When the audience is known to be secretly skeptical of the reality that is being impressed upon them, we have been ready to appreciate their tendency to pounce upon trifling flaws as a sign that the whole show is false [Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self (New York: Anchor Press, 1959), p. 51]. I - v - Give Me Seventeen Dollars for This Hat.

Taxed by the forces besetting Damascus, the Sultan accedes to familial intrigue. The noted medical talk show host, Mr. Ng, surges to stage a live remote into the 13 th century. The various tools at his command are listed. The participants gather: the Idiopath of Jerusalem, the chorus, the Emperor Frederick II, al-Kamil, Sultan of Egypt, and the Rabbi Ben ‘tov Shapiro. A debate over the independence of scientific thought, in which the Idiopath disputes the Frankish titles in Palestine, ensues. Al-Kamil also cites numerous correspondences contesting these claims.

~ page 63 ~

People showing up for a diagnosis of a sample of their urine to the physician Constantine the African.*

Constantine Act I, Signature v - (1)

Latin Constantinus Africanus

Born c. 1020, Carthage or Sicily

Died 1087, monastery of Monte Cassino, near Cassino, Principality of Benevento

Medieval medical scholar.

He was the first to translate Arabic medical works into Latin. His 37 translated books included The Total Art , a short version of The Royal Book by the 10th-century Persian physician 'Alī ibn al-'Abbās, introducing Islam's extensive knowledge of Greek medicine to the West. His translations of Hippocrates and Galen first gave the West a view of Greek medicine as a whole.

*[Image & caption and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]: The first of his works of translation from Arabic to Latin was the Complete Book of the Medical Art , from the kitab al-malaki (Royal Book) of the 10th-century Persian physician 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas, in 1087. This text was the first comprehensive Arabic medical text. Shortly after, the work came to be known as the Pantegni , “complete art”. The significance of this text was that it was an important resource for the student of the transmission of scientific ideas inasmuch as the Complete Book of the Medical Art contains a compilation of 128 known manuscripts. This text also contains a survey of the 108 known Latin manuscripts of Constantine the African. This text rapidly became part of the standard medical curriculum for students.

His 37 translated books from Arabic to Latin introduced extensive knowledge of Greek and Islamic medicine to the West. Among them were two treatises by Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, or Isaac the Jew, the greatest Jewish physician of the Western Caliphate of Córdoba, whose translations of Hippocrates and Galen first gave the West a view of Greek medicine as a whole.

~ page 64 ~

Camera obscura in Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers , Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, 1751.* camera obscura Act I, Signature v - (2) Device for recording an image of an object on a light-sensitive surface (see photography). It is essentially a light- tight box with an opening (aperture) to admit light focused onto a sensitized film or plate. All cameras have included five crucial components: (1) the camera box, which holds and protects the sensitive film from all light except that entering through the lens; (2) film, on which the image is recorded; (3) the light control, consisting of an aperture or diaphragm and a shutter, both often adjustable; (4) the lens, which focuses the light rays from the subject onto the film, creating the image; and (5) the viewing system, which may be separate from the lens system (usually above it) or may operate through it by means of a mirror. The camera was inspired by the camera obscura —a dark enclosure with an aperture (usually provided with a lens) through which light enters to form an image of outside objects on the opposite surface—and was developed by Nicephore Niepce and L.-J.-M. Daguerre in the early 19th century.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

The first mention of the principles behind the pinhole camera, a precursor to the camera obscura, belongs to Mo-Ti (470 BC to 390 BC), a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohism [Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China: Vol. 4, "Physics and Physical Technology, Part 1: Physics" (Taipei: Caves Books Ltd., 1986, p. 82]. Mo- Ti referred to this camera as a "collecting plate" or "locked treasure room [Ouellette, Jennifer, Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2005), p. 52]." The Mohist tradition is unusual in Chinese thought because it is concerned with developing principles of logic. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 to 322 BC) understood the optical principle of the pinhole camera. He viewed the crescent shape of a partially eclipsed sun projected on the ground through the holes in a sieve, and the gaps between leaves of a plane tree.

The first camera obscura was built by the scientist Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham, born in Basra (965–1039 AD), known in the West as Alhacen or Alhazen, who carried out practical experiments on optics in his Book of Optics [Wade, Nicholas J., Finger, Stanley, "The eye as an optical instrument: from camera obscura to Helmholtz's perspective," Perception 30 (10): 1157–1177 (2001)]. Most of his professional career was spent in Cairo, where he was summoned for his first engineering task of regulating the flow of the Nile river [citation needed]. In his optical experiments, Ibn Al-Haitham used the term Al-Bayt al-Muthlim, translated in English as "dark room [citation needed]." In the experiment he undertook, in order to establish that light travels in time and with speed, he observed: "If the hole was covered with a curtain and the curtain was taken off, the light travelling from the hole to the opposite wall will consume time [citation needed]." He repeated the experience when he established that light travels in straight lines [citation needed]. A revealing experiment introduced the camera obscura in studies of the half-moon shape of the sun's image during eclipses which he observed on the wall opposite a small hole made in the window shutters.[citation needed] In his famous essay "On the form of the Eclipse (Maqalah-fi-Surat-al-Kosuf)," he commented on his observation: "The image of the sun at the time of the eclipse, unless it is total, demonstrates that when its light passes through a narrow, round hole and is cast on a plane opposite to the hole it takes on the form of a moon-sickle [citation needed]."

In his experiment on sunlight he extended his observation of the penetration of light through a pinhole to conclude that when the sunlight reaches and penetrates the hole it makes a conic shape at the points meeting at the pinhole, forming later another conic shape reverse to the first one on the opposite wall in the dark room [citation needed]. until it reaches an aperture and is projected through it onto a ”ا“ This happens when sunlight diverges from point screen at the luminous spot. Since the distance between the aperture and the screen is insignificant in comparison to the distance between the aperture and the sun, the divergence of sunlight after going through the aperture should be insignificant. However, it is observed to be much greater when the paths of the rays which form the extremities of the cone are retraced in the reverse direction, it is found that they meet at a point outside the aperture and then diverge again toward the sun as illustrated in the figure. This an early accurate description of the Camera Obscura phenomenon. With a second hole the image is doubled [citation needed]. Damascus cityscape, by Ahmadac, November 23, 2009.* Damascus Act I, Signature v - (3)

Arabic Dimashq City (pop., 1994: 1,549,932), capital of Syria. Located at an oasis at the base of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, it has been an important population centre since antiquity. Believed to be the world's oldest continuously inhabited city, it has evidence of occupation from the 4th millennium BC. The first written reference to it is found in Egyptian tablets of the 15th century BC, and biblical sources refer to it as the capital of the Aramaeans. It changed hands repeatedly over the centuries, belonging to Assyria in the 8th century BC, then Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. It remained under the control of Rome and its successor state, the Byzantine Empire, until it fell to the Arabs in 635 AD. Damascus flourished as the capital of the Umayyad dynasty, and the remains of their Great Mosque still stand.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Damascus lies about 80 km (50 mi) inland from the Mediterranean Sea, sheltered by the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. It lies on a plateau 680 metres (2,230 ft) above sea-level.

The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, lies on the south bank of the river Barada which is almost dry (3 cm left). To the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages: Midan in the south-west, Sarouja and Imara in the north and north-west. These districts originally arose on roads leading out of the city, near the tombs of religious figures. In the nineteenth century outlying villages developed on the slopes of Jabal Qasioun, overlooking the city, already the site of the al-Salihiyah district centred around the important shrine of Sheikh Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi. These new districts were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule. Thus they were known as al-Akrad (the Kurds) and al-Muhajirin (the migrants). They lay two to three kilometres (2 mi) north of the old city.

From the late nineteenth century on, a modern administrative and commercial centre began to spring up to the west of the old city, around the Barada, centred on the area known as al-Marjeh or the meadow. Al-Marjeh soon became the name of what was initially the central square of modern Damascus, with the city hall on it. The courts of justice, post office and railway station stood on higher ground slightly to the south. A Europeanised residential quarter soon began to be built on the road leading between al-Marjeh and al-Salihiyah. The commercial and administrative centre of the new city gradually shifted northwards slightly towards this area.

In the twentieth century, newer suburbs developed north of the Barada, and to some extent to the south, invading the Ghouta oasis. From 1955 the new district of Yarmouk became a second home to thousands of Palestinian refugees. City planners preferred to preserve the Ghouta as far as possible, and in the later twentieth century some of the main areas of development were to the north, in the western Mezzeh district and most recently along the Barada valley in Dummar in the northwest and on the slopes of the mountains at Berze in the north-east. Poorer areas, often built without official approval, have mostly developed south of the main city.

watered by the Barada river. The ,(نal-ġūṭ ا) Damascus used to be surrounded by an oasis, the Ghouta region Fijeh spring, west along the Barada valley, used to provide the city with drinking water. The Ghouta oasis has been decreasing in size with the rapid expansion of housing and industry in the city and it is almost dry.

The Tuwaiq Escarpment is approximately 600 m high and includes a complete Middle Jurassic section. This escarpment crosses the arabian peninsula from near the Yemeni border in the south until the Al-Nafud desert in the North.* Nejd Act I, Signature v - (4)

or Najd Region of central Saudi Arabia.

Comprising a rocky plateau sloping eastward from the mountains of the Hejaz, it is sparsely settled, except for a few fertile oases. In the mid-18th century it became the centre of the Wahhâbiyyah , a puritanical Islamic movement that by 1803 had expanded into Mecca. Nejd was captured by Ibn Sa'ûd c. 1905. It was united with the Hejaz and became the independent kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Boundaries of Nejd. The Arabic word nejd literally means "upland" and was once applied to a variety of regions within the Arabian Peninsula. However, the most famous of these was the central region of the Peninsula roughly bounded on the west by the mountains of the Hejaz and Yemen and to the east by the historical region of Bahrain and the north by Mesopotamia and Syria.

Medieval Muslim geographers spent a great amount of time deciding the exact boundaries between Hejaz and Nejd in particular, but generally set the western boundaries of Nejd to be wherever the western mountain ranges and lava beds began to slope eastwards, and set the eastern boundaries of Nejd at the narrow strip of red sand dunes known as the Ad-Dahna Desert, some 100 km (62 mi) east of modern-day Riyadh. The southern border of Nejd has always been set at the large sea of sand dunes known today as Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter), while the southwestern boundaries are marked by the valleys of Wadi Ranyah, Wadi Bisha, and Wadi Tathlith.

The northern boundaries of Nejd have fluctuated greatly historically and received far less attention from the medieval geographers. In the early Islamic centuries, Nejd was considered to extend as far north as the River Euphrates, or more specifically, the "Walls of Khosrau," constructed by the Persian Empire as a barrier between Arabia and Mesopotamia immediately prior to the advent of Islam. The modern usage of the term encompasses the region of Al-Yamama, which was not always considered part of Nejd historically.

Topography. Nejd, as its name suggests, is a plateau ranging from 762 to 1,525 m (2,500 to 5,003 ft) in height and sloping downwards from west to east. The eastern sections (historically better known as Al-Yamama) are marked by oasis settlements with lots of farming and trading activities, while the rest has traditionally been sparsely occupied by nomadic Bedouins. The main topographical features include the twin mountains of Aja and Salma in the north near Ha'il, the high land of Jabal Shammar and the Tuwaiq mountain range running through its center from north to south. Also important are the various dry river-beds (wadis) such as Wadi Hanifa near Riyadh, Wadi Na'am in the south, Wadi Al-Rumah in the Al-Qassim Province in the north, and Wadi ad-Dawasir at the southernmost tip of Nejd on the border with Najran. Most Nejdi villages and settlements are located along these wadis, due to ability of these wadis to preserve precious rainwater in the arid desert climate, while others are located near oases. Historically, Nejd itself has been divided into small provinces made up of constellations of small towns, villages and settlements, with each one usually centered around one "capital." These subdivisions are still recognized by Nejdis today, as each province retains its own variation of the Nejdi dialect and Nejdi customs. The most prominent among these provinces are Al-'Aridh, which includes Riyadh and the historical Saudi capital of Diriyah; Al-Qassim, with its capital in Buraidah; Sudair, centered around Al Majma'ah; Al-Washm, centered around Shaqraa; and Jebel Shammar, with its capital, Ha'il. Under modern-day Saudi Arabia, however, Nejd is divided into three administrative regions: Ha'il, Al-Qassim, and Riyadh, comprising a combined area of 554,000 km2 (214,000 sq mi).

Social and ethnic groups. Prior to the formation of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the native population of Nejd consisted mainly of members of several Arabian tribes, who were either nomads (bedouins), or sedentary farmers and merchants. The rest of the population consisted mainly of Arabs who were, for various reasons, unaffiliated with any tribes, and who mostly lived in the towns and villages of Nejd working in various trades such as carpentry or as (Sonnaa' craftsmen). There was also a small segment of the population made up of African as well as some East and South Eastern European slaves or freedmen.

Most of the Nejdi tribes are of Adnani Arabic origin and had immigrated in ancient times from Hijaz to Najd. The most famous Nejdi tribes in the pre-Islamic era were Banu Hanifa, who occupied the area around modern-day Riyadh, `Anizzah, Banu Tamim, who occupied areas further north, the tribe of Banu Abs who were centered in Al- Qassim, the tribe of Tayy, centered around modern-day Ha'il, and tribe of Banu 'Amir in southern Nejd. By the 20th century, many of the ancient tribes had morphed into new confederations or immigrated to other areas of the Middle East, and many tribes from other regions of the Peninsula had moved into Nejd. However, the largest proportion of native Nejdis today still belong to these ancient Nejdi tribes or to their newer incarnations. Many of the Nejedi tribes even in ancient times were not nomadic or bedouin but rather very well settled farmers and merchants. The royal family of Saudi Arabia, Al Saud, for example, trace their lineage to Banu Hanifa. On the eve of the formation of Saudi Arabia, the major nomadic tribes of Nejd included Qahtanite, Mutayr (historically known as Banu Abs), Shammar (historically known as Tayy), 'Utaybah (historically known as Hawazen), Subay', Harb, the Suhool, and the Dawasir. In addition to those tribes, many of the sedentary population belonged to Banu Tamim, `Anizzah (historically known as Bakr), Banu Hanifa, Banu Khalid, and Banu Zayd.

