#When Death Came to Baghdad

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Artist: Anthony van Dyck, 1627, (Detail)

* * * * *

This story first appeared in the Jewish Talmud over 1500 years ago. Later it appeared in Muslim Sufi literature called “When Death Came to Baghdad”. The message is the same just the names and places have changed and later it was adapted by the British writer Somerset Maugham...... APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA There was once a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to the market to buy provisions, and in a short time the servant came back,white and trembling, he said, “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a man in the crowd, and when I turned I saw it was Death that had jolted me. He looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from the city so to avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death won’t find me.” The merchant lent him his horse, the servant mounted it, dug its spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop, he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death disguised as a man standing in the crowd, and he walked over to him and said, ‘Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?” The man said, “it was only a gesture of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

-Epigraph by W. Somerset Maugham to John O’Hara, 1934 book of the same name.

[Jim Fagiolo]

[hyperions-fate]

During the next several hours, Marines killed twenty-four Iraqi men, women, and children. Near the site of the explosion, they shot five men who had been driving to a college in Baghdad. They entered three nearby homes and killed nearly everyone inside. The youngest victim was a three-year-old girl. The oldest was a seventy-six-year-old man. The Marines would later claim that they were fighting insurgents that day, but the dead were all civilians.

[...]

The killings came to be known as the Haditha massacre. Four Marines were charged with murder, but those charges were later dropped. General James Mattis, who went on to become Secretary of Defense, wrote a glowing letter to one of the Marines, dismissing his charges and declaring him innocent. By 2012, when the final case ended in a plea deal with no prison sentence, the Iraq War was over, and stories about the legacy of the U.S. occupation rarely got much attention. The news barely registered.

The photos and accounts included in this article are extremely graphic and disturbing. But they give only a sense of what the US and UK occupation of Iraq entailed for ordinary Iraqis: an almost clinical regime of torture, misery, and death, without even the semblance of justice.

[beardedmrbean]

LONDON — A British court gave Wikileaks founder Julian Assange permission to launch a full appeal against his extradition to the United States on espionage charges Monday, after more than a decade of legal battles. 

Two judges at the High Court in London said the Australian-born Assange could have a full appeal to hear his argument that he might be discriminated against because he is a foreign national.

Assange’s legal avenues in the U.K. would have been exhausted if the High Court had ruled the extradition could go ahead. His legal team said last week that Assange could have been put on a plane to the U.S. within 24 hours if they ruled against him.

Assange's lawyer Edward Fitzgerald had told the judges they should not accept the assurance given by American prosecutors that his client could seek the protections given under the First Amendment, as a U.S court would not be bound by this. “We say this is a blatantly inadequate assurance,” he told the court, Reuters reported.

However, Reuters said that he had accepted a separate assurance that Assange would not face the death penalty, saying the U.S. had provided an “unambiguous promise not to charge any capital offense.”

It could be months before the appeal is heard.

Assange, 52, was not in court to hear his fate being debated. Fitzgerald said he did not attend for health reasons.

But hundreds of protesters cheered outside the court as news of the verdict came through.

Assange has been fighting extradition for more than a decade, including seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London before he was jailed in the high-security Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London, where he has been held for five years.

Assange has been indicted in the U.S. on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents.

American prosecutors have alleged that he put lives at risk when he helped Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published almost 15 years ago. 

James Lewis, a lawyer for the U.S., argued in written submissions that Assange’s actions “threatened damage to the strategic and national security interests of the United States” and put individuals named in the documents — including Iraqis and Afghans who had helped U.S. forces — at risk of “serious physical harm.”

Assange's attorneys have argued that he engaged in regular journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information and the prosecution is politically motivated retaliation.

They have said he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted, although American authorities have said the sentence is likely to be much shorter than that.

Assange’s many global supporters have criticized the prosecution and there have been calls for the case to be dropped from rights groups, some media bodies and political leaders including  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. 

Document drop site

Wikileaks, which he launched in 2006 as a place for leakers to drop classified documents, rose to prominence four years later when it published a classified video provided by Manning. 

Recorded in 2007, the video showed a U.S. military helicopter killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Baghdad. When a van arrived to pick up the wounded, it was also shot at. More than 10 people were killed. 

Manning was convicted at a court-martial of espionage and other charges in 2013 for leaking secret military files to WikiLeaks. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison but was released in 2017 after President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Assange’s legal troubles began in 2010, when he was arrested in London at the request of Sweden, which wanted to question him about allegations of rape and sexual assault made by two women.

Two years later, he jumped bail and sought refuge inside the Ecuadorian Embassy which put him out of reach of authorities, but effectively trapped him in the building.

After the relationship soured, he was evicted from the embassy in April 2019 and British police immediately arrested him for breaching bail in 2012. He has been in prison ever since although Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in 2019 because of time elapsed.

Although a British district court judge ruled against the extradition request in 2021, citing a real and “oppressive” risk of suicide, U.S. authorities won an appeal the following year, after giving a series of assurances about how Assange would be treated if extradited. This included a pledge that he could be transferred to Australia, to serve his sentence. 

Earlier this year, the Australian parliament called for Assange to be allowed to return to his homeland. Officials have tried to lobby the U.S. to drop the extradition efforts or find a diplomatic solution that would allow Assange to return to his homeland.

Australian authorities have said the case has dragged on for too long and officials have tried to lobby the U.S. to drop the extradition efforts or find a diplomatic solution that would allow his return. 

Asked about Australia’s request last month, President Joe Biden his administration was “considering it.”

[icemankazansky]

J or K or V. or you know all 3 if you're feeling up to it please and thank you

I was going to answer all three of these, but I think I'm about to do enough damage with the one question.

K. What is the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?

Before TGM came out, I wrote this, which is a document titled TG2 heartbreak rewrite. I think this was after the first TGM trailer came out with the meeting with Cain (but before we knew who Cain was), and before we had proof of life for Ice. Obviously there is an angst warning here.

Ice is waiting for him outside the admiral's office. He's in his flight suit, as usual, looking trim and tan and beautiful. 

"That went well," he says. 

Maverick scrubs a hand over his face. "If I'm too old to get chewed out by the brass, I'm too old, period." 

He walks down the sidewalk, and Ice falls in step beside him. "He's not wrong," Ice says. "You deserve a promotion." 

"Shut up, Commander." 

Ice's expression darkens, and Maverick feels a stab of pain to the chest, which he should have expected. Too low a blow. He lowers his head and walks quickly to his bike, weaving in and out through the people crowding the walk. 

"Look, man, I'm sorry," he says, but when he looks up, Ice is gone.

*

Maverick's therapist: "Have you and Ice been spending a lot of time together?" 

He shrugs. "The usual." 

"Pete…" 

"It's fine. It's fine." 

"I'm not here to play couple's therapist to you and Ice. I want you to say it." 

Maverick felt himself flush, and he felt himself get cold at the same time. "No. I don't want to." 

"Pete. We've talked about this." 

"I like it when he's around, okay? It's not—" 

"Pete. Please." 

He tried to ignore the way his chest tightened, the way his hands shook. "Iceman Kazansky is dead. He died June 27, 1993. His plane was shot down over Baghdad, and there were no survivors." 

His therapist is saying something now. Maverick can't hear her over his own pulse. He can't hear her over a twenty-six-year-old phone call, Ice's sister speaking between sobs, "Tommy's dead, Maverick. I'm so sorry. I know how much—I know how much you loved him. How much he loved you. I'm so sorry." 

"I'm cursed," Maverick says abruptly, cutting off whatever his therapist is saying. 

"There's no such thing as curses, Pete. You're not cursed." 

"Everyone I've ever loved has died. I'm radioactive. There's something poisonous about me—" 

"Pete," she says evenly, "Ice's death is not your fault. Goose's death is not your fault. Your parents' deaths are not your fault." 

"So what?" he says. "It's some kind of divine punishment? I—" 

"It's nothing but bad luck, Pete. Soldiers die in wars. People get sick. It's just how the world works." She's quiet a moment, looking at him. Finally, "I think we should talk about medication again." 

He laughs, but it's a sharp noise. "I gotta go, Doc." 

"Pete—" 

"I gotta go. You stop moving for too long, that's when they get you." 

***

Maverick knows he's not crazy, but he also knows that crazy is relative. Most of what goes on in a war zone would be crazy anywhere else. It's just a matter of circumstance. 

