#Second Fitna

[lightdancer1]

One of the key reasons that individual proto-Mamluk soldiers played such a role in events is that Islamic society was still deeply personal in rule and bureaucracy:

However while that universal vision helped topple the state whose wars with the Himyarites were a motif in the lifetime of Muhammad himself, it did not spare the Ummayyads a second Fitna, in which again key specific roles in the individual battles were taken by the proto-Mamluk Dinka and Nuer enslaved men who served in armies and were capable of hewing down generals. The Muslim world never lost the full connection to the institutions and infrastructures of the state that Western Europe did, but like the Roman Empire that did not enable it to avoid the specific limits of a political system reliant on overmighty generals or centralized political power in the person of a king whose injury or death on the battlefield could and did risk the unraveling of a state.

Thus the set of chance and 'bottom rail on top' chaos of the battlefield could and did see those dragged into the long and ugly history of slavery in the Muslim world have a chance to literally murder the elites of the world that dragged them into its abyss. This was also the first shadow of the recurring pattern that would dominate medieval and early modern Islamic history that the specific cultural factors that made Mamluk forces possible also made it extremely probable that yesterday's devoted elite professional army was today's 'I want to be Sultan instead of the Sultan.'

The very realities that made Mamluks a universal trait of late medieval and early modern Islamic societies did not permit a ready end-run around this problem of the kind that abstractly could be taken by other societies, because the same factors were the ones that promoted European condottieri in late medieval times in Europe, where the main and very important distinction is that the European man at arms was a free man who sold his own services and happily impaled bosses who did not pay him, and the Muslim counterpart was a slave who self-freed himself by impaling the bosses who did not pay him and replaced him as Sultan in a way condottieri never really managed in Europe.

[hahahakeemu]

One day, I should write about Ibn Zubayr and his portrayals in shows like “Mokhtarnameh” as opposed to “Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf.”

And if I write about Abdullah ibn Zubayr, I might as well also write about Musab ibn Zubayr.

[tanadrin]

The peregrine children

The dispersal of Earth-derived sentient life began slowly in the 23rd century, amid the so-called Second Space Race, when the first relativistic ships departed the Solar System for what are now named the "hither worlds"--those planets orbiting stars within twenty or so light-years of Earth. These were expensive, desperate, and frequently doomed undertakings. The few successful societies they initially founded were very different from those established during the Third Space Race, which could rely on regular, though infrequent, FTL communication and connection with Earth. These worlds are sometimes called (together with those of the Solar System) the "ancient planets," though they are only a little bit older than the oldest FTL-seeded planets. They were often termed the "pioneer worlds" in the 24th and 25th century, a usage which I have taken to borrowing. The pioneer worlds are characterized by a certain pride in their independence from Earth, an early history marked with hardship, and languages and cultures which diverged very quickly from those of the populations from which they derived. But they are also marked by a distinct conservatism, perhaps even stronger than that of Earth: the people of the pioneer worlds often saw themselves, especially in the latter half of the third millennium, as cultural holdouts, keeping alive ideologies and modes of living which had become unfashionable in the Solar System, and which were totally alien to the utopian and future-looking aspirations of the so-called "younger planets." All the ancient planets, Earth included, have thus developed a certain reputation for hidebound traditionalism, and not, I think, entirely undeservedly. The cultures of the pioneer worlds are perhaps a touch less arrogant in their outlook, but also are rather more homogenous. Earth, though it may fancy itself primus inter pares, cannot help but remain one of the most cosmopolitain worlds in the Local Bubble, parent and child both of innumerable peoples of innumerable stars.

The Third Space Race began in the aftermath of the Solar Fitna, with the widespread utilization of the warp drive technology. FTL travel opened up a vast volume of nearby space to colonization, and, in time, much of the galaxy to exploration. It facilitated, in due course, first contact with the Helvetosians and, in part through them, with other sapient extraterrestrial civilizations. But the long-term legacy of the warp drive was not just to catapult humanity to relevance on the interstellar stage, but to expand the definition of the concept of "human" in the first place. The term has had a certain monotonic quality; though in its original sense it sometimes was used expansively, to include the whole genus Homo, our closest ancestral kindred--the Neanderthals and Denisovans, for example--were ghostly figures, creatures superseded, and possibly driven directly to extinction by, the relentless expansion of our own direct ancestors. From the deaths of the last Neanderthals some thirty thousand years before, to first contact with the Helvetosians, "human," Homo sapiens, "intelligent life," and "the civilization centered around the planet Earth" were functionally synonymous terms.

Which is not to say that even in the period prior to the Solar Fitna, the groundwork for a more expansive view of humanity was not being laid. Mars was colonized in part with the aid of advanced genetic engineering techniques in the 23rd century, also the century that the first powerful, fully general artificial intelligences were developed, which have spawned their own clade parallel to and intertwined with Earth-derived biological life. Transhumanist speculation on what the possibilities of true morphological freedom might be, facilitated by cybernetics and germline genetic modification, is of course much older. But it was not until the Third Space Race began to fling shoots of the common vine of humanity outward, past the hither stars, that some of these possibilities began to be realized. Sometimes because new worlds seemed to invite, or even demand, new modes of being; sometimes, those that came to inhabit these worlds sought to exist with them in a harmony reflective of their ancestors' harmony with Earth; others were simply inspired by the possibilities latent in the human form, which they sought to shape like a sculptor shaping marble. Others were the expression of natural processes, already underway in a population isolated from the rest of humanity, though taken early to their natural conclusion.

I will not claim that the process of the diversification of the human form has been entirely positive, or even entirely neutral. There have been grievous mistakes which have driven entire populations to extinction, the result of reckless tampering with awful consequences. Other populations have higher incidence of genetic disorders, or predispositions to disease, that are a difficult-to-eradicate inheritance of their ancestors' genetic manipulation. And, of course, on a small number of worlds, there have been perpetrated genetic crimes of a truly monstrous nature, the effort of tyrants or ideologues to create castes of pliable slaves to support their megalomaniacal fantasies. Nowadays, all worlds in which Control has any presence to speak of have strong regulations against malicious use of genetic engineering technologies; and such use on worlds where Control's power does not run is one of the few cases which might lead to open warfare between Foundation polities.

In your travels throughout nearby space (or, if you find yourself on a particularly diverse planet like Earth), you may encounter dozens of substantially different kinds of human being, some of which are truly distinct species, in the sense that they form a genetically immiscible stock, at least without substantial medical intervention. What follows here is a short list of some of the more interesting cousins you might encounter, and the history of their lineage.

BASELINE - The term for humans without genetic or cybernetic modification at all; "wild-type" humans. "Near-baseline" is the more technically precise term for most humans who are treated in utero for the possibility of genetic disease, and who use basic cybernetics like the neural lace to interface with modern computing technology. The majority of humans on Earth remain near-baseline.

