition of its former vassals; the Medes, Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians and Cimmerians were able to attack and gradually destroy it. Urartu was ravaged by marauding Indo-European speaking Scythian and Cimmerian raiders during this time, with its vassal king (together with the king of neighbouring Lydia) vainly pleading with the beleaguered Assyrian king for help. After the fall of Assyria, Urartu came under the control of the Median Empire and then its successor Persian Empire during the 6th century BC. During the 2nd millennium BC a new wave of Indo-European speakers migrated over the Caucasus into Urartian lands, these being the Armenians. An alternate theory suggests that Armenians were tribes indigenous to the northern shores of Lake Van or Urartu's northern periphery (possibly as the Hayasans, Etuini, and/or Diauehi, all of whom are known only from references left by neighboring peoples such Hittites, Urartians, and Assyrians). This theory is supported by genetic and archaeological evidence, which is suggestive of an Indo-European presence in Armenia and eastern Turkey by the end of the 3rd millennium BC.


title: Hurrians

text: It is argued that proto-Armenian came into contact with Urartian at an early date (3rd or 2nd millennium BC), before the formation of the Urartian kingdom. While the Urartian language was used by the royal elite, the population they ruled may have been multi-lingual, and some of these peoples would have spoken Armenian.


title: Hurrians

text: In the 6th century BC the region became part of the Armenian Orontid Dynasty. The Hurro-Urartians seem to have disappeared from history around this time, almost certainly being absorbed into the Indo-European Armenian population.


title: Hurrians

text: Knowledge of Hurrian culture relies on archaeological excavations at sites such as Nuzi and Alalakh as well as on cuneiform tablets, primarily from Hattusa (Boghazköy), the capital of the Hittites, whose civilization was greatly influenced by the Hurrians. Tablets from Nuzi, Alalakh, and other cities with Hurrian populations (as shown by personal names) reveal Hurrian cultural features even though they were written in Akkadian. Hurrian cylinder seals were carefully carved and often portrayed mythological motifs. They are a key to the understanding of Hurrian culture and history.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrians were masterful ceramists. Their pottery is commonly found in Mesopotamia and in the lands west of the Euphrates; it was highly valued in distant Egypt, by the time of the New Kingdom. Archaeologists use the terms Khabur ware and Nuzi ware for two types of wheel-made pottery used by the Hurrians. Khabur ware is characterized by reddish painted lines with a geometric triangular pattern and dots, while Nuzi ware has very distinctive forms, and are painted in brown or black.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrians had a reputation in metallurgy. It is proposed that the Sumerian term for "coppersmith" "tabira"/"tibira" was borrowed from Hurrian, which would imply an early presence of the Hurrians way before their first historical mention in Akkadian sources. Copper was traded south to Mesopotamia from the highlands of Anatolia. The Khabur Valley had a central position in the metal trade, and copper, silver and even tin were accessible from the Hurrian-dominated countries Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa situated in the Anatolian highland. Gold was in short supply, and the Amarna letters inform us that it was acquired from Egypt. Not many examples of Hurrian metal work have survived, except from the later Urartu. Some small fine bronze lion figurines were discovered at Urkesh.


title: Hurrians

text: The Mitanni were closely associated with horses. The name of the country of Ishuwa, which might have had a substantial Hurrian population, meant "horse-land" (it is also suggested the name may have Anatolian or proto-Armenian roots). A text discovered at Hattusa deals with the training of horses. The man who was responsible for the horse-training was a Hurrian called Kikkuli. The terminology used in connection with horses contains many Indo-Aryan loan-words (Mayrhofer, 1974).


title: Hurrians

text: Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are the oldest known instances of written music, dating from c. 1400 BC. Among these fragments are found the names of four Hurrian composers, Tapšiẖuni, Puẖiya(na), Urẖiya, and Ammiya.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrian culture made a great impact on the religion of the Hittites. From the Hurrian cult centre at Kummanni in Kizzuwatna, Hurrian religion spread to the Hittite people. Syncretism merged the Old Hittite and Hurrian religions. Hurrian religion spread to Syria, where Baal became the counterpart of Teshub. The Hurrian religion, in different forms, influenced the entire ancient Near East, except ancient Egypt and southern Mesopotamia.


title: Hurrians

text: While the Hurrian and Urartian languages are related, there is little similarity between corresponding systems of belief.


title: Hurrians

text: Hurrian cylinder seals often depict mythological creatures such as winged humans or animals, dragons and other monsters. The interpretation of these depictions of gods and demons remains uncertain. They may have been both protective and evil spirits. Some are reminiscent of the Assyrian shedu.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrian gods do not appear to have had particular "home temples", like in the Mesopotamian religion or Ancient Egyptian religion. Some important cult centres were Kummanni in Kizzuwatna and Hittite Yazilikaya. Harran was at least later a religious centre for the moon god, and Shauskha had an important temple in Nineve, when the city was under Hurrian rule. A temple of Nergal was built in Urkesh in the late third millennium BC. The town of Kahat was a religious centre in the kingdom of Mitanni.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrian myth "The Songs of Ullikummi", preserved among the Hittites, is a parallel to Hesiod's Theogony; the castration of Uranus by Cronus may be derived from the castration of Anu by Kumarbi, while Zeus's overthrow of Cronus and Cronus's regurgitation of the swallowed gods is like the Hurrian myth of Teshub and Kumarbi. It has been argued that the worship of Attis drew on Hurrian myth.


title: Hurrians

text: The Hurrian urban culture was not represented by a large number of cities. Urkesh was the only Hurrian city in the third millennium BC. In the second millennium BC we know a number of Hurrian cities, such as Arrapha, Harran, Kahat, Nuzi, Taidu and Washukanni – the capital of Mitanni. Although the site of Washukanni, alleged to be at Tell Fakhariya, is not known for certain, no tell (city mound) in the Khabur Valley much exceeds the size of 1 square kilometer (250 acres), and the majority of sites are much smaller. The Hurrian urban culture appears to have been quite different from the centralized state administrations of Assyria and ancient Egypt. An explanation could be that the feudal organization of the Hurrian kingdoms did not allow large palace or temple estates to develop.


