title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Gwendolyn Willow Wilson (born August 31, 1982) is an American comics writer, prose author, and essayist. Her best-known prose works include the novels "Alif the Unseen" and "The Bird King". She is most well known for relaunching the "Ms. Marvel" title for Marvel Comics starring a 16-year-old Muslim superhero named Kamala Khan. Her work is most often categorized as magical realism.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Wilson was born on August 31, 1982 in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and grew up in Morganville. Wilson lived in the county until she was 12. However, in an interview with Newsrama in 2013, she erroneously said she was born in Morris County and spent the first ten years of her life there. Her parents were atheists who renounced Protestantism in the late 1960s, hence Wilson was not raised in a religious household. Wilson first encountered comics when she read an anti-smoking pamphlet featuring the X-Men in the fifth grade. The characters fascinated her and she began watching the cartoon every Saturday. Two years later she and her family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where Wilson continued to pursue her interest in comics and other forms of popular culture such as tabletop role-playing games.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: After high school, Wilson attended Boston University to pursue a degree in history. During her sophomore year, Wilson began experiencing adrenal problems and the associated discomfort resulted in her studying a number of religions, including Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. After studying Judaism she focused on Islam, which appealed to her because "to become a Muslim is sort of a deal between you and God." The 9/11 terrorist attack set back her religious studies – fearing she had misjudged the religion – but she later resumed her studies.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: In 2003, shortly before her graduation, Wilson agreed to teach English in Cairo. During the plane journey, Wilson converted to Islam; claiming she "made peace with God. I called him Allah." According to "Butterfly Mosque", upon arrival in Cairo, Wilson secretly practiced Islam but after becoming engaged to an Egyptian she began to practice it more openly. She and her roommate resided in Tura, a district in Cairo, Egypt. The pair soon met a physics teacher named Omar who offered to show them around and act as a cultural guide. Months later, Wilson and Omar became engaged. Later, she moved with him back to the United States, with Wilson returning to her writing career, and Omar becoming a legal advocate for refugees.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Wilson's writing career began from her work as a freelance music critic for DigBoston. After moving to Cairo, she contributed articles to the "Atlantic Monthly", "The New York Times Magazine", and the "National Post". She was also a regular contributor to the now-defunct Egyptian opposition weekly "Cairo Magazine". Wilson was the first Western journalist to be granted a private interview with Ali Gomaa after his promotion to the position of Grand Mufti of Egypt. Additionally, Wilson released a memoir titled "The Butterfly Mosque" about life in Egypt during the Mubarak regime, which was named a "Seattle Times" Best Book of 2010.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Her first graphic novel, "Cairo", with art by M.K. Perker, was published by Vertigo in 2007, and named one of the best graphic novels of 2007 by "Publishers Weekly", "The Edmonton Journal/CanWest News", and "Comics Worth Reading". The paperback edition of "Cairo" was named one of Best Graphic Novels for High School Students in 2008 by "School Library Journal", and one of 2009's Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens by the American Library Association.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Her first ongoing comic series, "Air", launched by Vertigo in 2008 reunited her with Perker, and was nominated for an Eisner Award for 'Best New Series' of 2009. NPR named "Air" one of the top comics of 2009, and it also received acclaim from the "Fairfield Weekly", "Comic Book Resources", "Marie Claire", and "Library Journal". Other works for DC include fill-in issues #704 and 706 of "Superman", the five-issue mini-series "Vixen: Return of the Lion", starring the Justice League member Vixen with art by CAFU, and "The Outsiders".


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Wilson then wrote "Mystic" (2011), a four-issue miniseries for Marvel Comics with art by David Lopez. Although a CrossGen revival, Willow's "Mystic" bears little resemblance to its previous incarnation.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: In 2014, Marvel debuted a new "Ms. Marvel" series written by Wilson. The book stars Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenager living in Jersey City, New Jersey, who takes up the mantle after the previous Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, took up the name Captain Marvel.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: In November 2018, Wilson began writing "Wonder Woman" from DC Comics. The character battles Ares in an arc entitled "The Just War."


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Her March 2019 novel, "The Bird King", tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret: he can draw maps of places he's never seen and bend the shape of reality.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: In 2020, she is writing The Dreaming from DC Comics, with art by Nick Robles and starting with issue #19. The series is part of The Sandman Universe.


title: G. Willow Wilson

text: Wilson had already had a few forays into the comic book industry, having worked on titles such as "Superman" and "Vixen" previously. She received an email for an interview with David Gabriel, a senior vice-president at Marvel Entertainment. By that point Wilson was almost finished with her second novel, but she took the time to speak with him. Shortly thereafter she was offered to co-create a new version of Ms. Marvel named Kamala Khan alongside Sana Amanat, a director and editor at Marvel Entertainment. The process of crafting Kamala was detailed, both artists wished to create a teenage Muslim American girl. Before settling on her Pakistani heritage the two debated the idea of making her a Somali American girl. While creating Kamala as a character the duo expected negativity, not just from people who were anti-Muslim, but also from Muslims who believed Kamala should be portrayed in a certain way. The crafting also focused on smaller details, Wilson did not believe Kamala should have worn a hijab due to a majority of teenage Muslim American girls not wearing them. Despite their initial fears, Kamala was received positively. Some sources described her as easy to relate to, even likening her to a modern-day Peter Parker. Others even viewed Kamala as a symbol for equality and representation among different religions.


title: David Tom

text: David Tom is an American actor, most famous for portraying Billy Abbott on the CBS soap opera "The Young and the Restless" from 1999 to 2002, and again in 2014.


title: David Tom

text: In 1993, Tom was nominated for two Young Artist Awards for his roles in "Stepfather III" and "Stay Tuned". In 1994, he was again nominated for "Outstanding Youth Ensemble in a Motion Picture" for "Swing Kids", alongside co-stars Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale and Frank Whaley.


title: David Tom

text: He portrayed Billy Abbott on the CBS soap opera, "The Young and the Restless", from 1999 to 2002. Tom received two Daytime Emmy nominations for "Outstanding Younger Actor" in 2000 and 2001, winning in the former year. He also won a Soap Opera Digest Award for "Outstanding Male Newcomer" in 2000 and was consecutively nominated in 2001 for "Outstanding Younger Lead Actor". It was announced in November 2013 that Tom would be reprising the role of Billy, taking over the role from Billy Miller, who had portrayed the character since 2008. Tom returned as Billy on "Y&R" in February 2014. Four months later, Tom was fired from the show and the role of Billy was recast yet again with primetime television actor Burgess Jenkins.


title: David Tom

text: In 2004, Tom portrayed Paul Cramer (the half-brother of Kelly Cramer, portrayed by his sister, Heather) on the ABC soap opera, "One Life to Live", a role he played from March of that year to October 2004. His character was crucial to a year-long baby-switch storyline on "One Life to Live" and its sister series, "All My Children". He played Whitey, Tobey Maguire's adversary in the Reese Witherspoon/Tobey Maguire movie "Pleasantville" in 1998. He also had a small role in the made-for-TV movie "The '60s" in 1999, and a recurring role on The CW television network in its series "Veronica Mars" in 2006.


title: David Tom

text: Tom was born in Hinsdale, Illinois to Charles and Marie Tom. He has a twin sister, Nicholle Tom who is also an actress. He and Nicholle guest-starred together playing the roles of siblings in an episode of "Criminal Minds" in 2008. Heather Tom, his older sister who is a regular on "The Bold and The Beautiful" portraying Katie Logan, appeared on "The Young and the Restless" as well as Victoria Newman. The two almost never appeared together in the same scene; after other actors assumed the roles their characters were married for a time.


title: David Tom

text: David Tom's musical background includes formerly being the lead singer of the indie rock band Eudora.


title: The Innocent Man (South Korean TV series)

text: The Innocent Man () is a 2012 South Korean television series starring Song Joong-ki, Moon Chae-won, and Park Si-yeon. It is known on Netflix as Nice Guy.


text: It is a dark melodrama involving betrayal and romance. It aired on KBS2 for 20 episodes from September 12 to November 15, 2012.


text: Smart and promising medical student Kang Ma-ru (Song Joong-ki) is deeply in love with his slightly older neighbor Han Jae-hee (Park Si-yeon), a television reporter. But when her situation takes a turn for the worse and Jae-hee becomes desperate to escape poverty, she meets a man who changes everything—a rich CEO who introduces her to a life of comfort. So she turns her back on Ma-ru, choosing money over love.


text: The brutal betrayal leaves Ma-ru fractured—not just angry, but a completely changed man. A few years later, Ma-ru is now 30 years old and works as a bartender and gigolo, no longer a "nice guy." He then meets Seo Eun-gi (Moon Chae-won), a young chaebol heiress who's being groomed to take over her father's conglomerate. Eun-gi is cold and calculating, business-savvy, and raised by her father to never show emotion to anyone.


text: Ma-ru decides to take revenge on his ex Jae-hee and bring her down from her position after his sister, Kang Cho-co (Lee Yu-bi) is rushed to the hospital because of Jae-hee. Ma-ru, though initially had no plans as such, uses Eun-gi to take revenge on Jae-hee Just when Ma-ru is beginning to love Eun-gi, she finds out the real reason why he approached her and they break up. But a car accident causes Eun-gi to lose her memory, and she enters Ma-ru's life again.


text: The series is written by Lee Kyung-hee, who previously wrote "Will It Snow for Christmas?", "Thank You", "A Love to Kill", "I'm Sorry, I Love You", and "Sang Doo! Let's Go to School".


text: Kim Jin-won was the director of Drama Special episodes "Just an Ordinary Love Story", "Crossing the Young-do Bridge", "Guardian Angel Kim Yeong-goo", "Snail Gosiwon", and "The Last Flashman".


text: The series features real-life friends and former "Running Man" co-stars Song Joong-ki and Lee Kwang-soo for the first time since Song left the variety show.


text: Beginning episode 5, the series ranked number one in its timeslot for eight consecutive weeks until its finale.


title: Sony Music India

text: Sony Music Entertainment India Pvt. Ltd. is the record label operated by Sony in Chennai, India. The company began operation in 1997, and it was the first record company in India to be 100% foreign-owned, with Sony being a Japanese corporation. From December 2013 to March 2020, the company distributed Warner Music Group releases for Indian and SAARC market, until the Warner Music India division was created. Sony Music India is the largest foreign-owned music label in India, and the country's second largest record label overall with up to 25% share of the Indian music market, after T-Series, and ahead of Zee Music which Sony has a partnership with. Sony Music South is affiliated with Sony Music India and it is specifically made for South Indian albums.