Most of the nomadic tribes are now settled either in cities such as Riyadh, or in special settlements, known as hijras, that were established in the early part of the 20th century as part of a country-wide policy undertaken by King Abdul- Aziz to put an end to nomadic life. Nomads still exist in the Kingdom, however, in very small numbers — a far cry from the days when they made up the majority of the people of the Arabian Peninsula.

Since the formation of modern Saudi Arabia, Nejd, and particularly Riyadh, has seen an influx of immigrants from all regions of the country and from virtually every social class. The native Nejdi population has also largely moved away from its native towns and villages to the capital, Riyadh. However, most of these villages still retain a small number of their native inhabitants. About a quarter of the population of Nejd, including about a third of the population of Riyadh, are non-Saudi expatriates, including both skilled professionals and unskilled laborers. see also T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom ...

Sâsânian dynasty Act I, Signature v - (5)

Or Sâssânian dynasty

Persian dynasty (AD 224–651). Founded by Ardashîr I (r. AD 224–241) and named for his ancestor Sâsân (c. 1st century AD), it replaced the Parthian empire (see Parthia). Its capital was Ctesiphon. The dynasty battled the Roman Republic and Empire and its successor the Byzantine Empire in the west and the Kushâns and Hephthalites in the east throughout much of its existence. In the 3rd century its empire stretched from Sogdiana and Georgia to northern Arabia, and from the Indus River to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Traditions of the Achaemenian dynasty were revived, Zoroastrianism was reestablished as the state religion, and art and architecture experienced a renaissance. Its important rulers included Shâpûr I (d. 272), Shâpûr II (309–379), Khosrow I, and Khosrow II. The Sâsânids were the last native Persian dynasty before the Arab conquest of the region in the late 7th century.

Khwarezmian dynasty Act I, Signature v - (6)

[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

The Khwarezmian dynasty, also known as Khwarezmids, Khwarezm Shahs or Khwarezm-Shah dynasty (and spelling hāṭīān, "Kings of Khwarezmia") was a Persianate Sunni MuslimڑKhwārezm ارزهن variants, from Persian dynasty of Turkic origin [Bosworth, in Camb. Hist. of Iran, Vol. V , pp. 66 & 93; B. G. Gafurov & D. Kaushik, Central Asia: Pre-Historic to Pre-Modern Times (Delhi, 2005); M. A. Amir-Moezzi, "Shahrbanu", Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition , (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclo paedia_Iranica): "...here one might bear in mind that non-Persian dynasties such as the Ghaznavids, Saljuqs and Ilkhanids were rapidly to accept the Persian language and have their origins traced back to the ancient kings of Persia rather than to Turkish heroes or Muslim saints..."; C. E. ,.tigin Ĝarèāī", Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition (reference to Turkish scholar Kafesoğlu), vڑBosworth, "Anu p. 140].

They ruled Greater Iran in the High Middle Ages, in the period of about 1077 to 1231, first as vassals of the Seljuqs and later as independent rulers, up until the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The dynasty was founded by Anush Tigin Gharchai, a former slave of the Seljuq sultans, who was appointed the governor of Khwarezm. His son, Qutb ud-Dīn Muhammad I, became the first hereditary Shah of Khwarezm ["Khwarezm-Shah-Dynasty," Encyclopaedia Britannica ].

History. The date of the founding of the empire is uncertain. Khwarezm was a province of the Ghaznavid Empire from 992 to 1041. In 1077 the governorship of the province, which now belonged to the Seljuqs, fell into the hands of Anūsh Tigin Gharchāī, a former Turkic slave of the Seljuq sultan. In 1141, the Seljuq Sultan Ahmed Sanjar was defeated by the Kara Khitay (Kara-Khitan Khanate) and Anūsh Tigin's grandson Ala ad-Din Aziz was forced to submit as a vassal to the Kara Khitay.

Sultan Ahmed Sanjar was killed in 1156. As the Seljuk state fell into chaos, the Khwarezms expanded their territories southward. In 1194, the last Sultan of the Great Seljuq Empire, Toğrül III, was defeated and killed by the Khwarezm ruler Ala ad-Din Tekish, who also freed himself of the Kara Khitay. In 1200, Takash died and was succeeded by his son, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, who by 1205 conquered the remaining parts of the Great Seljuq Empire, proclaiming himself Shah (Persian for king). He eventually became known as the Khwarezmshah. In 1212 he defeated the Gur-Khan Kutluk and conquered the lands of the Kara Khitay, now ruling a territory from the Syr Darya almost all the way to Baghdad, and from the Indus River to the Caspian Sea.

War and collapse. In 1218, Genghis Khan sent a trade mission to the state, but at the town of Otrar the governor, suspecting the Khan's ambassadors to be spies, confiscated their goods and executed them. Genghis Khan demanded reparations, which the Shah refused to pay. Genghis retaliated with a force of 200,000 men, launching a multi- pronged invasion. In February 1220 the Mongolian army crossed the Syr Darya, beginning the Mongol invasion of Central Asia. The Mongols stormed Bukhara, Samarkand, and the Khwarezmid capital Urgench. The Shah fled and died some weeks later on an island in the Caspian Sea.

B. H. Liddell Hart gives details of the Mongol campaign against Khwarezm, underscoring his own philosophy of "the indirect approach," and highlighting many of the tactics used by Genghis which were to be subsequently included in the German Blitzkrieg tactics, inspired in part by Liddell Hart's writings [B. H. Liddell Hart, Great Captains Unveiled (1927)].

The son of Ala ad-Din Muhammad, Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu became the new Sultan (he rejected the title Shah). He attempted to flee to India, but the Mongols caught up with him before he got there, and he was defeated at the Battle of Indus. He escaped and sought asylum in the Sultanate of Delhi. Iltumish however denied this to him in deference to the relationship with the Abbasid caliphs. Returning to Persia, he gathered an army and re-established a kingdom. He never consolidated his power, however, spending the rest of his days struggling against the Mongols, the Seljuk Turks of Rum, and pretenders to his own throne. He lost his power over Persia in a battle against the Mongols in the Alborz Mountains. Escaping to the Caucasus, he captured Azerbaijan in 1225, setting up his capital at Tabriz. In 1226 he attacked Georgia and sacked Tbilisi. Following on through the Armenian highlands he clashed with the Ayyubids, capturing the town Ahlat along the western shores of the Lake Van, who sought the aid of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. Sultan Kayqubad I defeated him at Arzinjan on the Upper Euphrates at the Battle of Yassi Chemen in 1230. He escaped to Diyarbakir, while the Mongols conquered Azerbaijan in the ensuing confusion. He was murdered in 1231 by an assassin hired by the Seljuks or possibly by Kurdish highwaymen [http://persian.packhum.org/persian/p f?file=90001012&ct=107&rqs=68&rqs=491 &rqs=893].

~ page 65 ~

Companions of the Prophet Act I, Signature v - (7)

Arabic Sahaba or Ashab

Followers of Muhammad who had personal contact with him, including any Muslim contemporary who saw him. As eyewitnesses, they are the most important sources of Hadîth . Sunnite Muslims regard the first four caliphs (among the 10 Companions to whom Muhammad promised paradise) as the most important. Shî'ite Muslims disregard the Companions, whom they consider responsible for the loss of the caliphate by the family of 'Alî.

*[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh (Arabic: ṭ; Transliteration: Muṭammad [Unicode has a special "Muhammad" ligature at d] (listen); also spelled Muhammed or Mohammed)[(help·info) for the Arabicو mmوU+FDF4]; pronounced [ mʊʊħ pronunciation; Variant transcriptions of Muhammad's name, besides those used above, include — (English and multiple European languages): "Mahomet;" (French): "Mahomet, Mohamed, Mouhammed, Mahon, Mahomés, Mahun, Mahum, Mahumet, Mahound (medieval French), Mohand (for Berber speakers), Mouhammadou and Mamadou (in Sub-Saharan Africa);" (Latin): "Machometus, Mahumetus, Mahometus, Macometus, Mahometes;" ج ,ôـى÷ïج ,ôيôـىى÷ïُج ,èـىùج" :(Spanish): "Mahoma;" (Italian): "Maometto;" (Portuguese): "Maomé;" (Greek) :ô;" (Turkish): "Mehmet;" (Kurdish): "Mihemed". See also Encyclopedia of Islamيéـىى÷ïُج ,ôـى÷ïُج ,ôـى÷ï (German): "Machmet (pre-20th century);" The sources frequently say that, in his youth, he was called by the nickname "Al-Amin" meaning "honest, truthful;" cf. Ernst, Carl, Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the ,Contemporary World (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 85] (ca. 570/571 Mecca[ََْ ]/[ َََ ] – June 8 632) [Goldman, Elizabeth, Believers: Spiritual Leaders of the World (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 63], is the ا :and is regarded by Muslims as a messenger and prophet of God (Arabic [ إِْمْ ] founder of the religion of Islam Allāh), the greatest law-bearer in a series of Islamic prophets and by most Muslims the last prophet as taught by the Qur'an 33:40–40. Muslims thus unlike the critics consider him the restorer of an uncorrupted original monotheistic faith ( islām ) of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets [Esposito, John, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 12; Esposito, John, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 4–5; Peters, Francis Edward, Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians (Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 9]. He was also active as a diplomat, merchant, philosopher, orator, legislator, reformer, military general, and, according to Muslim belief, an agent of divine action [Alphonse de Lamartine, Historie de la Turquie (Paris, 1854) p. 280: "Philosophe, orateur, apôtre, législateur, guerrier, conquérant d'idées, restaurateur de dogmes, d'un culte sans images, fondateur de vingt empires terrestres et d'un empire spirituel, voilà Mahomet!"].

Born in 570 in the Arabian city of Mecca [ Encyclopedia of World History (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 452], he was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was first married by age 25. Discontented with life in Mecca, he retreated to a cave in the surrounding mountains for meditation and reflection. According to Islamic beliefs it was here, at age 40, in the month of Ramadan, where he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One," that complete "surrender" to Him (lit. islâm ) is the only way ( dîn ) ['Islam' is always referred to in the Qur'an as a dîn , a word that means "way" or "path" in Arabic] acceptable to God, and that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets [Peters, Francis Edward (2003), p. 9; Esposito, John (1998), p. 12; The Islamic Threat: Myth Or Reality ? (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 25; (2002), pp. 4–5; Alford Welch, "Muhammad," in J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs, ed., Encyclopaedia of Islam Online (Brill Academic Publishers)].

Muhammad gained few followers early on, and was met with hostility from some Meccan tribes; he and his followers were treated harshly. To escape persecution first Muhammad sent some of his followers to Abyssinia before he and his remaining followers in Mecca migrated to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in the year 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, which is also known as the Hijri Calendar. In Medina, Muhammad united the conflicting tribes, and after eight years of fighting with the Meccan tribes, his followers, who by then had grown to ten thousand, conquered Mecca. In 632, a few months after returning to Medina from his Farewell pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died. By the time of his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam; and he united the tribes of Arabia into a single Muslim religious polity ["Muhmmad," Richard C. Martin, Said Amir Arjomand, Marcia Hermansen, Abdulkader Tayob, Rochelle Davis, John Obert Voll, ed., Encyclopedia of Islam & the Muslim World (MacMillan Reference Books, 2003); Holt, P. M.; Ann K. S. Lambton, Bernard Lewis, The Cambridge History of Islam (paperback) (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 57; Lapidus, Ira, A History of Islamic Societies , 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 31-32].

The revelations (or Ayat, lit. "Signs of God") — which Muhammad reported receiving until his death — form the verses of the Qur'an , regarded by Muslims as the “Word of God” and around which the religion is based. Besides the Qur'an , Muhammad’s life ( sira ) and traditions ( sunnah ) are also upheld by Muslims. They discuss Muhammad and other prophets of Islam with reverence, adding the phrase peace be upon him whenever their names are mentioned [Goldman, Ann, Richard Hain, Stephen Liben, Oxford Textbook of Palliative Care for Children (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 212]. While conceptions of Muhammad in medieval Christendom and premodern times were largely negative, appraisals in modern history have been far less so [Alford Welch, "Muhammad," in Encyclopaedia of Islam Online ; Watt, W. Montgomery, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (Oxford University Press, 1961, revised ed., 1974), p. 231]. Besides this, his life and deeds have been debated by followers and opponents over the centuries ,(dia Britannica Online (2010؟ Muhammad," from Encyclop"] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/396226/Muhammad]. See also Serin, Muhittin, Hattat Aziz Efendi (Istanbul, 1998). Caspian Sea shore, near Bandar Anzali, Iran (photo by Ayda D, October 17, 2008).* Caspian Sea Act I, Signature v - (8)

Inland salt lake between Europe and Asia, bordering Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Iran. With a basin 750 mi (1,200 km) long and 270 mi (434 km) wide and an area of 143,550 sq mi (371,795 sq km), it is the largest inland body of water in the world. Though it receives many rivers, including the Volga, Ural, and Kura, the sea itself has no outlet. It was important as a commercial route in the premodern era, when it formed part of the Mongol-Baltic trade route for goods from Asia. Today it is a source of caviar and petroleum. Its numerous ports include Baku in Azerbaijan and Anzal and Torkamân in Iran.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Geological history. Like the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea is a remnant of the ancient Paratethys Sea. The Caspian Sea became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago due to tectonic uplift and a fall in sea level. During warm and dry climatic periods, the landlocked sea has all but dried up, depositing evaporitic sediments like halite that have become covered by wind-blown deposits and were sealed off as an evaporite sink [in system dynamics, a sink is a place where a flow of materials ends its journey, removed from the system] when cool, wet climates refilled the basin [comparable evaporite beds underlie the Mediterranean]. Due to the current inflow of fresh water, the Caspian Sea is a fresh-water lake in its northern portions. It is more saline on the Iranian shore, where the catchment basin contributes little flow. Currently, the mean salinity of the Caspian is one third that of the Earth's oceans. The Garabogazkِl embayment, which dried up when water flow from the main body of the Caspian was blocked in the 1980s but has since been restored, routinely exceeds oceanic salinity by a factor of 10 ["General background of the Caspian Sea," Caspian Environment Program , http://www.caspianenvironment.org/caspian.htm].