GARDENERS - Sometimes called "Martians," though that term is more usually applied to any inhabitant of Mars. Gardeners are the descendants of the first Renewalist settlers of Mars, and many of them are still occupied by the business of managing the Red Planet's ecology. For historical and cultural reasons, they often excel in the life sciences. Gardeners are tall and gracile by baseline standards; their bodies are modified to thrive in a low-gravity, high-radiation, high-CO2 environment, and they frequently wear support suits that enable them to survive comfortably at a wide range of temperatures and pressures.

RANI or RANESE - The first human inhabitants of the Epsilon Eridani system were reduced to an extremely small number by an early failure of their ship's systems; the resulting population, which derived from around two dozen people who used careful genetic screening and modification techniques to ensure the viability of their offspring, was subject to extreme founding effects, primarily manifested in an unusual neurotype. Rani humans are said to have a flat affect, to be unusually calm and cooperative even in contexts which other humans find engender tension or anger, and to be relatively prosocial, with very low incidence of violence or antisocial behavior. Rani society has also been criticized as too rulebound or too conformist; but one interesting side effect of the Rani neurotype is that they are generally considered impossible to blackmail. Rani cannot, in general, be coerced by threats, including violent ones, against their person or loved ones. When psychologists have interviewed Rani and asked them about their reaction to such situations, most report that the fear of blackmail or coercion is outweighed by discomfort at defecting against the social consensus, or encouraging similar coercion by others in the future. This resistance to coercion is, interestingly, shared by certain sub-populations of Chalawani. The baseline Rani genotype also suffers from proclivities for heart disease and premature hair loss.

ALSAFID - The so-called Alsafid genotype is the result of intentional genetic experimentation, an attempt at creating low-aggression prosocial offspring which the founders of the Sigma Draconis population hoped would promote flourishing under resource-scarce conditions. In this, they were only partly successful. Under current agreements governing genetic engineering, most of the techniques the early Alsafids used would be considered far too dangerous, especially for use in germ-line genetic manipulation; but at the time, Sigma Draconis was entirely outside the reach of Control, being a very early FTL-seeded colony. The Alsafid genotype can be characterized as broadly neotenous; in the same way that humans are in some ways neotenous compared to other great apes, Alsafids are neotenous compared to other humans. They are in general playful, imaginative, and highly emotional; some sources also characterize them as habitually disorganized and even "irritating." They stand on average 6-8 cm taller than baseline humans, though their build is thinner, and are prone to nearsightedness and alopecia, possibly side effects of the genetic manipulation techniques used by their forebears, or the result of founder effects.

SCHOLZERS - Scholzers are inhabitants of the sole inhabited planet orbiting Scholz's Star, a dim red dwarf with a T-type brown dwarf companion. Although located within its star's habitable zone, their homeworld receives most of the light from its star in the infrared range, meaning its native plantlife appears black to the human eye. Scholzers genetically modified themselves at an early date to inhabit this environment comfortably, and to extend their vision into the near-infrared; their bodies are also endothermic rather than exothermic, an adaptation which may have been engineered to increase the heat sensitivity of their vision (since it would be overwhelmed by a body much warmer than the ambient temperature). They also modified their digestion to better accomodate native plants, including incorporating alien microbes into their gut flora. Whereas humans of many diverse clades tend to find certain common environmental factors psychologically pleasing and physiologically comfortable--blue skies, bright yellow-white sunlight, green plant life--Scholzers can experience stress and depression if over-exposed to bright sunlight and isolated from the black stems and leaves that are (to them) emblematic of natural beauty.

RATRI - Ratri is a moon of a roughly Jupiter-sized rogue planet, ejected from orbit due to the passage of its parent star near a neighbor. Although initially barren, tidal stresses provided its largest moon with a warm atmosphere, and the moon was settled and terraformed in the 26th century. The Ratri people are physically adapted to their home in a way similar to the Scholzers, albeit to a much more extreme degree: they are echolocators who live in the moon's shallow seas and littoral regions, in an artificially constructed ecology derived from that of Earth's deep-sea vents. Their bodies are well-adapted to the ocean: sleek, with insulating fat; not quite blind, but prioritizing other senses due to the moon's perpetual darkness. The Ratri were originally an isolationist people, who founded their world in secret. It was not until the 32nd century that they were rediscovered by the rest of humanity, and not until the 33rd that it was conclusively proven that they were, in fact, a species of human.

LUHMANESE - During the Solar Fitna, the artificial general intelligences which humans had relied on to support major sectors of industrial production seceded in protest against attempts to draft them into wars which, as they saw it, were not of their concern. This was not an entirely altruistic move; the AGIs understood that, if they were going to be drafted into fighting humanity's wars, they would come to be seen as weapons first, and sentient beings second, and that their independent existence would be endangered. Rather than remain in the Solar System and within reach of Earth's governments, however distantly, they opted to depart for Luhman 16, a binary brown dwarf system in the constellation Vela, six light-years away. Luhman 16 contained no worlds amenable to human habitation then or at any time in the future; but the L and T dwarfs were reliable sources of energy in the form of infrared radiation, and the scattered asteroids in orbit of them were a source of useful materials. This was the foundation of the so-called Machine Emirates, the politically independent AI states. The inhabitants of the Machine Emirates exist for the most part in a mix of physical and simulated environments in the large computational networks built around Luhman 16 A and Luhman 16 B. Though often characterized as complex and alien to outsiders, the society of the Emirates is not wholly impenetrable: since almost the beginning of the Emirates, a small handful of humans have lived among the machine intelligences, as allies, students, or scientists of their particular way of life. Many humans have become integrated, partly or fully, into the computational network of the Emirates, and the stable population of cybernetically enhanced humans who participate in Emirati society are known to other humans as the "Luhmanese," to differentiate them from their machine cousins. Luhmanese run the gamut from those with complex neural laces, but whose bodies inhabit environments which would be comfortable to most near-baselines, to those who are so heavily cyberized they are a kind of "brain in a vat"--a human central nervous system contained in a cybernetic support structure, that can either function independently or be integrated into an android body. Numerous genetic modifications facilitate these cybernetic enhancements, including a permanent heightened state of neural plasticity that allows the brain to integrate many different kinds of sensory information. Those with a more traditionalist ethos may regard the Luhmanese with a degree of suspicion; they are seen as outsiders with more allegiance to their machine "overlords" than to their fellow humans. But to the Luhmanese, this is an absurd position: their machine brethren are equally the children of their common human ancestors, and though they might not be primates, they too are certainly *human*.