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: Dharam-Veer is a 1977 Hindi-language period action-drama film, directed by Manmohan Desai, produced by Subhas Desai under the Mehboob Studios and R.K. Studios banner, starring Dharmendra, Jeetendra, Zeenat Aman, Neetu Singh, Pran.


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: Its music was composed by Laxmikant–Pyarelal. Dharmendra's younger son Bobby Deol appears briefly playing the childhood version of his father's character. It was part of Desai's four big hits of the year based on the "separated and reunited" theme (the others being "Parvarish", "Chacha Bhatija" (which also starred Dharmendra) and "Amar Akbar Anthony").


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: "Dharam-Veer" takes place in a mythical kingdom and tells the tale of twin brothers Dharam played by Dharamendra and Veer played by Jeetendra, who gets separated at birth, later who still becomes best friends in childhood, not knowing that they were real brothers, later turns against eachother dueto conspiracies of villains and in the end reunites. Upon theatrical release this film went on to become a big blockbuster at the Indian box office, becoming the second highest-grossing film of 1977 as well as one of the biggest hits of the 1970s decade.


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: Maharani Meenakshi is a princess who, one day while out hunting, is rescued from a handful of attackers by a hunter-warrior Jwala Singh (Pran), who lives alone in the jungle, accompanied only by his pet falcon, Sheroo. She offers him a reward for saving her life, but he only wants her hand in marriage, which he had been denied by her father. During the night, they are awoken by another tiger, and Jwala goes to slay it. The tiger kills a villager, and Jwala puts his poncho over him to cover his dead body. He wrestles with the tiger, and they both fall over a cliff. The Princess sees the body of the dead villager, and she thinks it is that of Jwala and goes into shock. Her father eventually marries her off to another royal family. Unbeknownst to Jwala, Meenakshi is pregnant by him. King Satpal Singh, Meenakshi's brother, is told in a prophecy that he will be killed by his eldest nephew, Dharam. To prevent this, he pleads to poverty and moves in with his sister.


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: The Queen gives birth to a healthy baby boy. Satpal takes the baby, minutes after it is born and tosses it out of a window. Instead of falling to its death, though, the baby is caught by Sheroo, who flies him to his master. Jwala has been injured by a tiger and is being healed by a poor arrowsmith and his wife. They are childless and are pleased when the bird brings the baby, believing it to be a gift. They explain what happened to Jwala when he awakes, and he assents to them keeping the child and raising it as their own. In the meanwhile, we learn that the Queen gave birth to twins, and Satpal only dealt with the firstborn. He is satisfied that the prophecy has been averted and now plans to help himself further by swapping his sister's baby with his own. Whilst he is asleep, though, his wife swaps the children back.


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: As the children grow up, Satpal mistreats his child, who he believes to be the prince, and dotes on the prince whom he thinks is his son. The twins grow up. The elder is called Dharam (Dharmendra) and grows up to be an arrowsmith like his father. The younger, Veer (Jeetendra) is the crown prince. The boys become best friends and do not realize that this is because they are twin brothers. Dharam falls in love with a princess (Zeenat Aman), while Veer wins the heart of a gypsy girl, Rupa (Neetu Singh). They also meet Jwala Singh, who is the master of swordsmanship. Jwala Singh teaches Dharam the skills of swordsmanship and as a result Dharam also becomes a master swordsman.


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: Once the truth about his son is revealed to Satpal, he attempts to get rid of Veer. Before doing so, he realizes he must first break the bond between him and his staunchest supporter, Dharam. The Kingdom has "an eye for an eye" as the ultimate law. Dharam's father is accused of shoddily preparing a chariot wheel which caused a soldier to lose his hands. In reality, Satpal and his son Ranjeet sabotaged it. The Queen is forced to chop off Dharam's father's hands in retribution. Dharam vows never to forgive Veer for this. Satpal and his son then kill Dharam's mother and use one of the prince's royal arrows. Dharam finds this and accuses the prince of the murder. In retribution for the mother he has lost, Dharam demands the Queen become his mother. Although Veer strongly protests, the Queen submits, stating that she must be seen to uphold the law or no one will. For this act, Veer begins to bitterly hate Dharam. Veer challenges Dharam to a duel, and Dharam accepts. Satpal and his son know that in this duel, Dharam will kill Veer, and they will get Dharam executed for Veer's murder. Whilst the boys are fighting, the poor blacksmith reveals the story of how Dharam came to him and his wife. He shows the Queen the cloth the baby was wrapped in. The queen realizes that this was, in fact, her child, who she believed to have been carried off by a falcon. She stops the fight just in time to stop the brothers from killing each other and reveals their relationship. Reunited, the brothers now face the challenge of disposing of the forces that Satpal Singh has gathered together. In the end, Satpal is killed by Dharam.


title: Dharam Veer (film)

text: The soundtrack was composed by Laxmikant–Pyarelal, and the lyrics were penned by the veteran Anand Bakshi. The soundtrack of the movie proved to be as popular and successful as the movie itself. "Hum Banjaaro ki Baat Mat Pucho ji" was a cover of Misirlou.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calculated in software running on a generic CPU can also be calculated in custom-made hardware, or in some mix of both.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: To perform computing tasks more quickly (or better in some other way), generally one can invest time and money in improving the software, improving the hardware, or both. There are various approaches with advantages and disadvantages in terms of decreased latency, increased throughput and reduced energy consumption. Typical advantages of focusing on software may include more rapid development, lower non-recurring engineering costs, heightened portability, and ease of updating features or patching bugs, at the cost of overhead to compute general operations. Advantages of focusing on hardware may include speedup, reduced power consumption, lower latency, increased parallelism and bandwidth, and better utilization of area and functional components available on an integrated circuit; at the cost of lower ability to update designs once etched onto silicon and higher costs of functional verification, and times to market. In the hierarchy of digital computing systems ranging from general-purpose processors to fully customized hardware, there is a tradeoff between flexibility and efficiency, with efficiency increasing by orders of magnitude when any given application is implemented higher up that hierarchy. This hierarchy includes general-purpose processors such as CPUs, more specialized processors such as GPUs, fixed-function implemented on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and fixed-function implemented on application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Hardware acceleration is advantageous for performance, and practical when the functions are fixed so updates are not as needed as in software solutions. With the advent of reprogrammable logic devices such as FPGAs, the restriction of hardware acceleration to fully fixed algorithms has eased since 2010, allowing hardware acceleration to be applied to problem domains requiring modification to algorithms and processing control flow. The disadvantage however, is that in many open source projects, it requires proprietary libraries that not all vendors are keen to distribute or expose, making it difficult to integrate in such projects.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Integrated circuits can be created to perform arbitrary operations on analog and digital signals. Most often in computing, signals are digital and can be interpreted as binary number data. Computer hardware and software operate on information in binary representation to perform computing; this is accomplished by calculating boolean functions on the bits of input and outputting the result to some output device downstream for storage or further processing.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Because all Turing machines can run any computable function, it is always possible to design custom hardware that performs the same function as a given piece of software. Conversely, software can be always used to emulate the function of a given piece of hardware. Custom hardware may offer higher performance per watt for the same functions that can be specified in software. Hardware description languages (HDLs) such as Verilog and VHDL can model the same semantics as software and synthesize the design into a netlist that can be programmed to an FPGA or composed into the logic gates of an ASIC.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: The vast majority of software-based computing occurs on machines implementing the von Neumann architecture, collectively known as stored-program computers. Computer programs are stored as data and executed by processors. Such processors must fetch and decode instructions, as well as loading data operands from memory (as part of the instruction cycle) to execute the instructions constituting the software program. Relying on a common cache for code and data leads to the "von Neumann bottleneck", a fundamental limitation on the throughput of software on processors implementing the von Neumann architecture. Even in the modified Harvard architecture, where instructions and data have separate caches in the memory hierarchy, there is overhead to decoding instruction opcodes and multiplexing available execution units on a microprocessor or microcontroller, leading to low circuit utilization. Modern processors that provide simultaneous multithreading exploit under-utilization of available processor functional units and instruction level parallelism between different hardware threads.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Hardware execution units do not in general rely on the von Neumann or modified Harvard architectures and do not need to perform the instruction fetch and decode steps of an instruction cycle and incur those stages' overhead. If needed calculations are specified in a register transfer level (RTL) hardware design, the time and circuit area costs that would be incurred by instruction fetch and decoding stages can be reclaimed and put to other uses.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: This reclamation saves time, power and circuit area in computation. The reclaimed resources can be used for increased parallel computation, other functions, communication or memory, as well as increased input/output capabilities. This comes at the cost of general-purpose utility.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Greater RTL customization of hardware designs allows emerging architectures such as in-memory computing, transport triggered architectures (TTA) and networks-on-chip (NoC) to further benefit from increased locality of data to execution context, thereby reducing computing and communication latency between modules and functional units.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Custom hardware is limited in parallel processing capability only by the area and logic blocks available on the integrated circuit die. Therefore, hardware is much more free to offer massive parallelism than software on general-purpose processors, offering a possibility of implementing the parallel random-access machine (PRAM) model.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: It is common to build multicore and manycore processing units out of microprocessor IP core schematics on a single FPGA or ASIC. Similarly, specialized functional units can be composed in parallel as in digital signal processing without being embedded in a processor IP core. Therefore, hardware acceleration is often employed for repetitive, fixed tasks involving little conditional branching, especially on large amounts of data. This is how Nvidia's CUDA line of GPUs are implemented.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: As device mobility has increased, new metrics have been developed that measure the relative performance of specific acceleration protocols, considering the characteristics such as physical hardware dimensions, power consumption and operations throughput. These can be summarized into three categories: task efficiency, implementation efficiency, and flexibility. Appropriate metrics consider the area of the hardware along with both the corresponding operations throughput and energy consumed.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Examples of hardware acceleration include bit blit acceleration functionality in graphics processing units (GPUs), use of memristors for accelerating neural networks and regular expression hardware acceleration for spam control in the server industry, intended to prevent regular expression denial of service (ReDoS) attacks. The hardware that performs the acceleration may be part of a general-purpose CPU, or a separate unit called a hardware accelerator, though they are usually referred with a more specific term, such as 3D accelerator, or cryptographic accelerator.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Traditionally, processors were sequential (instructions are executed one by one), and were designed to run general purpose algorithms controlled by instruction fetch (for example moving temporary results to and from a register file). Hardware accelerators improve the execution of a specific algorithm by allowing greater concurrency, having specific datapaths for their temporary variables, and reducing the overhead of instruction control in the fetch-decode-execute cycle.