[lesbiamano]

AN INTRODUCTION TO "The Loving River", AKA Nazya's story!!

this story takes place in a historic setting in iraq, no specific years (for now) so everything here is subject to some change in the future.

this post is just an introduction to the main stuff and characters in the story! (all under cut, and fair warning, its a lot)

Shanya Al-Malaika:

shanya is a 29 year old poet, going by the pen name "Ta'abata Sharan" and taking on the image of a man so she can comfortably write about her love for nazik, and to be taken more seriously in the world of poetry. she is the mortal daughter of the goddess shaahida, also referred to as "The Witness", and ill be explaining more about her and her lore later.

to make a long story short, shaahida never wanted a child, and so shanya's coming into the world was a complete accident, and to shaahida, a shameful mistake. with that, she sends off newborn shanya to live with her aunt, saabira, another goddess, this one referred to as "Patience". saabira had a mortal husband and five mortal children with him, so the choice to send shanya there was easy. shaahida was sure saabira, with all her patience and knowledge of children, would be able to take care of shanya better than shaahida ever could. but of course, if she was going to give away shanya like this, shed have to gain something out of it too. she slashed baby shanya across the mouth with her divine nails, drawing blood, and leaving a scar. a tie between them both, stronger than their familial connection. wherever shanya was, shaahida would be able to keep watch, and when the time comes, shaahida would be able to use shanya as the vessel for her plan (which i'll discuss later,, maybe.)

shanya lives with saabira's family for most of her life in dhi qar, where she meets nazik, a girl around her age, and eventually, falls for her. the two are worlds apart though, for while saabira prefers to live humble and poor despite her divinity, making shanya live as a young sheep herder, nazik came from a wealthy family. middle upper class, to be exact. one day, however, nazik leaves dhi qar suddenly, and without much explanation, leaving shanya all alone. what made it all worse was this coming directly after a major fight/argument between the two. (this is insanely simplified, for a lot of stuff happens between them here.)

shanya continues to live with saabira, until the age of 16. when one day, as she on the carriage of saabira's oldest son, shaheen, she began to tinker with the oud guitar he always had with him. she strummed a few notes and smiled to herself, preparing to play a small tune. the carriage soon hit a bump, and the oud, with all its heaviness, slipped out of shanyas hands and fell off the carriage, tumbling down into the nearby river, and breaking. shaheen went off the rails at this, screaming at shanya about how expensive the oud was, and going as far as slap her and push her out of the carriage, telling her to walk home instead. its then, when shes trying to walk home, in the most vaguest in terms, she ends up dying. very unfortunate, and a horrible look for shaheen.

shaahida oversaw all of this. she was angered, not as a mother would be for a daughter, but a creator to a vessel. she transforms her own body to shanyas likeness, and makes it, in a way, a vessel for shanyas spirit to reside in for the time being. making daughter and mother, one and the same.

after saabira realizes what had happened, shanya's death, shaahida's work, she is frightened, and she does not tell shanya of what had truly happened to her. instead she grabs her and takes her towards kirkuk, where hashim, her uncle, and saabira and shaahidas brother, resides. hashim the god, also referred to as "The Punisher". after learning of what had happened to shanya, hashim takes her in, almost like his own daughter, and he is the one who teaches her of poetry and art and whatnot.

it is also hashim who sends 29 year old shanya out of kirkuk and to baghdad, along with her cousins, the twins jamil and jameela (also saabira's children), to gain more knowledge and more inspiration after she finds herself in a writing block. and that is where shanya meets nazik again after so long, which kickstarts the main story.

Nazik Al-Khafaji:

nazik is the 30 year old eldest daughter to jasim al-khafaji and his university sweetheart, nadeen. young nazik worked in a library with her mother until she was 14, before becoming a 'healer' or a doctor later into her adulthood. she has a younger brother, azra, only 4 years younger. nazik's mother had been a worshipper of saabira, one of the saabiroon, and as such, nazik aligned herself with that sect of worship too. and when push comes to shove, as an adult, nazik realizes she had been blessed by saabira with the power of healing. specifically, healing people with her own blood, something she couldve used much, much earlier.

jasim's family was quite a rich one, and yet, he distanced himself from them and went against his own family's wishes by marrying nadeen, and as such he did not inherit much of their wealth at all, and all the wealth naziks family did have came entirely from his own hard work and businesses in gold selling and jewelry making. nazik's family was originally from baghdad, however after jasim's falling out with his family, they packed their bags and moved to dhi qar when nazik was 6 and azra was 2, which is, of course, where nazik met shanya.

nazik quickly found herself enjoying shanya's company, and even introducing shanya to her brother, for a chance to get the girl to step out of her shell and meet new people, for nazik had noticed how lonely shanya seemed to be, with how all of her cousins were decades upon decades older than her, and having no free time to spend with her at all. nazik found herself skipping many of her classes to be with shanya, almost getting caught by her father many times, but she simply could not get away from her. in her free time she brought shanya books to read with her, though most of the time she sat by and listened to shanya play the oud, yes, the one she often borrowed from shaheen. nazik hadnt realized it, but she had fallen for shanya, hard and deep. one day, after returning home later than she should, after spending a night with shanya, she came back to find her mother dead. nadeen had been sick for years now, but nobody had expected her to die so suddenly. naziks life changed overnight. in the morning, she went to visit shanya one last time, a meeting which resulted in a huge useless argument, before nazik ran off, going home to finish her packing. that night, her, her brother, and her father took a carriage all the way to baghdad. she left shanya with no last goodbye, no last hug, and that is her one regret, though she does not blame herself.

jasim never quite made up with his family, his parents however begrudgingly gave him an estate to own in baghdad, which they settled in. as an adult, nazik was practically the only one working in the house. jasim had given up on life and on fatherhood after nadeen's death, forcing nazik to mother her own brother, and to grow up faster than she shouldve. and while jasim was useless, azra picked up traveling as a hobby, untied and free of all burdens, he was almost never home, and always off doing his own thing outside of iraq, leaving nazik to labor on her own, completely oblivious to the exhaustion she was facing, for she hid it all from him.

nazik, of course, has her own set of people in baghdad, and one of them was a pen pal, jameela, who she did not recognize as shanyas cousin, and whom she had urged to come to baghdad to meet. jameela had of course come to baghdad with her twin brother jamil and her cousin shanya. however, shanya and nazik would not stumble upon eachother until much, much later after shanyas coming to baghdad.

Shaahida (Al-Malaika):

shaahida, the witness, was the second born goddess from "The Creator", coming only after her eldest sister, huda, "The Gift". sources speculate she was born from The Creator's left eye, to bear witness over humanity, and to help her brother, hashim, the punisher, who was born right behind her, in trials, so he may adequately punish both mortals and their divine siblings alike.

of course it must be explained that The Creator is the one true god of the universe, having created it all with humans and all. in their divine eternalness, they split themselves into 99 different pieces, and the one last 100th piece would be created when all 99 pieces set aside their differences and finish their business on earth, and come together to create a new "creator". which is to say, the 99 lesser gods created were much weaker in comparison to The Creator, having a limited set of skills, and being very close to human like with their feuds and problems and personalities. some say there is no way all 99 of them would ever come together to become whole again, for each of them held such wildly different ideologies, and often butted heads with eachother. sometimes mortals wonder if they truly did come from one beings.

each god has their own set of followers that follow certain rules for worship. some gods have easier rules than others, some want all the worship, some want none. while, worshipping one god means you believe in the existence of the 98 remaining, it does not necessarily mean you believe in their coming together again to be one, and it does not mean you believe in them coming from one being. those beliefs depend on the individual and the family they hail from. there is however another religion made from these using all these factors (believing in all gods, their coming from one being and their eventual unity) called "Istiqbal", in the way that its followers await the future for the 'inevitable' unity of these gods.