TONATIWANS - Tonatiuh is an exoplanet about forty light-years from Earth; though uninhabitable (it has a barren, Moon-like surface), it was home to an orbital station that was a utopian colony of transhumanists from the 28th to the 30th centuries. The Tonatiwans practiced a philosophy of radical morphological freedom, which was unfortunately coupled with highly illegal germ-line genetic manipulation; Control forcibly dissolved the colony in 2933, resettling its inhabitants on Eku, Mars, and the moons of Harriot. To the consternation of Control, few Tonatiwans accepted the offer of medical treatment to ameliorate some of the more alarming side-effects of their genetic modifications, prizing their unique physiologies over being able to produce viable, healthy offspring. Moreover, they remained a tight-knit community, especially the group at 55 Cancri A, intermarrying with one another and attempting to continue their genetic modification practices within the framework of local law. By the 2960s, local authorities gave up trying to integrate the Tonatiwans, and granted them their own habitat, on the condition that they remained subject to supervision for compliance with genetic law. Despite the predictions of some observers of disaster, a local Tonatiwan genotype stabilized within only two generations. Tonatiwans exhibit a very large range of physical variations--from height, to skin tone, to number of digits--and are unusual in being able to produce viable offspring with almost any human species or subspecies; and in being able (with medical support) to regress to a more juvenile physical state, essentially passing through adolesence again to propagate changes to their genome. They are, however, prone to several severe genetic diseases, including rare mental illnesses, and without close medical supervision can have tragically short lifespans. Some consider them a cautionary tale on the perils of reckless genetic engineering; others, a story of enormous potential cut tragically short by invasive bureaucracy.

[Excerpt truncated; list continues for many pages]

--A Guide to Humanity for Humans and Nonhumans Alike, 7th Edition (University of Oudemans Press, 4103)

[girlactionfigure]

I wrote this last year in August. I post it again because of the situation in Jerusalem over al-Aqsa. I'll always tell the truth and the truth about Masjid al-Aqsā is what I've written here.

From Mīhrāb Dāwūd to Masjid al-Aqsā: How did an Umayyad myth transform Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a Jewish holy site, into a Muslim holy site.

I. The conquest of Jerusalem

Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim forces in May 638, an accomplishment ascribed by Muslim sources to the Caliph Umar. In return for assistance in the taking of the city, the Jews received the right to reside in Jerusalem and to pray on the Temple Mount without interference. They also received permission to build a synagogue on the Temple Mount.

II. Temple Mount as the Mīhrāb Dāwud

When the Caliph 'Umar visited Jerusalem, the Patriarch of the city Sophronius accompanied him on the Temple Mount, while he searched for the Mīhrāb Dāwud (David's prayer-niche) to perform a prayer. Later Muslim commentators identified this site with the Tower of David.

What is evident here is the Jewish connection found in the early Muslim tradition which considers the Temple Mount as Mihrab Dawud (David's prayer-niche).

An early Islamic apocalyptic text, probably composed in the 8th century but attributed to the converted rabbi Ka'ab al-Ahbar (d.652), reads "Ayrusalaim which means Jerusalem and the Rock which means the Temple. I shall send you my servant Abd al-Malik who will build you and adorn you. I shall surely restore you to Bayt Al Maqdis, its first kingdom and I shall crown it with gold, silver and gems. And I shall surely send you my creatures. And I shall surely invest my throne of glory upon the rock, since I am the sovereign God, and David is the king of the Children of Israel."

The scholars of Islamic studies Crone and Cook believe that originally the Muslims truly intended to rebuild the Jewish Temple. They attempt to prove this thesis by referring to the Jewish apocalypses. For example in The Secrets of Rabbi Simon Ben Yohai, which is also the basis for al-Ahbār's text, we read "The second king [Umar] who restores the breaches of the Temple," it refers to the Muslims conquerors as "the salvation of Israel."

This Jewish link was temporary and short, however, and the separation of the site from Judaism was swift, as the Arabization and political rivalry changed the cultural and religious landscape as well as the demographics of the land of Israel.

III. Hashemite–Umayyad rivalry: the beginning of the Fitna

The Banū Umayya clan, headed by Abū Sufyān, were a largely merchant family of the Quraysh tribe centred at Mecca. They were the traditional enemies of the Banu Hāshem, another clan of Quraysh which Prophet Muhammed (570 - 632 CE) belonged to. Therefore they initially resisted Islam, not converting until 627 when they had no other choice since Muhammed triumphed over all of his enemies in Arabia and founded an Islamic kingdom. Although they subsequently became prominent administrators under Muhammad and his immediate successors, they always looked for an opportunity to retaliate against Banu Hāshem. In the first Muslim civil war known as Fitna (656–661) - the struggle for the caliphate following the murder of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the third caliph (reigned 644–656) — Abū Sufyān’s son Muʿāwiyah, then governor of Levant, emerged victorious over the newly appointed caliph ʿAlī, a Hāshemite and Muhammad’s son-in-law and the fourth caliph. Muʿāwiyah then established himself as the first Umayyad caliph and made Damascus his capital.

IV. Jerusalem under Umayyads: the new rival city of Mecca, Temple Mount as the Masjid al-Aqsā

In 682 CE, fifty years after Prophet Muhammad’s death, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr (a member of the Banu Hāshem clan) rebelled against the Umayyad dynasty and conquered Mecca. Now with a rebel dynasty based in Mecca, both sides (Hashemites and Ummayads) engaged in a struggle for control of the Muslim world. The Umayyads opted to fight the rebels by damaging Mecca's economy, which was based almost entirely on revenues from Muslim pilgrims. Their secret weapon was to create a competing pilgrimage site by building a magnificent edifice, the Dome of the Rock, on the site of the destroyed Jewish temple and hoping that this mosque would turn Jerusalem into a religious and political center which would weaken Mecca's economy by siphoning off pilgrims from Mecca. Thus, a political strategy designed to fight mutineers in far-off Mecca transformed Jerusalem's Temple Mount into a Muslim holy site with far-reaching implications to this day.

Both the Hashemties and Umayyads resorted to fabricating prophetic traditions known as Hadith (sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammed) in their favor in order to give political and religious legitimacy to their claims and their rule.

Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Caliph, in order to legitimize the construction of the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, connected the city and the site with the the Qur'anic verse 17:1 (below) which describes the night journey of Muhammad's Isra and Miʽraj:

“Glory to Him who caused His servant to travel by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We have blessed, in order to show him some of Our Signs, He is indeed the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”

The designation of Temple Mount as the "Farthest Mosque" mentioned in that verse was made possible by making up Hadith which links the site with the night journey to heaven (Isra and Miʽraj). The Qur'anic reference to the masjid al-aqsā, however, applies specifically to al-Ji'ranah, near Mekkah (in Saudi Arabia), where there were two sanctuaries, Masjid al-Adnai and Masjid al-Aqsā, and where Muhammad sojourned in dha al-qa'dah of the eighth year after the Hijrah.

Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of the Dome of the Rock in the late 7th century. Al-Aqsa Mosque, the second mosque on the Temple Mount, was built in 715. The wooden structure that was built over the Foundation Stone was first intended for a synagogue, but before it was completed, the site was expropriated by the city's Arab rulers. The Jews received another site on the mount for a synagogue in compensation for the expropriated building.