title: Hurrians

text: Hurrian settlements are distributed over three modern countries, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The heart of the Hurrian world is bisected by the modern border between Syria and Turkey. Several sites are situated within the border zone, making access for excavations problematic. A threat to the ancient sites are the many dam projects in the Euphrates, Tigris and Khabur valleys. Several rescue operations have already been undertaken when the construction of dams put entire river valleys under water.


title: Hurrians

text: The first major excavations of Hurrian sites in Iraq and Syria began in the 1920s and 1930s. They were led by the American archaeologist Edward Chiera at Yorghan Tepe (Nuzi), and the British archaeologist Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak. Recent excavations and surveys in progress are conducted by American, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and Italian teams of archaeologists, with international participants, in cooperation with the Syrian Department of Antiquities. The tells, or city mounds, often reveal a long occupation beginning in the Neolithic and ending in the Roman period or later. The characteristic Hurrian pottery, the Khabur ware, is helpful in determining the different strata of occupation within the mounds. The Hurrian settlements are usually identified from the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Late Bronze Age, with Tell Mozan (Urkesh) being the main exception.


title: Hurrians

text: The list includes some important ancient sites from the area dominated by the Hurrians. Excavation reports and images are found at the websites linked. As noted above, important discoveries of Hurrian culture and history were also made at Alalakh, Amarna, Hattusa and Ugarit.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: Safety is a position in gridiron football on the defense. The safeties are defensive backs who line up ten to fifteen yards from the line of scrimmage. There are two variations of the position: the free safety and the strong safety. Their duties depend on the defensive scheme. The defensive responsibilities of the safety and cornerback usually involve pass coverage towards the middle and sidelines of the field. While American (11-player) formations generally use two safeties, Canadian (12-player) formations generally have one safety and two defensive halfbacks, a position not used in the American game.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: As professional and college football have become more focused on the passing game, safeties have become more involved in covering the eligible pass receivers.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: Safeties are the last line of defense; they are expected to be reliable tacklers, and many safeties rank among the hardest hitters in football. Safety positions can also be converted cornerbacks, either by design (Byron Jones) or as a cornerback ages (Charles Woodson, DeAngelo Hall, Lardarius Webb, Tramon Williams).


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: Historically, in the era of the one-platoon system, the safety was known as the defensive fullback (specifically the free safety; the strong safety would be a defensive halfback, a term still in Canadian parlance) or goaltender.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: The free safety tends to watch the play unfold and follow the ball as well as be the "defensive quarterback" of the backfield. The free safety is typically assigned to the quarterback in man coverage, but as the quarterback usually remains in the pocket, the free safety is "free" to double cover another player. On pass plays, the free safety is expected to assist the cornerback on his side and to close the distance to the receiver by the time the ball reaches him. If the offense puts a receiver in the slot, then the free safety may be called upon to cover that receiver. Because of their speed and deep coverage, free safeties are especially likely to make interceptions.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: Offenses tend to use the play-action pass specifically to make the free safety expect a run play, which would draw him closer to the line of scrimmage, and reduce his effectiveness as a pass defender. Furthermore, quarterbacks often use a technique to "look off" a free safety, by looking away from the intended target receiver's side of the field during a pass play, with the intention to lure the free safety away from that side of the field. This phenomenon often tests how effective a free safety's savvy and athleticism are at defending long pass plays.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: Free safeties occasionally blitz as well. When this happens, the pressure on the quarterback can be severe since a blitz by a defensive back is not usually anticipated.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: Current examples of free safeties active in the NFL include Marcus Williams, Justin Simmons, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Quandre Diggs, Kevin Byard, Micah Hyde, and Jessie Bates III.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: The strong safety tends to be larger and stronger than the free safety. However, the word "strong" is used because he is assigned to cover the "strong side" of the offense, the side on which the tight end, a typically big, powerful receiver-type player lines up on offensive plays.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: The strong safety tends to play closer to the line than the free safety does, and assists in stopping the run. He may also cover a player, such as a running back or fullback or H-back, who comes out of the backfield to receive a pass. A strong safety's duties are a hybrid of those belonging to a linebacker in a 46 or 3-4 defense and those of the other defensive backs, in that he both covers the pass and stops the run.


title: Safety (gridiron football position)

text: Current examples of strong safeties active in the NFL include Jamal Adams, Landon Collins, Jordan Poyer, Harrison Smith, Budda Baker, Tyrann Mathieu and Derwin James. Strong safeties are not seen in the Canadian game, where the role is filled by the two defensive halfbacks.


title: Vivan Bhatena

text: Vivan Bhatena (born 28 October 1978) is an Indian model and actor who appears predominantly in Hindi films. His notable films include "Dangal" (2016), "Judwaa 2" (2017) and "Raja the Great" (2017). Vivan won Mister India World title in 2001. In 2016, he was a contestant on "".


title: Vivan Bhatena

text: Bhatena moved from modelling to acting with his first television role as Tulsi Virani's son-in-law Abhishek in "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi". He later appeared in "Maayka", "Kumkum - Ek Pyara Sa Bandhan" and "Pyaar Ka Bandhan". Bhatena, the 2001 "Mr. India" title holder, was also seen on the stage in Sandiip Sikcand's "Champagne On The House". He was also seen in Falguni Pathak's video "Maine Payal Hain Chankaayi".


title: Juicy (The Notorious B.I.G. song)

text: "Juicy" is the first single by American rapper the Notorious B.I.G. from his 1994 debut album, "Ready to Die". It was produced by Poke of the duo Trackmasters and Sean "Puffy" Combs. "Juicy" contains a sample of Mtume's 1983 song, "Juicy Fruit", though it is directly sampled from the song's "Fruity Instrumental" mix, and has an alternative chorus sung by Bad Boy Records cohorts, the girl group Total and label boss, Combs. The song is widely considered to be one of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time.