title: Hardware acceleration

text: Modern processors are multi-core and often feature parallel "single-instruction; multiple data" (SIMD) units. Even so, hardware acceleration still yields benefits. Hardware acceleration is suitable for any computation-intensive algorithm which is executed frequently in a task or program. Depending upon the granularity, hardware acceleration can vary from a small functional unit, to a large functional block (like motion estimation in MPEG-2).


title: Tuamotus

text: The Tuamotu Archipelago or the Tuamotu Islands (, officially ) are a French Polynesian chain of just under 80 islands and atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. They constitute the largest chain of atolls in the world, extending (from northwest to southeast) over an area roughly the size of Western Europe. Their combined land area is . This archipelago's major islands are Anaa, Fakarava, Hao and Makemo.


title: Tuamotus

text: The Tuamotus have approximately 16,000 inhabitants. The islands were initially settled by Polynesians, and modern Tuamotuans have inherited from them a shared culture and the Tuamotuan language.


title: Tuamotus

text: The early history of the Tuamotu islands is generally unknown. Archaeological findings suggest that the western Tuamotus were settled from the Society Islands as early as 900 CE or as late as 1200 CE. DNA evidence suggests that they were settled about 1110 CE. On the islands of Rangiroa, Manihi and Mataiva, there are flat ceremonial platforms (called "marae") made of coral blocks, although their exact age is unknown.


title: Tuamotus

text: The first known European encounter with the Tuamotus was with the Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan, during his circumglobal voyage in 1521, undertaken in the service of the Spanish Crown. His encounter was followed by visits from several other Europeans, including:


title: Tuamotus

text: None of these visits were of political consequence, as the islands were within the sphere of influence of the Pōmare Dynasty of Tahiti.


title: Tuamotus

text: The first Christian missionaries arrived in the islands at the beginning of the 19th century. By the late 19th century, traders had begun offering pearls from the islands for sale in Europe, and they became coveted possessions there. France forced the abdication of King Pōmare V of Tahiti and claimed the islands, but did not formally annex them.


title: Tuamotus

text: Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Stevenson travelled among the Taumotus (then called the Paumotus) on the yacht "Casco" in 1888; an account of their journey was published as "In the South Seas". Jack London wrote a story, "The Seed of McCoy", based on an incident in 1900 in which a burning ship, the "Pyrenees", had been safely beached on Mangareva. In the story, London has the ship sail past Mangareva and all through the Tuamotus before beaching on Fakarava.


title: Tuamotus

text: The Tuamotus made headlines around the world in 1947, when the Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl, sailing from South America with a crew of five others, reached Raroia on his raft "Kon-Tiki". The islands were in the news again somewhat later, when France conducted nuclear weapons testing on the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa.


title: Tuamotus

text: French Polynesia is a semi-autonomous island group designated as an overseas country of France. The Tuamotus combine with the Gambier Islands to form the "Îles Tuamotu-Gambier" which is one of the five administrative divisions of French Polynesia.


title: Tuamotus

text: The Tuamotus are grouped into sixteen communes: Anaa; Arutua; Fakarava; Fangatau; Hao; Hikueru; Makemo; Manihi; Napuka; Nukutavake; Puka Puka; Rangiroa; Reao; Takaroa; Tatakoto; and Tureia.


title: Tuamotus

text: The communes on Tuamotu are part of two different electoral districts ("circonscriptions électorales") represented in the Assembly of French Polynesia. The electoral district called "Îles Gambier et Tuamotu Est" comprises the commune of Gambier and eleven communes in eastern Tuamotu: Anaa, Fangatau, Hao, Hikueru, Makemo, Napuka, Nukutavake, Pukapuka, Reao, Tatakoto, and Tureia. The other five communes in western Tuamotu – Arutua, Fakarava, Manihi, Rangiroa, and Takaroa – form the electoral district called "Îles Tuamotu Ouest".


title: Tuamotus

text: Despite the vast spread of the archipelago, it covers a total land area of only about . The climate is a warm tropical one, without sharply distinct seasons. The average annual temperature is a relatively continuous . Water sources such as lakes or rivers are absent, leaving catchments of rain as the only source of fresh water. The annual average rainfall is . Although average rainfall is lowest in September and November, it does not vary markedly throughout the year.


title: Tuamotus

text: The archipelago is geologically highly stable, because it was created by the action of the Easter Fracture Zone, which is only weakly active. There have been no volcanic eruptions during recorded history.


title: Tuamotus

text: The sparse soil of the coral islands does not support diverse vegetation. The coconut palm, which is the basis of copra production, is of special economic importance. On a few of the islands, vanilla is also cultivated. Agriculture is generally otherwise limited to simple subsistence. Fruit and vegetable staples include yams, taro, breadfruit, and a wide range of tropical fruit. Pandanus leaves are traditionally woven together to make mats, hats, and roof thatches. However, many of the roofs nowadays are made of corrugated sheet-metal.


title: Tuamotus

text: The species-rich reefs are home to a diverse range of underwater fauna. The surface creatures are primarily seabirds, insects, and lizards. The Tuamotus have 86 species of birds, ten of which are endemic, including the Tuamotu kingfisher, the Tuamotu reed warbler, and the Tuamotu sandpiper. Thirteen species are globally threatened, and one has gone extinct.


title: Tuamotus

text: All of the islands of the Tuamotus are coral "low islands": essentially high sand bars built upon coral reefs. Makatea, southwest of the Palliser Islands, is one of three great phosphate rocks in the Pacific Ocean. (The others are Banaba in Kiribati, and the island nation of Nauru.) Although the Gambier Islands are geographically part of the Tuamotus because they lie at the southeastern extreme of the archipelago, they are geologically and culturally distinct.


title: Tuamotus

text: The ring-shaped atoll Taiaro, which lies in the northwestern portion of the archipelago, is a rare example of a coral reef that has a fully enclosed lagoon. Taiaro has been officially designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1977.


title: Tuamotus

text: A little more than fifty atolls are permanently populated; the rest are only occupied sporadically, during the copra harvesting season or as a base for fishing expeditions. The population has grown in the last years due to the fishing boom in the northern part and the extraction of pearls, especially black pearls, in the west and in the center. In any case, most of the inhabitants practice subsistence agriculture.


title: Tuamotus

text: In the 2007 census, there were 15,510 inhabitants in the Tuamotu Islands, a population density of 18 inhabitants/km². The population was 14,876 in 2002 and 8,100 in 1983. In 2002, 769 inhabitants lived within 400 km of the islands of Moruroa and Fangataufa (former nuclear test base).


title: Tuamotus

text: The official language of the archipelago is French. However, the Tuamotu language, Pa'umotu, is recognized as a regional language of the French Republic. In the Gambier Islands, Mangarevian is spoken, while in Puka Puka a Marquesan dialect is used.


title: Tuamotus

text: The majority of the population is Christian, including members of the Catholic Church and various Protestant groups. The Catholic Church administers 42 churches on the islands under the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Papeete.


title: Tuamotus

text: In 1833, the Catholic Church divided the Pacific into two apostolic vicariates: Western Oceania fell to the Marists and Eastern Oceania-which included the Tuamots, Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas and the Cook Islands-was the responsibility of the Picpus missionaries. In 1834, the French Fathers Honoré Laval and François d'Assise Caret arrived in Mangareva.


title: Tuamotus

text: First with the acquiescence and then with the active support of the island chiefs, the Picpusians embarked on an extensive development program for the Gambier Islands. This included the introduction of cotton cultivation, pearl and mother-of-pearl fishing, and the establishment of plantations and orchards. As they were very successful, their missionary activities gradually spread to the other islands of the Tuamotu archipelago. With the missionary work, news of the islands' wealth in pearls also reached Europe, making them a coveted destination for European traders and adventurers.


title: Tuamotus

text: The islands' economy is predominantly based on subsistence agriculture. The most important sources of additional income are the cultivation of black pearls and the preparation of copra. Tourism-related income remains meager, especially compared to the income generated by tourism in the neighboring Society Islands. Modest tourism infrastructure is found on the atolls of Rangiroa and Manihi, which offer recreational scuba diving and snorkeling destinations.