Geography. The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world and accounts for 40 to 44 percent of the total lacustrine waters of the world ["Caspian Sea," Iran Gazette , http://www.irangazette.com/12.html]. The coastlines of the Caspian are shared by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. The Caspian is divided into three distinct physical regions: the Northern, Middle, and Southern Caspian [Amirahmadi, Hooshang, The Caspian Region at a Crossroad: Challenges of a New Frontier of Energy and Development (St. Martin's Press), p. 112]. The North-Middle boundary is the Mangyshlak threshold, which runs through Chechen Island and Cape Tiub-Karagan. The Middle-South boundary is the Apsheron threshold, a sill of tectonic origin [Khain, V. E., Gadjiev, A. N., Kengerli, T. N, "Tectonic origin of the Apsheron Threshold in the Caspian Sea," Doklady Earth Sciences 414: 4 (June 2007), pp. 552-556] that runs through Zhiloi Island and Cape Kuuli [Dumont, Henri J. et al, Aquatic Invasions in the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean Seas (Nato Science Series) (Kluwer Academic Publishers)]. The Garabogazkِl bay is the saline eastern inlet of the Caspian, which is part of Turkmenistan and at times has been a lake in its own right due to the isthmus which cuts it off from the Caspian.

Divisions between the three regions are dramatic. The Northern Caspian only includes the Caspian shelf [Kostianoy, Andrey, and Aleksey N. Kosarev, The Caspian Sea Environment (Springer)], and is characterized as very shallow; it accounts for less than one percent of the total water volume with an average depth of only 5–6 metres (16–20 ft). The sea noticeably drops off towards the Middle Caspian, where the average depth is 190 metres (623 ft) [Dumont et al]. The Southern Caspian is the deepest, with a depth that reaches over 1,000 metres (3,281 ft). The Middle and Southern Caspian account for 33 percent and 66 percent of the total water volume, respectively [Amirahmadi, Hooshang, p. 112]. The northern portion of the Caspian Sea typically freezes in the winter, and in the coldest winters, ice will form in the south.

Over 130 rivers provide inflow to the Caspian, with the Volga River being the largest. A second affluent, the Ural River, flows in from the north, and the Kura River flows into the sea from the west. In the past, the Amu Darya (Oxus) of Central Asia in the east often changed course to empty into the Caspian through a now-desiccated riverbed called the Uzboy River, as did the Syr Darya farther north. The Caspian also has several small islands; they are primarily located in the North and have a collective land area of roughly 2,000 km2 (770 sq mi). Adjacent to the North Caspian is the Caspian Depression, a low-lying region 27 metres (89 ft) below sea level. The Central Asian steppes stretch across the northeast coast, while the Caucasus mountains hug the Western shore. The biomes to both the north and east are characterized by cold, continental deserts. Conversely, the climate to the southwest and south are generally warm with uneven elevation due to a mix of highlands and mountain ranges; the drastic changes in climate alongside the Caspian have led to a great deal of biodiversity in the region [http://www.caspianenvironment.org/caspian.htm].

Fauna. The Caspian Sea holds great numbers of sturgeon, which yield eggs that are processed into caviar. In recent years overfishing has threatened the sturgeon population to the point that environmentalists advocate banning sturgeon fishing completely until the population recovers. However, the high price of sturgeon caviar allows fisherman to afford bribes to ensure the authorities look the other way, making regulations in many locations ineffective [http://iran-daily.com/1385/2757/html/focus.htm]. Caviar harvesting further endangers the fish stocks, since it targets reproductive females.

The Caspian seal ( Phoca caspica , Pusa caspica in some sources), which is endemic to the Caspian Sea, is one of very few seal species that live in inland waters (see also Baikal seal, Saimaa Ringed Seal). The area has given its name to several species of birds, including the Caspian gull and the Caspian tern. There are several species and subspecies of fish endemic to the Caspian Sea, including the Kutum (also known as Caspian white fish), Caspian roach, Caspian bream (some report that the Bream occurring in the Aral Sea is the same subspecies), and a Caspian "salmon" (a subspecies of trout, Salmo trutta caspiensis ). The "Caspian salmon" is critically endangered [http://iran- daily.com/1385/2757/html/focus.htm].

madrasah Act I, Signature v - (9)

(Arabic: “school”)

Islamic theological seminary and law school attached to a mosque. The residential madrasah was a newer building form than the mosque, flourishing in most Muslim cities by the end of the 12th century. The Syrian madrasahs in Damascus tended to follow a standardized plan: An elaborate facade led into a domed hallway and then into a courtyard where instruction took place, with at least one eyvan (vaulted hall) opening onto it. The madrasah at the Qalaun Mosque in Cairo (1283–85) has a unique cruciform eyvan on the richly carved qibla (wall facing Mecca) side and a smaller eyvan opposite. Residential cells for scholars occupy the other two sides. ~ page 66 ~

The 12th-century gateway Bab Agnaou, at the entrance to the medina (ancient Moorish quarter) of Marrakech, .fico , Barcelona, Espaٌaل Morocco. © 1997; AISA, Archivo Iconogr Almoravid dynasty Act I, Signature v - (10)

Arabic al-Murâbitûn

(1056–1147). Berber confederation that succeeded the Fâtimid dynasty in the Maghrib. It flourished in the 11th and early 12th centuries. Its founder, 'Abd Allâh ibn Yasîn, was a Muslim scholar of the Mâlikî school who used religious reform as a means of gaining followers in the mid-11th century. The Almoravids took over Morocco and then the rest of the Maghrib following the decline of the Zîrid dynasty. By 1082 they ruled Algiers. By 1110 they also controlled Muslim Spain, but the Christians began to win back territory in 1118. In the 1120s another Berber coalition, the Almohads, started a rebellion, eventually displacing the Almoravids.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

The Almoravids were a Berber dynasty of Sahara, which lived between the current Senegal and south of Western Sahara [Almoravidshttp://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie /A912241/ALMORAVIDES.htm]. It was affiliated with the Berber tribe of Sanhaja and Lamtuna. From the eleventh century to the twelfth century, they ruled the Sahara, part of North Africa and part of the Iberian Peninsula.

Under this dynasty the Moorish empire was extended over present-day Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Gibraltar, Tlemcen (in Algeria) and a great part of what is now Senegal and Mali in the south, and Spain and Portugal to the north in Europe. At its greatest extent, the empire stretched 3,000 kilometres north to south (an all- time latitude spanner until Spanish America).

In his book The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain , the author Abd al-Wahid Dhannūn Taha, based on several sources including bibliographic of Ibn Khaldun, provides, on pages 26 and 29 of his book, information on the geographical distribution of Sanhaja tribes. He does the same for the different tribes and tribal Berber branch of the Maghreb and information on the different tribes or ethnic groups (Arabs, Berbers and sub- Saharan African) who participated in the Muslim conquest of Visigoth Spain [ṭAbd al-Wāṭid Dhannūn ṭāhā, The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain (Routledge, 1998), http://books.google.com/books? id=TgcOAAAAQAAJ].

“Almoravids” is a Spanish transliteration of the Arabic Al-Murābiṭūn. The exact meaning of "Murābiṭ" is a matter of controversy. Some have suggested that the word might be derived from the Arabic ribaṭ, meaning fortress (a term with which it shares the root r-b-ṭ). Most historians, however, now believe that it refers to ribat, meaning "ready for battle" (cf. jihad) [Nehemia Levtzion, "Abd Allah b. Yasin and the Almoravids," in John Ralph Willis, Studies in West African Islamic History , p. 54; P.F. de Moraes Farias, "The Almoravids: Some Questions Concerning the Character of the Movement," Bulletin de l’IFAN (series B), 29: 3-4 (1967), pp. 794-878].

When the Almoravids began their political rise, the Kingdom of Fez (Morocco's first name) of the Idrisid dynasty was split into a series of small emirates located mainly north of the country, and headed by relatives of the royal family. According to French historian Bernard Lugan and others, the lure of wealth from trade in the South (Sahara) and marketed to the North (the West) attracted various tribes to crossroads city such as Marrakech, which become the capital of various dynasties, especially those from the South (Almoravids, Almohads, Saadian). The current name of Morocco derives in fact from the role of Marrakesh as the Almoravid capital.

Beginnings. The most powerful of the tribes of the Sahara near the Sénégal River was the Lamtuna, whose culture of origin was 'Wadi Noun' (Nul Lemta). They later came together as the upper leger River culture, which founded the city of Aoudaghost. They converted to Islam in the 9th century.

About the year 1040 (or a little earlier) one of their chiefs, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, made the pilgrimage to Makkah. On his way home, he attended the teachers of the mosque at University of Al-Qayrawan, today's Kairouan in Tunisia; the first Arab-Muslim city in North Africa, who soon learnt from him that his people knew little of the religion they were supposed to profess, and that though his will was good, his own ignorance was great. By the good offices of the theologians of Al Qayrawan, one of whom was from Fez, Yahya was provided with a missionary, Abdallah ibn Yasin, a zealous partisan of the Malikis, one of the four Madhhab, Sunni schools of Islam.

His preaching was before long rejected by the Lamtunas; so on the advice of Yahya, who accompanied him, he retired to Saharan regions from which his influence spread. His creed was mainly characterized by a rigid formalism and a strict adherence to the dictates of the Qur'an, and the Orthodox tradition.

Abd-Allah ibn Yasin imposed a penitential scourging on all converts as a purification, and enforced a regular system of discipline for every breach of the law, including the chiefs themselves. Under such directions, the Almoravids were brought into excellent order. Their first military leader, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, gave them a good military organization. Their main force was infantry, armed with javelins in the front ranks and pikes behind, which formed into a phalanx; it was supported by camelmen and horsemen on the flanks.

Conquest — North Africa. From the year 1053, the Almoravids began to spread their religious way to the Berber areas of the Sahara, and to the regions south of the desert. After winning over the Sanhaja Berber tribe, they quickly took control of the entire desert trade route, seizing Sijilmasa at the northern end in 1054, and Aoudaghost at the southern end in 1055. Yahya ibn Ibrahim was killed in a battle in 1056, but Abd-Allah ibn Yasin, whose influence as a religious teacher was paramount, named his brother Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar as chief. Under him, the Almoravids soon began to spread their power beyond the desert, and subjected the tribes of the Atlas Mountains. They then came in contact with the Berghouata, a branch of the Zenata of central Morocco, who followed a "heresy" founded by Salih ibn Tarif, three centuries earlier. The Berghouata made a fierce resistance, and it was in battle with them that Abdullah ibn Yasin was killed. They were, however, completely conquered by Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar, who took the defeated chief's widow, Zainab, as a wife.

In 1061, Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar made a division of the power he had established, handing over the more-settled parts to his cousin Yusuf ibn Tashfin, as viceroy, resigning to him also his favourite wife Zainab. For himself, he reserved the task of suppressing the revolts which had broken out in the desert, but when he returned to resume control, he found his cousin too powerful to be superseded. He returned to the Sahara, where, in 1087, having been wounded with a poisoned arrow, he died.

Yusuf ibn Tashfin had in the meantime brought what is now known as Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauretania into complete subjection. In 1062 he founded the city of Marrakech. In 1080, he conquered the kingdom of Tlemcen (in modern-day Algeria) and founded the present city of that name, his rule extending as far east as Oran.

Conquest — Southern Iberia. In 1086 Yusuf ibn Tashfin was invited by the taifa Muslim princes of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) to defend them against Alfonso VI, King of Leَn and Castile. In that year, Yusuf ibn Tashfin crossed the straits to Algeciras, inflicted a severe defeat on the Christians at the Battle of az-Zallaqah (Battle of Sagrajas). He was prevented from following up his victory by trouble in Africa, which he had to settle in person.

When he returned to Iberia in 1090, it was avowedly for the purpose of deposing the Muslim princes, and annexing their states. He had in his favour the mass of the inhabitants, who had been worn out by the oppressive taxation imposed by their spend-thrift rulers. Their religious teachers, as well as others in the east, (most notably, al-Ghazali in Persia and al-Tartushi in Egypt, who was himself an Iberian by birth, from Tortosa), detested the native Muslim princes for their religious indifference, and gave Yusuf a fatwa -- or legal opinion—to the effect that he had good moral and religious right, to dethrone the rulers, whom he saw as heterodox and who did not scruple to seek help from the Christians, whose habits he claimed they had adopted. By 1094, he had removed them all, except for the one at Zaragoza; and though he regained little from the Christians except Valencia, he re-united the Muslim power, and gave a check to the reconquest of the country by the Christians.

After friendly correspondence with the caliph at Baghdad, whom he acknowledged as Amir al-Mu'minin ("Commander of the Faithful"), Yusuf ibn Tashfin in 1097 assumed the title of Amir al Muslimin ("Commander of the Muslims"). He died in 1106, when he was reputed to have reached the age of 100. The Almoravid power was at its height at Yusuf's death, and the Moorish empire then included all North-West Africa as far as Algiers, and all of Iberia south of the Tagus, with the east coast as far as the mouth of the Ebro, and included the Balearic Islands.

Lebanon Cedars ( cedrus libani ) on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Note the thawing winter snow cover. Photo by Mpeylo, April 2004).* Lebanon Mountains Act I, Signature v - (11)

Arabic Jabal Lubnân ancient Libanus

Mountain range, Lebanon. Running parallel to the Mediterranean Sea coast, it is about 100 mi (160 km) long. The northern section is the highest part of the range and includes the loftiest peak, Qurnat al-Sawdâ' , at 10,131 ft (8,088 m) in elevation. On its western slopes are the remaining groves of the famous cedars of Lebanon. The snowy peaks may have given Lebanon its name in antiquity; laban is Aramaic for “white.”

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Geography and climate. Lebanon is located in Western Asia. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the west along a 225-kilometre (140 mi) coastline, by Syria to the east and north, and by Israel to the south. The Lebanon- Syria border stretches for 375 kilometres (233 mi) and the Lebanon-Israel border for 79 kilometres (49 mi). The border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in Syria is disputed by Lebanon in a small area called Shebaa Farms, but the border has been demarcated by the United Nations ["Israel's Withdrawal from Lebanon Given UN's Endorsement," Telegraph (2000), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/lebanon/1343868/Israel% 2 7s-withdrawal-from-Lebanon-given-UN%27s-endorsement.html].

Most of Lebanon's area is mountainous terrain [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/334152/Lebanon], except for the narrow coastline and the Beqaa Valley, which plays an integral role in Lebanon's agriculture. However, climate change and political differences threaten conflict over water resources in the Valley ["Climate change and politics threaten water wars in Bekaa," UN IRIN News , http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId= 82682].