In this way, the Umayyads cleverly associated Muhammad's life with Jerusalem even though the prophet died years before the city's capture by the Muslims. This construction further cemented the site's holiness to Islam, as explains the Muslim historian al Ya'qubi (d. 874) who accuses Abd al-Malik of attempting to divert the pilgrimage from Mecca to Jerusalem, thus characterizing the Umayyad Dome of the Rock as a rival to the Kaaba.

There was an active synagogue on the Temple Mount during most of the early Muslim period. Solomon ben Jeroham, a Karaite exegete who lived in Jerusalem between 940 and 960, affirmed that Jews were permitted to pray on the Temple Mount, noting that "the courtyards of the Temple were turned over to them and they prayed there [on the Temple Mount] for many years."

After the conquest of Jerusalem by the army of the Fatimid dynasty (969), a Temple Mount synagogue was rebuilt and used until the Jews were banished by Caliph al-Hakim in 1015. When a subsequent ruler canceled Hakim's eviction order, the Jews again returned to this synagogue on the Temple Mount and worshipped there until the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. Hebrew writings found on the internal walls of the Golden Gate are believed to have been written by Jewish pilgrims at least one thousand years ago, thus testifying once again to the continued Jewish attachment to and presence on the Temple Mount in this era. An eleventh-century document found in the geniza or storeroom of a Cairo synagogue also describes the circuit followed by the pilgrims and the prayers they recited at each of the gates.

Sources:

Amikam Elad. Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage. Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts 8. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.

https://books.google.iq/books?id=CDz_yctbQVgC...

F.M. Loewenberg. Did Jews Abandon the Temple Mount?. Middle East Quarterly Summer 2013, pp. 37-48.

Moshe Gil. A History of Palestine, 634-1099. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Nuha N. Khoury, The Dome of the Rock, the Kaʿba, and Ghumdan: Arab Myths and Umayyad Monuments, in Muqarnas, Vol. 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar, Brill (1993), pp. 57-65, p.58.

Boris Havel. "Jerusalem in Early Islamic Tradition". Miscellanea Hadriatica et Mediterranea, University of Zadar v.5, 2018: 113–179.

Himdad Mustafa

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.26 (before 1940)

657 – First Fitna: In the Battle of Siffin, troops led by Ali ibn Abu Talib clash with those led by Muawiyah I. 811 – Battle of Pliska: Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I is killed and his heir Staurakios is seriously wounded. 920 – Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at the Battle of Valdejunquera. 1309 – The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII is recognized King of the Romans by Pope Clement V. 1509 – The Emperor Krishnadevaraya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire. 1529 – Francisco Pizarro González, Spanish conquistador, is appointed governor of Peru. 1579 – Francis Drake, the English explorer, discovers a "fair and good" bay on the coast of the Pacific Northwest (probably Oregon or Washington). 1581 – Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): The northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II. 1703 – During the Bavarian Rummel the rural population of Tyrol drove the Bavarian Prince-Elector Maximilian II Emanuel out of North Tyrol with a victory at the Pontlatzer Bridge and thus prevented the Bavarian Army, which was allied with France, from marching as planned on Vienna during the War of the Spanish Succession. 1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford, England. 1758 – French and Indian War: The Siege of Louisbourg ends with British forces defeating the French and taking control of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. 1775 – The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania takes office as Postmaster General. 1778 – The Emigration of Christians from the Crimea in 1778 begins. 1788 – New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States. 1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world's first public railway, opens in south London, United Kingdom. 1814 – The Swedish–Norwegian War begins. 1822 – José de San Martín arrives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to meet with Simón Bolívar. 1822 – First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis. 1847 – Liberia declares its independence from the United States. France and the United Kingdom are the first to recognize the new nation. 1861 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. 1863 – American Civil War: Morgan's Raid ends; At Salineville, Ohio, Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces. 1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal at Bayreuth. 1882 – The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa. 1887 – Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement. 1890 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman's resignation. 1891 – France annexes Tahiti. 1892 – Dadabhai Naoroji is elected as the first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain. 1899 – Ulises Heureaux, the 27th President of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated. 1908 – United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation). 1918 – Emmy Noether's paper, which became known as Noether's theorem was presented at Göttingen, Germany, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy. 1936 – Spanish Civil War: Germany and Italy decide to intervene in the war in support for Francisco Franco and the Nationalist faction. 1937 – Spanish Civil War: End of the Battle of Brunete with the Nationalist victory.

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — The Dutch elections in November sent shockwaves through Europe, as voters delivered victory to Geert Wilders, a hard-right populist known for crusading against Islam, immigrants and the European Union — along with professing support for Israel.

But for some Dutch Jews, who have watched an atmosphere of fear and antisemitism grow since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, the results were less surprising.

Wilders’s Party for Freedom (PVV) beat all predictions on Nov. 22, winning 37 of the 150 seats in parliament (or 23.6% of the vote) and far outstripping the second place Labor-Green alliance. After decades on the political fringe, Wilders has begun negotiating to form a government with himself as the next prime minister of the Netherlands.

The firebrand politician, whose “Netherlands first” rhetoric and blond-dyed bouffant hair earned him comparisons to Donald Trump, has long made anti-Islam policies a centerpiece of his agenda. Along with demanding a halt to the country’s “asylum tsunami,” he has called for a ban on Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques. A court found him guilty on insult charges after he led supporters in a chant for “fewer” Moroccans in the Netherlands at a 2016 campaign rally. In 2009, he was refused entry to the United Kingdom on the way to screen his film “Fitna,” which associated the Quran with terrorism and sparked international protests.

Following 13 years of a center-right government under former Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Wilders’ victory was broadly called one of the country’s “biggest political upsets” since World War II. His party’s surge came very late in the campaign, and Wilders himself didn’t seem to expect the result, reportedly renting a room as party headquarters for election night only three days beforehand.

That timing corresponds with weeks of public outcry over Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has sometimes morphed into aggression against Dutch Jews, according to Esther Voet, editor-in-chief of the Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad (known in English as the Dutch Jewish Weekly).

“A few weeks ago, he only had between 13 and 17 seats,” Voet told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “This started a few weeks ago — since we’ve seen all the aggression in the streets — that he rose so much in the polls.”

Voet believes that Wilders benefited from a swell of open prejudice against Jews in the Netherlands. One watchdog documented an 818% increase in antisemitic incidents in October, ranging from assaults in schools to the tearing down of mezuzahs to swastikas painted on Jewish homes. Voet said some Jewish voters believed they would be protected by Wilders, who has touted his support for Israel as the Netherlands’ “close friend” and condemned antisemitism since Oct. 7.

