title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: In 685, Marwan and Ibn Bahdal expelled the Zubayrid governor of Egypt and replaced him with Marwan's son Abd al-Aziz, who would rule the province until his death in 704/05. Another son, Muhammad, was appointed to suppress Zufar's rebellion in the Jazira. Marwan died in April 685 and was succeeded by his eldest son Abd al-Malik. Although Ibn Ziyad attempted to restore the Syrian army of the Sufyanid caliphs, persistent divisions along Qays–Yaman lines contributed to the army's massive rout and Ibn Ziyad's death at the hands of the pro-Alid forces of Mukhtar al-Thaqafi of Kufa at the Battle of Khazir in August 686. The setback delayed Abd al-Malik's attempts to reestablish Umayyad authority in Iraq, while pressures from the Byzantine Empire and raids into Syria by the Byzantines' Mardaite allies compelled him to sign a peace treaty with Byzantium in 689 which substantially increased the Umayyads' annual tribute to the Empire. During his siege of Circesium in 691, Abd al-Malik reconciled with Zufar and the Qays by offering them privileged positions in the Umayyad court and army, signaling a new policy by the caliph and his successors to balance the interests of the Qays and Yaman in the Umayyad state. With his unified army, Abd al-Malik marched against the Zubayrids of Iraq, having already secretly secured the defection of the province's leading tribal chiefs, and defeated Iraq's ruler, Ibn al-Zubayr's brother Mus'ab, at the Battle of Maskin in 691. Afterward, the Umayyad commander al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf besieged Mecca and killed Ibn al-Zubayr in 692, marking the end of the Second Fitna and the reunification of the Caliphate under Abd al-Malik's rule.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Iraq remained politically unstable and the garrisons of Kufa and Basra had become exhausted by warfare with Kharijite rebels. In 694 Abd al-Malik combined both cities as a single province under the governorship of al-Hajjaj, who oversaw the suppression of the Kharijite revolts in Iraq and Iran by 698 and was subsequently given authority over the rest of the eastern Caliphate. Resentment among the Iraqi troops towards al-Hajjaj's methods of governance, particularly his death threats to force participation in the war efforts and his reductions to their stipends, culminated with a mass Iraqi rebellion against the Umayyads in . The leader of the rebels was the Kufan nobleman Ibn al-Ash'ath, grandson of al-Ash'ath ibn Qays. Al-Hajjaj defeated Ibn al-Ash'ath's rebels at the Battle of Dayr al-Jamajim in April. The suppression of the revolt marked the end of the Iraqi "muqātila" as a military force and the beginning of Syrian military domination of Iraq. Iraqi internal divisions, and the utilization of more disciplined Syrian forces by Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj, voided the Iraqis' attempt to reassert power in the province.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: To consolidate Umayyad rule after the Second Fitna, the Marwanids launched a series of centralization, Islamization and Arabization measures. To prevent further rebellions in Iraq, al-Hajjaj founded a permanent Syrian garrison in Wasit, situated between Kufa and Basra, and instituted a more rigorous administration in the province. Power thereafter derived from the Syrian troops, who became Iraq's ruling class, while Iraq's Arab nobility, religious scholars and "mawālī" became their virtual subjects. The surplus from the agriculturally rich Sawad lands was redirected from the "muqātila" to the caliphal treasury in Damascus to pay the Syrian troops in Iraq. The system of military pay established by Umar, which paid stipends to veterans of the earlier Muslim conquests and their descendants, was ended, salaries being restricted to those in active service. The old system was considered a handicap on Abd al-Malik's executive authority and financial ability to reward loyalists in the army. Thus, a professional army was established during Abd al-Malik's reign whose salaries derived from tax proceeds.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: In 693, the Byzantine gold "solidus" was replaced in Syria and Egypt with the dinar. Initially, the new coinage contained depictions of the Caliph as the spiritual leader of the Muslim community and its supreme military commander. This image proved no less acceptable to Muslim officialdom and was replaced in 696 or 697 with image-less coinage inscribed with Qur'anic quotes and other Muslim religious formulas. In 698/99, similar changes were made to the silver dirhams issued by the Muslims in the former Sasanian Persian lands of the eastern Caliphate. Arabic replaced Persian as the language of the "dīwān" in Iraq in 697, Greek in the Syrian "dīwān" in 700, and Greek and Coptic in the Egyptian "dīwān" in 705/06. Arabic ultimately became the sole official language of the Umayyad state, but the transition in faraway provinces, such as Khurasan, did not occur until the 740s. Although the official language was changed, Greek and Persian-speaking bureaucrats who were versed in Arabic kept their posts. According to Gibb, the decrees were the "first step towards the reorganization and unification of the diverse tax-systems in the provinces, and also a step towards a more definitely Muslim administration". Indeed, it formed an important part of the Islamization measures that lent the Umayyad Caliphate "a more ideological and programmatic coloring it had previously lacked", according to Blankinship.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: In 691/92, Abd al-Malik completed the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It was possibly intended as a monument of victory over the Christians that would distinguish Islam's uniqueness within the common Abrahamic setting of Jerusalem, home of the two older Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Christianity. An alternative motive may have been to divert the religious focus of Muslims in the Umayyad realm from the Ka'aba in Zubayrid Mecca (683–692), where the Umayyads were routinely condemned during the Hajj. In Damascus, Abd al-Malik's son and successor al-Walid I () confiscated the cathedral of St. John the Baptist and founded the Great Mosque in its place as a "symbol of the political supremacy and moral prestige of Islam", according to historian Nikita Elisséeff. Noting al-Walid's awareness of architecture's propaganda value, historian Robert Hillenbrand calls the Damascus mosque a "victory monument" intended as a "visible statement of Muslim supremacy and permanence".