title: Juicy (The Notorious B.I.G. song)

text: The song is a "rags-to-riches chronicle". The Notorious B.I.G. chronicles his childhood years living in poverty, his initial dreams of becoming a rapper, early musical influences, his time dealing drugs, criminal involvement, and his eventual success in the music industry and current lavish lifestyle.


title: Juicy (The Notorious B.I.G. song)

text: One of the song's lines reads, "Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade," referencing the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.


title: Juicy (The Notorious B.I.G. song)

text: Producer Pete Rock alleged that Puffy stole the idea for the original song's beat after hearing it at Rock's house. In an interview with "Wax Poetics", he said:


title: Juicy (The Notorious B.I.G. song)

text: Pete Rock's remix of "Juicy" uses the same sample as the original. During an appearance on the "Juan Epstein Podcast", Rock said that he has no hard feelings about how "Juicy" came about, but wished he had gotten the proper credit, although he did admit to harboring some ill feelings at the time.


title: Juicy (The Notorious B.I.G. song)

text: Biggie appeared in the "Unsigned Hype" column of the March 1992 issue of "The Source" as "The Notorious B-I-G," and he was also listed as "The Notorious B.I.G." on a 1992 single by Neneh Cherry when he was signed to Uptown/MCA. Aside from sharing the same sample source, both songs share little in common otherwise, most notably in regards to subject matter.


title: William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington

text: William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington (born 6 June 1969), professionally also known by the name Bill Burlington, is a British nobleman, aristocrat, photographer, and the son and heir of the 12th Duke of Devonshire. He was styled Earl of Burlington before his father's succession to the Dukedom of Devonshire, and has not assumed the title Marquess of Hartington as all previous heirs apparent to the dukedom have done.


title: William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington

text: Lord Burlington was educated at Eton College and the University of Cambridge. He subsequently studied photography under Jorge Lewinski.


title: William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington

text: In 2007 he married former model, fashion editor, and stylist Laura Montagu née Roundell (former wife of The Hon Orlando Montagu, younger son of the 11th Earl of Sandwich) in a private ceremony. They have three children, a son and two daughters:


title: William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington

text: Lord Burlington was installed as the fourth Chancellor of the University of Derby in a ceremony held in the Devonshire Dome (the University's Campus in Buxton) on 15 March 2018. He was nominated for this role after the previous Chancellor, Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire, Lord Burlington's father, stood down in 2018 after ten years in the role.


title: William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington

text: At the announcement of the news the previous year, Lord Burlington stated that he intended to "take the position with an open mind, not with preconceived ideas," and that he was "excited about being part of a university which offers opportunities for students from all backgrounds to reach their potential, succeed in life and contribute to society."


title: William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington

text: Within a wing of Lismore Castle, the Irish seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, Lord Burlington has established the notable contemporary arts gallery, Lismore Castle Arts.


title: Password strength

text: Password strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password against guessing or brute-force attacks. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability.


title: Password strength

text: Using strong passwords lowers overall risk of a security breach, but strong passwords do not replace the need for other effective security controls. The effectiveness of a password of a given strength is strongly determined by the design and implementation of the factors (knowledge, ownership, inherence). The first factor is the main focus in this article.


title: Password strength

text: The rate at which an attacker can submit guessed passwords to the system is a key factor in determining system security. Some systems impose a time-out of several seconds after a small number (e.g. three) of failed password entry attempts. In the absence of other vulnerabilities, such systems can be effectively secured with relatively simple passwords. However, the system must store information about the user's passwords in some form and if that information is stolen, say by breaching system security, the user's passwords can be at risk.


title: Password strength

text: In 2019, the United Kingdom's NCSC analysed public databases of breached accounts to see which words, phrases and strings people used. The most popular password on the list was 123456, appearing in more than 23 million passwords. The second-most popular string, 123456789, was not much harder to crack, while the top five included "qwerty", "password" and 1111111.


title: Password strength

text: Passwords are created either automatically (using randomizing equipment) or by a human; the latter case is more common. While the strength of randomly chosen passwords against a brute-force attack can be calculated with precision, determining the strength of human-generated passwords is difficult.


title: Password strength

text: Typically, humans are asked to choose a password, sometimes guided by suggestions or restricted by a set of rules, when creating a new account for a computer system or internet website. Only rough estimates of strength are possible since humans tend to follow patterns in such tasks, and those patterns can usually assist an attacker. In addition, lists of commonly chosen passwords are widely available for use by password guessing programs. Such lists include the numerous online dictionaries for various human languages, breached databases of plaintext and hashed passwords from various online business and social accounts, along with other common passwords. All items in such lists are considered weak, as are passwords that are simple modifications of them.


title: Password strength

text: Although random password generation programs are available nowadays which are meant to be easy to use, they usually generate random, hard to remember passwords, often resulting in people preferring to choose their own. However, this is inherently insecure because the person's lifestyles, entertainment preferences, and other key individualistic qualities usually come into play to influence the choice of password, while the prevalence of online social media has made obtaining information about people much easier.


title: Password strength

text: Systems that use passwords for authentication must have some way to check any password entered to gain access. If the valid passwords are simply stored in a system file or database, an attacker who gains sufficient access to the system will obtain all user passwords, giving the attacker access to all accounts on the attacked system and possibly other systems where users employ the same or similar passwords. One way to reduce this risk is to store only a cryptographic hash of each password instead of the password itself. Standard cryptographic hashes, such as the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) series, are very hard to reverse, so an attacker who gets hold of the hash value cannot directly recover the password. However, knowledge of the hash value lets the attacker quickly test guesses offline. Password cracking programs are widely available that will test a large number of trial passwords against a purloined cryptographic hash.


title: Password strength

text: Improvements in computing technology keep increasing the rate at which guessed passwords can be tested. For example, in 2010, the Georgia Tech Research Institute developed a method of using GPGPU to crack passwords much faster. Elcomsoft invented the usage of common graphic cards for quicker password recovery in August 2007 and soon filed a corresponding patent in the US. By 2011, commercial products were available that claimed the ability to test up to 112,000 passwords per second on a standard desktop computer, using a high-end graphics processor for that time. Such a device will crack a six-letter single-case password in one day. Note that the work can be distributed over many computers for an additional speedup proportional to the number of available computers with comparable GPUs. Special key stretching hashes are available that take a relatively long time to compute, reducing the rate at which guessing can take place. Although it is considered best practice to use key stretching, many common systems do not.