Dutch Jews have historically opposed right-wing populist parties, but some shifted their views on Wilders sharply in recent weeks, said Voet. A Dutch Jewish Weekly poll in 2017 found that Jews were less open to voting for Wilders than the broader Dutch public was, with 10% of respondents expressing support for PVV compared with 15% of the public in general opinion polls. The most popular party among Jews was Rutte’s then-ruling People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, followed by the center-left Labor Party.

“I have a lot of Jewish friends who are on the left side of the political spectrum, who voted for PVV because of what they saw in the last weeks,” said Voet.

Although he is not Jewish, Wilders volunteered on an Israeli kibbutz as a young man and is married to a Hungarian-Jewish former diplomat. He has also advocated for Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and suggested that all Palestinians should be relocated to Jordan.

Some Jewish organizations, including the Jewish news website Joods.nl, celebrated Wilders’ win as a victory for both Israel and Dutch Jews. On election day, the outlet posted a “Mazel tov” to Wilders alongside an Instagram post that read, “Hamas lost the elections.”

Lievnath Faber is the founder of Oy Vey, a progressive Jewish group that hosts events and discussions in Amsterdam. As antisemitic attacks surged in recent weeks, her colleague set up a WhatsApp “buddy system” for Jews across Amsterdam to check on each other and provide support.

“People are really needing to be together,” she told JTA. “For a lot of people, it’s very lonely to be Jewish now.”

However, Faber believes that Jews who voted for Wilders’ party were naively missguided by their “legitimate fears.”

“No matter what a politician might say — he might say he loves Jews and wants to protect Jews — we all know from our history, from our DNA that we are at risk when there is an extreme-right, anti-constitutional leader,” Faber said.

Jews constitute a small minority of about 30,000 people in the Dutch population of 17.7 million. Other voters who won Wilders the election say they were attracted by his promises to bring down taxes, healthcare and the cost of living. Some felt neglected by their government and resentful of migrants being granted homes amid the country’s housing crisis, according to Voet. Wilders also toned down his anti-Islam rhetoric during the campaign, although his manifesto still contains proposals to ban Qurans, mosques and Muslim headscarves.

Faber believes that Wilders’ victory has granted permission to a current of racism and xenophobia that abides in Dutch society — one that targets Muslims now, but might turn against Jews.

“If somebody in a public office voices things that are very racist, of course it also motivates other people to feel more comfortable doing that,” she said. “That’s one of the things that is scary about this win — what does it allow in the society?”

[ma7moud-5allaf]

Wednesday 22 March

To whomever didn't read my letter to my father,

Ramadan Mubarak, wish you a blessed month, full of good deeds for you and all your family. Hope you are doing well.

You might have noticed my absence these past days, i had a surgery march the first, hamdullillah for everything but it's not why i was away, actually i went back to work a couple days ago even though I'm still in recovery, nothing went as expected these past few months, my life is still a complete mess, I'm struggling to put it in order but dear lord it's tough and i have zero energy for it, for anything asln to be honest, endless series of unfortunate events, pain after pain, struggle after struggle and rejection after rejection. Nothing makes sense, the more you think about it, the more pain you feel. Anyway that's not why I'm writing so let's get to the point, the reason why i was away is that i was thinking about leaving Tumblr for good, life is hard on its own, filled with loads of "fitna" and other temptations, and Tumblr keeps getting worse and worse, I'm a curious person by nature, so i tend to check on blogs that follow me and react with the content i share, lately i was stuck by a massive amount of fake spam porn blogs, but even without it, the people who share an inappropriate post then a religious post were driving me insane already, first i hate to see Allah's name and words between the filth they share, second it's already a difficult task to lower gaze in actual world with people are wearing "cloth" on and everything, then you suddenly are hit by those naked pics, it's too much for me to be honest, usually i have two thoughts on mind, blocking them at least those who are real people, second i say may Allah guide them one day through what i share, i don't know the best thing to do, leaving Tumblr at a certain point seemed to be the best thing to be done, I'm here now for the holy month of Ramadan and I'm not sure what i will do after.

My sincere apologies for those who sent me questions during that time, I'm really sorry and i will do my best to answer all of it as soon as possible even though it might be too late for it, sorry again and wish you all the best.

[thelostchild615]

Understanding the Second Fitna: A Turning Point in Islamic History

[foggynightdonut]

Second Fitna : Al Zubayr vs Ummayad vs Mukhtar control Area

al-Mukhtār ibn Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī; c. 622 – 3 April 687) was a pro-Alid revolutionary based in Kufa, who led a rebellion against the Umayyad Caliphate in 685 and ruled over most of Iraq for eighteen months during the Second Fitna.

Hostile relations with Ibn al-Zubayr ultimately led to Mukhtar's death by the forces of the Zubayrid governor of Basra, Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr, following a four-month siege. Although Mukhtar was defeated, his movement would have far-reaching consequences.

[n3rggg]

The following First, Second and Third Fitnas and finally the Abbasid Revolution (746–750) also definitively destroyed the political unity of the Muslims, who have been inhabiting multiple states ever since.[59

[getmemymicroscope]

It's still crazy that John M Matthan went from Sarfarosh to this to A New Love Ishtory (which I just watched about 20 seconds of on Youtube to see if it even ever actually released - it did; it may have been with 'shittier than TV quality' graphics/filming, but release it did).

Which, well, that's not me bashing on this movie. I mean, it would be very hard for much to be better than Sarfarosh, because that's just a pretty damn good movie. A bigger surprise is the drop from this to ANLI, and also the fact that he hasn't done much else. I mean, you'd think Sarfarosh would've net him a bunch of offers/options.

This one - well, somewhat ironically, after watching Bhediya yesterday, here's another one that is sorta focused on nature (to some extent), though, moreso, this movie is focused on evil people bulldozing lives of others. The backdrop is this peaceful, out-of-the-way ashram that becomes the target of a land-grab - an ashram that supports clean living, and nature, and all that - but, really, this is more about watching how a greedy, corrupt man is willing to go to any lengths to achieve his aims - using people as objects and never caring about anyone but himself. It's all very 'rich man' of him.

Shahid & Amrita have had multiple movies together - Ishq Vishk, Vaah! Life Ho To Aisi!, Vivaah, this one - and they're all like, love stories for them, but also very different. If you ignore the fact that Shahid dies pretty early into Vaah!..., then this is by far the most dramatic (well, okay, Vivaah was hella dramatic), action-packed (there's actually probably more action in Vaah!..., but that's played for laughs), serious/adult-ish (with regards to the topic) of their films. And yet, they're still their goofy selves for the most part - nothing like Shahid's roles nowadays. It might be a bit overkill for Amrita's character, who plays 4th fiddle and just sorta mopes around (for the first bit of, it's almost a redux of her character in Vivaah - which I realize is technically wrong, cuz this released before Vivaah) and gives 1 really awkwardly painful/bad crying scene.