title: Tuamotus

text: The inhabitants of Tuamotu produce 75% of the copra of French Polynesia. It is a subsidized family activity and the only resource of the atolls farthest from the center and east.


title: Tuamotus

text: Fishing is a major activity in the atolls closest to Tahiti (Rangiroa, Arutua, Apataki), which supply the central market of Papeete.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 is a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. It was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service. Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, it was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries and the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The type was capable of holding its own during the so-called Phoney War from September 1939 to 10 May 1940. Upon the invasion of France in May 1940, approximately 400 Moranes were lost. Out of these, around 150 were lost to enemy fighters and ground fire, while another 100 aircraft were destroyed on the ground during enemy air raids; the remainder were deliberately destroyed by French military personnel to prevent the fighters from falling into German hands. French M.S.406 squadrons had achieved 191 confirmed victories, along with another 83 probable victories. Limited production of the type continued in France for sometime after the Armistice of 22 June 1940 under German supervision.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The M.S.406 was exported to a range of customers. Out of 160 aeroplanes ordered by Poland, none had reached Polish territory before the outbreak of war, with the first consignment sent on 29 August 1939. Of particular note was its service in the hands of Finnish and Swiss air forces; both operators chose to develop indigenous models, such as the Finnish "Mörkö-Morane"). By the end of the war, the majority of M.S.406s and its derivatives were out of service, having been rendered obsolete by rapid advances in fighter aircraft technology. Its final use was as an advanced trainer aircraft in Finland, prior to the last examples of the type being scrapped during 1952.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: During 1934, the "Service Technique de l'Aéronautique" (Aeronautical Technical Service) of the French Air Force issued the "C1 design" requirement for a new and modern single-seat interceptor fighter. Envisaged as a monoplane with a retractable undercarriage, the prospective fighter aircraft was to serve as a replacement for the Dewoitine D.371, Dewoitine D.500 and Loire 46 aircraft. Amongst the various aviation companies who took interest in the specification, to which the potential for a large production order was attached, was French aircraft manufacturer Morane-Saulnier.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The company's design team quickly projected that a low-wing monoplane design would be capable of delivering the desired level of performance; other features were to include an enclosed cockpit, a variable-pitch propeller and landing flaps. It was decided to submit their own response to the requirement, the "M.S.405"; work on the design was headed by the firm's Engineer-in-Chief, Paul-René Gauthier. The shape and basic configuration of the M.S.405 were hotly contested, particularly between 'traditional' advocates of biplane aircraft and 'modern' monoplane supporters.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The MS.405 was a low-wing monoplane of mixed construction, with fabric-covered wooden tail, with a bonded metal–wood material ("Plymax") skin fixed to duralumin tubing. Plymax consisted of a thin sheet of duralumin bonded to a thicker sheet of plywood. Morane-Saulnier had a long history of producing warplanes dating back to the pre-First World War years but in the inter-war period, they had concentrated on civil designs. The aircraft was a departure for them, being their first low-wing monoplane, first with an enclosed cockpit and first with retracting landing gear. Prior to this, their most modern designs were fixed-gear parasol monoplanes.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The new Hispano-Suiza 12Ygrs engine driving a two-pitch Chauvière propeller powered the first "M.S405-1" prototype, which flew on 8 August 1935. First flown by French aerobatic pilot Michel Détroyat, the prototype demonstrated the type's favourable flying characteristics from the onset. Early test flights were flown with a fixed undercarriage, which was replaced by a retractable counterpart later on. After 80 hours of test flights, in January 1936, the prototype was delivered with all military equipment fitted to CEMA at Villacoublay to participate in service trials. On 19 June 1937, the first prototype generated substantial publicity when Détroyat flew it from Paris to Brussels in Belgium, to be displayed at the Brussels Aeronautical Exhibition.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Development of the M.S.405 proceeded fairly slowly; testing revealed the need to modify the wing planform and dihedral, while the Chauvière-built propeller was replaced by a Levasseur-built counterpart. The second "M.S.405-2" prototype with a Hispano-Suiza 12Ycrs engine did not make its first flight until 20 January 1937, almost a year and a half behind the first prototype. The second prototype was able to attain a speed of during testing. During July 1937, both prototypes were flown to the Paris Air Show. On 29 July 1938, the second prototype was lost along with its pilot. During March 1937, having been suitably impressed with its performance, an initial order was placed for the construction of 16 pre-production prototypes, which were to incorporate the design improvements that had been made upon the previous version.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: As a consequence of various changes made between the prototypes and the pre-production aircraft, the name "M.S.406" was adopted for the type. On 3 February 1938, the first pre-production aircraft made its first flight; during December 1938, the final pre-production M.S.406 was delivered. The pre-production aircraft served to build up experience of manufacturing and testing of the type in advance of production M.S.406s. These 15 aircraft were used for various purposes, such as the third and tenth which served as examples for subcontractors Société nationale des constructions aéronautiques de l'ouest (SNCAO) and Société nationale des constructions aéronautiques du Midi (SNCAM), and the twelfth and thirteenth functioned as prototypes for the Swiss D-3801 and D-3800 export models. Variants of the aircraft, including some which later entered mass production, were first represented amongst the pre-production aircraft.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The two main changes of the M.S. 406 were the inclusion of a new wing structure which saved weight and the fitting of a retractable radiator, underneath the fuselage. Powered by the production HS 12Y-31 engine, the new design was over faster than the earlier M.S.405 model. Designed to reach speeds of , examples were tested without encountering any difficulty in reaching up to 730 km/h (454 mph) in a dive. Armament consisted of a Hispano-Suiza HS.9 or 404 cannon with 60 rounds in the V of the engine, fired through the propeller hub and two MAC 1934 machine guns (one in each wing, each with 300 rounds). A weakness of the MAC 1934 was its operation at high altitudes. It was found that at altitudes over , the guns had a tendency to freeze. Heaters were added to the guns for high-altitude use.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Beyond the base M.S.406 design, the development of improved variants and derivatives were emphasised even as mass production of the type was still being established. Perhaps the most significant of these was the "M.S.410", which was developed on the basis of very early combat experience gathered during autumn 1939. This model had four MAC 1934 machine guns with 550 rounds per gun, all of which were heated by warm air fed via a heat exchanger placed on the port engine exhausts. The cockpit had a modified windscreen to accommodate a new reflector sight arrangement, as well the adoption of electropneumatic controls of the armaments and provisions for the carriage of under-wing auxiliary fuel tanks.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Following the completion of a pair of prototypes, during February 1940, the French government issued an order authorising the bulk upgrading of 500 M.S.406 fighters to the better armed, stronger and faster ( M.S.410 configuration. It took 15 days to convert each fighter but conversions were stopped in May 1940 to put every available combat aircraft into action during the Battle of France against invading German forces. Only five complete production M.S.410 aircraft, along with 150 pairs of the revised wings, had been completed by this point.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: During the late 1930s, there was a growing perception that a major conflict between Germany and France was not only looming but increasingly unavoidable. As part of its rearmament, the French Air Force placed an order for 1,000 M.S406 airframes during March 1938. Morane-Saulnier was unable to produce anywhere near this number at their own factory, thus a second assembly line was established at the nationalized factories of SNCAO at St. Nazaire in order to produce the type. In April 1937, an initial order for 50 SNCAO-built M.S.406 fighters was placed; in August 1937, a follow-up order for 80 aircraft was issued. In April 1938, as a component of the French Air Force's "Plan V", a large order for 825 M.S.406 was placed with the various nationalised French aircraft industries.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: During late 1938, production of the M.S.406 commenced; the first production example performed its maiden flight on 29 January 1939. Production was initially quite slow; only 18 aircraft were produced at Puteaux, along with 10 fighters built by SNCAO. Deliveries were hampered more by the slow deliveries of engines than by the lack of airframes; while efforts were made to correct this, according to Botquin, the engine shortage was present throughout the manufacturing programme. By April 1939, the production lines were delivering six aircraft per day and when war broke out on 3 September 1939, the rate production had risen to 11 aircraft per day; at this time, 535 M.S.406s had entered squadron service. According to aviation author Gaston Botquin, the rate of production of the type was comparable to the initial model of the British Hawker Hurricane.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Production had reached a high-point of 147 M.S.406 aircraft during August 1939, before declining as manufacturing efforts were progressively re-directed towards other aircraft, such as the Lioré et Olivier LeO 45. Manufacturing of the M.S.406 was wound down during March 1940, by which point the original order for 1,000 fighters had been delivered in full to the French Air Force, along with a further 77 aircraft which had been constructed for foreign users (30 fighters for Finland and 45 for Turkey). Additional M.S.406 orders that had been placed for Lithuania and Poland were cancelled with the outbreak of the war.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: According to Botquin, the M.S.406 had attracted considerable foreign attention during the late 1930s, and had shown signs of commercial promise early on. During 1937, negotiations were underway between France and Belgium to undertake the licensed production of the type by Belgian aircraft manufacturer Avions Fairey for both the Belgian and French air forces, but these ultimately came to nothing. Instead, the first major export customer was Switzerland who, in September 1938, acquired a manufacturing licence for the type to be manufactured by Swiss firm Fabrique fédérale d'avions in Emmen.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: During May 1938, the 2nd "Escadrille" of the 7th "Groupe de Chasse" at Reims conducted operational testing of the type using a handful of pre-production M.S.406 aircraft. In spite of some accidents experienced, pilots were commonly pleased with the type's performance; in response to the accidents, improvements such as the strengthening of the undercarriage and the cabin hood were implemented during mid-1939. In spite of complaints regarding the forward fuselage exterior covering and motor attachments, no corrective actions were implemented to address these concerns.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Production M.S.406s quickly followed the earlier examples. Between December 1938 and January 1939, the 6th Escadre exchanged its obsolete Loire 46 fighters for the type, while other units rapidly followed. By Bastille Day of that year, sufficient production M.S.406 aircraft had been delivered to enable the type to perform the Paris fly-past on 14 July 1939. Overall, the M.S.406 equipped 16 "Groupes de Chasse" and three "Escadrilles", stationed in both mainland France and across its overseas colonies; of these, 12 of the "Groupes" saw action against the "Luftwaffe".