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Under al-Walid I the Umayyad Caliphate reached its greatest territorial extent. The war with the Byzantines had resumed under his father after the civil war, with the Umayyads defeating the Byzantines at the Battle of Sebastopolis in 692. The Umayyads launched constant raids against Byzantine Anatolia and Armenia in the following years. By 705, Armenia was annexed by the Caliphate along with the principalities of Caucasian Albania and Iberia, which collectively became the province of Arminiya. In 695–698 the commander Hassan ibn al-Nu'man al-Ghassani restored Umayyad control over Ifriqiya after defeating the Byzantines and Berbers there. Carthage was captured and destroyed in 698, signaling "the final, irretrievable end of Roman power in Africa", according to Kennedy. Kairouan was firmly secured as a launchpad for later conquests, while the port town of Tunis was founded and equipped with an arsenal on Abd al-Malik's orders to establish a strong Arab fleet. Hassan al-Nu'man continued the campaign against the Berbers, defeating them and killing their leader, the warrior queen al-Kahina, between 698 and 703. His successor in Ifriqiya, Musa ibn Nusayr, subjugated the Berbers of the Hawwara, Zenata and Kutama confederations and advanced into the Maghreb (western North Africa), conquering Tangier and Sus in 708/09. Musa's Berber "mawla", Tariq ibn Ziyad, invaded the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) in 711 and within five years most of Hispania was conquered.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Al-Hajjaj managed the eastern expansion from Iraq. His lieutenant governor of Khurasan, Qutayba ibn Muslim, launched numerous campaigns against Transoxiana (Central Asia), which had been a largely impenetrable region for earlier Muslim armies, between 705 and 715. Despite the distance from the Arab garrison towns of Khurasan, the unfavorable terrain and climate and his enemies' numerical superiority, Qutayba, through his persistent raids, gained the surrender of Bukhara in 706–709, Khwarazm and Samarkand in 711–712 and Farghana in 713. He established Arab garrisons and tax administrations in Samarkand and Bukhara and demolished their Zoroastrian fire temples. Both cities developed as future centers of Islamic and Arabic learning. Umayyad suzerainty was secured over the rest of conquered Transoxiana through tributary alliances with local rulers, whose power remained intact.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: From 708/09, al-Hajjaj's nephew Muhammad ibn Qasim conquered northwestern South Asia and established out of this new territory the province of Sind. The massive war spoils netted by the conquests of Transoxiana, Sind and Hispania were comparable to the amounts accrued in the early Muslim conquests during the reign of Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab ().


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Al-Walid I's brother and successor Sulayman () continued his predecessors' militarist policies, but expansion nonetheless mostly ground to a halt during his reign. The deaths of al-Hajjaj in 714 and Qutayba in 715 left the Arab armies in Transoxiana in disarray. For the next twenty-five years, no further eastward conquests were undertaken and the Arabs lost territory. The Tang Chinese defeated the Arabs at the Battle of Aksu in 717, forcing their withdrawal to Tashkent. Meanwhile, in 716, the governor of Khurasan, Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, attempted to conquer the principalities of Jurjan and Tabaristan along the southern Caspian coast. His Khurasani and Iraqi troops were reinforced by Syrians, marking their first deployment to Khurasan, but the Arabs' initial successes were reversed by the local Iranian coalition of Farrukhan the Great. Afterward, the Arabs withdrew in return for a tributary agreement.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: On the Byzantine front, Sulayman took up his predecessor's project to capture Constantinople with increased vigor. His brother Maslama besieged the Byzantine capital from the land, while Umar ibn Hubayra al-Fazari launched a naval campaign against the city. The Byzantines destroyed the Umayyad fleets and defeated Maslama's army, prompting his withdrawal to Syria in 718. The massive losses incurred during the campaign led to a partial retrenchment of Umayyad forces from the captured Byzantine frontier districts, but already in 720, Umayyad raids against Byzantium recommenced. Nevertheless, the goal of conquering Constantinople was effectively abandoned, and the frontier between the two empires stabilized along the line of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountains, over which both sides continued to launch regular raids and counter-raids during the next centuries.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Sulayman was succeeded by his cousin, Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (717–720), whose position among the Umayyad caliphs is somewhat unusual. He is the only Umayyad ruler to have been recognized by subsequent Islamic tradition as a genuine caliph ("khalifa") and not merely as a worldly king ("malik").