that being said, shaahida was never one to love her job. as the witness for the punisher, she did not last long. she kept it up merely 3 millennia before giving it up, opting to wander the world meaninglessly for a few couple of centuries, before settling in a temple and watching people worship at her feet all day. along the way, she found herself obsessing with a mortal girl, a girl named batool, and a worshipper of hers. she possessive as much as she was obsessive, and batool did not by any means hate the attention. until one day, when she revealed to shaahida that was to get married to a man soon. of course, that angered shaahida greatly, and with her anger came eyes on them, and the public soon found out about their situation. it was not homosexuality itself that was forbidden, but the act of mingling with mortals at the time was. hashim came, with his divine punishment, and stoned them, though whether he truly wanted to or not was debated. some even said he had someone else come and punish them in his stead. shaahida was hung up and stoned for a whole year, before her mortal lover which of course died before her. after her punishment, shaahidas reputation was tainted forever. humans misunderstood the punishment, thinking it for homosexuality, and quickly forbid it. which, in turn, made shaahida a symbol for homosexuality, and specifically, lesbian love. she would gain a few followers for this, though not many, and all worshipped her in secret. for the next few centuries or millennia, shaahida wandered aimlessly amongst the earth in a disguise, though she did not dare get close to any mortal during that time.

until one day, it suddenly became allowed to get with mortals. a lot of time had passed, and most of her siblings had slowly but surely been becoming more lax on many things. it was frustrating, to think that if her and batool's love was delayed a few mere centuries, it wouldve blossomed to fruition.

shaahida let herself out again, and began to mingle once more with the mortals. she met a writer one day, a man who calls himself abd al sahib. without knowing of her divinity, he spoke to her of his want to write a book about the witness. she smiled, thinking it was flattering. the two got closer, though she did not love him in the way she loved batool, nor in the way lovers loved eachother. he however, was obviously in love and head over heels. and he was not stupid, he soon learned of her divinity and her being the subject of his book, which only made him get closer to her. a series of events unfolds, many that were out of shaahidas control, and she finds herself bearing a child, a mortal child, shanya. for the first few months she had not truly processed it, until one day abd al sahib pointed it out, grinning with pride at the fact that he had impregnated her. her actions next had been a long time coming, she had enough. she killed abd al sahib, which, of course, was a sin. for gods could not murder their subjects and humans in general. it was fine however, for she hid all the clues. and when she brought shanya into the world, she was disgusted. not specifically by shanya, but the events that led up to her birth.

she sends shanya away and goes into hiding, hoping hashim would not find this out.

she loses herself completely in this loneliness and new found hopelessness she has dug herself into, and thinks the only way to get out of it and to be free is to simply become the new creator, to end the world prematurely. and maybe shanya was simply a tool given to her by the world to achieve this.

with that, her loneliness is broken only slightly, and only briefly by her meeting a new woman. nadeen. they got close over a short period of time in baghdad, before shaahida realized nadeen was already married, and already had a few month old daughter. it was shortly after this realization did nadeen leave for dhi qar with her husband and daughter, and shaahida never had much of a chance to see her again. and there she returns to solitude.

.

.

.

and thats all for now! this is barely even half of the story, but again, its just intros, and it's already so long so i dont want to add more. i know not many will read all of this anyway so ive only written this for myself so its easier for me to see the info of my own story here. anyway! heres some art for the characters mentioned!

nadeen (left) and batool (right)! this is all i have for now! if youve made it this far, tysm for reading!

[razorsadness]

I love writing. I thought, “I’ll be a news writer.” That was why I went to grad school.

This is why I quit grad school: I learned that there are only four stories and there’s only one way to tell each but no matter what pen I used, new stories came out, seditious and unwieldy, and I still can’t stop finding new ways to tell them.

This is why I correct typos for a living while others depict glorious international events in black, white and read Virginia Woolf the other day; she said for a woman to write, she must first kill the angel in the house.

The grad school chair was too alive to be an angel, but given another chance I’d fix that and drive a red ball-point like a stake through his shriveled black heart and watch the ink run out then wash my hands.

I still read. I read all the time. I read the newspaper. On the bus. Over the shoulder. Of the person sitting in front of me. Today, it’s Wednesday but the paper’s stuck on Sunday. You’ve got to figure, though, with the speed of information these days, it was out of date on Sunday even for speed readers, outmoded even before the ink was dry and here’s the headline: NIGHTMARE IN BAGHDAD: A WOMAN SEARCHES FOR THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GULF WAR.

Do you believe everything you read? Do you believe anything you read in the newspaper? Teen Pregnancy Up, Moral Decay in America Up, Rate of Incarceration of Black Males Up, Dear Beth, Why can’t he get it up? So, there’s a NIGHTMARE in Baghdad. Wake up and the nightmare’s gone It’s not like it affects property values here in Baghdad-by-the-Bay and it’s about a woman anyway and it’s in the newspaper and she’s looking for what really happened to her son or something like that I’m sure because it’s a woman and women are only news when they have sons or husbands or they’re dead and I’m sure he’s not really dead since no one ever really dies in press rhetoric and anyway it’s only one woman “searching” for the “truth” so she’s obviously a kook or a martyr or both and we can make her disappear by turning a page we can make thousands of deaths disappear by talking about collateral damage we can make thousands of deaths disappear by not writing about them at all; wasn’t Bosnia last year?

It’s hard to turn the page of a newspaper on the bus. You hit the elbow of whoever is sitting next to you, jostle the hair of the woman putting on eyeliner in front of you. It’s messy, yes, and difficult, but a search for a story, even just one, is like that keep turning those pages next page

Headline: 70 YEARS AFTER SUFFRAGE: WHAT DO WOMEN WANT Why don’t you go ask the angel in the house? All she’s doing is reading Cosmo, which won’t cover AIDS since women aren’t really at risk no one really dies in the glossy pages with perfume strips and why dwell on that when you could be talking about seven ways to drive him wild in bed or six ways to flatten your stomach or five ways to love your body (as long as he loves it) or four ways to dress for dinner or three new hairstyles or two pages about knowing when it’s over or one story that the angel knows as she lies on her bed, looking so pretty. All stretched out, wearing her high, high ivory pedestal heels. Look at her pretty painted mouth twist in an O as I pluck her wings feather by feather—it’s painful, yes, but I guess it’s going to be like that— and I pull a feather and she’s saying there’s a story— that one about the woman who bit an apple and ruined the world and I pull a feather and she’s crying that in the beginning there was the father, the son and something invisible and I yank a handful of feathers and she screams that in the beginning there was the law, the father and I shove the feathers in her mouth and tell her, quietly, that here is the beginning and we have a murder, a motive and a body of evidence that here is the beginning and we have blank walls to write on that here is the beginning and we have blood.

—Daphne Gottlieb, “Death and the Maiden and the Information Age” (Pelt, Odd Girls Press, 1999)

[totallyhussein-blog]

'They wanted to break me, but they lost.’ Iraqis recount IS horrors in Mosul

When the Islamic State group rampaged through Iraq’s ancient city of Mosul a decade ago, the jihadists killed thousands, upended countless more lives and left deep scars among the survivors. Under their self-declared “caliphate” stretching across swathes of Syria and Iraq, they committed beheadings, torture and enslavement, turning life into living hell and leaving behind mass graves.

The Sunni Muslim extremists seized Mosul on June 10, 2014 and the group’s then leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, soon made his first public appearance in the city’s iconic Great Mosque of Al-Nuri. In the lands they controlled, the jihadists banned music, burnt books and punished perceived wrongdoers by stoning them and cutting off the fingers of smokers and the hands of alleged thieves.

It was not until 2017 that US-backed Iraqi forces drove IS out of Mosul in one of the bloodiest urban battles of modern times, leaving behind a city in rubble and despair. When the guns fell silent, Mosul’s traumatized residents were left to rebuild their shattered lives. AFP spoke to three of them about their memories of that terrible time.

Azad Hassan, 29, was a young student when IS came, and he suffered the full brunt of their violence. He lost one of his hands to the jihadists, and relatives whom he never saw again. He recalled the terrifying spring morning in 2015 when a crowd gathered in a Mosul square, with all eyes fixed on him, his brother and two other men.

His heart thumped in his chest when he saw the people cheering, their excitement strangely reminding him of a football match. “It was as if Real Madrid and Barcelona were playing,” the 29-year-old recalled, before adding that the situation was deadly serious. IS fighters “cut off our hands”, Hassan said, explaining that they were being punished for a feud with a jihadist.

The family’s suffering did not end there. IS detained Hassan’s brother and three other relatives, and they remain missing to this day. Hassan said he did not give in to a thirst for revenge, but kept studying, started a family and would soon receive his Master’s diploma in Arabic literature.

Now the father of a seven-year-old, he said he has also become an advocate for people with disabilities and for missing persons. Although he admits to often having to battle negative feelings, he said that his “willpower always prevails”. “They wanted to break me, but they lost,” he said. “I now go to university, play football and drive. But the scar is still here.”