title: Password strength

text: Another situation where quick guessing is possible is when the password is used to form a cryptographic key. In such cases, an attacker can quickly check to see if a guessed password successfully decodes encrypted data. For example, one commercial product claims to test 103,000 WPA PSK passwords per second.


title: Password strength

text: If a password system only stores the hash of the password, an attacker can pre-compute hash values for common passwords variants and for all passwords shorter than a certain length, allowing very rapid recovery of the password once its hash is obtained. Very long lists of pre-computed password hashes can be efficiently stored using rainbow tables. This method of attack can be foiled by storing a random value, called a cryptographic salt, along with the hash. The salt is combined with the password when computing the hash, so an attacker precomputing a rainbow table would have to store for each password its hash with every possible salt value. This becomes infeasible if the salt has a big enough range, say a 32-bit number. Unfortunately, many authentication systems in common use do not employ salts and rainbow tables are available on the Internet for several such systems.


title: Password strength

text: It is usual in the computer industry to specify password strength in terms of information entropy, which is measured in bits and is a concept from information theory. Instead of the number of guesses needed to find the password with certainty, the base-2 logarithm of that number is given, which is commonly referred to as the number of "entropy bits" in a password, though this is not exactly the same quantity as information entropy. A password with an entropy of 42 bits calculated in this way would be as strong as a string of 42 bits chosen randomly, for example by a fair coin toss. Put another way, a password with an entropy of 42 bits would require 2 (4,398,046,511,104) attempts to exhaust all possibilities during a brute force search. Thus, increasing the entropy of the password by one bit doubles the number of guesses required, making an attacker's task twice as difficult. On average, an attacker will have to try half the possible number of passwords before finding the correct one.


title: Password strength

text: Random passwords consist of a string of symbols of specified length taken from some set of symbols using a random selection process in which each symbol is equally likely to be selected. The symbols can be individual characters from a character set (e.g., the ASCII character set), syllables designed to form pronounceable passwords, or even words from a word list (thus forming a passphrase).


title: Password strength

text: The strength of random passwords depends on the actual entropy of the underlying number generator; however, these are often not truly random, but pseudorandom. Many publicly available password generators use random number generators found in programming libraries that offer limited entropy. However most modern operating systems offer cryptographically strong random number generators that are suitable for password generation. It is also possible to use ordinary dice to generate random passwords. "See stronger methods." Random password programs often have the ability to ensure that the resulting password complies with a local password policy; for instance, by always producing a mix of letters, numbers and special characters.


title: Password strength

text: For passwords generated by a process that randomly selects a string of symbols of length, "L", from a set of "N" possible symbols, the number of possible passwords can be found by raising the number of symbols to the power "L", i.e. "N". Increasing either "L" or "N" will strengthen the generated password. The strength of a random password as measured by the information entropy is just the base-2 logarithm or log of the number of possible passwords, assuming each symbol in the password is produced independently. Thus a random password's information entropy, "H", is given by the formula:


title: Password strength

text: where "N" is the number of possible symbols and "L" is the number of symbols in the password. "H" is measured in bits. In the last expression, "log" can be to any base.


title: Password strength

text: To find the length, "L," needed to achieve a desired strength "H," with a password drawn randomly from a set of "N" symbols, one computes:


title: Password strength

text: The following table uses this formula to show the required lengths of truly randomly generated passwords to achieve desired password entropies for common symbol sets:


title: Password strength

text: People are notoriously poor at achieving sufficient entropy to produce satisfactory passwords. According to one study involving half a million users, the average password entropy was estimated at 40.54 bits.


title: Password strength

text: Thus, in one analysis of over 3 million eight-character passwords, the letter "e" was used over 1.5 million times, while the letter "f" was used only 250,000 times. A uniform distribution would have had each character being used about 900,000 times. The most common number used is "1", whereas the most common letters are a, e, o, and r.


title: Password strength

text: Users rarely make full use of larger character sets in forming passwords. For example, hacking results obtained from a MySpace phishing scheme in 2006 revealed 34,000 passwords, of which only 8.3% used mixed case, numbers, and symbols.


title: Password strength

text: The full strength associated with using the entire ASCII character set (numerals, mixed case letters and special characters) is only achieved if each possible password is equally likely. This seems to suggest that all passwords must contain characters from each of several character classes, perhaps upper and lower case letters, numbers, and non-alphanumeric characters. In fact, such a requirement is a pattern in password choice and can be expected to reduce an attacker's "work factor" (in Claude Shannon's terms). This is a reduction in password "strength". A better requirement would be to require a password NOT to contain any word in an online dictionary, or list of names, or any license plate pattern from any state (in the US) or country (as in the EU). If patterned choices are required, humans are likely to use them in predictable ways, such as capitalizing a letter, adding one or two numbers, and a special character. This predictability means that the increase in password strength is minor when compared to random passwords.


title: Password strength

text: NIST Special Publication 800-63 of June 2004 (revision two) suggested a scheme to approximate the entropy of human-generated passwords:


title: Password strength

text: Using this scheme, an eight-character human-selected password without upper case characters and non-alphabetic characters OR with either but of the two character sets is estimated to have eighteen bits of entropy. The NIST publication concedes that at the time of development, little information was available on the real world selection of passwords. Later research into human-selected password entropy using newly available real world data has demonstrated that the NIST scheme does not provide a valid metric for entropy estimation of human-selected passwords. The June 2017 revision of SP 800-63 (Revision three) drops this approach.


title: Password strength

text: Because national keyboard implementations vary, not all 94 ASCII printable characters can be used everywhere. This can present a problem to an international traveler who wished to log into remote system using a keyboard on a local computer. "See" "keyboard layout". Many hand held devices, such as tablet computers and smart phones, require complex shift sequences or keyboard app swapping to enter special characters.