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Umar is honoured for his attempt to resolve the fiscal problems attendant upon conversion to Islam. During the Umayyad period, the majority of people living within the caliphate were not Muslim, but Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, or members of other small groups. These religious communities were not forced to convert to Islam but were subject to a tax ("jizyah") which was not imposed upon Muslims. This situation may actually have made the widespread conversion to Islam undesirable from the point of view of state revenue, and there are reports that provincial governors actively discouraged such conversions. It is not clear how Umar attempted to resolve this situation, but the sources portray him as having insisted on like treatment of Arab and non-Arab ("mawali") Muslims, and on the removal of obstacles to the conversion of non-Arabs to Islam.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: After the death of Umar, another son of Abd al-Malik, Yazid II (720–724) became caliph. Yazid is best known for his "iconoclastic edict", which ordered the destruction of Christian images within the territory of the Caliphate. In 720, another major revolt arose in Iraq, this time led by Yazid ibn al-Muhallab.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The final son of Abd al-Malik to become caliph was Hisham (724–43), whose long and eventful reign was above all marked by the curtailment of military expansion. Hisham established his court at Resafa in northern Syria, which was closer to the Byzantine border than Damascus, and resumed hostilities against the Byzantines, which had lapsed following the failure of the last siege of Constantinople. The new campaigns resulted in a number of successful raids into Anatolia, but also in a major defeat (the Battle of Akroinon), and did not lead to any significant territorial expansion.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: From the caliphate's north-western African bases, a series of raids on coastal areas of the Visigothic Kingdom paved the way to the permanent occupation of most of Iberia by the Umayyads (starting in 711), and on into south-eastern Gaul (last stronghold at Narbonne in 759). Hisham's reign witnessed the end of expansion in the west, following the defeat of the Arab army by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in 732. In 739 a major Berber Revolt broke out in North Africa, which was probably the largest military setback in the reign of Caliph Hisham. From it emerged some of the first Muslim states outside the Caliphate. It is also regarded as the beginning of Moroccan independence, as Morocco would never again come under the rule of an eastern Caliph or any other foreign power until the 20th century. It was followed by the collapse of Umayyad authority in al-Andalus. In India, the Umayyad armies were defeated by the south Indian Chalukya dynasty and by the north Indian Pratiharas Dynasty, stagnating further eastward Arab expansion.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: In the Caucasus, the confrontation with the Khazars peaked under Hisham: the Arabs established Derbent as a major military base and launched several invasions of the northern Caucasus, but failed to subdue the nomadic Khazars. The conflict was arduous and bloody, and the Arab army even suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Marj Ardabil in 730. Marwan ibn Muhammad, the future Marwan II, finally ended the war in 737 with a massive invasion that is reported to have reached as far as the Volga, but the Khazars remained unsubdued.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Hisham suffered still worse defeats in the east, where his armies attempted to subdue both Tokharistan, with its centre at Balkh, and Transoxiana, with its centre at Samarkand. Both areas had already been partially conquered but remained difficult to govern. Once again, a particular difficulty concerned the question of the conversion of non-Arabs, especially the Sogdians of Transoxiana. Following the Umayyad defeat in the "Day of Thirst" in 724, Ashras ibn 'Abd Allah al-Sulami, governor of Khurasan, promised tax relief to those Sogdians who converted to Islam but went back on his offer when it proved too popular and threatened to reduce tax revenues.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Discontent among the Khorasani Arabs rose sharply after the losses suffered in the Battle of the Defile in 731. In 734, al-Harith ibn Surayj led a revolt that received broad backing from Arabs and natives alike, capturing Balkh but failing to take Merv. After this defeat, al-Harith's movement seems to have been dissolved. The problem of the rights of non-Arab Muslims would continue to plague the Umayyads.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Hisham was succeeded by Al-Walid II (743–44), the son of Yazid II. Al-Walid is reported to have been more interested in earthly pleasures than in religion, a reputation that may be confirmed by the decoration of the so-called "desert palaces" (including Qusayr Amra and Khirbat al-Mafjar) that have been attributed to him. He quickly attracted the enmity of many, both by executing a number of those who had opposed his accession and by persecuting the Qadariyya.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: In 744, Yazid III, a son of al-Walid I, was proclaimed caliph in Damascus, and his army tracked down and killed al-Walid II. Yazid III has received a certain reputation for piety and may have been sympathetic to the Qadariyya. He died a mere six months into his reign.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Yazid had appointed his brother, Ibrahim, as his successor, but Marwan II (744–50), the grandson of Marwan I, led an army from the northern frontier and entered Damascus in December 744, where he was proclaimed caliph. Marwan immediately moved the capital north to Harran, in present-day Turkey. A rebellion soon broke out in Syria, perhaps due to resentment over the relocation of the capital, and in 746 Marwan razed the walls of Homs and Damascus in retaliation.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Marwan also faced significant opposition from Kharijites in Iraq and Iran, who put forth first Dahhak ibn Qays and then Abu Dulaf as rival caliphs. In 747, Marwan managed to reestablish control of Iraq, but by this time a more serious threat had arisen in Khorasan.