Two days before the jihadists swept into Mosul, Judge Ahmed Hureithi left the city to find refuge in Baghdad, but then the extremists came for his family. They detained his father and two brothers, and later beheaded the youngest “with a sword”. He was only 17 years old. “They published pictures,” said Hureithi, 60. “They were proud of such acts.”

Years later, Hureithi would preside over a court in the capital Baghdad, judging hundreds of former fighters for unleashing their reign of terror. In 2019, he sentenced to death 11 French nationals, although they are still being held in an Iraqi prison. “I ruled according to Iraqi law,” Hureithi said. “The evidence was sufficient and clear.”

The courts have handed down hundreds of death and life sentences to people convicted of “terrorism” in trials that some human rights groups have denounced as hasty. Hureithi is adamant that he bears no grudge against the defendants and that he “acted with great impartiality”.

Hureithi returned to a still-devastated Mosul in 2020, and is now vice president of Nineveh province’s court of appeal. “I didn’t recognize the city,” the judge recalled. “It was as if I was entering it for the first time.”

When IS invaded the city, music shop owner Amar Kheder had one goal: to get his beloved music collection out of harm’s way before the jihadists destroyed it. He arranged for a food truck driver to take his decades-old collection of vinyl, tapes, radios and gramophones to friends in Baghdad.

“We concealed the boxes behind the food,” Kheder, 50, recalled. “Once the archive was out of harm’s way, I was relieved.” Jihadists turned up once to enquire about the music shop, but by then he had already turned it into a secondhand clothing store.

He decided to stay in Mosul in the belief that IS rule would last just a few months. In the end, it was three years before the jihadists were ejected.

Undeterred by the destruction in the city, Kheder restored his shop and sent to Baghdad for the treasures that his family had collected over more than 50 years. His is not just any store, but a balm for the soul, he said. “I consider it a pharmacy … it offers each person a remedy.”

Today, Kheder’s shop is again filled with a trove of music history. Vinyl discs, cassette tapes and CDs occupy every corner — many Iraqi and Arab artists, but also Bach and Beethoven.

Vintage round tables, classic radios and old recording machines take center stage, and the walls are adorned with framed pictures of iconic Arab singers from a bygone era. After so much suffering, Kheder said, his music treasure in Mosul has survived and “life has come back … to a city for historians, intellectuals and scholars”.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Al-Razi: Islam’s Favorite Heretic

Many centuries ago, in the heart of one of Islam’s great empires, there lived a man who openly questioned the foundations of the Islamic faith. He outraged religious thinkers of his time, he mocked sacred scriptures, rejected religious authority, even denied the prophethood of Muhammad himself.

If he were alive today, he would be condemned as a heretic, maybe even an apostate. He would risk professional ruin, social dishonor and exile, even mob violence. In some countries, his views would lend him a sentence of death.

And yet, in his time, this man lived a long and happy life, greatly respected. What’s more, today he is celebrated all over the Muslim world, his heresies forgotten.

This is the secret history of Abu Bakr Al-Razi - the Physician.

Al-Razi was born in the 9th century, in the city of Rayy, located in what is now Iran. A curious and analytical thinker, al-Razi’s exceptional medical talents quickly won him respect and renown.

He was the first to distinguish between smallpox and measles; and the first to write a medical manual for the home. A practitioner and a teacher, his lectures attracted scores of eager learners.

And he wrote mountains of books -- over 200 -- including the 23-volume Comprehensive Book of Medicine which was studied around the world for centuries, and what was perhaps the very first book on Pediatrics.

A superb and innovative clinician, Razi reasoned into practices that would become standard today, like keeping detailed documentation of characteristics and treatment of hospital patients (a form of today’s case records), and using a control group in an experiment.

Razi also had an intuitive understanding of the role of hygiene and the environment in health. It is said that when it came time to build a new hospital in Baghdad, Razi was asked to choose the location. He had fresh meat hung throughout the city. A few days later, Razi returned to check each location, and decided that the hospital should be placed where the meat had putrefied the least.

Confident in his skills, Razi wasn’t afraid to provoke.

He authored a critique of Greek masters such as Galen at a time where orthodoxy was the rule and such authorities were to be studied with submissive reverence, not challenged.

But al-Razi was not a believer in the untouchability of “authorities” - he was instead, a believer in human reason. Thus, to Razi even giants like Galen could -- and in fact should -- be questioned.

“It grieves me to oppose and criticize the man Galen from whose sea of knowledge I have drawn much,” said Razi. “Indeed, he is the Master and I am the disciple. Although this reverence and appreciation will and should not prevent me from doubting, as I did, what is erroneous in his theories. and if he were alive, he would have congratulated me on what I am doing. I say this because Galen's aim was to seek and find the truth and bring light out of darkness.”

So it’s no surprise Razi found himself frustrated with those who blindly accepted dogma in other realms, especially faith. Fortunately for Razi, in the ninth century, “Islam” as we know it today was still being actively formed.

Only two centuries after the death of the Prophet, it was a time when the hadith -- the source of much of Islamic doctrine -- were still being gathered and recorded.

The Islamic world was humming with change: philosophers clashed with theologians while factions argued over the particulars of religious edicts which would later become unquestionable orthodoxy. Still, there were limitations to these debates - the “fundamentals” of the faith were not to be questioned, which irked al-Razi.

“The followers of revealed religions … reject rational speculation and inquiry about the fundamental doctrines of religion. They restrict and forbid it,” said he. “If these people are asked about the proof of the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question,” said Razi

Razi may have been protected from the worst of this violence by his great accomplishments and stature, as certainly he himself held views on Islam that were deeply heretical.

For one, he denied the divine nature of the Qur’an, which he called “a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation.”

If that wasn’t heretical enough, Razi went so far as to reject the bedrock doctrine of Islam, the “shahada” -- a declaration of faith required in Islam, which states that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.

To Razi, God may exist, but Muhammad was not God’s prophet - in fact, he considered all prophets nothing but cheap tricksters and frauds, like street performers or magicians.

Razi believed in his own version of God, one who could be found through reason rather than revelation. To theologians, these beliefs were heinous and horrific, prompting furious rebuttals. Curiously, these rebuttals are the only remaining sources we have of his most sacrilegious views.

While many of Razi’s medical writings are accessible to us, his most directly heretical writings have long vanished. Over the centuries, the loss of this work allowed the religious to claim the physician for themselves. His heresies buried under the sands of time, Razi is today considered among the greatest thinkers in Islam.

In modern day Iran, where freethinkers can be sentenced to death for insulting the prophet, Razi’s birthday is even honored as a professional holiday.

If he was alive today, Razi, who fiercely valued his ability to think freely, who despised deference to authorities in matters of reason and faith, would have been persecuted by the very same people who revere his life and many achievements. … Almost certainly, his insults to the Prophet and the Qur’an would mean the end of his life ...and all his brilliance and potential with it.

[mariacallous]

The speaker is Death

"There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, 'Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.  She looked at me and made a threatening gesture,  now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.'  The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.  Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, 'Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?'  'That was not a threatening gesture,' I said, 'it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.'"

[avatarvyakara]

And now for something a little different:

(Yes, this is what I’ve been working on for the past while.)

For context:

The story of the Golden River—’Onochok in Kochachi, Kingawa in Nikkeijin Japanese—with its five rivers, its seven great cities, its many-buttressed buildings and sacred isles—is a complex one, as is the story of the Nikkei-jin, the Japanese settlers who became the greatest rivals of the people of the Bay. But they are not alone, in the story of this continent. Nor can what happened to them truly be divorced from events elsewhere in the known world.

The continent of HESPERIA lacks much in the way of domesticable animals, but there was one key exception—camelops celeris, which the Bay would call ’espeli (plural ’espelik) but most of the world would come to call nayoomee. Large and llama-like, the nayoomee would provide meat, wool, and perhaps most importantly a suitable mount. Camelops c. occidentalis, the variant found on the western coast of Hesperia, would come to be used by the ancient Hokan pastoral peoples, giving them an edge against the Yok-Utian agriculturalists…at least at first. It would also give the ancient Inawemaaganic [Algonquian] tribes on what another history would call the Columbia Plateau a key boost in their expansions across the continent to the west.