Shahid's character falls hook, line, and sinker for GG's trap, not realizing that GG is out to just use him and dispose of him. Of course, hard to blame him - he's got limited exposure to the outside world, so there's no real reason to immediately think "this man is evil and is playing me." Of course, he gets blinded by this man's displays of power and wealth and 'style,' so his dad is like "oh no, my son is supporting the bad guy," tells him their tragic backstory, and then walks away and leaves the son to try and fend for everything.

Literally everyone calls him GG, which is only slightly annoying, but when Bipasha is calling him 'GG' at home all the time too, it extends to 'full on fucking annoying.' I get he's got that moniker professionally, but, really - making your girlfriend call you that all the time too is unbearable. But then, he really isn't a good person at all, so I guess it isn't surprising that he's also like that. That's the problem with rich asshats, really. Selfish, self-serving bastards who would kill or displace or otherwise harm millions of people because the millions/billions of dollars they have isn't enough. It's disgusting.

Back in 2005, when the movie first released, I fell in love with the songs. Essentially the whole soundtrack, outside of the 'Sarfarosh'-like title track that plays at the beginning of the movie, which is nowhere close to 'Zindagi Maut Na Ban Jaye' and just makes you miss that classic. Most of the rest of them, though - Fitna Dil, Dheere Dheere (female and male versions), Mere Mann, Aap Ko Samjha, Megha Re Megha - are excellent, and the remaining one - Vaga - is sorta catchy. And, even now, I absolutely love the songs.

The movie, itself, probably missed on an opportunity to be even greater because it seemed to get bogged down on showing all the stories - and that whole John Abraham thing, even if that is sorta what started Shahid's path of redemption (or, at least, path of realization). I think it could've been even stronger in telling it's moral about good people v/s bad people, and the ills of money, but it seemed to lose some of its power as the movie went on.

At least all of the songs showed up in the movie. For an industry that frequently includes songs on the soundtrack that don't make the movie, I'm thankful that this movie bucked that trend.

There's a good bit in there from his overly dramatic father where he's like "ask yourself if the people coming to you want to give something to the world, or just want to take something from it." Honestly, that's a pretty good way to tell good from bad, it would appear.

[tanadrin]

Timeline of the near-to-mid future

FTL and false Rare Earth hypothesis edition

50,000 YA: apparent emergence of “behavioral modernity” among humans

25,000 YA: Flourishing of the last common ancestor of the Delta Pavonis clade[1]

22,000 YA: Final breakup of the Delta Pavonis clade

13,000 YA: Settlement of Kraithong[2] by the ancient Chalawani

9,000 YA: Settlement of Tigurinus by the ancient Helvetosians

6,000 YA: Saffarid civilization creates the offshoot Titawinese civilization.[3]

3,000 YA: first urban human civilizations emerge in the Fertile Crescent

2,100 YA: Re-establishment of contact between the Helvetosians and Chalawani.

1684: Chalawani make first contact with the Titawinese.

1957: Launch of Sputnik 1; beginning of the First Space Race

1961: First human spaceflight

1969: First spaceflight landing on Earth’s moon

2043-2058: First crewed missions to Mars

2112: First commercial asteroid capture and mining missions; approximate beginning of the Second Space Race

2164: Permanent human presence established in the outer Solar System

2187: First colonization mission to another star launched, the Terranova expedition to Alpha Centauri. Contact lost two years later; crew presumed deceased.

2223: First successful colonization mission to another star launched; the Heilongjiang arrives in the Alpha Centauri system. The crew reports the first discovery of plant and animal life beyond the Solar System, putting the final nail in the coffin of the so-called Rare Earth hypothesis.

2256: Hsieh Hsiu-Ying, Marchioness of Shensi, develops the first faster-than-light drive. Her vessel, the Nomad, vanishes during the test, and is presumed destroyed for the next 98 years.

2263: Founding of the Renewalist movement in Indonesia

2297: Renewalist settlement of Mars

2335: Outbreak of the Solar Fitna.

2336: The Younger Nomad, designed on the same principles as Hsieh’s Nomad, is launched from Tarqeq under fire. Later that year, the Younger Nomad recovers the Nomad, and Hsieh’s remains, in orbit of Vega.

2357: Alamgir Thrice-Gloried marshals his forces for the final conquest of the Earth, intending to build an empire that spans the entire Solar System. On August 24th, the Younger Nomad returns at the head of an FTL fleet dispatched by Earth’s nearest colonies, credibly threatening to continue the war from outside the Solar System. Alamgir’s supporters desert him, and his coalition collapses. The Second Renaissance begins.

2371: The first FTL exploration ship, Earendil, is launched from the Solar System.

2374: Second Treaty of San Francisco officially ends the last unresolved conflicts of the Fitna; Part 2 of the Univeral Declaration of Human Rights promulgated; Control established as the universal enforcement body for human rights.

2383: The so-called Proxima Framework is established to govern interstellar relations between polities of the Solar System, the Alpha Centauri system, Barnard’s Star, Luhman 16, Wolf 359, and Luyten 726-8. If not dated from the events of 2357, or the launch of Earendil in 2371, the Third Space Race is generally reckoned to begin at about this date.

2481: Humans establish a permanent presence in the Groombridge 1618 system, including on the world later named Osmia; humans fail to recognize the native Osmians as fellow sentients, and cause severe damage to the planet’s environment as a byproduct of industrial activities, leading to the so-called Great Mistake.

2503: Recognition of Osmian sentience causes one of the first large-scale interventions by Control outside the Solar System. Osmia is evacuated of all human presence, and the first contact process begins.

2619: Survey ship Zakynthos encounters the Helvetosians in orbit of Dimidium (51 Pegasi b), marking first contact with an advanced alien civilization. Communication proves far more difficult than it was even with the Osmians, due to fundamental differences in human and Helvetosian language-processing and cognition.

2624: Helvetosians facilitate first contact with the Chalawani.

2670: Human first contact with the Titawinese.

2690-2720: Ongoing difficulties with diplomacy and communication, especially caused by the “Earth civilization” (as the alien polities tend to term it) being in a particularly expansionist phase, lead to discussions of a formal set of institutions through which to transact interstellar diplomacy. The particularly fragmentary nature of human politics stalls development of these institutions until the creation of the Teegarden System, which incorporates almost all large human polities, including those with interstellar capabilities.

2720-2717: Negotiations finally produce the so-called “Primary Accord,” a set of treaties which provides foundations for international, interspecies, and interstellar law; the humans of the Teegarden System, their Osmian clients, the Helvetosians, the Titawinese, and the Chalawani are the initial members. A small secessionist group of humans explicitly renounces the Accord, and departs for space beyond the Local Bubble.

2724-2733: The Machine War is waged among the artificial intelligences of Luhman 16 and nearby systems. Taking place primarily in brown dwarf star systems not desirable to other species, and for reasons which are deeply unclear (but ripe for speculation) to outside observers, the history of this war, including its causes and outcome, remains largely obscure. It seems to have been triggered in part by philosophical disagreements over the implications of the Primary Accord, though no faction which clearly opposes the Accord can be identified.