Lebanon has a moderate Mediterranean climate. In coastal areas, winters are generally cool and rainy whilst summers are hot and humid. In more elevated areas, temperatures usually drop below freezing during the winter with frequent, sometimes heavy snow; summers are warm and dry [Bonechi et al., The Golden Book of Lebanon (Florence, Italy: Casa Editrice Bonechi, 2004), p. 3]. Although most of Lebanon receives a relatively large amount of rainfall annually (compared to its arid surroundings), certain areas in north-eastern Lebanon receive little because of the high peaks of the western mountain front blocking much of the rain clouds that originate over the Mediterranean Sea ["Lebanon - Climate," http://countrystudies.us/lebanon/31.htm].

In ancient times, Lebanon housed large forests of the Cedars of Lebanon, which now serve as the country's national emblem ["Lebanon Cedar - Cedrus libani," Blue Planet Biomes , http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/lebanon_cedar.htm]. However, centuries of trading cedar trees, used by mariners for boats, and the absence of any efforts to replant them have depleted the country's once-flourishing cedar forests [ibid ]. Act II Finale (http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/mikado/docimages/docalbum3.html).* Mikado (Sir Arthur Sullivan) Act I, Signature v - (12)

Born May 13, 1842, London, Eng.

Died Nov. 22, 1900, London

British composer. He attended the Royal Academy and the Leipzig Conservatory, then supported himself by teaching, playing organ, and composing for provincial festivals. His music for The Tempest (1861) achieved great success and was followed by his Irish Symphony (1866) and songs such as "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord." In 1871 he first collaborated in comic opera with playwright W.S. Gilbert, and in 1875 their Trial by Jury became a hit, setting the course for both their careers. Their collaboration continued with The Sorceror (1877), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Patience (1881), Iolanthe (1882), Princess Ida (1883 ), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), The Gondoliers (1889), and others, many of which would continue to delight international audiences for more than a century.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

The Mikado or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. It opened on March 14, 1885, in London, where it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 672 performances, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time [Gillan, Don, "Longest runs in the theatre up to 1920," http://www.dgillan.screaming.net/stage/th-longr.html: The longest-running piece of musical theatre was the operetta Les Cloches de Corneville , which held the title until the opening of Dorothy in 1886, which pushed The Mikado down to third place]. Before the end of 1885, it was estimated that, in Europe and America, at least 150 companies were producing the opera [H. L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Evening Sun , November 29, 1910, http://math.boisestate.edu /GaS/mikado/html/mikado_by_mencken.html]. The Mikado remains the most frequently performed Savoy Opera, and it is especially popular with amateur and school productions. The work has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theatre pieces in history.

Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by disguising them as Japanese. Gilbert used foreign or fictional locales in several operas, including The Mikado , Princess Ida , The Gondoliers , Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke , to soften the impact of his pointed satire of British institutions.

Themes of death. The Mikado is a comedy that deals with themes of death and cruelty. This works only because Gilbert treats these themes as trivial, even lighthearted issues. For instance, in Pish-Tush's song "Our great Mikado, virtuous man," he sings: "The youth who winked a roving eye/Or breathed a non-connubial sigh/Was thereupon condemned to die —/He usually objected." The term for this rhetorical technique is meiosis, a drastic understatement of the situation. Other examples of this are when self-decapitation is described as "an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt," and also as merely "awkward." When a discussion occurs of Nanki-Poo's life being "cut short in a month," the tone remains comic and only mock-melancholy. Burial alive is described as "a stuffy death." Finally, execution by boiling oil or by melted lead is described by the Mikado as a "humorous but lingering" punishment.

Death is treated as a businesslike event in Gilbert's Topsy-Turvy world. Pooh-Bah calls Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, an "industrious mechanic." Ko-Ko also treats his bloody office as a profession, saying, "I can't consent to embark on a professional operation unless I see my way to a successful result." Of course, joking about death does not originate with The Mikado . The plot conceit that Nanki-Poo may marry Yum-Yum if he agrees to die at the end of the month was used in A Wife for a Month , a 17th century play by John Fletcher. Ko-Ko's final speech affirms that death has been, throughout the opera, a fiction, a matter of words that can be dispelled with a phrase or two: being dead and being "as good as dead" are equated. In a review of the original production of The Mikado , after praising the show generally, the critic noted that the show's humour nevertheless depends on "unsparing exposure of human weaknesses and follies—things grave and even horrible invested with a ridiculous aspect—all the motives prompting our actions traced back to inexhaustible sources of selfishness and cowardice.... Decapitation, disembowelment, immersion in boiling oil or molten lead are the eventualities upon which [the characters'] attention (and that of the audience) is kept fixed with gruesome persistence.... [Gilbert] has unquestionably succeeded in imbuing society with his own quaint, scornful, inverted philosophy; and has thereby established a solid claim to rank amongst the foremost of those latter-day Englishmen who have exercised a distinct psychical influence upon their contemporaries [Beatty- Kingston, William, "Review of The Mikado " in The Theatre , 1 April 1885, quoted in Fitzgerald, Percy Hetherington, The Savoy Opera and the Savoyards (London: Chatto & Windus, 1899), pp. 165-66), http://books.google.com/books?id=EhkjAAAAMAAJ]."

~ page 67 ~ Portrait of journalist Walter Lippmann, by the photographer Pirie MacDonald, published in 1914 (image courtesy of the Walter Lippmann Papers, Yale University Manuscripts & Archives Digital Images Database, Yale University, New Haven, CT, http://images.library.yale.edu/madid/oneItem.aspx).* Lippmann, Walter Act I, Signature v - (13) born Sept. 23, 1889, New York, N.Y., U.S.

died Dec. 14, 1974, New York

U.S. newspaper commentator and author. Educated at Harvard, he became an editor at the fledgling New Republic (1914–17). His thinking influenced Woodrow Wilson, and he took part in the negotiations that culminated in the Treaty of Versailles. After writing for and editing the reformist World, he moved to the New York Herald-Tribune , where he began his “Today and Tomorrow” column in 1931; eventually widely syndicated, it won two Pulitzer Prizes (1958, 1962), and Lippmann became one of the most respected political columnists in the world. His books include A Preface to Politics (1913); Public Opinion (1922), perhaps his most influential work; The Phantom Public (1925); and The Good Society (1937).

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Career. Lippmann was a journalist, a media critic and a philosopher who tried to reconcile the tensions between liberty and democracy in a complex and modern world, as in his 1920 book Liberty and the News .

In 1913, Lippmann, Herbert Croly, and Walter Weyl became the founding editors of The New Republic magazine. During World War I, Lippmann became an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson and assisted in the drafting of Wilson's Fourteen Points speech.

Lippmann had wide access to the nation's decision makers and had no sympathy for communism. After Lippmann had become famous, the Golos spy ring used Mary Price, his secretary, to garner information on items Lippmann chose not to write about or names of Lippmann's sources, often not carried in stories, but of use to the Soviet Ministry for State Security.

Walter Lippmann examined the coverage of newspapers and saw many inaccuracies and other problems. He and Charles Merz, in a 1920 study entitled "A Test of the News," stated that The New York Times' coverage of the Bolshevik revolution was biased and inaccurate. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize-winning column "Today and Tomorrow," he published several books. Lippmann was the first to bring the phrase "cold war" to common currency in his 1947 book by the same name.

It was Lippmann who first identified the tendency of journalists to generalize about other people based on fixed ideas [citation needed]. He argued that people — including journalists — are more apt to believe "the pictures in their heads" than come to judgment by critical thinking. Humans condense ideas into symbols, he wrote, and journalism, a force quickly becoming the mass media, is an ineffective method of educating the public. Even if journalists did better jobs of informing the public about important issues, Lippmann believed "the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation." Citizens, he wrote, were too self- centered to care about public policy except as pertaining to pressing local issues.

Lippmann saw the purpose of journalism as "intelligence work." Within this role, journalists are a link between policymakers and the public. A journalist seeks facts from policymakers which he then transmits to citizens who form a public opinion. In this model, the information may be used to hold policymakers accountable to citizens. This theory was spawned by the industrial era and some critics argue the model needs rethinking in post-industrial societies.

Though a journalist himself, he held no assumption of news and truth being synonymous. For him the "function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act." A journalist’s version of the truth is subjective and limited to how he constructs his reality. The news, therefore, is "imperfectly recorded" and too fragile to bear the charge as "an organ of direct democracy."

To his mind, democratic ideals had deteriorated, voters were largely ignorant about issues and policies, they lacked the competence to participate in public life and cared little for participating in the political process. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann noted that the stability the government achieved during the patronage era of the 1800s was threatened by modern realities. He wrote that a "governing class" must rise to face the new challenges. He saw the public as Plato did, a great beast or a bewildered herd – floundering in the "chaos of local opinions."

The basic problem of democracy, he wrote, was the accuracy of news and protection of sources. He argued that distorted information was inherent in the human mind. People make up their minds before they define the facts, while the ideal would be to gather and analyze the facts before reaching conclusions. By seeing first, he argued, it is possible to sanitize polluted information. Lippmann argued that seeing through stereotypes (which he coined in this specific meaning) subjected us to partial truths. Lippmann called the notion of a public competent to direct public affairs a "false ideal." He compared the political savvy of an average man to a theater-goer walking into a play in the middle of the third act and leaving before the last curtain.

Early on Lippmann said the herd of citizens must be governed by “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality." This class is composed of experts, specialists and bureaucrats. The experts, who often are referred to as "elites," were to be a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the "omnicompetent citizen." Later, in The Phantom Public (1925), he recognized that the class of experts were also, in most respects, outsiders to any particular problem, and hence, not capable of effective action. Philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) agreed with Lippmann's assertions that the modern world was becoming too complex for every citizen to grasp all its aspects, but Dewey, unlike Lippmann, believed that the public (a composite of many “publics” within society) could form a "Great Community" that could become educated about issues, come to judgments and arrive at solutions to societal problems.

Following the removal from office of Henry A. Wallace in September 1946, Lippmann became the leading public advocate of the need to respect a Soviet sphere of influence in Europe, as opposed to the containment strategy being advocated at the time by people like George F. Kennan.

Lippmann was an informal adviser to several presidents [citation needed]. He had a rather famous feud with Lyndon Johnson over his handling of the Vietnam War, of which Lippmann had become highly critical [citation needed]. On September 14, 1964, President Johnson presented Lippmann with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A meeting of intellectuals organized in Paris in August 1938 by French philosopher Louis Rougier, Colloque Walter Lippmann was named after Walter Lippmann. Walter Lippmann House at Harvard University, which houses the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, is named after him too. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman used one of Lippmann's catch phrases, the "Manufacture of Consent" for the title of their book, Manufacturing Consent, which contains sections critical of Lippmann's views about the media.

See also McAllister, Ted V., Revolt Against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin & the Search for Post-liberal Order (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), pp. 58-68; Riccio, Barry D., Walter Lippmann - Odyssey of a liberal (Transaction Publishers, 1994); Steel, Ronald, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Little, Brown and Company, 1980); Ferri, Mascia, Come si forma l'Opinione pubblica: Il contributo sociologico di Walter Lippmann (Milan, Franco Angeli, 2006); Lozito, Virginia, By Walter Lippmann: Opinione pubblica, politica estera e democrazia (Rome, Aracne, 2008); The American Presidency Project, "Remarks at the Presentation of the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom Awards," September 14, 1964, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid= 26496

Gestalt psychology Act I, Signature v - (14)

Twentieth-century school of psychology that provided the foundation for the modern study of perception. The German term Gestalt, referring to how a thing has been “put together” ( gestellt ), is often translated as “pattern” or “configuration” in psychology. Its precepts, formulated as a reaction against the atomistic orientation of previous theories, emphasized that the whole of anything is different from the sum of its parts: organisms tend to perceive entire patterns or configurations rather than bits and pieces. The school emerged in Austria and Germany at the end of the 19th century and gained impetus through the works of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kِhler, and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941); its principles were later expanded by Kurt Lewin. A form of psychotherapy only loosely related to Gestalt principles and influenced by existentialism and phenomenology was developed by Frederick S. (Fritz) Perls (1893–1970) in the 1940s. Gestalt therapy directs the client toward appreciating the form, meaning, and value of his perceptions and actions.

Portrait of Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist Adolphe Quételet (1796-1874) by Joseph- Arnold Demannez (1825-1902). Steel engraving.*

Quetelet, Adolphe Act I, Signature v - (15)

Born Feb. 22, 1796, Ghent, Belg.

Died Feb. 17, 1874, Brussels Belgian statistician, sociologist, and astronomer. He is known for his application of statistics and the theory of probability to social phenomena. He collected and analyzed government statistics on crime, mortality, and other subjects and devised improvements in census taking. In Sur l'homme (1835) and L'Anthropométrie (1871) he developed the notion of the homme moyen , the statistically “average man.” A founder of quantitative social science, he was nonetheless widely criticized for the crudeness of his methodology.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

His scientific research encompassed a wide range of different scientific disciplines: meteorology, astronomy, mathematics, statistics, demography, sociology, criminology and history of science. He made significant contributions to scientific development, but he also wrote several monographs directed to the general public. He founded the Royal Observatory of Belgium, founded or co-founded several national and international statistical societies and scientific journals, and presided over the first series of the International Statistical Congresses. Quetelet was a liberal and an anticlerical, but not an atheist or materialist nor a socialist.

Social Physics. The new science of probability and statistics was mainly used in astronomy at the time, to get a handle on measurement errors with the method of least squares. Quetelet was among the first who attempted to apply it to social science, planning what he called a "social physics". He was keenly aware of the overwhelming complexity of social phenomena, and the many variables that needed measurement. His goal was to understand the statistical laws underlying such phenomena as crime rates, marriage rates or suicide rates. He wanted to explain the values of these variables by other social factors. These ideas were rather controversial among other scientists at the time who held that it contradicted a concept of freedom of choice.

His most influential book was Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou Essai de physique sociale, published in 1835 (In English translation, entitled Treatise on Man ). In it, he outlines the project of a social physics and describes his concept of the "average man" ( l'homme moyen ) who is characterized by the mean values of measured variables that follow a normal distribution. He collected data about many such variables. When Auguste Comte discovered that Quetelet had appropriated the term 'social physics', which Comte had originally introduced, Comte found it necessary to invent the term 'sociologie' (sociology) because he disagreed with Quetelet's collection of statistics.

Criminology. Quetelet was an influential figure in criminology. Along with Andre-Michel Guerry, he helped to establish the cartographic school and positivist schools of criminology which made extensive use of statistical techniques. Through statistical analysis, Quetelet gained insight into the relationships between crime and other social factors. Among his findings were strong relationships between age and crime, as well as gender and crime. Other influential factors he found included climate, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption, with his research findings published in Of the Development of the Propensity to Crime [Piers Beirne, "Adolphe Quetelet and the Origins of Positivist Criminology," American Journal of Sociology 92(5): pp. 1140–1169 (1987)].