title: Password strength

text: Authentication programs vary in which characters they allow in passwords. Some do not recognize case differences (e.g., the upper-case "E" is considered equivalent to the lower-case "e"), others prohibit some of the other symbols. In the past few decades, systems have permitted more characters in passwords, but limitations still exist. Systems also vary in the maximum length of passwords allowed.


title: Password strength

text: As a practical matter, passwords must be both reasonable and functional for the end user as well as strong enough for the intended purpose. Passwords that are too difficult to remember may be forgotten and so are more likely to be written on paper, which some consider a security risk. In contrast, others argue that forcing users to remember passwords without assistance can only accommodate weak passwords, and thus poses a greater security risk. According to Bruce Schneier, most people are good at securing their wallets or purses, which is a "great place" to store a written password.


title: Password strength

text: The minimum number of bits of entropy needed for a password depends on the threat model for the given application. If key stretching is not used, passwords with more entropy are needed. RFC 4086, "Randomness Requirements for Security", published June 2005, presents some example threat models and how to calculate the entropy desired for each one. Their answers vary between 29 bits of entropy needed if only online attacks are expected, and up to 96 bits of entropy needed for important cryptographic keys used in applications like encryption where the password or key needs to be secure for a long period of time and stretching isn't applicable. A 2010 Georgia Tech Research Institute study based on unstretched keys recommended a 12-character random password, but as a minimum length requirement. Keep in mind that computing power continues to grow, so to prevent offline attacks the required bits of entropy should also increase over time.


title: Password strength

text: The upper end is related to the stringent requirements of choosing keys used in encryption. In 1999, an Electronic Frontier Foundation project broke 56-bit DES encryption in less than a day using specially designed hardware. In 2002, "distributed.net" cracked a 64-bit key in 4 years, 9 months, and 23 days. As of October 12, 2011, "distributed.net" estimates that cracking a 72-bit key using current hardware will take about 45,579 days or 124.8 years. Due to currently understood limitations from fundamental physics, there is no expectation that any digital computer (or combination) will be capable of breaking 256-bit encryption via a brute-force attack. Whether or not quantum computers will be able to do so in practice is still unknown, though theoretical analysis suggests such possibilities.


title: Password strength

text: Guidelines for choosing good passwords are typically designed to make passwords harder to discover by intelligent guessing. Common guidelines advocated by proponents of software system security have included:


title: Password strength

text: The forcing of lowercase, uppercase alphabetic characters, numbers and symbols in passwords was common policy, but has been found to actually decrease security, by making it easier to crack. Research has shown how very predictable common use of such symbols are, and the US, UK government cyber security departments advise against forcing their inclusion in password policy. Complex symbols also make remembering passwords much harder, which increases writing down, password resets and password reuse – all of which lower rather than improve password security. The original author of password complexity rules, Bill Burr, has apologised and admits they actually decrease security, as research has found; this was widely reported in the media in 2017. Online security researchers and consultants are also supportive of the change in best practice advice on passwords.


title: Password strength

text: Some guidelines advise against writing passwords down, while others, noting the large numbers of password protected systems users must access, encourage writing down passwords as long as the written password lists are kept in a safe place, not attached to a monitor or in an unlocked desk drawer. Use of a password manager is recommended by the NCSC.


title: Password strength

text: The possible character set for a password can be constrained by different web sites or by the range of keyboards on which the password must be entered.


title: Password strength

text: As with any security measure, passwords vary in strength; some are weaker than others. For example, the difference in strength between a dictionary word and a word with obfuscation (e.g. letters in the password are substituted by, say, numbers — a common approach) may cost a password cracking device a few more seconds; this adds little strength. The examples below illustrate various ways weak passwords might be constructed, all of which are based on simple patterns which result in extremely low entropy, allowing them to be tested automatically at high speeds.:


title: Password strength

text: There are many other ways a password can be weak, corresponding to the strengths of various attack schemes; the core principle is that a password should have high entropy (usually taken to be equivalent to randomness) and "not" be readily derivable by any "clever" pattern, nor should passwords be mixed with information identifying the user. On-line services often provide a restore password function that a hacker can figure out and by doing so bypass a password. Choosing hard-to-guess restore password questions can further secure the password.


title: Password strength

text: In December, 2012, William Cheswick wrote an article published in ACM magazine that included the mathematical possibilities of how easy or difficult it would be to break passwords that are constructed using the commonly recommended, and sometimes followed, standards of today. In his article, William showed that a standard eight character alpha-numeric password could withstand a brute force attack of ten million attempts per second, and remain unbroken for 252 days. Ten million attempts each second is the acceptable rate of attempts using a multi-core system that most users would have access to. A much greater degree of attempts, at the rate of 7 billion per second, could also be achieved when using modern GPUs. At this rate, the same 8 character full alpha-numeric password could be broken in approximately 0.36 days (i.e. 9 hours). Increasing the password complexity to a 13 character full alpha-numeric password increases the time needed to crack it to more than 900,000 years at 7 billion attempts per second. This is, of course, assuming the password does not use a common word that a dictionary attack could break much sooner. Using a password of this strength reduces the obligation to change it as often as many organizations require, including the U.S. Government, as it could not be reasonably broken in such a short period of time.


title: Password strength

text: Previous password policies used to prescribe the characters which passwords must contain, such as numbers, symbols or upper/lower case. While this is still in use, it has been debunked as less secure by university research, by the original instigator of this policy, and by the cyber security departments (and other related government security bodies) of USA and UK. Password complexity rules of enforced symbols were previously used by major platforms such as Google and Facebook, but these have removed the requirement following the discovery they actually reduced security. This is because the human element is a far greater risk than cracking, and enforced complexity leads most users to highly predictable patterns (number at end, swap 3 for E etc.) which actually helps crack passwords. So password simplicity and length (passphrases) are the new best practice and complexity is discouraged. Forced complexity rules also increase support costs, user friction and discourage user signups.