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Hashimiyya movement (a sub-sect of the Kaysanites Shia), led by the Abbasid family, overthrew the Umayyad caliphate. The Abbasids were members of the Hashim clan, rivals of the Umayyads, but the word "Hashimiyya" seems to refer specifically to Abu Hashim, a grandson of Ali and son of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya. According to certain traditions, Abu Hashim died in 717 in Humeima in the house of Muhammad ibn Ali, the head of the Abbasid family, and before dying named Muhammad ibn Ali as his successor. This tradition allowed the Abbasids to rally the supporters of the failed revolt of Mukhtar, who had represented themselves as the supporters of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Beginning around 719, Hashimiyya missions began to seek adherents in Khurasan. Their campaign was framed as one of proselytism (dawah). They sought support for a "member of the family" of Muhammad, without making explicit mention of the Abbasids. These missions met with success both among Arabs and non-Arabs (mawali), although the latter may have played a particularly important role in the growth of the movement.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Around 746, Abu Muslim assumed leadership of the Hashimiyya in Khurasan. In 747, he successfully initiated an open revolt against Umayyad rule, which was carried out under the sign of the black flag. He soon established control of Khurasan, expelling its Umayyad governor, Nasr ibn Sayyar, and dispatched an army westwards. Kufa fell to the Hashimiyya in 749, the last Umayyad stronghold in Iraq, Wasit, was placed under siege, and in November of the same year Abul Abbas as-Saffah was recognized as the new caliph in the mosque at Kufa. At this point Marwan mobilized his troops from Harran and advanced toward Iraq. In January 750 the two forces met in the Battle of the Zab, and the Umayyads were defeated. Damascus fell to the Abbasids in April, and in August, Marwan was killed in Egypt. Some Umayyads in Syria continued to resist the takeover. The Umayyad princes Abu Muhammad al-Sufyani, al-Abbas ibn Muhammad, and Hashim ibn Yazid launched revolts in Syria and the Islamic–Byzantine frontier around late 750, but they were defeated.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The victors desecrated the tombs of the Umayyads in Syria, sparing only that of Umar II, and most of the remaining members of the Umayyad family were tracked down and killed. When Abbasids declared amnesty for members of the Umayyad family, eighty gathered to receive pardons, and all were massacred. One grandson of Hisham, Abd al-Rahman I, survived, escaped across North Africa, and established an emirate in Moorish Iberia (Al-Andalus). In a claim unrecognized outside of al-Andalus, he maintained that the Umayyad Caliphate, the true, authentic caliphate, more legitimate than the Abbasids, was continued through him in Córdoba. It was to survive for centuries.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Some Umayyads also survived in Syria, and their descendants would once more attempt to restore their old regime during the Fourth Fitna. Two Umayyads, Abu al-Umaytir al-Sufyani and Maslama ibn Ya'qub, successively seized control of Damascus from 811 to 813, and declared themselves caliphs. However, their rebellions were suppressed.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Previté-Orton argues that the reason for the decline of the Umayyads was the rapid expansion of Islam. During the Umayyad period, mass conversions brought Persians, Berbers, Copts, and Aramaic to Islam. These "mawalis" (clients) were often better educated and more civilised than their Arab overlords. The new converts, on the basis of equality of all Muslims, transformed the political landscape. Previté-Orton also argues that the feud between Syria and Iraq further weakened the empire.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The first four caliphs created a stable administration for the empire, following the practices and administrative institutions of the Byzantine Empire which had ruled the same region previously. These consisted of four main governmental branches: political affairs, military affairs, tax collection, and religious administration. Each of these was further subdivided into more branches, offices, and departments.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Geographically, the empire was divided into several provinces, the borders of which changed numerous times during the Umayyad reign. Each province had a governor appointed by the caliph. The governor was in charge of the religious officials, army leaders, police, and civil administrators in his province. Local expenses were paid for by taxes coming from that province, with the remainder each year being sent to the central government in Damascus. As the central power of the Umayyad rulers waned in the later years of the dynasty, some governors neglected to send the extra tax revenue to Damascus and created great personal fortunes.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: As the empire grew, the number of qualified Arab workers was too small to keep up with the rapid expansion of the empire. Therefore, Muawiya allowed many of the local government workers in conquered provinces to keep their jobs under the new Umayyad government. Thus, much of the local government's work was recorded in Greek, Coptic, and Persian. It was only during the reign of Abd al-Malik that government work began to be regularly recorded in Arabic.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Umayyad army was mainly Arab, with its core consisting of those who had settled in urban Syria and the Arab tribes who originally served in the army of the Eastern Roman Empire in Syria. These were supported by tribes in the Syrian desert and in the frontier with the Byzantines, as well as Christian Syrian tribes. Soldiers were registered with the Army Ministry, the Diwan Al-Jaysh, and were salaried. The army was divided into junds based on regional fortified cities. The Umayyad Syrian forces specialised in close order infantry warfare, and favoured using a kneeling spear wall formation in battle, probably as a result of their encounters with Roman armies. This was radically different from the original Bedouin style of mobile and individualistic fighting.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires relied on money economies before the Muslim conquest, and that system remained in effect during the Umayyad period. Byzantine coinage was used until 658; Byzantine gold coins were still in use until the monetary reforms c.700. In addition to this, the Umayyad government began to mint its own coins in Damascus, which were initially similar to pre-existing coins but evolved in an independent direction. These were the first coins minted by a Muslim government in history. Gold coins were called "dinars" while silver coins were called "dirhams".