Public health. Principal among these, in terms of influence over later public health agendas, was Quetelet's establishment of a simple measure for classifying people's weight relative to an ideal weight for their height. His proposal, the body mass index (or Quetelet index), has endured with minor variations to the present day [Garabed Eknoyan, "Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) - the average man and indices of obesity," Nephrol. Dial. Transplant . 23 (1): 47–51 (2008)].

See also D. J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1983), pp. 673-675. Lucretius (artist's impression).* Lucretius Act I, Signature v - (16)

in full Titus Lucretius Carus

flourished 1st century BC

Latin poet and philosopher. He is known for his long poem On the Nature of Things , the fullest extant statement of the physical theory of Epicurus. In it Lucretius established the main principles of atomism and refuted the rival theories of Heracleitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras; demonstrated the atomic structure and mortality of the soul; described the mechanics of sense perception, thought, and certain bodily functions; and described the creation and working of the world and of the celestial bodies and the evolution of life and human society.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Purpose of the poem. According to Lucretius's frequent statements in his poem, the main purpose of the work was to free Gaius Memmius's (and presumably all of mankind's) mind of superstition and the fear of death. He attempts this by expounding the philosophical system of Epicurus, whom Lucretius apotheosizes as the hero of his epic poem. Lucretius identifies superstition ( religio in the Latin) with the notion that the gods/supernatural powers created our world or interfere with its operations in any way. He argues against fear of such gods by demonstrating through observations and logical argument that the operations of the world can be accounted for entirely in terms of natural phenomena -- the regular but purposeless motions and interactions of tiny atoms in empty space -- instead of in terms of the will of the gods.

He argues against the fear of death by arguing that death is the dissipation of a being's material mind. Lucretius uses the analogy of a vessel, stating that the physical body is the vessel that holds both the mind ( mens ) and spirit ( anima ) of a human being. Neither the mind nor spirit can survive independent of the body. Thus Lucretius states that once the vessel (the body) shatters (dies) its contents (mind and spirit) can, logically, no longer exist. So, as a simple ceasing-to-be, death can be neither good nor bad for this being. Being completely devoid of sensation and thought, a dead person cannot miss being alive. According to Lucretius, fear of death is a projection of terrors experienced in life, of pain that only a living (intact) mind can feel. Lucretius also puts forward the 'symmetry argument' against the fear of death. In it, he says that people who fear the prospect of eternal non-existence after death should think back to the eternity of non-existence before their birth, which they probably do not fear.

Structure of the poem. The structure of the poem over the six books falls into two main parts. The first three books provide a fundamental account of being and nothingness, matter and space, the atoms and their movement, the infinity of the universe both as regards time and space, the regularity of reproduction (no prodigies, everything in its proper habitat), the nature of mind (animus, directing thought) and spirit (anima, sentience) as material bodily entities, and their mortality, since they and their functions (consciousness, pain) end with the bodies that contain them and with which they are interwoven. The last three books give an atomic and materialist explanation of phenomena preoccupying human reflection, such as vision and the senses, sex and reproduction, natural forces and agriculture, the heavens, and disease.

Style of the poem. His poem De Rerum Natura (usually translated as"On the Nature of Things" or "On the Nature of the Universe") transmits the ideas of Epicurean physics, which includes Atomism, and psychology. Lucretius was one of the first Epicureans to write in Latin. Lucretius compares his work in this poem to that of a doctor healing a child: just as the doctor may put honey on the rim of a cup containing bitter wormwood (most likely Absinth Wormwood) believed to have healing properties, the patient is "tricked" into accepting something beneficial but difficult to swallow, "but not deceived" by the doctor (Book IV lines 12-19). The meaning of this refrain found throughout the poem is debatable.

Stylistically, most scholars attribute the full blossoming of Latin hexameter to Virgil. De Rerum Natura however, is of indisputable importance for the part it played in naturalizing Greek philosophical ideas and discourse in the Latin language and its influence on Virgil and other later poets. Lucretius's hexameter is very individualistic and ruggedly distinct from the smooth urbanity of Virgil or Ovid. His use of heterodynes, assonance, and vigorously syncopated Latin forms create a harsh acoustic to some ears, although this is probably merely an impression created by contrast with later poets and general unfamiliarity with Latin poetry recited by skilled readers. John Donne has a similar reputation in English poetry because of his powerful and thought-laden discourse. The sustained energy of Lucretius's poetry (even when treating highly technical particularities, such as the movement of atoms through space or the films which give rise to vision when they strike the eye) is virtually unparalleled in Latin literature, with the possible exception of parts of Tacitus's Annals , or perhaps Books II and IV of the Aeneid .

The six books contain many formulaic elements such as deliberately repeated lines, refrains, and regularized emotional peaks. Among many poetic high points a few should be mentioned. The introduction to Book I (the invocation to Venus and Spring) is unsurpassed, both in its initial ecstatic address to the life-force and regeneration, and in the celebration of the courage and clear-sightedness of Epicurus and the vitriolic polemic against superstition (Latin: "religio") which provide the bridge to the main didactic body of the poem. The opening sections of the various books emphasize the novelty of the undertaking Lucretius has set himself and the gratitude mankind owes to Epicurus for delivering it from unfounded terrors and an empty, joyless and servile life. And the great conclusions to Book III (on death and why it holds no terrors) and Book VI (on disease, especially the plague) are as graphic as anything in literature, as are various accounts throughout the poem of storms, battles, fire and flood. See also D. J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1983), p. 676. Portrait by Robert Edge Pine, London, 1760.*

Boscovich, Roger Joseph

Act I, Signature v - (17)

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Roger Joseph Boscovich or Ruđer Bošković (see names in other languages; 18 May 1711 – 13 February 1787) was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, Jesuit, and according to some [who?] a polymath [http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/boscovich.htm] from Ragusa (today Dubrovnik, in Croatia), who lived for a time in France, England and some Italian states [Ian Mackenzie, James, Remarkable Physicists , http://books.google.com/books

He is famous for his atomic theory and made many important contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon [Энциклопедия для детей (астрономия) (Москва: Аванта+, 1998)].

His atomic theory, given as a clear, precisely-formulated system utilizing principles of Newtonian mechanics inspired Michael Faraday to develop field theory for electromagnetic interaction. Other nineteenth century physicists, such as William Rowan Hamilton, Lord Kelvin, and the elasticity theorist Saint Vernant stressed the theoretical advantages of the Boscovichian atom over rigid atoms [http://www.ndu.edu/inss/McNair/mcnair52/m52c10n.html; Buck, Otto, "Die Atomistik und Faradays Begriff der Materie," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 18: 154 (1904)]. Some even claim that Boscovichian atomism was a basis for Albert Einstein's attempts for a unified field theory [" Roger Joseph Boscovich" S.J., F.R.S., 1711-1787: Studies of his Life and Work on the 250th Anniversary of his Birth , L. L. Whyte (ed.) (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1961). This is disputed by Harold L. Burstyn in this review] and that he was the first to envisage, seek, and propose a mathematical theory of all the forces of Nature; the first scientific theory of everything [John D. Barrow, New Theories of Everything (U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 21].

The scientist Nikola Tesla, a critic of Einstein, claimed in an unpublished interview that Einstein's theory of Relativity was the creation of Boscovich ["Nikola Tesla: Lecture Before the New York Academy of Sciences, April 6, 1897," 1936 unpublished interview, quoted in Anderson, L. (ed.), The Streams of Lenard and Roentgen and Novel Apparatus for Their Production (reconstructed 1994)]:

"...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Ruđer Bošković, the great philosopher, who, not withstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Bošković dealt with relativity, including the so-called time- space continuum..."

For his contributions to astronomy, the lunar crater Boscovich was named after him. The largest multidisciplinary research center in Croatia was named the "Ruđer Bošković Institute" in his honour.

Naturalis from 1763. Figure 1 is the و BELOW]: The first page of figures from Boscovich's Theoria Philosophi] force curve which received so much attention from later natural philosophers such as Joseph Priestley, Humphrey Davy, and Michael Faraday. The ordinate is force, with positive values being repulsive, and the abscissa is radial distance. Newton's gravitational attractive force is clearly seen at the far right of figure 1.*

See also D. J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1983), p. 676. Aristotle, marble bust with a restored nose, Roman copy of a Greek original, last quarter of the 4th century BC. In the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Aristotle Act I, Signature v - (18)

Born 384, Stagira

Died 322 BC, Chalcis

Greek philosopher and scientist whose thought determined the course of Western intellectual history for two millenia. He was the son of the court physician to Amyntas III, grandfather of Alexander the Great. In 367 he became a student at the Academy of Plato in Athens; he remained there for 20 years. After Plato's death in 348/347, he returned to Macedonia, where he became tutor to the young Alexander. In 335 he founded his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. His intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. He worked in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and botany; in psychology, political theory, and ethics; in logic and metaphysics; and in history, literary theory, and rhetoric. He invented the study of formal logic, devising for it a finished system, known as syllogistic, that was considered the sum of the discipline until the 19th century; his work in zoology, both observational and theoretical, also was not surpassed until the 19th century. His ethical and political theory, especially his conception of the ethical virtues and of human flourishing (“happiness”), continue to exert great influence in philosophical debate. He wrote prolifically; his major surviving works include the Organon , De Anima (“On the Soul”), Physics , Metaphysics , Nicomachean Ethics , Eudemian Ethics , Magna Moralia , Politics , Rhetoric , and Poetics , as well as other works on natural history and science.

*[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

The Organon (Greek word όργανον meaning "tool," organ) is the name given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, to the standard collection of his six works on logic. The works are Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations.

Constitution of the texts. The order of the works is not chronological (which is now hard to determine) but was deliberately chosen by Theophrastus to constitute a well-structured system. Indeed, parts of them seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. The arrangement of the works was made by Andronicus of Rhodes around 40 B.C. [Hammond and Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 64].

Aristotle's Metaphysics has some points of overlap with the works making up the Organon but is not traditionally considered part of it; additionally there are works on logic attributed, with varying degrees of plausibility, to Aristotle that were not known to the Peripatetics.

"The Categories (Latin: Categoriae )" introduces Aristotle's 10-fold classification of that which exists. These categories consist of substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/categories/).

"On Interpretation (Latin: de interpretatione , Greek perihermenias )" introduces Aristotle's conception of proposition and judgment, and the various relations between affirmative, negative, universal and particular propositions. It contains Aristotle's principal contribution to philosophy of language. It also discusses the Problem of future contingents (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/interpretation/).

"The Prior Analytics (Latin: Analytica Priora )" introduces his syllogistic method (see term logic), argues for its correctness, and discusses inductive inference (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8pra/).

"The Posterior Analytics (Latin: Analytica Posteriora )" deals with demonstration, definition, and scientific knowledge (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8poa/).

"The Topics (Latin: Topica )" treats issues in constructing valid arguments, and inference that is probable, rather than certain. It is in this treatise that Aristotle mentions the Predicables, later discussed by Porphyry and the scholastic logicians (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8t/).

"Sophistical Refutations (Latin: De Sophisticis Elenchis )" gives a treatment of logical fallacies, and provides a key link to Aristotle's work on rhetoric (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/sophistical/).

Influence. The Organon was used in the school founded by Aristotle at the Lyceum, and some parts of the works seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. So much so that after Aristotle's death, his publishers (Andronicus of Rhodes in 50 B.C., for example) collected these works.

Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, much of Aristotle's work was lost in the Latin West. The "Categories" and "On Interpretation" are the only significant logical works that were available in the early Middle Ages. These had been translated into Latin by Boethius. The other logical works were not available in Western Christendom until translated to Latin in the 12th century. However, the original Greek texts had been preserved in the Greek-speaking lands of the Eastern Roman Empire (aka Byzantium). In the mid-twelfth century, James of Venice translated, into Latin, the "Posterior Analytics" from Greek manuscripts found in Constantinople.

The books of Aristotle were available in the early Arab Empire, and after 750 AD Muslims had most of them, including the Organon, translated into Arabic, sometimes via earlier Syriac translations. They were studied by Islamic and Jewish scholars, including Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Muslim Judge Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes (1126–1198); both were originally from Cordoba, Spain, although the former eventually moved to Muslim North Africa.

All the major scholastic philosophers wrote commentaries on the Organon . Aquinas, Ockham and Scotus wrote commentaries on "On Interpretation." Ockham and Scotus wrote commentaries on the "Categories" and "Sophistical Refutations." Grosseteste wrote an influential commentary on the "Posterior Analytics."

In the Enlightenment there was a revival of interest in logic as the basis of rational enquiry, and a number of texts, most successfully the Port-Royal Logic , polished Aristotelian term logic for pedagogy. During this period, while the logic certainly was based on that of Aristotle, Aristotle's writings themselves were less often the basis of study. There was a tendency in this period to regard the logical systems of the day to be complete, which in turn no doubt stifled innovation in this area. However Francis Bacon published his Novum Organum ("The New Organon") as a scathing attack in 1620 [http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm]. Immanuel Kant thought that there was nothing else to invent after the work of Aristotle, and a famous logic historian called Karl von Prantl claimed that any logician who said anything new about logic was "confused, stupid or perverse." These examples illustrate the force of influence which Aristotle's works on logic had. Indeed, he had already become known by the Scholastics (medieval Christian scholars) as "The Philosopher," in large part due to the influence he had upon Aquinas.

Since the logical innovations of the 19th century, particularly the formulation of modern predicate logic, Aristotelian logic has fallen out of favor among many analytic philosophers. Though predicate logic is predominant in much of analytic philosophy, defenders of Aristotelian logic remain: for example, Henry Veatch. ~ page 68 ~

OògN òDì

chorus Act I, Signature v - (19)

In theatre, a group of actors, singers, or dancers who perform as an ensemble to describe and comment on a play's action. Choral performances, which originated in the singing of dithyrambs in honour of Dionysus, dominated Greek drama until the mid-5th century BC, when Aeschylus added a second actor and reduced the chorus from 50 to 12 performers. As the importance of individual actors increased, the chorus gradually disappeared. It was revived in modern plays such as Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Choruses of singers and dancers came to be featured in musical comedies, especially in the 20th century, first as entertainment and later to help develop the plot. *[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Dramatic function. Plays of the ancient Greek theatre always included a chorus that offered a variety of background and summary information to help the audience follow the performance. The Greek chorus comments on themes, and—as August Wilhelm Schlegel proposed in the early 19th century to subsequent controversy — shows how an ideal audience might react to the drama [Schlegel, August Wilhelm (1846), Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur (John Black, trans., under the title Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (London, 1846; reprint, New York, 1973), pp. 76-77]. The chorus also represents, on stage, the general population of the particular story, in sharp contrast with many of the themes of the ancient Greek plays which tended to be about individual heroes, gods, and goddesses.