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: On 23 August 1939, in response to the diplomatic crisis emerging over the Invasion of Poland, all French Air Force units were mobilised as part of preparations to be ready for imminent combat operations. Various M.S.406-equipped units were deployed along the border with Germany stretching between Luxembourg and Switzerland, intended to support the sizable ground elements of the French Army from the air. During the Phoney War opening phase of the Second World War, a time of relatively low combat intensity, the type's activities focused upon air defence operations with the aim of countering the prolific aerial reconnaissance and probing activities of small groups of Axis-aligned fighters coming over the border, in addition to escorting friendly reconnaissance aircraft. Throughout the Phoney War, a total of 10,119 fighter missions were reportedly flown over the Army Zones on the border, around half of which being flown by M.S.406 fighters.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: During the Phoney War, isolated skirmishes occurred between the M.S.406 and fighters of the "Luftwaffe", particularly early models of the Messerschmitt Bf 109. For 32 claimed 'kills' and 16 'probables' achieved by M.S.406s, including against the Bf 109, 13 were lost in combat along with 33 more that were lost within the border zone under vague circumstances. According to Botquin, by this stage, the weaknesses of the M.S.406 were already apparent, such as the lack of armouring, frequent gun-jamming, inadequate firepower, slow responsiveness of the guns, unreliable radio units, very high rate of engine wear, corrosion of rudder components, cabin glazing breaking under air pressure during certain manoeuvres, loss of exterior panels due to screws deteriorating rapidly, and the lack of rear-view mirrors.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: While the aircraft was very manoeuvrable and could withstand high amounts of battle damage, potentially giving possible advantages during combat against Luftwaffe fighters, the M.S.406 was overall outclassed by the Bf 109. Efforts to replace the M.S.406, such as efforts to convert existing aircraft to the improved M.S.410 standard, with a more capable fighter failed to occur prior to the end of the Phoney War on 10 May 1940, the month in which a massive full-scale invasion by German forces of mainland France commenced, resulting in the Battle of France. On the eve of the invasion, a total of 10 Groupes de Chasse were equipped with M.S.406 fighters, along with a number of defensive units which were almost exclusively equipped with either the M.S.406 or Bloch MB.152 aircraft.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: During the relentless fighting that followed, Allied forces suffered a high rate of attrition and were unable to keep up with the level of damage being sustained. Of the M.S.406s that saw action against the Germans, heavy losses were incurred; reportedly, 150 aircraft were lost in action while a further 250–300 fighters were recorded as having been lost through other causes. The rapid advance of German forces led to repeated retreats and abandonment of bases, rendering most repair and replacement efforts disorganized, along with ground crews often having to destroy large numbers of their own fighter aircraft on the ground to prevent their capture. The decision to employ small groups of French fighters against larger German formations was mostly ineffective against bombers and often costly.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: In combat against enemy fighters, the M.S.406 often experienced mixed results. While there were isolated incidents of favourable results being achieved with the type even against the capable Bf 109 - that was 100 km/h faster than the Morane - the 406 was usually outclassed by the Luftwaffe fighters. The story of GC III/7 was tragically typical. On 15 May, nine Moranes of this fighter unit encountered a dozen Bf 109s over Mézières. The Messerschmitts stayed a few thousand feet above their French opponents and dived in pairs to attack, with a single firing pass, before climbing back and then repeating the attack. Three M.S.406 went spinning down in flames and only one pilot bailed out, severely wounded. A fourth Morane, riddled with bullets, crash-landed at Soissons and was wrecked. A fifth pilot, Sergent Deshons, was wounded in the head by splinters, forcing him to land. Six days later, on 21 May, 17 Morane of the same unit, over Compiègne, intercepted 50 Dorniers escorted by as many Bf 109s. Before the Morane could close in to open fire, the Messerschmitts jumped them and shot down four Moranes almost at once. Two more were so badly damaged that could not be repaired. On their side, the French pilots claimed two Bf109s.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The M.S.406 holds the unfortunate distinction of being the least effective French fighter in service during the Battle of France, which Botquin suggests was due to its relatively low firepower. On 24 June 1940, a M.S.406 flown by Sous Lieutenant Marchelidon of G.C.1/2 scored the French Air Force's last kill in the conflict. Botquin stated of the aircraft: "it would be pointless to pretend, as was often done during the war for propaganda purposes, that the M.S.406 was the finest fighter in the world...but it was certainly a pleasant machine to fly with no vices and great maneuverability".


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: In the aftermath of the armistice, only a single Vichy unit, GC. 1/7, was equipped with the M.S.406. According to Botquin, the deployment of the type from this point onwards reflected the fighter's relative obsolescence; it was reduced to relatively minor roles, being used mainly for training purposes in mainland France. A handful of Syrian M.S.406 aircraft flew to Egypt, joining up with the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Free French Air Force, continuing to be operated there until they became unserviceable. Those that remained in Vichy France's control saw action in Syria against encroaching RAF forces, and on Madagascar against the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy suffering heavy losses against the service's Fairey Fulmar fighters.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Germany took possession of a large number of M.S.406s and the later M.S.410s. The "Luftwaffe" operated a number of the type for training purposes, while others were sold off to third parties. Finland purchased additional M.S.406s (as well as a few 406/410 hybrids) from the Germans, while others were passed off to Italy and some 48 aircraft were delivered to the Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia during 1943. Both Switzerland and Turkey also operated the type; the Swiss actually downed a number of both German and Allied aircraft during the 1944–45 period.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Before the Pacific campaign proper, Vichy authorities in French Indochina were engaged in a frontier war against Thailand, during 1940–41. A number of M.S.406s stationed in Indochina downed several Thai fighters before all French Air Force units were withdrawn from the theatre. Some abandoned examples of the M.S.406 were captured by the Thai Air Force.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The M.S.406 had a parallel career in Finland. In February 1940, the first 30 French fighters were allocated to "LeLv 28", commanded by Major Jusu. These aircraft received the Finnish designations MS-301 to MS-330. They were used in combat during the Winter War, against the USSR and carried out 259 operational sorties and shot down 16 Soviet aircraft. In modified form, the M.S.406 were later involved in the Continuation War. Between November 1939 and 4 September 1944, Lv28 scored 118 aerial victories flying the Morane M.S.406 (the unit flew Bf 109Gs for a time, as well). The unit lost 15 aircraft. Total Finnish kills were 121. The top Morane ace in all theatres was W/O Urho Lehtovaara, with 15 of his 44.5 total kills achieved in Moranes. The Finnish nicknames were "Murjaani" ("moor" or "Negro"), a twist on its name, and "Mätimaha" (roe-belly) and "Riippuvatsa" (hanging belly) because of its bulged ventral fuselage.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The "M.S.405" was a low-wing monoplane of mixed construction, being furnished with a fabric-covered wooden tail and a bonded metal/wood material ("Plymax") skin fixed to duralumin tubing. Plymax consisted of a thin sheet of duralumin bonded to a thicker sheet of plywood. It was the company's first low-wing monoplane design, as well as the first with an enclosed cockpit, and the first to feature retractable landing gear. The new Hispano-Suiza 12Ygrs engine driving a two-pitch Chauvière propeller powered the first prototype, "M.S.405-01", which flew on 8 August 1935. The second prototype, "M.S.405-02", powered by a Hispano-Suiza 12Ycrs engine, performed its first flight on 20 January 1937. Outfitted with the new engine, the fighter was able to attain a speed of .


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The "M.S.406" designation was adopted following various design changes from the earlier M.S.405 prototypes; two of the principal design changes were the inclusion of a new weight-saving wing structure and the new retractable radiator. Powered by the production HS 12Y-31 engine, the new M.S.406 was over faster than the M.S. 405, at , tested with no problem to reach up to in a dive. Armament consisted of a Hispano-Suiza HS.9 or Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon with 60 rounds in the V of the engine and fired through the propeller hub, and two MAC 1934 machine guns (one in each wing, each with 300 rounds).