It is with these people—or with a descendant people, the Nnu [Mi’kmaq]—that the next stage of the story takes place. Because in the year 1000, a ship came from the northeast of the world, bearing warriors from a faraway land, a strange faith, strange new animals—and strange diseases. Smallpox in particular did a lot of damage—tore the Wóšnathípi Empire to pieces, ended the cult of the Bird-Men, nearly destroyed the power of the Turtle Cities of the Great Lakes, and left piles of burning corpses brightening the night in the Bay, among other effects. Key to all this, though, is that the people of the urban civilizations of Hesperia survived. And those who did now had a boost against the sicknesses of the Other World.

The story continues in 1251, when a group of Tau raiders—whom another history would call the Inuit—made their way across the Strait and traded with Japan and China. North China, anyway; the Mongol Conquest was still ongoing at the time. Unfortunately, the Tau brought a disease of their own with them, which English speakers would come to call alcom: a herpesvirus causing diarrhea, spots, and febrile seizures, and then, as little as four months or as much as five years later, inflammation of the body—including fatal encephalitis. It was this sickness, also called the Red Death, which among other things stopped the Yuan from getting all the way south, saved the city of Baghdad (by forcing a recall of the armies), ensured the presence of Christian kingdoms in Palestine and Muslim principates in Iberia for centuries to come, and meant that the population had already dropped by a full fifth across Eurasia when bubonic plague came along not too long later.

It would be a much more haggard, somewhat more fervent, world which was set to unite in 1485, when Kuroda Kiyoshi, frustrated at the Mongol omnipotence in trade, was granted permission by the Emperor Go-Tenji (Yamahito) to seek an alternative trade route with the faraway land of Europe. After being at sea for thirty-nine days, on the fortieth they came to a great bay, filled with sacred islands and surrounded by cities of stone and mud.

In keeping with a time-honoured tradition across the multiverse, he deemed it France.

***

Hesperia will have had three and a half thousand years of recognizable “civilization” (large-scale agriculture, cities, literacy, metallurgy, epidemic disease, war) by the time the worlds collide. The countless cultures to have risen and fallen in that time could fill a book—and in this world and ours they already have. But for simplicity’s sake, let us divide the world into six portions.

KAWIINI, the “centre-world”, marks the western coast of the continent, along the edge of the Assinotie Mountains (which another history would call the Rockies). This is where the nayoomee was first domesticated; this is where tule reed was first stamped into paper scrolls; this is where the first outbreak of alcom occurred; this is where one of the continent’s three major religions, HOYOHHA, would develop. The region of Lokloni, the “Great Valley”, contains four great powers constantly one-upping each other in trade and warfare. The KOCHACHI, whom another history would call the Miwoks, hold sway here, the Earth-King and Water-King in Hulpu-Mni (our Sacramento) controlling the massive river valley to the north and (more importantly) four of the Seven Cities around the Bay. The other powers worth mentioning are the SHUURVITAM [Tongva and nearby Takic peoples] to the south, whose great city of Iyáanga would later be described as a “Babylon in Paradise”, and the TAU, Hesperia’s first intercontinental empire.

TUUWAQATSI is slightly to the east, in the Assinoti Mountains themselves. Cliff-cities were being built here before almost anywhere else on the continent; the arrival of the nayoomee, and more importantly domesticated bighorn sheep, did wonders for the local economy, as did goosefoot and sunflowers and, later, maize, beans, and squash. Currently most of the land—and a good chunk of the plains to the east—is under the control of the TINTA IMPERIUM, whose dominant inhabitants call themselves the Nemi and are called the Shoshone in our timeline. Of mention are the DINÉ, the Navajo, who have maintained a reasonable presence despite the efforts of the Eight Mayors, and the ÂSHINI [Zuñi] and HOPI, both of whom are considered de facto independent peoples within the Tinta Imperium thanks to the prominence of their cities.

ÑÍTA is what our world would call the Mississippi River Basin, with much territory on the eastern coast and the western plains; perhaps it would be fairer to call it the home of the Mississippian Cultures instead. Here grow sunflowers and goosefoots, amaranth and squash; here a species of dwarf bison was domesticated for meat and wool, becoming immensely valuable; here rose the cult of the Bird-Men, in recent centuries overthrown. Currently the ancient city of Omašté, ruled as ever by the ancient WAPKÁTXUNGWANG (called the Lakota in our own timeline), has recovered most of its former territories after the Scabbing (smallpox epidemic). But further to the south the OKLA (Choctaw) have begun spreading their own faith, HVSHI ANOWA, along with their Horsemen, uniting the Riverlands by something other than mercantile cunning or brute strength. Ugedaliyv, homeland of the ANIYVWIYA’I [Cherokee], has broken away, seemingly for good—so long as the Ongweh’onweh (Iroquois) don’t make a move in their direction. And as always, there are the SEA COUNTRIES: Aphópkee, Hótvlee-Tv’lwv, Chitkohòki, and Kuht’hanut, caught between too many powers and just wanting a relatively quiet life.

AKIIWAN is actually a ridiculously large region, from the Atlantic to the Arctic, and almost all of it is Cree. NĒHIRAW, that is; they are perhaps the oldest continuous INAWEMAAGANIC culture, keeping to their ancestral patterns of semi-nomadic migration from buried city to buried city, all across the northern grasslands and into the taiga. But although the largest, they’re by no means considered the most influential. No, that would be the circuits of GAMEEN, the land around the five Great Lakes which would come to be known as Gameen in time. The BII’WEG, our Ojibwe or Anishinaabeg, were the first to domesticate lake rice, and the first to smelt arsenic bronze, and the second to adopt ironworking. Their main religion, NANDOWIN, has spread far across the continent; most of the Nēhiraw have synchronized to it, and even the arrival of the Vinlanders couldn’t stop the NNU from seeking the Answers they wanted. The VINLANDERS themselves have all but fully integrated into Nnu society; both their language and that of the Nnu are spoken equally at the great Althing in Kyrvik/Welta’qase’g (and most places have two names, too). Their trading (and raiding) empire stretches as far north as Nucho, Baffin Island in another time, and as far south as the Bawa Sea. And they’ve come at last to an uneasy truce with the Bii’weg, at least until the whole mess with the ONGWEH’ONWEH [Haudenosaunee] is sorted out.

The tropical BAWA SEA has long been dominated by the TAÍNO, whose ship-building has moved from dugout canoes to junk-like ships with cotton sails and mahogany hulls. The cacicazgos of the four main islands have a strict policy of peace on land. …and technically on water, too, but normally they just end up hiring Huasteca, Carib, Tupi, Okla, or Vinlandic pirates to capture each others’ ships. Captured Taíno are ransomed; captured pirates are sold, or brought back to work on plantations. For the Taíno, thanks to the Tupi, are now Hesperia’s main source of KYE, an extract of stevia rebaudiana up to 300 times sweeter than sugar. People in the north will pay a small fortune for the chance at even a taste; it is small wonder that when Malinese explorers come this way, they will name it the Digeji—the Sea of Honey.

ANAHUAC is a world of its own. The NAHUA peoples made their way south some time ago, riding nayoomee and herding peccaries through the desert and introducing steeds and sickness alike to the various civilizations to the south while pinching the secret of bronze from the Purépecha. These days, the Nahua—or more precisely the MEXICA—rule a decent chunk of the country that would in another world (and another time) be called Mexico, under three great kings on their island city of Nopalla. The only real contenders are the ZAPOTECS and MIXTECS, who remain among the few places the Mexica have not been able to bring under tributary sway, and the MAYA, disparate jungle city-states who survived the plagues and general collapse and have begun trading chocolate and jade with the Taíno to the north and the Tupi to the south. The Mexica are known historically for their logistics, nayoomee being excellent tools for message delivery, but in the past few decades the capture of human sacrifices has been getting a little too much for subject people who can’t understand why they don’t just eat their giant dogs instead. Still, it’s not all bad; perhaps it just needs some shaking up…

[yes-i-am-a-genius]

The Anatomy of Murder

Spencer thought he'd seen it all; families torn apart by a family annihilator. This case was unlike anything they'd ever handled. He sat down at the wooden round table waiting for the other agents to gather and discuss their latest case.

Lennox knocked on the open door. She juggled her coffee and laptop in the bundle of files she had. "Is this the debriefing room?"