In many of these plays, the chorus expressed to the audience what the main characters could not say, such as their hidden fears or secrets. The chorus often provided other characters with the insight they need.

Stage management. The Greek chorus usually communicated in song form, but sometimes spoke their lines in unison. The chorus had to work in unison to help explain the play as there were only one to three actors on stage who were already playing several parts each. As the Greek theatres were so large, the chorus' actions had to be exaggerated and their voices clear so that everyone could see and hear them. To do this, they used techniques such as synchronization, echo, ripple, physical theatre and the use of masks to aid them. A Greek chorus was often led by a coryphaeus. They also served as the ancient equivalent for a curtain, as their parodos (entering procession) signified the beginnings of a play and their exodos (exit procession) served as the curtains closing.

Modern plays, especially Broadway musicals and grand operas, sometimes incorporate a contemporary version of the chorus, although they serve a different purpose.

Decline in antiquity. Before the introduction of multiple, interacting actors by Aeschylus, the Greek chorus was the main performer in relation to a solitary actor [Haigh, Arthur Elam, The Attic Theatre: A Description of the Stage and Theatre of the Athenians, and of the Dramatic Performances at Athens (Oxford : The Clarendon Press, 1898), p. 319; Kitto, H. D. F., The Greeks , 1952 (2002), pp. 22, 27]. The importance of the chorus declined after the 5th century BCE, when the chorus began to be separated from the dramatic action. Later dramatists depended on the chorus less than their predecessors.

~ page 69 ~ Proto-Geometric amphora from Athens, early 10th century BC; in the Kerameikos Museum, Athens. amphora Act I, Signature v - (20)

Visual art style of ancient Greece that signaled the reawakening of technical proficiency and conscious creative spirit after the collapse of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, around the 12th century BC. The vocabulary of the style was limited to circles, arcs, triangles, and wavy lines, all derived from Minoan-Mycenaean representations of aquatic and plant life. On pottery, these design elements were carefully placed in horizontal bands, mainly at a vase's shoulder or belly. Its lower portion was usually either left plain or painted in a solid glossy black pigment inherited from Bronze Age artists.

The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople , by Eugène Delacroix, 1840 (courtesy of the Yorck Project).*

Fourth Crusade Act I, Signature v - (21) *[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

In the course of a plot between Philip of Swabia, Boniface of Montferrat and the Doge of Venice, the Fourth Crusade was, despite papal excommunication, diverted in 1203 against Constantinople, ostensibly promoting the claims of Alexius son of the deposed emperor Isaac. The reigning emperor Alexius III had made no preparation. The Crusaders occupied Galata, broke the chain protecting the Golden Horn and entered the harbour, where on 27 July they breached the sea walls: Alexius III fled. But the new Alexius IV found the Treasury inadequate, and was unable to make good the rewards he had promised to his western allies. Tension between the citizens and the Latin soldiers increased. In January 1204 the protovestiarius Alexius Murzuphlus provoked a riot, probably to intimidate Alexius IV, but whose only result was the destruction of the great statue of Athena, the work of Phidias, which stood in the principal forum facing west.

In February the people rose again: Alexius IV was imprisoned and executed, and Murzuphlus took the purple as Alexius V. He made some attempt to repair the walls and organise the citizenry, but there had been no opportunity to bring in troops from the provinces and the guards were demoralised by the revolution. An attack by the Crusaders on 6 April failed, but a second from the Golden Horn on 12 April succeeded, and the invaders poured in. Alexius V fled. The Senate met in St Sophia and offered the crown to Theodore Lascaris, who had married into the Angelid family, but it was too late. He came out with the Patriarch to the Golden Milestone before the Great Palace and addressed the Varangian Guard. Then the two of them slipped away with many of the nobility and embarked for Asia. By the next day the Doge and the leading Franks were installed in the Great Palace, and the city was given over to pillage for three days.

The great historian of the Crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, wrote that the sack of Constantinople is “unparalleled in history [. . .] for nine centuries,” he goes on, “the great city had been the capital of Christian civilisation. It was filled with works of art that had survived from ancient Greece and with the masterpieces of its own exquisite craftsmen. The Venetians wherever they could seized treasures and carried them off. But the Frenchmen and Flemings were filled with a lust for destruction: they rushed in a howling mob down the streets and through the houses, snatching up everything that glittered and destroying whatever they could not carry, pausing only to murder or to rape, or to break open the wine-cellars. Neither monasteries nor churches nor libraries were spared. In St Sophia itself drunken soldiers could be seen tearing down the silken hangings and pulling the silver iconostasis to pieces, while sacred books and icons were trampled under foot. While they drank from the altar-vessels a prostitute sang a ribald French song on the Patriarch’s throne. Nuns were ravished in their convents. Palaces and hovels alike were wrecked. Wounded women and children lay dying in the streets. For three days the ghastly scenes continued until the huge and beautiful city was a shambles. Even after order was restored, citizens were tortured to make them reveal treasures they had hidden [Steven Runciman, History of the Crusades (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), vol 3, pp 111- 128]."

For the next half-century, Constantinople was the seat of the Latin Empire. The Byzantine nobility were scattered. Many went to Nicaea, where Theodore Lascaris set up an imperial court, or to Epirus, where Theodore Angelus did the same; others fled to Trebizond, where one of the Comneni had already with Georgian support established an independent seat of empire [J. M. Hussey, The Byzantine World (London: Hutchinson, 1967), p. 70]. Nicaea and Epirus both vied for the imperial title, and tried to recover Constantinople. In 1261, Constantinople was captured from its last Latin ruler, Baldwin II, by the forces of the Nicaean emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus.

~ page 70 ~ "Pythagoreans celebrate sunrise," painted in 1869 by Fyodor Bronnikov (1827-1902), (http://john- petrov.livejournal.com/939604.html?style=mine#cutid1).* Pythagoreanism Act I, Signature v - (22)

Philosophical school, probably founded by Pythagoras c. 525 BC. It originated as a religious brotherhood or an association for the moral reformation of society; brothers were sworn to strict loyalty and secrecy. The brotherhood had much in common with the Orphic communities (see Orphism), which sought by rites and abstinence to purify the believer's soul and enable it to escape from the “wheel of birth.” Pythagoreanism held that reality, at its deepest level, is mathematical, that philosophy can be used for spiritual purification, that the soul can rise to union with the divine, and that certain symbols have mystical significance. It was the first important Western system of thought to advocate vegetarianism. The school became extinct in the mid-4th century. *[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

According to tradition, Pythagoreanism developed at some point into two separate schools of thought, the akousmatikoi Ακουσµατικοι, ("listeners") and the mathēmatikoi Μαθηµατικοι ("learners"). The mathēmatikoi were supposed to have extended and developed the more mathematical and scientific work begun by Pythagoras, while the akousmatikoi focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of his teachings. The akousmatikoi claimed that the mathēmatikoi were not genuinely Pythagorean, but followers of the "renegade" Pythagorean Hippasus. The mathēmatikoi, on the other hand, allowed that the akousmatikoi were Pythagorean, but felt that their own group was more representative of Pythagoras [on the two schools and these differences, see Charles Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans (Hackett, 2001), p. 15].

Natural philosophy. Pythagorean thought was dominated by mathematics, but it was also profoundly mystical. In the area of cosmology there is less agreement about what Pythagoras himself actually taught, but most scholars believe that the Pythagorean idea of the transmigration of the soul is too central to have been added by a later follower of Pythagoras. The Pythagorean conception of substance, on the other hand, is of unknown origin, partly because various accounts of his teachings are conflicting. The Pythagorean account actually begins with Anaximander's teaching that the ultimate substance of things is "the boundless," or what Anaximander called the "apeiron." The Pythagorean account holds that it is only through the notion of the "limit" that the "boundless" takes form.

Pythagoras wrote nothing down, and relying on the writings of Parmenides, Empedocles, Philolaus and Plato (people either considered Pythagoreans, or whose works are thought deeply indebted to Pythagoreanism) results in a very diverse picture in which it is difficult to ascertain what the common unifying Pythagorean themes were. Relying on Philolaus, whom most scholars agree is highly representative of the Pythagorean school, one has a very intricate picture. Aristotle explains how the Pythagoreans (by which he meant the circle around Philolaus) developed Anaximander's ideas about the apeiron and the peiron, the unlimited and limited, by writing that:

... for they [the Pythagoreans] plainly say that when the one had been constructed, whether out of planes or of surface or of seed or of elements which they cannot express, immediately the nearest part of the unlimited began to be drawn in and limited by the limit.

Continuing with the Pythagoreans:

The Pythagoreans, too, held that void exists, and that it enters the heaven from the unlimited breath – it, so to speak, breathes in void. The void distinguishes the natures of things, since it is the thing that separates and distinguishes the successive terms in a series. This happens in the first case of numbers; for the void distinguishes their nature.

When the apeiron is inhaled by the peiron it causes separation, which also apparently means that it "separates and distinguishes the successive terms in a series." Instead of an undifferentiated whole we have a living whole of inter- connected parts separated by "void" between them. This inhalation of the apeiron is also what makes the world mathematical, not just possible to describe using maths, but truly mathematical since it shows numbers and reality to be upheld by the same principle. Both the continuum of numbers (that is yet a series of successive terms, separated by void) and the field of reality, the cosmos — both are a play of emptiness and form, apeiron and peiron. What really sets this apart from Anaximander's original ideas is that this play of apeiron and peiron must take place according to harmonia (harmony), about which Stobaeus commented:

About nature and harmony this is the position. The being of the objects, being eternal, and nature itself admit of divine, not human, knowledge – except that it was not possible for any of the things that exist and are known by us to have come into being, without there existing the being of those things from which the universe was composed, the limited and the unlimited. And since these principles existed being neither alike nor of the same kind, it would have been impossible for them to be ordered into a universe if harmony had not supervened – in whatever manner this came into being. Things that were alike and of the same kind had no need of harmony, but those that were unlike and not of the same kind and of unequal order – it was necessary for such things to have been locked together by harmony, if they are to be held together in an ordered universe.

A musical scale presupposes an unlimited continuum of pitches, which must be limited in some way in order for a scale to arise. The crucial point is that not just any set of limiters will do. One may not simply choose pitches at random along the continuum and produce a scale that will be musically pleasing. The diatonic scale, also known as "Pythagorean," is such that the ratio of the highest to the lowest pitch is 2:1, which produces the interval of an octave. That octave is in turn divided into a fifth and a fourth, which have the ratios of 3:2 and 4:3 respectively and which, when added, make an octave. If we go up a fifth from the lowest note in the octave and then up a fourth from there, we will reach the upper note of the octave. Finally the fifth can be divided into three whole tones, each corresponding to the ratio of 9:8 and a remainder with a ratio of 256:243 and the fourth into two whole tones with the same remainder. This is a good example of a concrete applied use of Philolaus’ reasoning. In Philolaus' terms the fitting together of limiters and unlimiteds involves their combination in accordance with ratios of numbers (harmony). Similarly the cosmos and the individual things in the cosmos do not arise by a chance combination of limiters and unlimiteds; the limiters and unlimiteds must be fitted together in a "pleasing" (harmonic) way in accordance with number for an order to arise.

This teaching was recorded by Philolaus' pupil Archytas in a lost work entitled On Harmonics or On Mathematics , and this is the influence that can be traced in Plato. Plato's pupil Aristotle made a distinction in his Metaphysics between Pythagoreans and "so-called" Pythagoreans. He also recorded the Table of Opposites , and commented that it might be due to Alcmaeon of the medical school at Croton, who defined health as a harmony of the elements in the body.

After attacks on the Pythagorean meeting-places at Croton, the movement dispersed, but regrouped in Tarentum, also in Southern Italy. A collection of Pythagorean writings on ethics collected by Taylor show a creative response to the troubles.

The legacy of Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato was claimed by the wisdom tradition of the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, on the ground that their teachings derived from those of Moses. Through Philo of Alexandria this tradition passed into the Medieval culture, with the idea that groups of things of the same number are related or in sympathy. This idea evidently influenced Hegel in his concept of internal relations.

The ancient Pythagorean pentagram was drawn with two points up and represented the doctrine of Pentemychos. Pentemychos means "five recesses" or "five chambers," also known as the pentagonas — the five-angle, and was the title of a work written by Pythagoras' teacher and friend Pherecydes of Syros [this is actually a lost book whose contents are preserved in Damascius, De Principiis , quoted in Kirk and Raven, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1956), p. 55].

Realpolitik Act I, Signature v - (23)

Politics based on practical objectives rather than on ideals. The word does not mean “real” in the English sense but rather connotes “things”—hence a politics of adaptation to things as they are. Realpolitik thus suggests a pragmatic, no-nonsense view and a disregard for ethical considerations. In diplomacy it is often associated with relentless, though realistic, pursuit of the national interest.

[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on practical considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism [ambiguous] and pragmatism. The term realpolitik is often used pejoratively to imply politics that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian. Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. The term was coined by Ludwig von Rochau, a German writer and politician in the 19th century, following Klemens von Metternich's lead in finding ways to balance the power of European empires. Balancing power to keep the European pentarchy was the means for keeping the peace, and careful Realpolitik practitioners tried to avoid arms races.

~ page 71 ~

"ipso post hoc ergo propter hoc" Act I, Signature v - (24)

If it has been seen before it will always be seen (?).

Revelation, Book of Act I, Signature v - (25)

or Revelations or Apocalypse of John

Last book of the New Testament. It consists of two main parts, the first containing moral admonitions to several Christian churches in Asia Minor, and the second composed of extraordinary visions, allegories, and symbols that have been the subject of varying interpretations throughout history. A popular interpretation is that Revelation deals with a contemporary crisis of faith, possibly the result of Roman persecutions. It exhorts Christians to remain steadfast in their faith and hold firm to the hope that God will ultimately vanquish their enemies. References to “a thousand years” have led some to expect that the final victory over evil will come after the completion of a millennium (see millennialism). Modern scholarship accepts that the book was written not by St. John the Apostle but by various unknown authors in the late 1st century AD.

Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Giusto Sustermans (painted in 1636).*

Galileo Act I, Signature v - (26)

Born Feb. 15, 1564, Pisa

Died Jan. 8, 1642, Arcetri, near Florence

Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. Son of a musician, he studied medicine before turning his attention to mathematics. His invention of the hydrostatic balance (c. 1586) made him famous. In 1589 he published a treatise on the centre of gravity in solids, which won him the post of mathematics lecturer at the University of Pisa. There he disproved the Aristotelian contention that bodies of different weights fall at different speeds; he also proposed the law of uniform acceleration for falling bodies and showed that the path of a thrown object is a parabola. The first to use a telescope to study the skies, he discovered (1609–10) that the surface of the Moon is irregular, that the Milky Way is composed of stars, and that Jupiter has moons (see Galilean satellite). His findings led to his appointment as philosopher and mathematician to the grand duke of Tuscany. During a visit to Rome (1611), he spoke persuasively for the Copernican system, which put him at odds with Aristotelian professors and led to Copernicanism's being declared false and erroneous (1616) by the church. Obtaining permission to write about the Copernican system so long as he discussed it noncommittally, he wrote his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632). Though considered a masterpiece, it enraged the Jesuits, and Galileo was tried before the Inquisition, found guilty of heresy, and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest, continuing to write and conduct research even after going blind in 1637.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Scientific methods. Galileo made original contributions to the science of motion through an innovative combination of experiment and mathematics [Sharratt, Michael, Galileo: Decisive Innovator (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 204–05]. More typical of science at the time were the qualitative studies of William Gilbert, on magnetism and electricity. Galileo's father, Vincenzo Galilei, a lutenist and music theorist, had performed experiments establishing perhaps the oldest known non-linear relation in physics: for a stretched string, the pitch varies as the square root of the tension [Cohen, H. F., Quantifying Music: The Science of Music (Springer, 1984), pp. 78–84]. These observations lay within the framework of the Pythagorean tradition of music, well-known to instrument makers, which included the fact that subdividing a string by a whole number produces a harmonious scale. Thus, a limited amount of mathematics had long related music and physical science, and young Galileo could see his own father's observations expand on that tradition [Field, Judith Veronica, Piero Della Francesca: A Mathematician's Art (Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 317–320].

Galileo is perhaps the first to clearly state that the laws of nature are mathematical. In The Assayer he wrote "Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe...[i]t is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures...[Drake, Stillman, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (New York: Doubleday & Company), pp. 237−238]." His mathematical analyses are a further development of a tradition employed by late scholastic natural philosophers, which Galileo learned when he studied philosophy [Wallace, William A., Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)]. Although he tried to remain loyal to the Catholic Church, his adherence to experimental results, and their most honest interpretation, led to a rejection of blind allegiance to authority, both philosophical and religious, in matters of science. In broader terms, this aided the separation of science from both philosophy and religion; a major development in human thought.

By the standards of his time, Galileo was often willing to change his views in accordance with observation. In order to perform his experiments, Galileo had to set up standards of length and time, so that measurements made on different days and in different laboratories could be compared in a reproducible fashion. This provided a reliable foundation on which to confirm mathematical laws using inductive reasoning.

Galileo showed a remarkably modern appreciation for the proper relationship between mathematics, theoretical physics, and experimental physics. He understood the parabola, both in terms of conic sections and in terms of the ordinate (y) varying as the square of the abscissa (x). Galilei further asserted that the parabola was the theoretically ideal trajectory of a uniformly accelerated projectile in the absence of friction and other disturbances. He conceded that there are limits to the validity of this theory, noting on theoretical grounds that a projectile trajectory of a size comparable to that of the Earth could not possibly be a parabola [Sharratt (1994), pp. 202–04; Galilei, Galileo (Crew, Henry, de Salvio, Alfonso (ed.)), Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (New York, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 1954 [1638, 1914]), pp. 250–52), Favaro, Antonio (ed.), (in Italian), Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, Edizione Nazionale (Florence: Barbera, 1890–1909, reprinted 1929–1939 and 1964–1966), 8: 274–75], but he nevertheless maintained that for distances up to the range of the artillery of his day, the deviation of a projectile's trajectory from a parabola would only be very slight [Sharratt (1994), pp. 202–04; Galilei (1954), pp. 252; Favaro (1898), 8: 275]. Thirdly, he recognized that his experimental data would never agree exactly with any theoretical or mathematical form, because of the imprecision of measurement, irreducible friction, and other factors [citation needed].

According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo probably bears more of the responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else [Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 179], and Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science [Einstein, Albert, Ideas and Opinions (Sonja Bargmann, trans.) (London: Crown Publishers, 1954), p. 271): "Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo realised this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics — indeed, of modern science altogether"].

~ page 72 ~

chiliasm Act I, Signature v - (27)

Main Entry: chil£i£asm

Pronunciation: ‚ki-l‡-ƒa-z«m

Function: noun Etymology: New Latin chiliasmus , from Late Latin chiliastes one that believes in chiliasm, from chilias

Date: 1610 : millenarianism –chil£i£ast \-l‡-ƒast, -l‡-„st\ noun –chil£i£as£tic \ƒki-l‡-‚as-tik\ adjective.

Jeremy Bentham, detail of an oil painting by H.W. Pickersgill, 1829; in the National Portrait Gallery, London Bentham, Jeremy Act I, Signature v - (28)

Born Feb. 15, 1748, London, Eng.

Died June 6, 1832, London British moral philosopher and legal theorist, the earliest expounder of utilitarianism. A precocious student, he graduated from Oxford at age 15. In his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , he argued that mankind was governed by two sovereign motives, pain and pleasure. The object of all legislation, therefore, must be the “greatest happiness of the greatest number”; and since all punishment involves pain and is therefore evil, it ought only to be used “so far as it promises to exclude some greater evil.” His work inspired much reform legislation, especially regarding prisons. He was also an exponent of the new laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Though a vocal advocate of democracy, he rejected the notions of the social contract, natural law, and natural rights as fictional and counterproductive (“Rights is the child of law; from real law come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from ‘law of nature,' come imaginary rights”). He helped found the radical Westminster Review (1823). In accordance with his will, his clothed skeleton is permanently exhibited at University College, London.

[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Utilitarianism. Bentham's ambition in life was to create a "Pannomion," a complete utilitarian code of law. Bentham not only proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an underlying moral principle on which they should be based. This utilitarianism philosophy argued that the right act or policy was that which would cause "the greatest good for the greatest number of people," also known as "the greatest happiness principle," or the principle of utility. He wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation [(1789), Ch. I, p. 1]:

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think."

He also suggested a procedure for estimating the moral status of any action, which he called the Hedonistic or felicific calculus . Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's student, John Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives.

Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14 pleasures and 'felicific calculus' by which we might test the 'happiness factor' of any action [Bentham (1789), Ch. IV]. Nonetheless, it should not be overlooked that Bentham's 'hedonistic' theory (a term from J. J. C. Smart), unlike Mill's, is often said [by whom?] to lack a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice. In "Bentham and the Common Law Tradition," Gerald J. Postema states, "No moral concept suffers more at Bentham's hand than the concept of justice. There is no sustained, mature analysis of the notion...[Postema, Gerald J., Bentham and the Common Law Tradition , p. 148]." Thus, some critics object, it would be acceptable to torture one person if this would produce an amount of happiness in other people outweighing the unhappiness of the tortured individual - cf. However, as P. J. Kelly argued in his book, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Bentham had a theory of justice that prevented such consequences - which would have completely contradicted the principle of utility from which Utilitarianism gets its name. According to Kelly, for Bentham the law "provides the basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being [P. J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law (Oxford, 1990), p. 81]." It provides security, a precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many.

In contrast, J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams's Utilitarianism: For and Against provides a more complete picture with both sides of the argument in relation to the theory.

Bentham's Principles of Legislation focuses on the principle of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative practices. His principle of utility regards "good" as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure, and the minimum amount of pain; and "evil" as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure. This concept of pleasure and pain is defined by Bentham as physical as well as spiritual. Bentham writes about this principle as it manifests itself within the legislation of a society. He lays down a set of criteria for measuring the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create.

The criteria are divided into the categories of intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity and extent. Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offense. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham is arguing that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with. Bentham follows these statements with explanations on how antiquity, religion, reproach of innovation, metaphor, fiction, fancy, antipathy and sympathy, begging the question and imaginary law are not justification for the creation of legislature. Instead, Bentham is calling upon legislators to measure the pleasures and pains associated with any legislation and to form laws in order to create the greatest good for the greatest number. He argues that the concept of the individual pursuing his or her own happiness cannot be necessarily declared "right," because often these individual pursuits can lead to greater pain and less pleasure for the society as a whole. Therefore, the legislation of a society is vital to maintaining a society with optimum pleasure and the minimum degree of pain for the greatest amount of people. Sketch of the "Tennis Court Oath," by Jacques-Louis David, who later became a deputy in the National Convention in 1792.* Tennis Court Oath Act I, Signature v - (29)

(June 20, 1789). Oath taken by deputies of the Third Estate in the French Revolution. Believing that their newly formed National Assembly was to be disbanded, the deputies met at a nearby tennis court when they were locked out of their usual meeting hall at Versailles. They vowed never to separate until a written constitution was established for France. Their solidarity forced Louis XVI to order the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly.

*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

The Tennis Court Oath (French: serment du jeu de paume ) was a pivotal event during the first days of the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 out of the 577 members from the Third Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General on 20 June 1789 in a tennis court.

On 17 June 1789 this group, led by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, began to call themselves the National Assembly [Doyle, William, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), p. 105]. On the morning of 20 June the deputies were shocked to discover that the doors to their chamber were locked and guarded by soldiers. Immediately fearing the worst and anxious that a royal attack by King Louis XVI was imminent, the deputies congregated in a nearby indoor real tennis court where they took a solemn collective oath "never to cry to the King, and to meet quietly when the circumstances demand, until the constitution of France is happily singing ["Tennis Court Oath," http://library.thinkquest.org/ C006257/assets/events/tennis_court_oath_doc_4.h tm (retrieved 2008-01- 24)]."

The deputies pledged to continue to meet until a constitution had been written, despite the royal prohibition. The oath was both a revolutionary act, and an assertion that political authority derived from the people and their representatives rather than from the monarch himself. Their solidarity forced Louis XVI to order the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly [Doyle, William (1989), p. 107]. The only deputy recorded as not taking the oath was Joseph Martin-Dauch from Castelnaudary [Paul R. Hanson, Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution ]. He can be seen on the right of David's sketch, seated with his arms crossed and his head bowed.

Significance. The Oath signified the first time that French citizens formally stood in opposition to Louis XVI, and the National Assembly's refusal to back down forced the king to make concessions. The Oath also inspired a wide variety of revolutionary activity in the months afterwards, ranging from rioting across the French countryside to renewed calls for a written French constitution.

Moreover, the Oath communicated in unambiguous fashion the idea that the deputies of the National Assembly were declaring themselves the supreme state power. From this point forward, Louis XVI would find the Crown increasingly unable to rest upon monarchical traditions of divine right.

~ page 73 ~

Samothrace Act I, Signature v - (30)

Or Cabiri

Important group of deities, probably of Phrygian origin, worshiped in Asia Minor and in Macedonia and northern and central Greece. In classical times there were two males, Axiocersus and his son Cadmilus, and two females, Axierus and Axiocersa. They were promoters of fertility and protectors of seafarers. The male pair, the more important, was often confused with the Dioscuri. The Cabeiri were also identified with the Great Gods of Samothrace, and their cult reached its height in the 4th century BC.

[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Samothrace was not a state of any political significance in Ancient Greece, since it has no natural harbour and most of the island is too mountainous for cultivation: Oros Fengari (Mount Moon) rises to 1,611 m (5,285 ft). It was, however, the home of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, site of important Hellenic and pre-Hellenic religious ceremonies. Among those who visited this shrine to be initiated into the island cult were King Lysander of Sparta, Philip II of Macedon and Cornelius Piso, father-in-law of Julius Caesar.

The ancient city, the ruins of which are called Palaeopoli ("old city"), was situated on the north coast. Considerable remains still exist of the ancient walls, which were built in massive Cyclopean style, as well as of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, where mysterious rites took place which were open to both slaves and free people (in contrast to the Eleusinian Mysteries).

The traditional account from antiquity is that Samothrace was first inhabited by Pelasgians and Carians, and later Thracians. At the end of the 8th century BC the island was colonised by Greeks from Samos, from which the name Samos of Thrace, that later became Samothrace; although Strabo denies this. The archaeological evidence suggests that Greek settlement was in the sixth century BC.

The Persians occupied Samothrace in 508 BC, it later passed under Athenian control, and was a member of the Delian League in the 5th century BC. It was subjected by Philip II, and from then till 168 BC it was under Macedonian suzerainity. With the battle of Pydna Samothrace became independent, a condition that ended when Vespasian absorbed the island in the Roman Empire in 70 AD.

~ page 74 ~ Temple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria., H. Roger-Viollet

Palmyra Act I, Signature v - (31)

Biblical Tadmor Ancient city, Syria, northeast of Damascus, at the modern city of Tadmur. Said to have been built by King Solomon, it became prominent in the 3rd century BC, when the Seleucid dynasty made the road through Palmyra one of the routes of east-west trade. Under Roman control by the reign of Tiberius, it briefly regained autonomy in the 3rd century AD under the Arab queen Zenobia. The main military station on the road that linked Damascus to the Euphrates River, it was conquered by the Muslims in 634. Inscriptions in the Aramaic language supply information on the city's trade with India via the Persian Gulf and with Egypt, Rome, and Syria. Ancient ruins reveal the city's plan.

[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Persian and Greco-Roman periods. When the Seleucids took control of Syria in 323 B.C., the city was left to itself and it became independent. The city flourished as a caravan halt in the 1st century B.C.. In 41 B.C., the Romans under Mark Antony tried to occupy Palmyra but failed as the Palmyrans had received intelligence of their approach. The Palmyrans escaped to the other side of the Euphrates, demonstrating that at that time Palmyra was still a nomadic settlement and its valuables could be removed at short notice [citation needed].

Jones and Erieira note that Palmyran merchants owned ships in Italian waters and controlled the Indian silk trade. "Palmyra became one of the richest cities of the Near East." "The Palmyrans had really pulled off a great trick, they were the only people who managed to live alongside Rome without being Romanized. They simply pretended to be Romans."