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: To assist the Caliph in administration there were six boards at the centre: Diwan al-Kharaj (the Board of Revenue), Diwan al-Rasa'il (the Board of Correspondence), Diwan al-Khatam (the Board of Signet), Diwan al-Barid (the Board of Posts), Diwan al-Qudat (the Board of Justice) and Diwan al-Jund (the Military Board)


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Central Board of Revenue administered the entire finances of the empire. It also imposed and collected taxes and disbursed revenue.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: A regular Board of Correspondence was established under the Umayyads. It issued state missives and circulars to the Central and Provincial Officers. It coordinated the work of all Boards and dealt with all correspondence as the chief secretariat.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: In order to reduce forgery, Diwan al-Khatam (Bureau of Registry), a kind of state chancellery, was instituted by Mu'awiyah. It used to make and preserve a copy of each official document before sealing and despatching the original to its destination. Thus in the course of time a state archive developed in Damascus by the Umayyads under Abd al-Malik. This department survived till the middle of the Abbasid period.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Mu'awiyah introduced the postal service, Abd al-Malik extended it throughout his empire, and Walid made full use of it. Umar bin Abdul-Aziz developed it further by building caravanserais at stages along the Khurasan highway. Relays of horses were used for the conveyance of dispatches between the caliph and his agents and officials posted in the provinces. The main highways were divided into stages of each and each stage had horses, donkeys, or camels ready to carry the post. Primarily the service met the needs of Government officials, but travellers and their important dispatches were also benefited by the system. The postal carriages were also used for the swift transport of troops. They were able to carry fifty to a hundred men at a time. Under Governor Yusuf bin Umar, the postal department of Iraq costs 4,000,000 dirhams a year.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: In the early period of Islam, justice was administered by Muhammad and the orthodox Caliphs in person. After the expansion of the Islamic State, Umar al-Faruq had to separate the judiciary from the general administration and appointed the first "qadi" in Egypt as early as AD 643/23 AH. After 661, a series of judges served in Egypt during the caliphates of Hisham and Walid II.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Diwan of Umar, assigning annuities to all Arabs and to the Muslim soldiers of other races, underwent a change in the hands of the Umayyads. The Umayyads meddled with the register and the recipients regarded pensions as the subsistence allowance even without being in active service. Hisham reformed it and paid only to those who participated in the battle.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: On the pattern of the Byzantine system, the Umayyads reformed their army organization in general and divided it into five corps: the centre, two wings, vanguards, and rearguards, following the same formation while on the march or on a battlefield. Marwan II (740–50) abandoned the old division and introduced the Kurdus (cohort), a small compact body.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Umayyad troops were divided into three divisions: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Arab troops were dressed and armed in Greek fashion. The Umayyad cavalry used plain and round saddles. The artillery used the arradah (ballista), the manjaniq (mangonel), and the dabbabah or kabsh (battering ram). The heavy engines, siege machines, and baggage were carried on camels behind the army.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Muslim Arabs were at the top of the society and saw it as their duty to rule over the conquered areas. The Arab Muslims held themselves in higher esteem than Muslim non-Arabs and generally did not mix with other Muslims.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: As Islam spread, more and more of the Muslim population consisted of non-Arabs. This caused social unrest, as the new converts were not given the same rights as Muslim Arabs. Also, as conversions increased, tax revenues (peasant tax) from non-Muslims decreased to dangerous lows. These issues continued to worsen until they helped cause the Abbasid Revolt in the 740s.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Non-Muslim groups in the Umayyad Caliphate, which included Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and pagans, were called dhimmis. They were given a legally protected status as second-class citizens as long as they accepted and acknowledged the political supremacy of the ruling Muslims, i.e. paid a tax, known as jizya, which the Muslims did not have to pay, who would instead pay the zakat tax. If they converted to Islam they would cease paying jizya and would instead pay zakat.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Although the Umayyads were harsh when it came to defeating their Zoroastrian adversaries, they did offer protection and relative religious tolerance to the Zoroastrians who accepted their authority. As a matter of fact, Umar II was reported to have said in one of his letters commanding not to "destroy a synagogue or a church or temple of fire worshippers (meaning the Zoroastrians) as long as they have reconciled with and agreed upon with the Muslims". Fred Donner says that Zoroastrians in the northern parts of Iran were hardly penetrated by the "believers", winning virtually complete autonomy in-return for tribute-tax or jizyah. Donner adds "Zoroastrians continued to exist in large numbers in northern and western Iran and elsewhere for centuries after the rise of Islam, and indeed, much of the canon of Zoroastrian religious texts was elaborated and written down during the Islamic period."


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Christians and Jews still continued to produce great theological thinkers within their communities, but as time wore on, many of the intellectuals converted to Islam, leading to a lack of great thinkers in the non-Muslim communities. Important Christian writers from the Umayyad period include the theologian John of Damascus, bishop Cosmas of Maiuma, Pope Benjamin I of Alexandria and Isaac of Nineveh.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Although non-Muslims could not hold the highest public offices in the empire, they held many bureaucratic positions within the government. An important example of Christian employment in the Umayyad government is that of Sarjun ibn Mansur. He was a Melkite Christian official of the early Umayyad Caliphate. The son of a prominent Byzantine official of Damascus, he was a favourite of the early Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiya I and Yazid I, and served as the head of the fiscal administration for Syria from the mid-7th century until the year 700, when Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan dismissed him as part of his efforts to Arabicize the administration of the Caliphate. According to the Muslim historians al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari, Sarjun was a "mawla" of the first Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiya I (), serving as his "secretary and the person in charge of his business". The hagiographies, although less reliable, also assign to him a role in the administration, even as "ruler" ("archon" or even "amir"), of Damascus and its environs, where he was responsible for collecting the revenue. In this capacity, he is attested in later collections of source material such as that of al-Mas'udi. Sarjun ibn Mansur was replaced by Sulayman ibn Sa'd al-Khushani, another Christian.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Muawiya's marriage to Maysun bint Bahdal (Yazid's mother) was politically motivated, as she was the daughter of the chief of the Kalb tribe, which was a large Syriac Orthodox Christian Arab tribe in Syria. The Kalb tribe had remained largely neutral when the Muslims first went into Syria. After the plague that killed much of the Muslim army in Syria, by marrying Maysun, Muawiyah used the Syriac Orthodox Christians against the Byzantines.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Tom Holland writes that Christians, Jews, Samaritans and Manichaeans were all treated well by Muawiyah. Muawiyah even restored Edessa's cathedral after it had been toppled by an earthquake. Holland also writes that, "Savagely though Muawiyah prosecuted his wars against the Romans, yet his subjects, no longer trampled by rival armies, no longer divided by hostile watchtowers, knew only peace at last. Justice flourished in his time, and there was great peace in the regions under his control. He allowed everyone to live as they wanted."


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Umayyad caliphate was marked both by territorial expansion and by the administrative and cultural problems that such expansion created. Despite some notable exceptions, the Umayyads tended to favor the rights of the old Arab families, and in particular their own, over those of newly converted Muslims (mawali). Therefore, they held to a less universalist conception of Islam than did many of their rivals. As G.R. Hawting has written, "Islam was in fact regarded as the property of the conquering aristocracy."


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: During the period of the Umayyads, Arabic became the administrative language and the process of Arabization was initiated in the Levant, Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Iberia. State documents and currency were issued in Arabic. Mass conversions also created a growing population of Muslims in the territory of the Caliphate.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: According to one common view, the Umayyads transformed the caliphate from a religious institution (during the Rashidun caliphate) to a dynastic one. However, the Umayyad caliphs do seem to have understood themselves as the representatives of God on earth, and to have been responsible for the "definition and elaboration of God's ordinances, or in other words the definition or elaboration of Islamic law."