title: Password strength

text: Password expiration was in some older password policies but has been debunked as best practice and is not supported by USA or UK governments, or Microsoft which removed the password expiry feature. Password expiration was previously trying to serve two purposes:


title: Password strength

text: The hardest passwords to crack, for a given length and character set, are random character strings; if long enough they resist brute force attacks (because there are many characters) and guessing attacks (due to high entropy). However, such passwords are typically the hardest to remember. The imposition of a requirement for such passwords in a password policy may encourage users to write them down, store them in mobile devices, or share them with others as a safeguard against memory failure. While some people consider each of these user resorts to increase security risks, others suggest the absurdity of expecting users to remember distinct complex passwords for each of the dozens of accounts they access. For example, in 2005, security expert Bruce Schneier recommended writing down one's password:


title: Password strength

text: Computer users are generally advised to "never write down a password anywhere, no matter what" and "never use the same password for more than one account." However, an ordinary computer user may have dozens of password-protected accounts. Users with multiple accounts needing passwords often give up and use the same password for every account. When varied password complexity requirements prevent use of the same (memorable) scheme for producing high-strength passwords, oversimplified passwords will often be created to satisfy irritating and conflicting password requirements.


title: Password strength

text: A Microsoft expert was quoted as saying at a 2005 security conference: "I claim that password policy should say you should write down your password. I have 68 different passwords. If I am not allowed to write any of them down, guess what I am going to do? I am going to use the same password on every one of them."


title: Password strength

text: Software is available for popular hand-held computers that can store passwords for numerous accounts in encrypted form. Passwords can be encrypted by hand on paper and remember the encryption method and key. Even a better way is to encrypt a weak password with one of the commonly available and tested cryptographic algorithms or hashing functions and use the cipher as your password.


title: Password strength

text: A single "master" password can be used with software to generate a new password for each application, based on the master password and the application's name. This approach is used by Stanford's PwdHash, Princeton's Password Multiplier, and other stateless password managers. In this approach, protecting the master password is essential, as all passwords are compromised if the master password is revealed, and lost if the master password is forgotten or misplaced.


title: Password strength

text: A reasonable compromise for using large numbers of passwords is to record them in a password manager program, which include stand-alone applications, web browser extensions, or a manager built into the operating system. A password manager allows the user to use hundreds of different passwords, and only have to remember a single password, the one which opens the encrypted password database. Needless to say, this single password should be strong and well-protected (not recorded anywhere). Most password managers can automatically create strong passwords using a cryptographically secure random password generator, as well as calculating the entropy of the generated password. A good password manager will provide resistance against attacks such as key logging, clipboard logging and various other memory spying techniques.


title: 2022–23 Süper Lig

text: The 2022–23 Süper Lig, officially called the Spor Toto Süper Lig 2022–23 season, is the 65th season of the Süper Lig, the highest tier football league of Turkey.


title: 2022–23 Süper Lig

text: A total of 19 teams contest the league, including 16 sides from the 2021–22 season and 2021–22 TFF First League champions Ankaragücü, runner-ups Ümraniyespor and play-off winners İstanbulspor. Ankaragücü immediately returned to top level, Ümraniyespor is competing in the Süper Lig for the first time in their history. İstanbulspor returned to top level after 17 years.


title: Eve Pollard

text: Evelyn, Lady Lloyd, ("née" Pollard, formerly Winkleman, born 25 December 1943) is an English author and journalist, and has been the editor of several tabloid newspapers.


title: Eve Pollard

text: In her early years Pollard (then known as Pollak) lived in Maida Vale, London, with her Jewish parents Izzo and Martha; and younger twin brothers, Peter and Ralph Pollak, who now live in Southern California. Her mother had left Austria in 1938 and her Hungarian father arrived with the Free French in 1940.


title: Eve Pollard

text: Her career began at "Honey" magazine, where she eventually became fashion editor in 1967. She moved to the "Daily Mirror" the following year.


title: Eve Pollard

text: In 1985, she was launch editor-in-chief of "Elle" magazine in the US and edited "Sunday" magazine for the "News of the World" and "You" magazine for the "Mail on Sunday". She has also worked in television as features editor of TV-am (1982–1983) and devised "Frocks on the Box", which ran for two 13-part series in the 1980s, for the ITV contractor TVS. She has often appeared on radio and TV and was a regular participant in "Through the Keyhole". In 2003 Pollard was a guest panellist on the talk show "Loose Women".


title: Eve Pollard

text: In 1992, she founded Women in Journalism. She was the first Chair and is still the Honorary President of the organisation, which advises members on networking, campaigning and training. In 2003, she became the Vice-Chairman of Wellbeing of Women, a charity dedicated to improving the health of women and babies in the UK. She still holds that post.


title: Eve Pollard

text: In 2016, she was appointed the first Chair of Reporters without Borders in the UK. In June 2019, she was awarded the prestigious Journalist Laureate prize by the London Press Club. She was given the accolade for being an inspirational editor and broadcaster.


title: Eve Pollard

text: She has been a member, appointed in 1999, of the Competition Commission’s Newspaper Takeover Panel. Her publications include "Jackie", a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1971), and she has jointly written four novels: "Splash" (1995), "Best of Enemies" (1996), "Double Trouble" (1997) and "Unfinished Business" (1998). She was set up in the "Brass Eye" episode "Science" in 1997.


title: Eve Pollard

text: Pollard was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours List for services to journalism.


title: Eve Pollard

text: She married Barry Winkleman (born 1939) in Hendon, north London, in 1968. They have a daughter, TV presenter Claudia Winkleman. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1975.


title: Eve Pollard

text: In April 1979 in Islington, London, Pollard married Nicholas Lloyd, a former editor of the "Daily Express" (1986–95); they have a son, Oliver.