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: While the M.S.406 was entering squadron service in 1939, an upgrade series was initiated with the aim of improving the design. The result was the "M.S.410", which included the adoption of a stronger wing, simpler fixed radiator in place of the earlier retractable design, an arrangement of four belt-fed MAC guns (which were heated by hot air to prevent the frequent jamming of the wing guns at low temperatures suffered by the M.S.406) in place of the earlier pair of drum-fed weapons, and the fitting of exhaust ejectors for additional thrust. The added thrust boosted the top speed to at , resulting in an improvement of about over the M.S.406 at the same height. Production of the M.S.410 had only just started in May 1940, when the German attack resulted in the conversion programme being stopped, by which point only five examples of the type had been completed. Production was allowed to continue under German supervision, converting earlier 406s to the 410 standard, but many of these aircraft received only the new wings. Altogether, a total of 74 planes were modified.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: A single example of the "M.S.411" was constructed by converting the 12th aircraft of the pre-production line with the 406 wing and the Hispano-Suiza 12Y-45 engine. A later modification was started as the "M.S.412" with the Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51 engine, but this was not completed by the time the war ended.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: In 1939, Hispano started prototype deliveries of the new Hispano-Suiza 12Z engine of . One was fitted to a modified M.S.410 to create the "M.S.450", giving dramatic improvements in performance, especially at altitude. However the engine did not enter production before France fell, and the similarly modified Dewoitine D.520 (the D.523) was considered a better design for the engine anyway.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: In 1938, Switzerland obtained a license for local production of the MS.406. Two MS.406H fighters were supplied to Switzerland in September 1938 and April 1939 to serve as pattern aircraft as the "D-3800", retaining the earlier wing design of the 405, but powered by the newer Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 engines as used by the MS.406.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Pre-production started with a run of eight aircraft from EKW with engines built by Adolph Saurer AG driving a new Escher-Wyss EW-V3 fully adjustable propeller. Instruments were replaced with Swiss versions and the drum-fed MAC machine guns with locally designed and built belt-fed guns, eliminating the wing-bulges of the French version, and avoiding the freezing problems encountered by French guns. The first of these aircraft was completed in November 1939. The pre-production models were then followed with an order for a further 74 examples, which were all delivered by 29 August 1940. In 1942, a further two were assembled with spares originally set aside for the original production run.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: During 1944, surviving aircraft were modified with new cooling and hydraulic installations, and were fitted with ejector exhausts. These modifications were the same standard as the D-3801 series, making them identical with the exception of the engine installation. At the end of the war the remaining aircraft were used as trainers, until the last one was scrapped in 1954.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The Swiss continued development of the MS.412 when French involvement stopped following the June 1940 Armistice. The Dornier-Altenrhein factory completed a prototype powered with a licensed-produced HS-51 12Y engine, generating together with the fixed radiator and revised exhausts as tested on the MS.411, in October 1940. The new type retained the armament changes and other improvements introduced on the D.3800. This series was put into production in 1941 as the "D-3801" with continued deliveries until 1945 with 207 completed. Another 17 were built from spares between 1947 and 1948. Reliability of the new engine was at first extremely poor, with problems with crankshaft bearings causing several accidents. The engine problems slowed deliveries, with only 16 aircraft produced in 1942 and a single aircraft delivered in 1943. The engine problems were eventually resolved in 1944. With from the Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51, the speed was boosted to , roughly equivalent to the D.520 or the Hurricane. Weights were between . After being retired from operational use as a fighter when the North American P-51 Mustang was acquired in 1948, the type remained in service as a trainer and target tug until 1959.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The D.3802 was based on the MS.450, emerging as the MS.540, with a Saurer YS-2 engine. The prototype flew in the autumn of 1944, revealing several shortcomings, but it was capable of . 12 were produced seeing limited use with Fliegerstaffel 17 and some other units.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The last development of this aircraft was the D.3803, with Saurer YS-3 engine, and modified dorsal fuselage (with an all-round visibility canopy). The D.3803 was armed with three HS-404 cannon (one in the nose, two in the wings), plus up to bombs and rockets. Despite not having a powerful engine, the type reached at . The performance was impressive, but the last development of this 1935 fighter design had several shortcomings and was not entirely successful. Its development was halted as P-51D Mustangs became available.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: France sent 30 M.S.406s to Finland, between 4 and 29 February 1940. By 1943 the Finns had received an additional 46 M.S.406s and 11 M.S.410s purchased from the Germans. By this point, the fighters were hopelessly outdated, but the Finns were so desperate for serviceable aircraft that they decided to start a modification program to bring all of their examples to a new standard.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The aircraft designer Aarne Lakomaa turned the obsolete "M-S" into a first rate fighter, the "Mörkö-Morane" ("Mörkö" is the Finnish for "Bogeyman" or "Bugbear"). It is sometimes referred to as the "LaGG-Morane". Powered by captured Klimov M-105P engines (a licensed version of the HS 12Y) of with a fully adjustable propeller, the airframe required some local strengthening and also gained a new and more aerodynamic engine cowling. These changes boosted the speed to . Other changes included a new oil cooler taken from the Bf 109, the use of four belt-fed guns like the M.S.410, and the excellent MG 151/20 cannon in the engine mounting. However, supplies of the MG 151 were limited, and several received captured Berezin UBS guns instead.


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: The first example of the modified fighter, MS-631, made its first flight on 25 January 1943, and the results were startling: the aircraft was faster than the original French version, and the service ceiling was increased from to .


title: Morane-Saulnier M.S.406

text: Originally, it was planned to convert all the 41 remaining M.S.406s and M.S.410s with the Soviet engine, but it took time, and the first front-line aircraft of this type did not reach LeLv 28 until July/August 1944. By the end of the Continuation War in September 1944, only three examples had been converted (including the original prototype). Lieutenant Lars Hattinen (an ace with six victories) scored three kills with the Mörkö-Morane, one with each Mörkö-Morane in the squadron. More fighters arrived from the factory, though, and the Mörkö-Moranes took part in the Lapland War as reconnaissance and ground attack aircraft. Not all the Mörkö-Morane conversions were completed before March 1945, when the entire re-engining programme was halted. After the end of the war, the total was brought to 41, which served as advanced trainers with TLeLv 14 until September 1948. In 1952 all remaining Finnish Moranes were scrapped.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Life Is Sweet is a 1990 British comedy-drama film directed by Mike Leigh, starring Alison Steadman, Jim Broadbent, Claire Skinner, Jane Horrocks and Timothy Spall. Leigh's third cinematic film, it was his most commercially successful title at the time of release. A tragi-comic story, it follows the fortunes of a working-class North London family over a few weeks one summer.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: On a hot summer weekend lunchtime, Andy (a senior chef in a large London catering facility) impulsively buys a dilapidated fast-food van touted by a disreputable acquaintance, Patsy, who has unexpectedly called at his home. Andy plans to restore the van for use on a local fast-food round. Wendy, his hard-working, good-natured and innuendo-prone wife, is sensibly sceptical about the project but understands her husband's ambitions. Their twin 22-year-old daughters (Natalie and Nicola) have profoundly different attitudes: tomboyish Natalie, thinks it is a good idea if it will make her father happy, whereas the bitter, shut-in Nicola, contemptuously and typically dismisses Andy as a "Capitalist!" Late that night, an anguished Nicola binges on chocolate and snacks, then forces herself to vomit. Natalie, awake in her adjacent bedroom and looking through USA travel brochures, overhears: her reactions indicate this is something she is painfully familiar with.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Meanwhile, Aubrey (Timothy Spall) - a hyperactive but emotionally labile family friend- is opening a Parisian-themed restaurant named The Regret Rien. Wendy accepts a part-time job as waitress in the restaurant, but her and Andy's initial confidence in the scheme is undermined by Aubrey's unorthodox approach to the interior décor (a cluttered, half-realised combination of outmoded French clichés, such as a bicycle in the bay window, and of tasteless Victoriana, such as a stuffed cat's head framed by broken accordion sconces) and by his menu. His singularly grotesque interpretation of the excesses of nouvelle cuisine includes dishes such as saveloy on a bed of lychees, liver in lager and pork cyst.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: During the afternoon, whilst the rest of the family are out at work, Nicola's lover comes to the family home to have sex with her. It appears that Nicola only can be aroused by a combination of light bondage and the consumption of chocolate spread from her chest – a practice to which he only reluctantly agrees. Trying to engage and understand her, he ultimately loses patience with her combative attitude, concluding she is "a bit vacant" and incapable of having a sincere, adult conversation or allowing herself to enjoy his companionship. Nicola calls his bluff and loses: frustrated but resolute, he leaves, and her fragile emotional state deteriorates further.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: The opening night of The Regret Rien is a disaster. Volunteering her help when Aubrey's waitress has let him down, Wendy discovers that Aubrey has neglected to advertise the opening, with the result that no customers turn up. Aubrey proceeds to get helplessly drunk, taking to the pavement and railing against the world. Wendy gets him back inside, where Aubrey blubbers that he fancies her, starts to undress and passes out: "a quivering, sobbing gelatinous blob of disappointment". Wendy has to deal not only with him but with his glum and passive sous-chef/dogsbody Paula.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Meanwhile, Andy and Patsy have gone to their local pub, where Andy gets uncharacteristically but emphatically drunk and ends up sleeping inside the decrepit fast-food van in his driveway. Wendy returns home to find him there. Unnerved by her bizarre evening, she loses her temper with the whole family.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Phlegmatic and dry-humoured Natalie enjoys her unconventional work as a plumber, the simple pleasures of a pint and a game of pool, and dreams of visiting the U.S. In contrast, the fidgety and isolated Nicola becomes increasingly agitated, aggressive and reclusive, and Wendy finally confronts her. During the course of their long and anguished confrontation, Wendy makes it clear to Nicola that she is deeply worried about her, wondering why she makes no attempt to get involved with the causes she claims to believe. She tells Nicola of the struggle that she and Andy endured to care for their baby daughters – how it meant she never went to college and Andy working in a "job he hates". It emerges that during an earlier phase of Nicola's bulimia, she almost starved to death. Ashamed and angry, Nicola is convinced that Wendy and the rest of the family hate her. Instead, as the exasperated Wendy tells her "We don't hate you! We love you, you stupid girl!" and leaves the room, deeply upset. The brittle behavioural armour that Nicola has protected her psyche with is now shattered, and she breaks down sobbing.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Meanwhile, Andy is seen running his kitchen at work with energy and authority but slips on a spoon, breaking his ankle. Wendy receives the news with a characteristic mixture of sympathy and amusement. She drives him home from the hospital; aided by Natalie she makes him comfortable, and then goes to see Nicola, still in her room. Mother and daughter reconcile.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: The film ends with Natalie and Nicola sitting peacefully in the evening sunshine in the back garden. Natalie observes that Nicola must own up to her parents about her bulimia. She then asks Nicola "D'you want some money?" and Nicola accepts gratefully, the first time in the film where she has accepted an offer of help.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: The film was a co-production between British Screen Productions, Channel Four Films and Thin Man Films, a production company created by Mike Leigh and producer Simon Channing-Williams. This was the first release by Thin Man, who have produced all Leigh's films since "Life Is Sweet".