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The Umayyads have met with a largely negative reception from later Islamic historians, who have accused them of promoting a kingship ("mulk", a term with connotations of tyranny) instead of a true caliphate ("khilafa"). In this respect it is notable that the Umayyad caliphs referred to themselves not as "khalifat rasul Allah" ("successor of the messenger of God", the title preferred by the tradition), but rather as "khalifat Allah" ("deputy of God"). The distinction seems to indicate that the Umayyads "regarded themselves as God's representatives at the head of the community and saw no need to share their religious power with, or delegate it to, the emergent class of religious scholars." In fact, it was precisely this class of scholars, based largely in Iraq, that was responsible for collecting and recording the traditions that form the primary source material for the history of the Umayyad period. In reconstructing this history, therefore, it is necessary to rely mainly on sources, such as the histories of Tabari and Baladhuri, that were written in the Abbasid court at Baghdad.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Modern Arab nationalism regards the period of the Umayyads as part of the Arab Golden Age which it sought to emulate and restore.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: This is particularly true of Syrian nationalists and the present-day state of Syria, centered like that of the Umayyads on Damascus. The Umayyad banners were white, after the banner of Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan; it is now one of the four Pan-Arab colours which appear in various combinations on the flags of most Arab countries.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Throughout the Levant, Egypt and North Africa, the Umayyads constructed grand congregational mosques and desert palaces, as well as various garrison cities ("amsar") to fortify their frontiers such as Fustat, Kairouan, Kufa, Basra and Mansura. Many of these buildings feature Byzantine stylistic and architectural features, such as Roman mosaics and Corinthian columns. Their most famous constructions include the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem and the Umayyad Mosque at Damascus, and other constructions include Hisham's Palace, Qusayr' Amra, the Great Mosque of Kairouan and the Great Mosque of Aleppo. Some of these buildings, such as the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, reflect the diversity of the empire, as thousands of Greek, Persian, Coptic, Indian and Persian craftsmen were conscripted to construct them. The later Emirate of Cordoba (an offshoot of the Umayyad dynasty in exile) established many endearing architectural projects in the Iberian Peninsula such as the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba and Medina Azahara, which influenced the architectural styles during the Middle Ages.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Many Muslims criticized the Umayyads for having too many non-Muslim, former Roman administrators in their government, "e.g.", St. John of Damascus. As the Muslims took over cities, they left the people's political representatives, the Roman tax collectors, and the administrators in the office. The taxes to the central government were calculated and negotiated by the people's political representatives. Both the central and local governments were compensated for the services each provided. Many Christian cities used some of the taxes to maintain their churches and run their own organizations. Later, the Umayyads were criticized by some Muslims for not reducing the taxes of the people who converted to Islam.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Later, when Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz came to power, he reduced these taxes. He is therefore praised as one of the greatest Muslim rulers after the four Rightly Guided Caliphs. Imam Abu Muhammad Abdullah ibn Abdul Hakam who lived in 829 and wrote a biography on Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz stated that the reduction in these taxes stimulated the economy and created wealth but it also reduced the government's budget, including, eventually, the defence budget.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The only Umayyad ruler who is unanimously praised by Sunni sources for his devout piety and justice is Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz. In his efforts to spread Islam, he established liberties for the "Mawali" by abolishing the jizya tax for converts to Islam. Imam Abu Muhammad Abdullah ibn Abdul Hakam stated that Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz also stopped the personal allowance offered to his relatives, stating that he could only give them an allowance if he gave an allowance to everyone else in the empire. After Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz was poisoned in 720, successive governments tried to reverse Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz's tax policies, but rebellion resulted.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The negative view of the Umayyads held by Shias is briefly expressed in the Shi'a book "Sulh al-Hasan". According to Shia hadiths, which are not considered authentic by Sunnis, Ali described them as the worst Fitna. In Shia sources, the Umayyad Caliphate is widely described as "tyrannical, anti-Islamic and godless". Shias point out that the founder of the dynasty, Muawiyah, declared himself a caliph in 657 and went to war against Muhammad's son-in-law and cousin, the ruling caliph Ali, clashing at the Battle of Siffin. Muawiyah also declared his son, Yazid, as his successor in breach of a treaty with Hassan, Muhammad's grandson. Another of Muhammad's grandsons, Husayn ibn Ali, would be killed by Yazid in the Battle of Karbala. Further Shia Imams, Ali ibn Husayn Zayn al-Abidin would be killed at the hands of ruling Umayyad caliphs.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Asked for an explanation of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation (12:3), `Abdu'l-Bahá suggests in Some Answered Questions that the "great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads," refers to the Umayyad caliphs who "rose against the religion of Prophet Muhammad and against the reality of Ali".


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The seven heads of the dragon are symbolic of the seven provinces of the lands dominated by the Umayyads: Damascus, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Africa, Andalusia, and Transoxiana. The ten horns represent the ten names of the leaders of the Umayyad dynasty: Abu Sufyan, Muawiya, Yazid, Marwan, Abd al-Malik, Walid, Sulayman, Umar, Hisham, and Ibrahim. Some names were re-used, as in the case of Yazid II and Yazid III, which were not accounted for in this interpretation.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The book "Al Muwatta", by Imam Malik, was written in the early Abbasid period in Medina. It does not contain any anti-Umayyad content because it was more concerned with what the Quran and what Muhammad said and was not a history book on the Umayyads.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Even the earliest pro-Shia accounts of al-Masudi are more balanced. Al-Masudi's "Ibn Hisham" is the earliest Shia account of Muawiyah. He recounted that Muawiyah spent a great deal of time in prayer, in spite of the burden of managing a large empire.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: Books written in the early Abbasid period like al-Baladhuri's "The Origins of the Islamic State" provide a more accurate and balanced history. Ibn Hisham also wrote about these events.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: After killing off most of the Umayyads and destroying the graves of the Umayyad rulers apart from Muawiyah and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, the history books were written during the later Abbasid period are more anti-Umayyad. The Abbasids justified their rule by saying that their ancestor Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib was a cousin of Muhammad.