title: Islam in Iran

text: The Muslim conquest of Persia () led to the end of the Sasanian Empire and triggered the decline of Zoroastrianism among the Iranian peoples due to large-scale persecution by Arab Muslims under the newly-arrived Rashidun Caliphate. Since its establishment after the 7th-century conquest, Islam has remained the official religion of Iran (also known as "Persia") except for during a short period after the Mongol invasions and subsequent establishment of the Ilkhanate in the 13th century. The 1979 Islamic Revolution brought an end to the historic Persian monarchy, after which Iran emerged as an Islamic republic.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Before the Muslim conquest, mainland Iranians primarily adhered to the Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism; there were also large and thriving Jewish and Christian communities, especially in the territories of northwestern, western, and southern Iran—mainly Caucasian Albania, Asoristan, Persian Armenia, and Caucasian Iberia. A significant number of Iranian peoples also adhered to Buddhism in what was then eastern Iran, such as the regions of Bactria and Sogdia. Following the Muslim conquest, there was a slow but steady movement of the population toward Islam, despite notable resistance. When Islam was introduced to Iranians, the nobility and city-dwellers were among the first to convert; Islam spread more slowly among the peasantry and the "dehqans", or land-owning magnates. By the 10th century, the majority of Persians had become Muslims. However, the achievements of the previous Persian civilizations were not lost, but were to a great extent absorbed by the new Islamic polities.


title: Islam in Iran

text: A 2013 Pew Research Center poll which questioned Iranian citizens on what role Islam should play in government showed that 85 percent of Iranians say that religious figures should have influence in politics. According to the poll, 83 of Iranian Muslims say that they prefer Sharia.


title: Islam in Iran

text: According to some surveys, almost all of Iran's 82,000,000 people are Muslims, with 90 percent adhering to Shia Islam, and a majority of that Shia populace following the Twelver branch. Another 10 percent adhere to Sunni Islam, most of them being Kurds, Achomis, Turkmens and Baloch, living in the northwest, northeast, south and southeast, respectively.


title: Islam in Iran

text: A 2020 survey by the World Values Survey found that 96.6 percent of Iranians believe in Islam. However, according to another 2020 online survey by the GAMAAN, there has been a sharp decline in religiosity in Iran, and only 40 percent of Iranians who took part of the online survey identified as Muslims.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Islam in Iran can be categorised into two periods: Sunni Islam as a majority from the 7th century to the 15th century, and Shia Islam as a majority from the 16th century onwards. The Safavids made Shia Islam the official state religion in the early-16th century and aggressively proselytized the faith by forced conversion. It is believed that by the mid-17th century most people in Iran, Iraq and the territory of the contemporary neighbouring Republic of Azerbaijan had become Shia from Sunni, an affiliation that has continued. Over the following centuries, with the state-fostered rise of an Iran-based Shia clergy, a synthesis was formed between Iranian culture and Shia Islam that marked each indelibly with the tincture of the other.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Muslims conquered Iran in the time of Umar (637) and conquered it after several great battles. Yazdegerd III fled from one district to another Merv in 651. By 674, Muslims had conquered Greater Khorasan (which included modern Iranian Khorasan province and modern Afghanistan, Transoxania).


title: Islam in Iran

text: As Bernard Lewis has quoted "These events have been variously seen in Iran: by some as a blessing, the advent of the true faith, the end of the age of ignorance and heathenism; by others as a humiliating national defeat, the conquest and subjugation of the country by foreign invaders. Both perceptions are of course valid, depending on one's angle of vision."


title: Islam in Iran

text: Under Umar and his immediate successors, the Arab conquerors attempted to maintain their political and cultural cohesion despite the attractions of the civilizations they had conquered. The Arabs were to settle in the garrison towns rather than on scattered estates. The new non-Muslim subjects, or "dhimmi", were to pay a special tax, the "jizya" or poll tax, which was calculated per individual at varying rates for able bodied men of military age.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Iranians were among the very earliest converts to Islam, and their conversion in significant numbers began as soon as the Arab armies reached and overran the Persian plateau. Despite some resistance from elements of the Zoroastrian clergy and other ancient religions, the anti-Islamic policies of later conquerors like the Il-khanids, the impact of the Christian and secular West in modern times, and the attraction of new religious movements like Babism and the Baháʼí Faith (qq.v.), the vast majority of Iranians became and have remained Muslims. Today perhaps 98 percent of ethnic Iranians, including the population of Persia, are at least nominal Muslims. For such a fundamental, pervasive, and enduring cultural transformation, the phenomenon of Iranian conversions to Islam has received remarkably little scholarly attention.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Recent research has established a general chronological framework for the process of conversion of Iranians to Islam. From a study of the probable dates of individual conversions based on genealogies in biographical dictionaries, Richard Bulliet has suggested that there was gradual and limited conversion of Persians down to the end of the Umayyad period (132/750), followed by a rapid increase in the number of conversions after the ʿAbbasid revolution, so that by the time when regional dynasties had been established in the east (ca. 338/950) 80 percent or more of Iranians had become Muslims. The data on which Bulliet's study was based limited the validity of this paradigm to generalizations about full, formal conversions in an urban environment. The situation in rural areas and individual regions may have been quite different, but the overall pattern is consistent with what can be deduced from traditional historical sources. Although in some areas, for example, Shiraz at the time of Moqaddasi's visit in about 375/985 (p. 429), there may still have been strong non-Muslim elements, it is reasonable to suppose that the Persian milieu as a whole became predominantly Islamic within the period of time suggested by Bulliet's research.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Following the Abbasid revolution of 749–51, in which Iranian converts played a major role, the Caliphate's center of gravity moved to Mesopotamia and underwent significant Iranian influences. Accordingly, the Muslim population of Iran rose from approx. 40% in the mid 9th century to close to 100% by the end of 11th century. Islam was readily accepted by Zoroastrians who were employed in industrial and artisan positions because, according to Zoroastrian dogma, such occupations that involved defiling fire made them impure. Moreover, Muslim missionaries did not encounter difficulty in explaining Islamic tenets to Zoroastrians, as there were many similarities between the faiths. According to Thomas Walker Arnold, for the Persian, he would meet Ahura Mazda and Ahriman under the names of Allah and Iblis. Muslim leaders in their effort to win converts encouraged attendance at Muslim prayer, and allowed the Quran to be recited in Persian instead of Arabic so that it would be intelligible to all. The first complete translation of the Qur'an into Persian occurred during the reign of Samanids in the 9th century. Seyyed Hossein Nasr suggests that the rapid increase in conversion was aided by the Persian nationality of the rulers.