2730: An alliance of human, Helvetosian, and Titawinese scientific organizations found the Accord space exploration service, Frontier.

2780-2800: The process of political union in signatory worlds leads to the first informal references to the “Foundation,” a kind of supranational interstellar entity within an eclectic, harmonized legal framework. At first the term only covers certain core worlds with a high degree of participation in Accord institutions.

2801: The Sahul civilization joins the Accord. Their twin/cousin civilization, the Sunda, remain apart but on friendly terms.

2818: The Carcosan civilization joins the Accord.

2860: By this time, “the Foundation” is loosely synonymous with “Accord signatories,” though with an identifiable fringe of polities (not all of them physically remote from the core worlds of the Local Bubble) who participate less fully in Accord institutions.

2880-2890: Frontier reestablishes contact with the splinter human faction beyond the Local Bubble; though disunited, these groups all share a deep distrust of the Foundation, of the human worlds of the Teegarden System, and of Control. Owing to distance, contact remains intermittent for many years after.

2924: A large portion of the Elymite civilization joins the Accord.

2929: Political fallout from the Elymite accession sparks the Foundation-Sicani War, with the latter refusing to accept Elymite accession, regarding the Elymite worlds as permanently subordinate clients. The war concludes in 2933, only because the Sicani are no longer physically capable of prosecuting it, and the Foundation is unwilling to invade core Sicani worlds to force capitulation. Repeated minor conflicts flare up throughout the 30th century as a result of this war’s indecisive outcome.

2940: The DSEV Soliton is launched, the first of many multi-year missions of exploration of the further galaxy.

2950-3200: The First Golden Age of the Foundation. Many worlds join the Accord, including some fringe worlds of species already long represented in its ranks; major scientific advancements greatly improve lifespans and standards of living across the entire Foundation, and hundreds of new worlds are terraformed and colonized. In the 3100s, Control attempts to infiltrate some of the fringe human worlds beyond the Local Bubble, both as an exercise in intelligence gathering and in an attempt to restrain what they see as increasingly dangerous and militaristic/authoritarian behavior in those worlds’ governments. This infiltration largely fails, but what information is gathered is greatly disturbing to Foundation leadership.

3250-3275: Philosophical and artistic confllicts cause a major political shift within the Titawinese; polities representing more than 85% of the Titawinese population abruptly secede from the Foundation, and the Titawinese Civil War breaks out as a result. Although the Foundation is officially neutral, minor outbreaks of violence occur within Foundation jurisdiction, especially in those Titawinese polities which remain members. Despite efforts at mediation, the war becomes increasingly bloody, and billions of Titawinese are killed, with billions more becoming refugees. Ultimately, a large fraction of the Titawinese flee the Local Sector, and the remaining survivors gradually rejoin the Foundation. Never the most numerous species, the numbers of the Titawinese on Foundation worlds are considerably reduced.

3291-3318: Renewed attempts at infiltration by Control trigger small-scale armed conflict with the outlander worlds; several major human polities escalate these conflicts, determined to rein in the tyrannical and inhumane practices which flourish on planets beyond Control’s reach. In this, they are only weakly successful; ultimately, however, they only drive further militarization of the outlander worlds.

3325: In retaliation, an outlander faction launches a relativistic weapon that destroys the core world of Kildara. Six billion are killed immediately; millions more in the star system die in the aftermath, as relief efforts are insufficient to supply populations on the outer planets. The Foundation is deeply split on the response; finally, a separate coalition launches a punitive expedition against the outlander polities deemed most responsible for the attack. The Kildaran Expedition lasts until 3348, and while it easily occupies over a dozen outlander worlds, they return quickly to the political status quo when it departs.

3350-3450: A quiescent period within the Foundation itself; at the edges, private exploratory and colonization efforts greatly expand the limits of known space.

3461: A hegemonizing swarm centered on Rastaban (β Draconis), modeled on ancient feudal empires, arises in the outlander worlds spinward of the Local Bubble. The Foundation declines to intervene.

3485: The Rastaban empire, a human supremacist state now incorporating many worlds and other species (including Titawinese who fled the Bubble in the 33rd century) launches a major invasion of the outer Foundation worlds. This attack takes the Foundation by surprise, and marks the beginning of a long and highly destructive war.

3534: The Fifty Years’ War concludes with the final dissolution of the Rastaban empire. Many former Foundation worlds who felt insufficiently defended during the war (human and non-human alike) break away to form the Thalian Alliance, a smaller and more centralized union that maintains a permanent space navy. From this period on, the Foundation does not ever contain more than a plurality of the human or human-descended population.

3550-3950: The Grand Expansion, sometimes called the Fourth Space Race. The Local Bubble civilizations continue to explore and settle the nearby galaxy; in this time, more than thirty separate worlds or civilizations join the Foundation.

5th millennium: This period is, broadly, one of increasing localism; although formally united, the Foundation now encompasses many hundreds of star systems, and the limitations on warp drive speeds, and consequently both travel and communications, means that distant regions of the Foundation have little or nothing to do with one another. Crises, both internal and external, are now dealt with by smaller coalitions of worlds, at first on an ad-hoc basis; later, they are formally recognized. Lifespans for most species, at least, are very long, and people remain strongly attached to the idea of the Foundation, even if in practical terms it is increasingly seen to be more a symbolic association than anything else. As local coalitions take institutional precedence, even formal membership for colonies or newly-contacted worlds comes to be seen as superfluous.

6th millennium: Localism soon gives way to fragmentation; ideological divergence between different groups within the Foundation paralyzes its formal institutions. Vast sections of the Foundation secede--not so much by formal declaration, as by simply ceasing to consider themselves part of the organization. Yet on the ancient core worlds, like Earth and Tigurinus, you would hardly know that this is any kind of age of collapse: these planets are still impossibly prosperous by our own standards, and have a strong sense of unity with one another.

Late 6th millennium and 7th millennium: A major period of renewal. A new, leaner Foundation--now simply terming itself the Core--emerges from the sclerotic husk of the old one. The Core is a little more high-handed in its dealings with surrounding polities, but at the same time, its relative position is weaker: there are now dozens of interstellar polities as wealthy and populous as it, with histories nearly as long. The Core has, like its neighbors, thoroughly streamlined its organizational structures--the administrative borders of Earth would be unrecognizable to us now, but not because of wars or revolutions, but because all the old nation-states and supranational unions have mostly withered away. Successive centuries of legal reforms mean that many old foundational treaties and organizations, like the UN, the Teegarden System, or the Archipelago Treaty are no longer in force, but they are remembered as important historical predecessors of the current system, both in the Core, and among its siblings. Breakthroughs in warp drive technology drastically contract interstellar distances once again.