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: The script was developed by Leigh and the cast, employing his established practice of collectively improvising and rehearsing for several weeks before shooting. For example, Aubrey's bizarre recipes were devised by Leigh and Timothy Spall over the course of an evening, and then checked for plausibility with a professional chef, who advised them about which ones were technically impossible to prepare; all the ones that appear in the film are, as Leigh put it, "all feasible, gross as it sounds."


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: David Thewlis, who played Nicola's anonymous lover, was disappointed at being given such a small role. Leigh promised him that the next time he considered Thewlis for a role in a film "he'd be given a fair slice of the pie." Thewlis' next role in a Leigh film was his award-winning performance as the lead character Johnny in "Naked".


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: The film was shot entirely on location in Enfield, UK and used local people as extras, including an Enfield-based dance school for the opening title sequence.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Alison Chitty found the house in Enfield for "Life Is Sweet" and fell in love with it because of its garden shed. She also found the old mobile snack-bar, which Rea's Patsy sells on to Broadbent's Andy as a pig in a poke in Northampton and painted it.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: "Life is Sweet"’s bright, primary-coloured production design contrasted with that of Leigh's next film, "Naked," which was conceived in blacks and blues and a 'dark, dilapidated grunginess'.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: The film received very favourable reviews, and on Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a rating of 92% from 13 reviews. "The Guardian" film reviewer awarded the film seven stars out of a possible ten. Roger Ebert in the "Chicago Sun-Times" was full of praise, commenting that in spite of the constraints of independent film production, the film was "as funny, spontaneous and free as if it had been made on a lark by a millionaire". He added that "By the end of "Life Is Sweet", we are treading close to the stuff of life itself – to the way we all struggle and make do, compromise some of our dreams and insist on the others. Watching this movie made me realize how boring and thin many movies are; how they substitute plots for the fascinations of life."


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Desson Thompson of the same paper agreed, praising Leigh for discovering "the tragic beauty of the mundane".


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: David Sexton in the "Times Literary Supplement" was critical, however, and wrote that "the film never transcends sitcom and remains static and anecdotal, its unit the scene, not the complete story." Further, he wrote that the film is "the product of an unresolved attitude to its subject matter and in particular of an uneasy relation to questions of class." Philip French in "The Observer" countered this idea: "Leigh has been called patronising. The charge is false. The Noël Coward/David Lean film "This Happy Breed", evoked by Leigh in several panning shots across suburban back gardens, is patronising. Coward and Lean pat their characters on the back...Leigh shakes them, hugs them, sometimes despairs over them, but never thinks that they are other than versions of ourselves."


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Aubrey's restaurant The Regret Rien is named after the 1956 song "Non, je ne regrette rien" by Charles Dumont and Michel Vaucaire, made famous by French singer Edith Piaf. A framed black-and-white head shot of Piaf hanging on a wall is replaced by a stuffed cat's head when he shows Wendy and Andy his restaurant before its opening.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: In his first appearance in the movie, Aubrey wears a San Francisco Giants Starter jacket while visiting the family's home.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Andy often speaks in comic voices, at one point uttering the out-of-context line "He's fallen in the water!". This was the catchphrase of Little Jim, a recurring character from the 1950s BBC radio comedy programme "The Goon Show".


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: Patsy is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football club. According to Leigh, this was a source of some discomfort to Stephen Rea who played the character because Rea is a supporter of the team's long-term rivals Arsenal.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: "Life Is Sweet" initially was released on VHS format in the United Kingdom following its theatrical showing, with two subsequent re-releases in 1993 and 2000. It was released on DVD region 2 on 11 February 2002, with a re-release on 17 March 2008. It was made available as part of several DVD collections, including a triple feature DVD alongside "Secrets & Lies" and "Career Girls" on 30 September 2002, a double feature DVD again with "Secrets & Lies", released on 3 May 2004, and "The Mike Leigh Feature Film Collection" with featured 10 of Leigh's more successful films on 7 April 2008. The film was released on Blu-ray format in the United Kingdom on 28 May 2012.


title: Life Is Sweet (film)

text: "Life Is Sweet" was released in the United States and Canada on DVD and Blu-ray on 28 May 2013 via The Criterion Collection. The set contains a newly restored 2K transfer with special features, including an audio commentary from Mike Leigh, an audio recording of a 1991 interview with Leigh at the National Film Theatre in London, five short films written and directed by Leigh for the television series "Five-Minute Films", a new introduction by Leigh, and a booklet featuring an essay from critic David Sterritt.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: In the history of medicine, "Islamic medicine" is the science of medicine developed in the Middle East, and usually written in Arabic, the "lingua franca" of Islamic civilization.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Islamic medicine adopted, systematized and developed the medical knowledge of classical antiquity, including the major traditions of Hippocrates, Galen and Dioscorides. During the post-classical era, Middle Eastern medicine was the most advanced in the world, integrating concepts of ancient Greek, Roman, Mesopotamian and Persian medicine as well as the ancient Indian tradition of Ayurveda, while making numerous advances and innovations. Islamic medicine, along with knowledge of classical medicine, was later adopted in the medieval medicine of Western Europe, after European physicians became familiar with Islamic medical authors during the Renaissance of the 12th century.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Medieval Islamic physicians largely retained their authority until the rise of medicine as a part of the natural sciences, beginning with the Age of Enlightenment, nearly six hundred years after their textbooks were opened by many people. Aspects of their writings remain of interest to physicians even today.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Medicine was a central part of medieval Islamic culture. This period was called the Golden Age of Islam and lasted from the eighth century to the fourteenth century. The economic and social standing of the patient determined to a large extent the type of care sought and the expectations of the patients varied along with the approaches of the practitioners.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Responding to circumstances of time and place/location, Islamic physicians and scholars developed a large and complex medical literature exploring, analyzing, and synthesizing the theory and practice of medicine Islamic medicine was initially built on tradition, chiefly the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in Arabia and was known at Muhammad's time, ancient Hellenistic medicine such as Unani, ancient Indian medicine such as Ayurveda, and the ancient Iranian Medicine of the Academy of Gundishapur. The works of ancient Greek and Roman physicians Hippocrates, Galen and Dioscorides also had a lasting impact on Middle Eastern medicine. Intellectual thirst, open-mindness, and vigor were at an all time high in this era. During the Golden Age of Islam, classical learning was sought out, systematised and improved upon by scientists and scholars with such diligence that Arab science became the most advanced of its day. Ophthalmology has been described as the most successful branch of medicine researched at the time, with the works of Ibn al-Haytham remaining an authority in the field until early modern times.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The adoption by the newly forming Islamic society of the medical knowledge of the surrounding, or newly conquered, "heathen" civilizations had to be justified as being in accordance with the beliefs of Islam. Early on, the study and practice of medicine was understood as an act of piety, founded on the principles of "Imaan" (faith) and "Tawakkul" (trust).


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Muhammad's opinions on health issues and habits in regard to the leading of a healthy life were collected early on and edited as a separate corpus of writings under the title "Ṭibb an-Nabī" ("The Medicine of the Prophet"). In the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, in his work "Muqaddimah" provides a brief overview over what he called "the art and craft of medicine", separating the science of medicine from religion:


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The Sahih al-Bukhari, a collection of prophetic traditions, or "hadith" by Muhammad al-Bukhari refers to a collection of Muhammad's opinions on medicine, by his younger contemporary Anas bin-Malik. Anas writes about two physicians who had treated him by cauterization and mentions that the prophet wanted to avoid this treatment and had asked for alternative treatments. Later on, there are reports of the caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān fixing his teeth with a wire made of gold. He also mentions that the habit of cleaning one's teeth with a small wooden toothpick dates back to pre-Islamic times.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Despite Muhammad's advocacy of medicine, Islam hindered development in human anatomy, regarding the human body as sacred. Only later, when Persian traditions have been integrated to Islamic thought, Muslims developed treatises about human anatomy.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The "Prophetic medicine" was rarely mentioned by the classical authors of Islamic medicine, but lived on in the materia medica for some centuries. In his "Kitab as-Ṣaidana" (Book of Remedies) from the 10./11. century, Al-Biruni refers to collected poems and other works dealing with, and commenting on, the materia medica of the old Arabs.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The most famous physician was Al-Ḥariṯ ben-Kalada aṯ-Ṯaqafī, who lived at the same time as the prophet. He is supposed to have been in touch with the Academy of Gondishapur, perhaps he was even trained there. He reportedly had a conversation once with Khosrow I Anushirvan about medical topics.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Most likely, the Arabian physicians became familiar with the Graeco-Roman and late Hellenistic medicine through direct contact with physicians who were practicing in the newly conquered regions rather than by reading the original or translated works. The translation of the capital of the emerging Islamic world to Damascus may have facilitated this contact, as Syrian medicine was part of that ancient tradition. The names of two Christian physicians are known: Ibn Aṯāl worked at the court of Muawiyah I, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty. The caliph abused his knowledge in order to get rid of some of his enemies by way of poisoning. Likewise, Abu l-Ḥakam, who was responsible for the preparation of drugs, was employed by Muawiah. His son, grandson, and great-grandson were also serving the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphate.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: These sources testify to the fact that the physicians of the emerging Islamic society were familiar with the classical medical traditions already at the times of the Umayyads. The medical knowledge likely arrived from Alexandria, and was probably transferred by Syrian scholars, or translators, finding its way into the Islamic world.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Very few sources provide information about how the expanding Islamic society received any medical knowledge. A physician called Abdalmalik ben Abgar al-Kinānī from Kufa in Iraq is supposed to have worked at the medical school of Alexandria before he joined ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz's court. ʿUmar transferred the medical school from Alexandria to Antioch. It is also known that members of the Academy of Gondishapur travelled to Damascus. The Academy of Gondishapur remained active throughout the time of the Abbasid caliphate, though.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: An important source from the second half of the 8th century is Jabir ibn Hayyans "Book of Poisons". He only cites earlier works in Arabic translations, as were available to him, including Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, Pythagoras, and Aristotle, and also mentions the Persian names of some drugs and medical plants.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: In 825, the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun founded the House of Wisdom (; "Bayt al-Hikma") in Baghdad, modelled after the Academy of Gondishapur. Led by the Christian physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and with support by Byzance, all available works from the antique world were translated, including Galen, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy and Archimedes.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: It is currently understood that the early Islamic medicine was mainly informed directly from Greek sources from the Academy of Alexandria, translated into the Arabic language; the influence of the Persian medical tradition seems to be limited to the materia medica, although the Persian physicians were familiar with the Greek sources as well.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Various translations of some works and compilations of ancient medical texts are known from the 7th century. Hunayn ibn Ishaq, the leader of a team of translators at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad played a key role with regard to the translation of the entire known corpus of classical medical literature. Caliph Al-Ma'mun had sent envoys to the Byzantine emperor Theophilos, asking him to provide whatever classical texts he had available. Thus, the great medical texts of Hippocrates and Galen were translated into Arabian, as well as works of Pythagoras, Akron of Agrigent, Democritus, Polybos, Diogenes of Apollonia, medical works attributed to Plato, Aristotle, Mnesitheus of Athens, Xenocrates, Pedanius Dioscorides, Kriton, Soranus of Ephesus, Archigenes, Antyllus, Rufus of Ephesus were translated from the original texts, other works including those of Erasistratos were known by their citations in Galen's works.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The works of Oribasius, physician to the Roman emperor Julian, from the 4th century AD, were well known, and were frequently cited in detail by Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes). The works of Philagrius of Epirus, who also lived in the 4th century AD, are only known today from quotations by Arabic authors. The philosopher and physician John the Grammarian, who lived in the 6th century AD was attributed the role of a commentator on the "Summaria Alexandrinorum". This is a compilation of 16 books by Galen, but corrupted by superstitious ideas. The physicians Gessius of Petra and Palladios were equally known to the Arabic physicians as authors of the "Summaria". Rhazes cites the Roman physician Alexander of Tralles (6th century) in order to support his criticism of Galen. The works of Aëtius of Amida were only known in later times, as they were neither cited by Rhazes nor by Ibn al-Nadim, but cited first by Al-Biruni in his "Kitab as-Saidana", and translated by Ibn al-Hammar in the 10th century.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: One of the first books which were translated from Greek into Syrian, and then into Arabic during the time of the fourth Umayyad caliph Marwan I by the Jewish scholar Māsarĝawai al-Basrĩ was the medical compilation "Kunnāš", by Ahron, who lived during the 6th century. Later on, Hunayn ibn Ishaq provided a better translation.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The physician Paul of Aegina lived in Alexandria during the time of the Arab expansion. His works seem to have been used as an important reference by the early Islamic physicians, and were frequently cited from Rhazes up to Avicenna. Paul of Aegina provides a direct connection between the late Hellenistic and the early Islamic medical science.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The early Islamic physicians were familiar with the life of Hippocrates and were aware of the fact that his biography was in part a legend. Also they knew that several persons lived who were called Hippocrates, and their works were compiled under one single name: Ibn an-Nadīm has conveyed a short treatise by Tabit ben-Qurra on "al-Buqratun" ("the (various persons called) Hippokrates"). Translations of some of Hippocrates's works must have existed before Hunayn ibn Ishaq started his translations, because the historian Al-Yaʾqūbī compiled a list of the works known to him in 872. Fortunately, his list also supplies a summary of the content, quotations, or even the entire text of the single works. The philosopher Al-Kindi wrote a book with the title "at-Tibb al-Buqrati" (The Medicine of Hippocrates), and his contemporary Hunayn ibn Ishāq then translated Galens commentary on Hippocrates. Rhazes is the first Arabic-writing physician who makes thorough use of Hippocrates's writings in order to set up his own medical system. Al-Tabari maintained that his compilation of hippocratic teachings ("al-Muʾālaḡāt al-buqrāṭīya") was a more appropriate summary. The work of Hippocrates was cited and commented on during the entire period of medieval Islamic medicine.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Galen is one of the most famous scholars and physicians of classical antiquity. Today, the original texts of some of his works, and details of his biography, are lost, and are only known to us because they were translated into Arabic. Jabir ibn Hayyan frequently cites Galen's books, which were available in early Arabic translations. In 872 AD, Ya'qubi refers to some of Galen's works. The titles of the books he mentions differ from those chosen by Hunayn ibn Ishāq for his own translations, thus suggesting earlier translations must have existed. Hunayn frequently mentions in his comments on works which he had translated that he considered earlier translations as insufficient, and had provided completely new translations. Early translations might have been available before the 8th century; most likely they were translated from Syrian or Persian.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Within medieval Islamic medicine, Hunayn ibn Ishāq and his younger contemporary Tabit ben-Qurra play an important role as translators and commentators of Galen's work. They also tried to compile and summarize a consistent medical system from these works, and add this to the medical science of their period. However, starting already with Jabir ibn Hayyan in the 8th century, and even more pronounced in Rhazes's treatise on vision, criticism of Galen's ideas took on. in the 10th century, the physician 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi wrote:


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: During the 10th century, Ibn Wahshiyya compiled writings by the Nabataeans, including also medical information. The Syrian scholar Sergius of Reshaina translated various works by Hippocrates and Galen, of whom parts 6–8 of a pharmacological book, and fragments of two other books have been preserved. Hunayn ibn Ishāq has translated these works into Arabic. Another work, still existing today, by an unknown Syrian author, likely has influenced the Arabic-writing physicians Al-Tabari and Yūhannā ibn Māsawaiyh.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The earliest known translation from the Syrian language is the "Kunnāš" of the scholar Ahron (who himself had translated it from the Greek), which was translated into the Arabian by Māsarĝawai al-Basrĩ in the 7th century. [Syriac-language, not Syrian, who were Nestorians] physicians also played an important role at the Academy of Gondishapur; their names were preserved because they worked at the court of the Abbasid caliphs.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Again the Academy of Gondishapur played an important role, guiding the transmission of Persian medical knowledge to the Arabic physicians. Founded, according to Gregorius Bar-Hebraeus, by the Sassanid ruler Shapur I during the 3rd century AD, the academy connected the ancient Greek and Indian medical traditions. Arabian physicians trained in Gondishapur may have established contacts with early Islamic medicine. The treatise "Abdāl al-adwiya" by the Christian physician Māsarĝawai (not to be confused with the translator M. al-Basrĩ) is of some importance, as the opening sentence of his work is:


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: In his work "Firdaus al-Hikma" (The Paradise of Wisdom), Al-Tabari uses only a few Persian medical terms, especially when mentioning specific diseases, but a large number of drugs and medicinal herbs are mentioned using their Persian names, which have also entered the medical language of Islamic medicine. As well as al-Tabari, Rhazes rarely uses Persian terms, and only refers to two Persian works: "Kunnāš fārisi" und "al-Filāha al-fārisiya".


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Indian scientific works, e.g. on Astronomy were already translated by Yaʿqūb ibn Ṭāriq and Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Fazārī during the times of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur. Under Harun al-Rashid, at latest, the first translations were performed of Indian works about medicine and pharmacology. In one chapter on Indian medicine, Ibn al-Nadim mentions the names of three of the translators: Mankah, Ibn Dahn, and ʾAbdallah ibn ʾAlī. Yūhannā ibn Māsawaiyh cites an Indian textbook in his treatise on ophthalmology.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: al-Tabarī devotes the last 36 chapters of his "Firdaus al-Hikmah" to describe the Indian medicine, citing Sushruta, Charaka, and the "Ashtanga Hridaya" (Sanskrit: अष्टांग हृदय, ; "The eightfold Heart"), one of the most important books on Ayurveda, translated between 773 and 808 by Ibn-Dhan. Rhazes cites in "al-Hawi" and in "Kitab al-Mansuri" both Sushruta and Charaka besides other authors unknown to him by name, whose works he cites as ""min kitab al-Hind"", „an Indian book".


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Meyerhof suggested that the Indian medicine, like the Persian medicine, has mainly influenced the Arabic "materia medica", because there is frequent reference to Indian names of herbal medicines and drugs which were unknown to the Greek medical tradition. Whilst Syrian physicians transmitted the medical knowledge of the ancient Greeks, most likely Persian physicians, probably from the Academy of Gondishapur, were the first intermediates between the Indian and the Arabic medicine Recent studies have shown that a number Ayurvedic texts were translated into Persian in South Asia from the 14th century until the Colonial period. From the 17th century onward, many Hindu physicians learnt Persian language and wrote Persian medical texts dealing with both Indian and Muslim medical materials (Speziale 2014, 2018, 2020).


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world was often directly related to horticulture. Fruits and vegetables were related to health and well being, although they were seen as having different properties than what modern medicine says now. The use of the humoral theory is also a large part of medicine in this period, shaping the diagnosis and treatments for patients. This kind of medicine was largely holistic, focused on on schedule, environment, and diet. As a result, medicine was very individualistic as every person who sought medical help would receive different advice dependent not only on their ailment, but also according to their lifestyle. There was still some connection between treatments however, as medicine was largely based on humoral theory which meant that each person needed to be treated according to whether or not their humors were hot, cold, melancholic, or choleric.


title: Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

text: The use of plants in medicine was quite common in this era with most plants being used in medicine being associated with both some benefits and consequences for use as well as certain situations in which they should be used. This was due to the association between certain plants with hot or cold properties, i.e "cool as a cucumber" or a hot pepper. Thus, hot ailments such as a fever should be addressed by consuming a cucumber and a cool ailment such as a significant amount of phlegm should be treated with the pepper.