"Yes, here let me help you." Spencer got up and took a couple of folders and her coffee from her. He followed her to her seat and sat them down beside her.

"Thank you." Lennox smiled, "I'm Lennox." She offered her hand to him, he gestured a wave saying, "Spencer. I'm not much for handshakes." He smiled then added, "I read your file, you're in hostage negotiations and formerly Airforce Special Forces. I thought your extraction in Iraq was impressive. The success rate of U.S. soldier extractions in Baghdad is 20%."

Lennox smiled and nodded, "thank you. It was... an experience." She tried not to think about her previous missions.

Garcia and Rossi came in and put their belongings down, then went to introduce themselves to her. Once pleasantries were finished and the remaining BAU agents entered the room, Garcia stood up and presented the first slides.

"Okay gumshoes, brace yourselves this is a rough one." Garcia began, pressing the remote and showing the crime scenes. "Two months ago, the Shepard family went on vacation. When they returned home," she flipped to the gruesome scene, "the unsub was already there. They killed Mr. Shepard and then chased Mrs. Shepard who was protecting her two boys Tommy and Billy. She then proceeded to, well..." She showed the picture and closed her eyes to the brutality and overkill on Mrs. Shepard. "The unsub then took the two children and haven't seen them since." Garcia flipped back to the family photo that showed the Shepard family happy. She then sat down to let the agents discuss the case in depth.

Lennox spoke up and passed her files around, "we were called in to assist because the autopsies on the victims revealed their deaths to be of non-human origin."

"Each victim died from slow molecular incineration from the inside out." She said. "When we tested for chemical traces, we found nothing. No trace of flammable agents on the body."

"Okay, lets look at the behavior." Rossi interjected. "This jackass, enters the home while the family is away. They stay there as if to insert themselves into the family. Then when the family returns, the unsub kills the biggest threat quickly and concentrates all their rage on the mother. They take their time killing her and once she's dead, the unsub takes the children." Rossi had a theory, but, wanted to let the other agents chime in with their thoughts first.

"It's been a month and there's no sign of ransom demands." Spencer said as he took notes. His mind ran though information that Lennox handed out. "If the children are the target, then why kill the parents at all?" He mused out loud.

"Because this unsub sees mothers as a threat to them. The amount of overkill says they're trying to obliterate her in the most painful way." Hotch said and looked over the other evidence.

"It's not all mothers." Emily said and passed a file around. "It's mothers who have a record of abuse. The unsub is punishing the mothers for their abuse, by obliterating them." Emily said. Many of the family photos in the house had the mother's face crossed out. Emily passed around hospital records showing the two boys going in for mysterious injuries.

"So this unsub thinks they're saving these children by punishing the abuser." Rossi said and leaned back in his chair thoughtfully.

"They're M.O. is using their mutant ability to make the mothers suffer for as long as possible." Lennox said and read over the information carefully. "The cooling off period is short, a week maybe two."

Spencer pulled up a small map of the U.S. "They seem to stick within suburban areas in Gotham. The Shepard family weren't wealthy but not middle class ether." He noted. and continued to build a victimology.

"Abusive mother, white collar suburbs. Sounds to me like this unsub is trying to destroy the image of the 'Perfect Family' façade." Rossi stated the obvious. There was something they were missing, it was on the tip of his mind, nagging at him. "So, you say this individual is a mutant," he asked Lennox, "what if this guy lost his own kids to an abusive wife?" Rossi began then added, "maybe this guy is one of those vigilantes and he's getting revenge?" That wasn't quite it, he could feel it. It was his best guess.

"Possibly. The fact that he takes the kids fits the revenge motive." Emily stated.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The MEK began as a revolt against the dictatorship of Iran’s last Shah in 1965, espousing left-leaning Marxist rebellion ideologies. Though it shared the shah as a common enemy with Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic, the leftist worldview of the MEK was in sharp contrast to Khomeini’s Islamist visions. When the shah fell in 1979, the MEK became one of the few threats to Khomeini and his Revolutionary Guard Corps’ power, with nearly as many followers.[...]

Many survivors point to one individual as the central figure in the decade of terror: Ebrahim Raisi, the current president of Iran. Beginning in 1985, Raisi was the deputy prosecutor and then prosecutor of Tehran. Raisi led a relentless campaign against groups suspected of opposing the new Iranian government, with the MEK at the center of his crosshairs.[...]

MEK remains a designated terrorist organization in Iran and was classified as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in the United States for 15 years. In 1997, the Clinton administration slapped MEK, which had a Washington office at the time, with the label — along with 29 other foreign groups — essentially freezing its assets and initiating travel bans on its members. This was widely considered a “goodwill gesture to Iran,” in which Tehran pledged to label the growing Lebanese militia Hezbollah with the same terrorist title on its turf, only that promise was broken.

Even during its time as an FTO, however, members of MEK were deemed “protected persons” by Washington under the Geneva Convention, given that a large swath of its members — who would have faced death in Iran — had fled to Iraq, aligning themselves with the government of Saddam Hussein during his war with the Iranian regime. The group founded the Ashraf 1 and Ashraf 2 camps on the edges of Baghdad.

The MEK’s evolution as a US-aligned dissident group was propelled by Saddam’s ouster after the US invasion in 2003. The encampments came under the protection of the US military, and American troops instead stood guard at the gates.

But after the protection designation expired in 2009, the US handed full sovereignty to the Shiite-dominated new Iraqi government, then led by Nouri al-Maliki. As a result, the MEK was soon in the line of fire from their new “protectors,” Iraqi forces with ties to Tehran. Bombs and bullets rained down on the unarmed compounds in 2012 and again in 2013, killing dozens. Iraqi forces assaulted the camps, survivors say, taking hostages.

In Washington, the MEK made allies with anti-Iran Republicans, who lobbied to have the group removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 2012.

In 2016, the group built Ashraf 3 in the quiet plains of the Albanian countryside, welcomed by the government in the Albanian capital of Tirana as it sought closer ties with Washington.[...]

Today, the MEK enjoys influence in Washington’s foreign policy and lobbying circles. The organization gained prominent footing under the administration of President Donald Trump, given the administration’s push to isolate Tehran from the international playing field through a “maximum pressure” campaign with support from the likes of Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton, as well as Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich.

In 2018, The New York Times ran a story headlined “M.E.K.: The Group John Bolton Wants To Rule Iran.” That same year, Bolton, Giuliani, and Gingrich attended the group’s annual convention in Villepinte, outside Paris, held under the banner of the MEK’s political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

But the event made headlines for a foiled Iranian bomb plot. An Iranian diplomat in Brussels was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempting to smuggle explosives into the event.[...]

Those in Ashraf 3 maintain that their revolution is nonviolent and say they believe in “small steps” inside their country. On Jan. 27, 2022, disruptors briefly hacked state-controlled television channels simultaneously with images of the Rajavis.

A few weeks earlier, with much fanfare to mark the second anniversary of his death, the regime unveiled a giant fiberglass statue of Qassem Soleimani, the shadowy Iranian spymaster bombed in Baghdad under Trump’s direction.

But just hours after it was erected in the southwestern Iranian city of Shahrekord, mysterious assailants torched the prized effigy to the ground.

“These acts are important,” one MEK member says with a smile. “People are no longer afraid.”

[0rdinarythoughts]

this story first appeared in the Jewish Talmud over 1500

years ago. Later it appeared in Muslim Sufi literature called.

“When Death Came to Baghdad”. The message is the same just the names and places have changed and later it was adapted by the British writer Somerset Maugham......!

APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA

There was once a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to the market to buy provisions, and in a short time the servant came back,white and trembling, he said, “Master,just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a man in the crowd, and when I turned I saw it was Death that had jolted me. He looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from the city so to avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will find me.”

The merchant lent him his horse, the servant mounted it, dug its spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop, he went.

Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death disguised as a man standing in the crowd, and he walked over to him and said, ‘Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?” The man said, “it was only a gesture of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

-Epigraph by W. Somerset Maugham to John O’Hara,

1934 book of the same name.

- Artist: Anthony van Dyck, 1627, (Detail)

[dinaive]

A great warrior

By Anwar Syed

Salahuddin, known to Christendom as the great and chivalrous Saladin, was born to an influential Kurdish family in northern Iraq in 1138. His father, Najmuddin Ayyub, was governor of Baalbek at the time, and his uncle, Asaduddin Shirkoh, served as a general in the Syrian army. Salahuddin was still a child when his father sent him to Damascus, where he read theology, and learned the arts of warfare. He gained military experience under his uncle’s command in campaigns against the “Frankish” (European crusaders’) ruling houses in several towns in Syria and Palestine.