title: Umayyad Caliphate

text: The books written later in the Abbasid period in Iran are more anti-Umayyad. Iran was Sunni at the time. There was much anti-Arab feeling in Iran after the fall of the Persian empire. This anti-Arab feeling also influenced the books on Islamic history. "Al-Tabri" was also written in Iran during that period. "Al-Tabri" was a huge collection, preserving everything the compiler could find for future generations to codify and to judge whether the histories were true or false.


title: DEFCON

text: The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and unified and specified combatant commands. It prescribes five graduated levels of readiness (or states of alert) for the U.S. military. It increases in severity from DEFCON 5 (least severe) to DEFCON 1 (most severe) to match varying military situations, with DEFCON 1 signalling the outbreak of nuclear warfare.


title: DEFCON

text: DEFCONs are a subsystem of a series of Alert Conditions, or LERTCONs, which also include Emergency Conditions (EMERGCONs).


title: DEFCON

text: The DEFCON level is controlled primarily by the U.S. president and the U.S. Secretary of Defense through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combatant Commanders; each level defines specific security, activation and response scenarios for the personnel in question.


title: DEFCON

text: Different branches of the U.S. Armed Forces (i.e. U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Space Force) and different bases or command groups can be activated at different defense conditions. According to "Air & Space/Smithsonian", , the U.S. DEFCON level has never been more severe than DEFCON 3. The DEFCON 2 levels in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and 1991 Gulf War applied only to the U.S.


title: DEFCON

text: DEFCONs should not be confused with similar systems used by the U.S. military, such as Force Protection Conditions (FPCONS), Readiness Conditions (REDCONS), Information Operations Condition (INFOCON) and its future replacement Cyber Operations Condition (CYBERCON), and Watch Conditions (WATCHCONS), or the former Homeland Security Advisory System used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.


title: DEFCON

text: Defense readiness conditions vary between many commands and have changed over time, and the United States Department of Defense uses exercise terms when referring to the DEFCON levels during exercises. This is to preclude the possibility of confusing exercise commands with actual operational commands. On January 12, 1966, NORAD "proposed the adoption of the readiness conditions of the JCS system", and information about the levels was declassified in 2006:


title: DEFCON

text: After NORAD was created, the command used different readiness levels (Normal, Increased, Maximum) subdivided into eight conditions, e.g., the "Maximum Readiness" level had two conditions "Air Defense Readiness" and "Air Defense Emergency". In October 1959, the JCS Chairman informed NORAD "that Canada and the U.S. had signed an agreement on increasing the operational readiness of NORAD forces during periods of international tension." After the agreement became effective on October 2, 1959, the JCS defined a system with DEFCONs in November 1959 for the military commands. The initial DEFCON system had "Alpha" and "Bravo" conditions (under DEFCON 3) and Charlie/Delta under DEFCON 4, plus an "Emergency" level higher than DEFCON 1 with two conditions: "Defense Emergency" and the highest, "Air Defense Emergency" ("Hot Box" and "Big Noise" for exercises).


title: DEFCON

text: During the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 16–28, 1962, the U.S. Armed Forces (with the exception of United States Army Europe (USAREUR)) were ordered to DEFCON 3. On October 24, Strategic Air Command (SAC) was ordered to DEFCON 2, while the rest of the U.S. Armed Forces remained at DEFCON 3. SAC remained at DEFCON 2 until November 15.


title: DEFCON

text: On January 15, 1991, the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared DEFCON 2 in the opening phase of Operation Desert Storm during the Persian Gulf War.


title: DEFCON

text: On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a joint attack on Israel resulting in the Yom Kippur War. The United States became concerned that the Soviet Union might intervene, and on October 25, US forces, including Strategic Air Command, Continental Air Defense Command, European Command and the Sixth Fleet, were placed at DEFCON 3.


title: DEFCON

text: According to documents declassified in 2016, the move to DEFCON 3 was motivated by CIA reports indicating that the Soviet Union had sent a ship to Egypt carrying nuclear weapons along with two other amphibious vessels. Soviet troops never landed and the declassified documents did not disclose the fate of the ship and its cargo.


title: DEFCON

text: Over the following days, the various forces reverted to normal status with the Sixth Fleet standing down on November 17.


title: DEFCON

text: Following the axe murder incident at Panmunjom on August 18, 1976, readiness levels for US forces in South Korea were increased to DEFCON 3, where they remained throughout Operation Paul Bunyan.


title: DEFCON

text: During the September 11 attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the DEFCON level be increased to 3, and also a stand-by for a possible increase to DEFCON 2. It was lowered to DEFCON 4 on September 14.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South America's southeastern coast. "Buenos Aires" can be translated as "fair winds" or "good airs", but the former was the meaning intended by the founders in the 16th century, by the use of the original name "Real de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre", named after the Madonna of Bonaria in Sardinia, Italy. Buenos Aires is classified as an alpha global city, according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) 2020 ranking.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city of Buenos Aires is neither part of Buenos Aires Province nor the Province's capital; rather, it is an autonomous district. In 1880, after decades of political infighting, Buenos Aires was federalized and removed from Buenos Aires Province. The city limits were enlarged to include the towns of Belgrano and Flores; both are now neighborhoods of the city. The 1994 constitutional amendment granted the city autonomy, hence its formal name of Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Its citizens first elected a Chief of Government in 1996; previously, the Mayor was directly appointed by the President of Argentina.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Greater Buenos Aires conurbation, which also includes several Buenos Aires Province districts, constitutes the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas, with a population of around 15.6 million. It is also the second largest city south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The quality of life in Buenos Aires was ranked 91st in the world in 2018, being one of the best in Latin America. In 2012, it was the most visited city in South America, and the second-most visited city of Latin America.