title: Islam in Iran

text: "Iran was indeed Islamized, but it was not Arabized. Persians remained Persians. And after an interval of silence, Iran reemerged as a separate, different and distinctive element within Islam, eventually adding a new element even to Islam itself. Culturally, politically, and most remarkable of all even religiously, the Iranian contribution to this new Islamic civilization is of immense importance. The work of Iranians can be seen in every field of cultural endeavor, including Arabic poetry, to which poets of Iranian origin composing their poems in Arabic made a very significant contribution. In a sense, Iranian Islam is a second advent of Islam itself, a new Islam sometimes referred to as Islam-i Ajam. It was this Persian Islam, rather than the original Arab Islam, that was brought to new areas and new peoples: to the Turks, first in Central Asia and then in the Middle East in the country which came to be called Turkey, and India. The Ottoman Turks brought a form of Iranian civilization to the walls of Vienna..."


title: Islam in Iran

text: The Islamization of Iran was to yield deep transformations within the cultural, scientific, and political structure of Iran's society: The blossoming of Persian literature, philosophy, medicine and art became major elements of the newly forming Muslim civilization. Inheriting a heritage of thousands of years of civilization, and being at the "crossroads of the major cultural highways", contributed to Persia emerging as what culminated into the "Islamic Golden Age". During this period, hundreds of scholars and scientists vastly contributed to technology, science and medicine, later influencing the rise of European science during the Renaissance.


title: Islam in Iran

text: The most important scholars of almost all of the Islamic sects and schools of thought were Persian or live in Iran including most notable and reliable Hadith collectors of Shia and Sunni like Shaikh Saduq, Shaikh Kulainy, Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim and Hakim al-Nishaburi, the greatest theologians of Shia and Sunni like Shaykh Tusi, Imam Ghazali, Imam Fakhr al-Razi and Al-Zamakhshari, the greatest physicians, astronomers, logicians, mathematicians, metaphysicians, philosophers and scientists like Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī, the greatest Shaykh of Sufism like Rumi, Abdul-Qadir Gilani.


title: Islam in Iran

text: "It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars… in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs, thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farsi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent... they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar. Great jurists were Persians. Only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet (Muhammad) becomes apparent, ""… The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them… as was the case with all crafts… This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana (modern Central Asia), retained their sedentary culture."


title: Islam in Iran

text: In the 9th and 10th centuries, non-Arab subjects of the Ummah, especially Persians created a movement called Shu'ubiyya in response to the privileged status of Arabs. This movement led to resurgence of Persian national identity. Although Persians adopted Islam, over the centuries they worked to protect and revive their distinctive language and culture, a process known as Persianization. Arabs and Turks also participated in this attempt.


title: Islam in Iran

text: As the power of the Abbasid caliphs diminished, a series of dynasties rose in various parts of Iran, some with considerable influence and power. Among the most important of these overlapping dynasties were the Tahirids in Khorasan (820-72); the Saffarids in Sistan (867-903); and the Samanids (875-1005), originally at Bokhara. The Samanids eventually ruled an area from central Iran to Pakistan. By the early 10th century, the Abbasids almost lost control to the growing Persian faction known as the Buwayhid dynasty (934-1055). Since much of the Abbasid administration had been Persian anyway, the Buwayhid, who were Zaidi Shia, were quietly able to assume real power in Baghdad.


title: Islam in Iran

text: The Samanid dynasty was the first fully native dynasty to rule Iran since the Muslim conquest, and led the revival of Persian culture. The first important Persian poet after the arrival of Islam, Rudaki, was born during this era and was praised by Samanid kings. The Samanids also revived many ancient Persian festivals. Their successor, the Ghaznawids, who were of non-Iranian Turkic origin, also became instrumental in the revival of Persian.


title: Islam in Iran

text: In 962 a Turkish governor of the Samanids, Alptigin, conquered Ghazna (in present-day Afghanistan) and established a dynasty, the Ghaznavids, that lasted to 1186. Later, the Seljuks, who like the Ghaznavids were Turks, slowly conquered Iran over the course of the 11th century. Their leader, Tughril Beg, turned his warriors against the Ghaznavids in Khorasan. He moved south and then west, conquering but not wasting the cities in his path. In 1055 the caliph in Baghdad gave Tughril Beg robes, gifts, and the title King of the East. Under Tughril Beg's successor, Malik Shah (1072–1092), Iran enjoyed a cultural and scientific renaissance, largely attributed to his brilliant Iranian vizier, Nizam al Mulk. These leaders established the Isfahan Observatory where Omar Khayyám did much of his experimentation for a new calendar, and they built religious schools in all the major towns. They brought Abu Hamid Ghazali, one of the greatest Islamic theologians, and other eminent scholars to the Seljuk capital at Baghdad and encouraged and supported their work.


title: Islam in Iran

text: A serious internal threat to the Seljuks during their reign came from the Hashshashin- Ismailis of the Nizari sect, with headquarters at Alamut between Rasht and Tehran. They controlled the immediate area for more than 150 years and sporadically sent out adherents to strengthen their rule by murdering important officials. Several of the various theories on the etymology of the word "assassin" derive from this group.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Another notable Sunni dynasty were the Timurids. Timur was a Turco-Mongol leader from the Eurasian Steppe, who conquered and ruled in the tradition of Genghis Khan. Under the Timurid Empire, the Turco-Persian tradition which began during the Abbasid period would continue. Ulugh Beg, grandson of Timur, built an observatory of his own, and a grand madrassah at Samarkand.


title: Islam in Iran

text: Although Shi'as have lived in Iran since the earliest days of Islam, the writers of the Four Books of Shi'a ahadith were Iranians of the pre-Safavid era and there was one Shi'a dynasty in part of Iran during the tenth and eleventh centuries, according to Mortaza Motahhari the majority of Iranian scholars and masses remained Sunni till the time of the Safavids.