He rose to eminence during Shirkoh’s campaigns to Egypt that Nuruddin, the sultan of Damascus, had commissioned. These campaigns were intended to thwart the designs of the covetous Frankish king of Jerusalem upon that land. Strangely enough, as Shirkoh’s forces approached Cairo on January 2, 1169, the Frankish army, which had been besieging the city, retreated. Sixteen days later, Salahuddin ambushed and killed the chief Fatimid vizier, Shawar, whereupon Shirkoh entered the city and assumed the office of vizier. He died unexpectedly two months later (March 23, 1169), and Salahuddin at the age of 30 succeeded him as the vizier and virtual ruler of Egypt. Officially, however, he ruled as an agent of Sultan Nuruddin, who in turn professed allegiance to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad.

Nuruddin wanted Salahuddin to terminate the Shia Fatimid caliphate in Egypt forthwith. Knowing that the young caliph (Al Adid) was not only powerless but terminally ill, he withheld action until the latter’s death on September 12, 1171. He then instructed the imams to bless the Abbasid caliph, instead of the Fatimid, in their Friday sermons. The Fatimid caliphate thus came to an end without bloodshed.

Even though his relationship with Nuruddin had become tense as a result of his “insubordination” in the matter of the Fatimid caliphate, Salahuddin did not proclaim himself the sultan of Egypt until after Nuruddin’s death on March 25, 1174. Nor, until then, did he move out of Egypt to subdue smaller Muslim principalities. He went some distance in the Maghreb (along the North African coast), and to the east to conquer Yemen.

Nuruddin’s heir, Ismail al-Malik, in Damascus was a mere boy controlled by a bunch of eunuchs in the palace. Salahuddin was well received when he entered the city and became the sultan of Damascus. Popular approval might have been taken as sufficient evidence of his legitimacy, but he chose to firm it up further by marrying Nuruddin’s widow. Within a few years he brought nearly all of Syria and parts of northern Iraq under his dominion, partly by skillful diplomacy and, when necessary, by swift and resolute use of force.

Salahuddin engaged the crusader in numerous battles most of which he won. He lost the Battle of Montgisard (November 25, 1177) in which he had to face the combined forces of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, Raynald of Chattilon, and the Knights Templars. Two years later he attacked the crusaders again and defeated them at Jacob’s Ford. But they continued to provoke him.

Raynald harassed Muslim trading caravans and pilgrims. Worse still, he threatened to invade Makkah and Madina. He looted a caravan of Muslim pilgrims in 1184. On July 4, 1187, Salahuddin met and annihilated the forces of Guy of Lusignan, king-consort of Jerusalem, Raymond III of Tripoli, and Raynald in the Battle of Hattin (near Tiberias in northern Palestine). Raynald was captured and executed; Guy, too, was taken, but his life was spared. This was a terrible defeat from which the crusaders never recovered. Most of the towns under their rule (Acre, Toron, Beruit, Sidon, Nazareth, Nabulus, Caesaria, Jaffa, and Ascalon) fell to Saladin within the next three months.

When the crusaders first conquered Jerusalem in 1099, they slaughtered every Muslim and Jewish man, woman, and child in sight. By contrast Salauddin, upon taking the city on October 2, 1187, announced a general amnesty, ordered his soldiers not to hurt or harass any resident, assured those who wanted to leave safe passage and time to pack their belongings and take along with them all that they or their mules could carry.

The fall of Jerusalem to Salahuddin, and the crusaders’ successive defeats, shocked religious and political circles in Europe and prompted a third crusade in 1190 under the joint leadership of Richard I (the “Lionheart”), of England, and the kings of France and Austria. The Austrian king died on the way, and the French king went back home after a short stay in Palestine, leaving it to Richard to deal with Salahuddin. They met at the battle of Arsuf (September 17, 1191), which Richard won but not decisively. On his way to Jerusalem in June 1192, he became too sick and tired to continue, and made peace with Salahuddin (Treaty of Ramla), providing that Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, but that it would be open to Christian pilgrims to visit freely. Soon thereafter, Richard left Palestine.

It is said that Richard was greatly impressed by Salahuddin’s generosity of spirit. Once when he was sick with fever, Salahuddin offered to send his personal physician to examine and treat him. On another occasion, Richard lost his horse, and Salahuddin sent him two of his own. When, on his way to Jerusalem, his men were without fresh water and extremely thirsty, Richard appealed to Salahuddin for supplies of fruit and water, which the latter sent.

Sir Walter Scott’s work, “Talisman,” depicts Salahuddin in Richard’s tent in the garb of a physician. So do legend and fable. Actually the two men had never met. Richard wanted a “summit” meeting, and sent a delegation of his knights to propose one, but Salahuddin declined. He asked the knights to tell Richard that they would meet only if and when one of them appeared before the other as a captive.

In terms of personal qualifications, Salahuddin is said to have been rather short, light brown of skin, slight of build, slim and frail, with piercing brown eyes and a pointed black beard. Beyond physical appearance, he was gentle, kind, merciful, and generous; tolerant and forgiving, courteous but firm; hardheaded, prudent, patient and persevering; courageous and chivalrous; competent planner and strategist.

He was a keeper of his covenants, and straightforward in that he said what he meant and meant what he said. He was pious and, according in some vesions, he may have damaged his health by excessive fasting. He was strictly honest; huge amounts of public revenues remained at his disposal but he took none of them. He gave away to the poor and the needy much of any salary that he may have drawn. His family and friends found upon his death that his “treasury” (more like a small cash box) contained no more than one gold piece, which would not be enough to meet his funeral expenses.

It appears that he did not care much for hierarchical distinctions. His subjects were free to sue him. He would not tolerate cruelty on the part of his functionaries, and forbade beating of servants. He banned exclusive enclaves or mansions for the wealthy in Cairo. He made it a thriving city in which commerce and cultural freedom flourished. He tended to treat his subordinates with respect and as near equals.

It has been reported that his secretary was once riding alongside him, and as they came to a muddy patch, his mule splashed mud on Salahuddin’s garment. He pulled back to ride behind the Sultan to avoid his mule’s mud-slinging. The Sultan is said to have laughed and told his secretary to ride alongside, not behind, him, for a bit of mud would not hurt him any.

One afternoon Salahuddin was resting in the opening of his tent when a servant brought him a document to sign. He told the servant to bring it back later because he was extremely tired at that time. The servant said the matter would brook no delay, and that he must sign the paper right away. Salahuddin then pleaded that he did not have an inkwell on hand. The servant retorted that an inkwell sat on a table at the back of the tent, implying that not he but the sultan himself should get up and fetch it. Believe it or not, that is exactly what the sultan did, and the servant got away with behaviour that in most quarters would have been regarded as gross and intolerable impertinence.

Salahuddin was a friend to learning. He established six colleges (seminaries) that taught not only religion but also mathematics, physics, geodesy, medicine, and administration. He recruited professors and scholars from all over the Muslim world to teach at these institutions and to undertake scholarly writing. He built a spacious hospital in Cairo that provided clean beds, free food and medicines, and employed physicians, druggists, and other needed helpers. It maintained a separate ward for women. Next to this hospital he built a facility that cared for mentally disturbed persons, treated them in a humane fashion, and employed experts to discover what had driven the inmates to their respective states of mind.

Salahuddin was a devout Sunni Muslim, apparently of the Shafi’i persuasion. He hoped to diminish any lingering Shia influence in Egypt, left by the long Fatimid rule, not by coercing but by “re-educating” the people. To this end he brought in quite a number of appropriate preachers, and hoped to re-establish Egypt as a stronghold of Sunni Islam.

He was zealous but by no means a fanatic. In his struggle against the European invaders he had the support of eastern Christians — the Georgian orthodox and the Egyptian Copts, who preferred him to the pope in Rome.

On the negative side, it may be noted that he dismantled the elaborate bureaucracy the Fatimids had maintained, appointed fellow-Kurds to high offices, gave many of his officers control over large tracts of fertile land, and thus furthered, if not introduced, feudalism in Egypt.

He died in Damascus on March 4, 1193. He was buried in the grounds of the Umayyad mosque and his tomb remains one of the most frequently visited in the Muslim world.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.

Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

[stargazertribe]

NPCS

THE ISLAND:

Rashid Izad Ibn Abdullah

Rashid was born in Baghdad in the late 700s CE. When he came of age, he would serve Harun al-Rashid as a scholar or many things, proving to be a bit of a polymath himself. Rashid’s last memories before arriving on the Island was traveling on a diplomatic mission to Frankish court of Charlemange-- and beset upon by raiders. He provides wisdom to the Stargazers. Preferred Tames: Layla, a female Argentavis, and Nadim, and a male Mesopithecus often found on his shoulder.

Altanyn Tuya

Tuya is a trained equestrian and competitive sharpshooter from Altai, Mongolia in the in 2020s. She is skilled with a rifle and the traditional Mongolian bow, often showing off on horseback. She is dedicated to preserving her people’s culture, but also embraces the future. Tuya also had a relatively sized social media following as well, posting videos of her tricks on and off horseback. Tuya studied abroad briefly in the UK, but then returned home to Ulanbaatar to continue her studies. She thought about history, but turned around and went more or a veterinary route. Tuya unfortunately was struck down by a driver before she could finish her studies. She is Stargazer's Stablemistress. Preferred Tames: Khulun, a female Equus, and Naran, a female Microraptor.

Oberführer Otto Eirich

The Leader of the Sonnenrad. In his former life, Oberführer Otto Eirich of the Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbände was commandant of some of the satellite labor camps during Nazi-controlled Europe. Dedicated to the cause, Otto was the exemplar of the Master Race in looks and ideals. He was responsible for the deaths of thousands before his own death during a camp revolt. After coming across the ruins of the New Legion and Rockwell’s later research, Otto has become obsessed with unlocking and overcoming the ARK and creating the Island as an Aryan paradise. Otto thinks very little of his fellow tribal leaders; with a strange sort of admiration-hate relationship regarding the Howling Wolves-- as Sigrid is part of his revered Aryan ancestors, but she refuses to ally with him. Preferred Tames: Jaeger, a raptor, and Alruna, a hyaenodon.

Forgemaster Zenshiro Hankei,

Leader of Iron Brotherhood. A prudent, and shrewd leader and skilled smith. In his previous life, he was a sword and gun smith from the Hankei family living during the Tokugawa Shogunate (Late 1500s/Early 1600s Japan) Preferred Tames: Iwa, a male Ankylosaur, and Yorume, a male Troodon.

Shieldmaiden Sigrid Sigurdsdottir

Sigrid was born at the start of the Viking Age to Jarl Sigurd Einarson, and in time became a Shieldmaiden fighting alongside her father when she came of age. Sigrid would inherit his lands after his death and become a fearsome raider raiding the English coast as the Norse expanded south. A competent and prudent warrior, she was not against learning and adapting her tactics from the Celts and Anglo-Saxons she was facing. She was killed in battle and expected to be greeted by the gods in Valhalla. Instead she found herself in the tundra naked and alone, with only her drive to survive. With her intelligence and determination she took command of the Tundra and the Howling Wolves from its previous leaders and has been leading the tribe since. Preferred Tames: Loki and Sigyn, a mated pair of Dire Wolves.

Edward Warden

Edward was a Warden for one of the Royal Forests during the end of the reign of Henry I (1100s England) and lived during the Anarchy– having been killed during the conflict between the Empress Matilda and Stephen of Blois. A simple, but shrewd man, he replaced the previous leader after they died in a raid. He has a grudging respect for both the Howling Wolves and the Stargazers, and has since slowly shed his misogynistic notion of women of his time since arriving to the Island. Despite his lack of technical know-how, he has proven to be a consumate survivor in the Jungles of their territories. Preferred Tames: Gwen, a female Gallimimus, Odo, a male Ichthyornis

Reed Abbot

Reed was just a regular bloke from the late 1990s Australia. Jack of all trades, master of some. A sort of nomadic handyman and, and farmhand, following where the money went in Slide-On, with his best mate, a black lab named Missy. It wasn’t the most lavish of lives, but he appreciated the freedom it gave him. A knowledgeable outdoors-man, Reed could make do in the wide wild lands in between towns. Reed’s end was through an unfortunate downing trying to save his employer’s sheep. Waking up to paradise, he though he’d reached Heaven. At least until the Dilophosaurs showed up. Making his way inland, he would find himself joining the Red Hawks tribe. As a simple man with no serious ambitions, the Eyrie hasn’t been considered part of the great tribes, but in their limited ambition have also survived. Preferred Tames: Drongo, a male Dodo, and Baz, a male Argentavis

Warlord Bane

Leader and " Warlord" of the Raider Laughing Skulls tribe. No one knows when or where Bane has come from, or who he was, and he has not divulged any of that information to anyone. It is possible he was incarcerated at some point, and part of some sort of gang, or even possibly a serial killer given his penchant for violence and chaos. A hedonist, he only really cares for sate his needs at the moment, the Skulls living their existence in the here and now, taking what they can get. Preferred Tames: Ravage, a male Carnotuaurus, and Mayhem, a male Pegomastax

[thedepartmentofdiscoveries]

Hedgehog, fol. 97r - Historia Plantarum, Lombardy ca. 1395-1400

Grassi, Giovannino de', approximately 1340-1398 Illuminator.

Grassi, Salomone de', active 1399-1400 Illuminator.

295 folios : parchment ; 433 x 285 mm

Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense, Ms. 459

Entire manuscript here (593 images) -

https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667882

Links to other copies -

http://medievalmanuscriptsunlocked.blogspot.com/2016/10/historia-plantarum-biblioteca.html?m=1

Title: On Plants.

Other Title: Historia Plantarum

Summary -

Historia Plantarum (On plants) is a natural science encyclopedia, in which animals, plants, and minerals are illustrated and described for their medicinal properties, in keeping with the medieval tradition of the tacuina medievali (medieval health handbooks), and from which the codex derives its most common name, Tacuinum sanitatis. The work was first compiled as Taqwim al-Sihhah (The maintenance of health) by the 11th-century Baghdad physician Ibn Buṭlān, and chief among his Greek sources was Dioscorides, a physician in the first century. The court in Sicily commissioned a Latin translation in the mid-13th century. The work is divided into sections ordered alphabetically, each of which is decorated with precious architectural motifs that intersect like branches stippled with gold. The text is illustrated with splendid miniatures that were executed in the Northern Italian Lombard style predominantly used by Giovannino and Salomone de' Grassi. The illustrations show animals, plants, minerals, and utensils, painted in watercolors or simply drawn, located at the top of the manuscript pages. The first entry of each alphabetic section is adorned with a decorative first letter that usually includes in its center figures of learned men or physicians. These are represented in half-length figures, framed with ornamental friezes and architectural motifs as well as figures of animals and humans. The initial letters of each chapter are illuminated in gold on a blue background; plain initial letters and paragraph signs are painted in red and blue. Many pages are decorated with phytomorphic and zoomorphic motifs. The codex was created at the Visconti court in Milan for King Wenceslas IV, who was born into the House of Luxembourg, ruled Bohemia from 1378 until his death in 1419, was king of Germany 1376--1400, and was emperor-elect (but not emperor) of the Holy Roman Empire. Duke Giangaleazzo Visconti gave it to Wenceslas circa 1396--97. On folio 1r, on a mosaic blue background, a rather large portrait depicts Wenceslas among the six electors of the Holy Roman Empire, surrounded by the three theological and the four cardinal virtues. At the center of the bottom margin on the same page, an illumination of the coat of arms of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (reigned 1458--90) is superimposed on the original coat of arms of the House of Luxembourg. Corvinus inherited the codex and added it to his library in Buda, which became known as the Bibliotheca Corviniana, and had his own workshop of miniaturists insert his coat of arms. Of the original binding, executed in the workshop of Buda's scriptorium at the end of the 15th century, only a few traces remain. When the Corvinus herbal was acquired by the Bibliotheca Casanatense is not known. There is no catalog of the original collection of manuscripts that belonged to Cardinal Girolamo Casanate. However, the total absence of a history of the Tacuinum from the death of Casanate in 1700 until 1744, the year in which it first appeared in the index of Casantense manuscripts compiled by the Dominican fathers, could indicate that it came from the cardinal's collection.

From Public Domain Photos and Images Facebook group.