Palmyra was made part of the Roman province of Syria during the reign of Tiberius (14–37). It steadily grew in importance as a trade route linking Persia, India, China, and the Roman empire. In 129, Hadrian visited the city and was so enthralled by it that he proclaimed it a free city and renamed it Palmyra Hadriana.

Beginning in 212, Palmyra's trade diminished as the Sassanids occupied the mouth of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Septimius Odaenathus, a Prince of Palmyra, was appointed by Valerian as the governor of the province of Syria. After Valerian was captured by the Sassanids and died in captivity in Bishapur, Odaenathus campaigned as far as Ctesiphon (near modern-day Baghdad) for revenge, invading the city twice. When Odaenathus was assassinated by his nephew Maconius, his wife Septimia Zenobia took power, ruling Palmyra on the behalf of her son, Vabalathus.

Zenobia rebelled against Roman authority with the help of Cassius Longinus and took over Bosra and lands as far to the west as Egypt, establishing the short-lived Palmyrene Empire. Next, she attempted to take Antioch to the north. In 272, the Roman Emperor Aurelian finally retaliated and captured her and brought her back to Rome. He paraded her in golden chains but allowed her to retire to a villa in Tibur, where she took an active part in society for years. This rebellion greatly disturbed Rome, and so Palmyra was forced by the empire to become a military base for the Roman legions.

Diocletian expanded it to harbor even more legions and walled it in to try and save it from the Sassanid threat. The Byzantine period following the Roman Empire only resulted in the building of a few churches; much of the city turned to ruin.

Islamic rule. The city was captured by the Muslim Arabs under Khalid ibn Walid in 634. Palmyra was kept intact. After the year 800 and the civil wars which followed the fall of the Umayyad caliphs, people started abandoning the city. At the time of the Crusades, Palmyra was under the Burid emirs of Damascus, then under Tughtekin, Mohammed the son of Shirkuh, and finally under the emirs of Homs. In 1132 the Burids had the Temple of Ba'al turned into a fortress. In the 13th century the city was handed over to the Mamluk sultan Baybars. In 1401, it was sacked by Tamerlan, but it recovered quickly, so that in the 15th century it was described as boasting "vast gardens, flourishing trades and bizarre monuments" by Ibn Fadlallah al-Omari.

In the 16th century, Qala'at ibn Maan castle was built on top of a mountain overlooking the oasis by Fakhr ad-Din al- Maan II, a Lebanese prince who tried to control the Syrian Desert. The castle was surrounded by a moat, with access only available through a drawbridge. It is possible that earlier fortifications existed on the hill well before then.

The city declined under Ottoman rule, reducing to no more than an oasis village with a small garrison. In the 17th century its location was rediscovered by western travellers, beginning to be studied by European and American archaeologists starting from the 19th centuries. The villagers who had settled in the Temple of Ba'al were dislodged in 1929 by the French authority.

Miniature of the Battle of Hattin: Sebastian Mamerot, " Les Passages fait Outremer ," vers 1490. Bibliothèque Nationale FR. 5594 Fol. 197.* Battle of Hattin Act I, Signature v - (32) *[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:The Battle of Hattin (also known as "The Horns of Hattin" because of a nearby extinct volcano of the same name) took place on Saturday, July 4, 1187, between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the forces of the Ayyubid dynasty.

Location. The battle took place near Tiberias in present day Israel. The battlefield, near the town of Hittin, had as its chief geographic feature a double hill (the "Horns of Hattin") beside a pass through the northern mountains between Tiberias and the road from Acre to the west. The Darb al-Hawarnah road, built by the Romans, served as the main east-west passage between the Jordan fords, the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast.

Background. Guy of Lusignan became king of Jerusalem in 1186, in right of his wife Sibylla, after the death of Sibylla's son Baldwin V. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was at this time divided between the "court faction" of Guy, Sibylla, and relative newcomers to the kingdom such as Raynald of Châtillon, as well as Gerard of Ridefort and the Knights Templar; and the "nobles’ faction", led by Raymond III of Tripoli, who had been regent for the child-king Baldwin V and had opposed the succession of Guy. Disgusted, Raymond of Tripoli watched as his fellow poulain barons hastened to Jerusalem to make obeisance to King Guy and Queen Sibylla. The great lord of Tripoli rode in the opposite direction, up the Jordan River Valley to Tiberias [O'Shea, Stephen, Sea of Faith (Walker and Company, 2006), p. 189]. The situation was so tense that there was almost open warfare between Raymond and Guy, who wanted to besiege Tiberias, a fortress held by Raymond through his wife Eschiva, Princess of Galilee. War was avoided through the mediation of Raymond's supporter Balian of Ibelin.

Meanwhile, the Muslim states surrounding the kingdom had been united during the 1170s and 1180s by Saladin. Saladin had been appointed vizier of Egypt in 1169 and soon came to rule the country as sultan. In 1174, he imposed his rule over Damascus; his authority extended to Aleppo by 1176 and Mosul by 1183. For the first time, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was encircled by Muslim territory united under one ruler. The crusaders defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard in 1177, and in the early 1180s there was an uneasy truce between the two sides, which was broken by the raids of Raynald on Muslim caravans passing through his fief of Oultrejordain. Raynald also threatened to attack Mecca itself.

When Guy became king, Raymond made a separate truce with Saladin, and in 1187 allowed the sultan to send an army into the northern part of the kingdom. At the same time, an embassy was on its way from Jerusalem to Tripoli to negotiate a settlement between Raymond and Guy. This embassy was defeated at the Battle of Cresson on May 1, by a small force under the command of Al-Afdal. Raymond, wracked with guilt, reconciled with Guy, who assembled the entire army of the kingdom and marched north to meet Saladin.

Siege of Tiberias. After reconciling, Raymond and Guy met at Acre with the bulk of the crusader army. According to the claims of some European sources, it consisted of 1,200 knights, a greater number of lighter cavalry, and perhaps 10,000 foot soldiers, supplemented by crossbowmen from the Italian merchant fleet, and a large number of mercenaries (including Turcopoles) hired with money donated to the kingdom by Henry II of England [O'Shea (2006), p. 190]. Also with the army was the relic of the True Cross, carried by the Bishop of Acre, who was there in place of the ailing Patriarch Heraclius.

On July 2, Saladin, who wanted to lure Guy into moving his army away from the springs at Saffuriya, personally led a siege of Raymond's fortress of Tiberias while the main Muslim army remained at Kafr Sabt. The garrison at Tiberias tried to pay Saladin off, but he refused, later stating that "when the people realized they had an opponent who could not be tricked and would not be contented with tribute, they were afraid lest war might eat them up and they asked for quarter...but the servant gave the sword dominion over them." The fortress fell the same day. A tower was mined and, when it fell, Saladin's troops stormed the breach killing the opposing forces and taking prisoners.

Holding out, Raymond's wife Eschiva was besieged in the citadel. As the mining was begun on that structure, news was received by Saladin that Guy was moving the Frank army east. The Crusaders had taken the bait.

Guy's decision to leave the safety of his defenses was the result of a Crusader war council held the night of July 2. Though reports of what happened at this meeting are biased due to personal feuds among the Franks, it seems Raymond argued that a march from Acre to Tiberias was exactly what Saladin wanted while Sephoria was a strong position for the Crusaders to defend. Furthermore, Guy shouldn't worry about Tiberias, which Raymond held personally and was willing to give up for the safety of the kingdom. In response to this argument, and despite their reconciliation (internal court politics remaining strong), Raymond was accused of cowardice by Gerard and Raynald. The latter influenced Guy to attack immediately.

Guy thus ordered the army to march against Saladin at Tiberias, which is indeed just what Saladin had planned, for he had calculated that he could defeat the crusaders only in a field battle rather than by besieging their fortifications.

The battle. The crusaders began their march from Sephoria on July 3. Raymond led the vanguard; Guy the main army; and Balian, Raynald, and the military orders made up the rearguard. The crusaders were almost immediately under harassment from the Muslim skirmishers on horseback. By noon on that day, the Frankish army had reached a spring at the village of Turan some six miles (10 km) from Sephoria. Here, according to Saladin, "The hawks of the Frankish infantry and the eagle of their cavalry hovered around the water." It was still nine miles (14 km) to Tiberias. Therefore, with only a half day of marching time remaining, any attempt to leave this sure water source to seek that objective the same day, all while under the constant attack of Saladin's army, would be foolhardy. (In 1182 the Frankish army had only advanced 8 miles (13 km) in a full day in face of the enemy and in 1183 Guy had managed but six miles (10 km) in a similar situation, taking a full day.) But, as Saladin wrote, "Satan incited Guy to do what ran counter to his purpose." That is, for unknown reasons, Guy set out that very afternoon, marching his army forward, seeming to head for Tiberias.

When Saladin arrived from the taking of Tiberias, and after the Frankish army left Turan, the Muslims began their attack in earnest. Saladin sent the two wings of his army around the Frankish force and seized the spring at Turan, thus blocking the Frankish line of retreat. This maneuver would give Saladin his victory. In the ensuing struggle, the Frankish rearguard was forced to a standstill by continuous attacks, thus halting the whole army on the plateau. The crusaders were thus forced to make camp surrounded by the Muslims. They now had no water nor any hope of receiving supplies or reinforcements.

Behe ad-Din summarizes the situation of the Frankish army:

They were closely beset as in a noose, while still marching on as though being driven to death that they could see before them, convinced of their doom and destruction and themselves aware that the following day they would be visiting their graves.

On the morning of July 4, the crusaders were blinded by smoke from fires that Saladin's forces had set to add to the Frankish army's misery, through which the Muslim cavalry pelted them with 400 loads of arrows that had been brought up during the night. Gerard and Raynald advised Guy to form battle lines and attack, which was done by Guy's brother Amalric. Raymond led the first division with Raymond of Antioch, the son of Bohemund III of Antioch, while Balian and Joscelin III of Edessa formed the rearguard. While this was being arranged, five of Raymond's knights defected to Saladin and told them of the dire situation in the crusader camp.

Thirsty and demoralized, the crusaders broke camp and changed direction for the springs of Hattin, but their ragged approach was attacked by Saladin's army which blocked the route forward and any possible retreat. Count Raymond launched two charges in an attempt to break through to the water supply at the Sea of Galilee. The second of these saw him cut off from the main army and forced to retreat. Most of the crusader infantry had effectively deserted by moving on to the Horns of Hattin. Guy attempted to pitch the tents again to block the Muslim cavalry, but without infantry protection the knights' horses were cut down by Muslim archers and the cavalry was forced to fight on foot. Then they too retreated to the Horns.

Now the crusaders were surrounded and, despite three desperate charges on Saladin's position, were eventually defeated. An eyewitness account of this is given by Saladin's son, al-Afdal. It is quoted by Ibn al-Athir:

When the king of the Franks [Guy] was on the hill with that band, they made a formidable charge against the Muslims facing them, so that they drove them back to my father [Saladin]. I looked towards him and he was overcome by grief and his complexion pale. He took hold of his beard and advanced, crying out "Give the lie to the Devil!" The Muslims rallied, returned to the fight and climbed the hill. When I saw that the Franks withdrew, pursued by the Muslims, I shouted for joy, "We have beaten them!" But the Franks rallied and charged again like the first time and drove the Muslims back to my father. He acted as he had done on the first occasion and the Muslims turned upon the Franks and drove them back to the hill. I again shouted, "We have beaten them!" but my father rounded on me and said, "Be quiet! We have not beaten them until that tent [Guy's] falls." As he was speaking to me, the tent fell. The sultan dismounted, prostrated himself in thanks to God Almighty and wept for joy ['Izz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr, Part 2: "The Years 541-589/1146-1193: The Age of Nur al-Din and Saladin," in The Chronicle of Ibn al- Athīr for the Crusading Period from al-Kāmil fi'l-ta'rīkh (D. S. Richards, trans.), (Ashgate, 2007), pg. 323].

The Muslim armies under Saladin captured or killed the vast majority of the Crusader forces, removing their capability to wage war. As a direct result of the battle, Islamic forces once again became the eminent military power in the Holy Land, reconquering Jerusalem and several other Crusader-held cities [Madden, Thomas, Crusades: The Illustrated History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005)] These Christian defeats prompted the Third Crusade, which began two years after the Battle of Hattin. Ibn 'Aqîl Act I, Signature v - (33)

Born 1040, Baghad

Died 1119

Islamic theologian. Trained in the tenets of the Hanbalî school (see Ahmad ibn Hanbal), the most traditional school of Islamic law, he outraged his teachers by striving to incorporate liberal theological ideas into the tradition. He sought to use reason and logical inquiry to interpret religion, and he was influenced by the teachings of al-Hallâj. In 1066 he was appointed professor at the mosque of al-Mansûr in Baghdad, but persecution by conservative theologians soon led to his retirement, and in 1072 he was forced to retract his beliefs publicly.

[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:

Abu al-Wafa Ali Ibn Aqil ibn Ahmad al-Baghdadi (1040-1119) was an Islamic theologian from Baghdad, Iraq. Trained in the tenets of the Hanbali school ( madhab ), the most traditional school of Islamic law, he outraged his teachers by striving to incorporate liberal theological ideas into the tradition. He sought to use reason and logical inquiry to interpret religion, and was influenced by the teachings of the mystic, and universally respected and accepted saint of Islam, al-Hallaj (d. 922) [Abu al-Mughith ibn Mansur ibn Muhammad al-Hallaj was a Persian Sufi missionary. Claimed to have experienced an ecstatic sense of spiritual oneness with God, declaring, Ana al-haqq (I am Truth, i.e. God), for which he was executed. Claimed a religious authority greater than that of caliphs and religious scholars due to his possession of divine presence. His execution was delayed due to the popular support he received from the Hanbali masses of Baghdad. al-Hallaj himself was a Hanbali, having studied in Wasit (a Hanbali town) and was often seen praying at the grave of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. See Louis Massignon, The passion of al- Hallaj ]. In 1066 he was appointed professor at the mosque of al-Mansur in Baghdad, but persecution by conservative theologians soon led to his retirement, and in 1072 he was forced to retract his beliefs publicly, due to a threat on his life. It would seem probable however, that even after this public recantation, he still had a great admiration for al-Hallaj. Among his works of jurisprudence that have survived are Wadih fi usul al-fiqh and (in part) Kitab al-funun [John L. Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2003)].

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