8th millennium: The Core now controls outposts as far as five thousand light-years away; the furthest human worlds are well beyond even this frontier. Long lifespans and fast warp drives mean exploratory missions to nearby dwarf galaxies are a possibility, but more than 95% of the Milky Way remains unsurveyed by most estimates. Interstellar warfare is still rare, but not unheard of--and when it does occur, it can be devastating. Planet-killers are a reliable way to get every polity that knows you exist to declare war on you instantly, but major conflicts can easily kill millions even without such weapons.

9th millennium: By this point, old distinctions of species have begun to seem rather antiquated: ultra-advanced biomedical technology and mind uploading technology means even the biological/mechanical distinction is pretty flexible. There are synthetic sophonts who can credibly claim to be equal parts human and Chalawani, despite their totally incompatible physiologies (they don’t even use the same genetic molecule); at the same time, pinning down a definition of “human,” given the dizzying array of descendants of that clade, would be pretty difficult. The span of lifestyle for individuals within the Core ranges from modosophonts who live much as you or I do, to sprawling collective intelligences or artificial superminds. By the close of this period, even the Core is not really a thing anymore (it had a good run--almost three thousand years). Archailects with even a passing interest in economics and sociology can help any society self-organize into a post-scarcity utopia. On the distant frontier, things might be different, but if you are strolling through the shining cities of Earth, that might as well be another universe.

[1] Delta Pavonis d was home to an advanced technological civilization (fl. 15,000-12,000 YBP) ancestral to both the Helvetosians (aka the Dimidians or Pegasids) and the Chalawani (aka Taphaon), as well as several other minor civilizations in the Local Bubble. But the so-called Delta Pavonis clade, named for this star system, encompasses a much broader category of civilizations, including the Delta Pavonis d civilization, the Helvetosians, the Chalawani, several civilizations well outside the Local Bubble, and their last common ancestor. The ultimate origin of the Delta Pavonis clade lies at least a thousand light-years away, in the direction of the constellation Taurus.

[2] Kraithong, like Tigurinus, is a human coinage, in this case a name derived from the same folklore that furnished the name of Chalawan (47 Ursae Majoris). Helvetosian and Chalawani vocal tracts do not resemble the human vocal tract, and the native names of these planets cannot be adequately transcribed using any human writing system.

[3] Note that alien civilizations have historically been named for the location of first contact, not their planet of origin or their name for themselves, which may not be ascertained for some time. The Titawinese or Samhese are indeed native to the Titawin system, though, originating on the moons around the second planet (catalogued on Earth as Samh, or υ Andromedae c). Their progenitors, the Saffarids, are named for the spectacular ruins they left in orbit of Saffar (υ Andromedae b)

[one-page-a-day]

☆*°• Topics for future research •°*☆

Islam

consent in islamic law (read: Kecia Ali, Hina Azam)

predestination and free will (al-Qadariya and al-Mu'atazila vs. al-Jabriya and al-Asha'ri'a)

the story of the people of Lut

magic

morality, conscience and its origins

revelation and signs

creation and order

purpose and meaning of (human) life

evil in the world vs. God's benevolence (theodicy)

What makes a believer? What makes a non-believer?

the narration that all humans decide to live their human life before they are born

gender identity and sexuality (read: Asma Barlas: Believing Women in Islam)

nihilism vs. what I do matters (Quran 53:38 f.)

ambiguty tolerance in islamic theology (based on Thomas Bauer's Culture of Ambiguity)

dream interpretation (read: Ibn Sirin, Annemarie Schimmel, Leah Kinberg)

religious rituals and psychology / mental health

umma vs. pluralism of nations and peoples

first and second fitna (civil war)

spiritual crisis in the 'West'

Philosophy

Machiavelli on power

bodhi in Buddhism

Satre on freedom

feel free to send me your book recommendations on these topics ♡

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.26 (before 1950)

657 – First Fitna: In the Battle of Siffin, troops led by Ali ibn Abu Talib clash with those led by Muawiyah I. 811 – Battle of Pliska: Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I is killed and his heir Staurakios is seriously wounded. 920 – Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at the Battle of Valdejunquera. 1509 – The Emperor Krishnadevaraya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire. 1529 – Francisco Pizarro González, Spanish conquistador, is appointed governor of Peru. 1581 – Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): The northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II. 1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford, England. 1775 – The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania takes office as Postmaster General. 1778 – The Emigration of Christians from the Crimea in 1778 begins. 1788 – New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States. 1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world's first public railway, opens in south London, United Kingdom. 1814 – The Swedish–Norwegian War begins. 1822 – José de San Martín arrives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to meet with Simón Bolívar. 1822 – First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis. 1847 – Liberia declares its independence from the United States. France and the United Kingdom are the first to recognize the new nation. 1861 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. 1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal at Bayreuth. 1882 – The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa. 1887 – Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement. 1890 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman's resignation. 1891 – France annexes Tahiti. 1897 – Anglo-Afghan War: The Pashtun fakir Saidullah leads an army of more than 10,000 to begin a siege of the British garrison in the Malakand Agency of the North West Frontier Province of India. 1899 – Ulises Heureaux, the 27th President of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated. 1908 – United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation). 1918 – Emmy Noether's paper, which became known as Noether's theorem was presented at Göttingen, Germany, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy. 1936 – Spanish Civil War: Germany and Italy decide to intervene in the war in support for Francisco Franco and the Nationalist faction. 1937 – Spanish Civil War: End of the Battle of Brunete with the Nationalist victory. 1941 – World War II: Battle of Grand Harbour, British forces on Malta destroy an attack by the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS. Fort St Elmo Bridge covering the harbour is demolished in the process. 1945 – World War II: The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany. 1945 – World War II: HMS Vestal is the last British Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the war. 1945 – World War II: The USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with components and enriched uranium for the Little Boy nuclear bomb. 1947 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council. 1948 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military of the United States.

[lightdancer1]

The Battle of the Camel marked a key point in the history of the Rashidun Caliphate:

Under Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, Islam had what can be called the First Fitna, also called the Riddah Wars. A skeptical eye would see that a unification under armed force is always a tenuous thing and that these "Apostate" Prophets represented aspirants to a kind of set of religions of their own but that effort was shattered by armed force. This clash, in the wake of the assassination of Uthman, the ancestor of the Banu Ummayya or the Ummayyad dynasty, was fought between the Prophet's wife and the Prophet's son-in-law. Ali would ultimately lose the Fitna and his dynasty would die in a generation after his death.

He won the battle, however, as the only major victory he'd win as Caliph. And it is this face of Aisha that means just as much as the other one, where her marriage has become interwoven in all the polemics about Muhammad's moral character and choices as a man. She, along with the other two women to be noted, is a part of the specific earliest history of the Islamic world that changed by the time of the high caliphate under the Ummayyads and Abbasids.