title: Buenos Aires

text: It is known for its preserved eclectic European architecture and rich cultural life. It is a multicultural city that is home to multiple ethnic and religious groups, contributing to its culture as well as to the dialect spoken in the city and in some other parts of the country. This is because since the 19th century, the city, and the country in general, has been a major recipient of millions of immigrants from all over the world, making it a melting pot where several ethnic groups live together. Thus, Buenos Aires is considered one of the most diverse cities of the Americas. Buenos Aires held the 1st FIBA World Championship in 1950 and 11th FIBA World Championship in 1990, the 1st Pan American Games in 1951, was the site of two venues in the 1978 FIFA World Cup and one in the 1982 FIVB Men's World Championship. Most recently, Buenos Aires had a venue in the 2001 FIFA World Youth Championship and in the 2002 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship, hosted the 125th IOC Session in 2013, the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics and the 2018 G20 summit.


title: Buenos Aires

text: It is recorded under the Aragonese's archives that Catalan missionaries and Jesuits arriving in Cagliari (Sardinia) under the Crown of Aragon, after its capture from the Pisans in 1324 established their headquarters on top of a hill that overlooked the city. The hill was known to them as "Bonaira" (or "Bonaria" in Sardinian language), as it was free of the foul smell prevalent in the old city (the castle area), which is adjacent to swampland. During the Cagliari's siege, the Catalans built a sanctuary to the Virgin Mary on top of the hill. In 1335, King Alfonso the Gentle donated the church to the Mercedarians, who built an abbey that stands to this day. In the years after that, a story circulated, claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary was retrieved from the sea after it miraculously helped to calm a storm in the Mediterranean Sea. The statue was placed in the abbey. Spanish sailors, especially Andalusians, venerated this image and frequently invoked the "Fair Winds" to aid them in their navigation and prevent shipwrecks. A sanctuary to the Virgin of Buen Ayre would be later erected in Seville.


title: Buenos Aires

text: In the first foundation of Buenos Aires, Spanish sailors arrived thankfully in the Río de la Plata by the blessings of the "Santa Maria de los Buenos Aires", the "Holy Virgin Mary of the Good Winds" who was said to have given them the good winds to reach the coast of what is today the modern city of Buenos Aires. Pedro de Mendoza called the city "Holy Mary of the Fair Winds", a name suggested by the chaplain of Mendoza's expedition – a devotee of the Virgin of Buen Ayre – after the "Madonna" of Bonaria from Sardinia (which is still to this day the patroness of the Mediterranean island). Mendoza's settlement soon came under attack by indigenous people, and was abandoned in 1541.


title: Buenos Aires

text: For many years, the name was attributed to a Sancho del Campo, who is said to have exclaimed: "How fair are the winds of this land!", as he arrived. But in 1882, after conducting extensive research in Spanish archives, Argentine merchant Eduardo Madero ultimately concluded that the name was indeed closely linked with the devotion of the sailors to Our Lady of Buen Ayre. A second (and permanent) settlement was established in 1580 by Juan de Garay, who sailed down the Paraná River from Asunción (now the capital of Paraguay). Garay preserved the name originally chosen by Mendoza, calling the city "Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María del Buen Aire" ("City of the Most Holy Trinity and Port of Saint Mary of the Fair Winds"). The short form that eventually became the city's name, "Buenos Aires", became commonly used during the 17th century.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The usual abbreviation for Buenos Aires in Spanish is Bs.As. It is common as well to refer to it as "B.A." or "BA". When referring specifically to the autonomous city, it is very common to colloquially call it "Capital" in Spanish. Since the autonomy obtained in 1994, it has been called "CABA" (per "Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires", Autonomous City of Buenos Aires).


title: Buenos Aires

text: In 1516, navigator and explorer Juan Díaz de Solís, navigating in the name of Spain, was the first European to reach the Río de la Plata. His expedition was cut short when he was killed during an attack by the native Charrúa tribe in what is now Uruguay. The city of Buenos Aires was first established as "Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre" (literally "City of Our Lady Saint Mary of the Fair Winds") after Our Lady of Bonaria (Patroness Saint of Sardinia) on 2 February 1536 by a Spanish expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza. The settlement founded by Mendoza was located in what is today the San Telmo district of Buenos Aires, south of the city center.


title: Buenos Aires

text: More attacks by the indigenous people forced the settlers away, and in 1542, the site was thusly abandoned. A second (and permanent) settlement was established on 11 June 1580 by Juan de Garay, who arrived by sailing down the Paraná River from Asunción (now the capital of Paraguay). He dubbed the settlement "Santísima Trinidad" and its port became "Puerto de Santa María de los Buenos Aires."


title: Buenos Aires

text: From its earliest days, Buenos Aires depended primarily on trade. During most of the 17th century, Spanish ships were menaced by pirates, so they developed a complex system where ships with military protection were dispatched to Central America in a convoy from Seville (the only port allowed to trade with the colonies) to Lima, Peru, and from it to the inner cities of the viceroyalty. Because of this, products took a very long time to arrive in Buenos Aires, and the taxes generated by the transport made them prohibitive. This scheme frustrated the traders of Buenos Aires, and a thriving informal yet accepted by the authorities contraband industry developed inside the colonies and with the Portuguese. This also instilled a deep resentment among "porteños" towards the Spanish authorities.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Sensing these feelings, Charles III of Spain progressively eased the trade restrictions before finally declaring Buenos Aires an open port in the late 18th century. The capture of Portobelo in Panama by British forces also fueled the need to foster commerce via the Atlantic route, to the detriment of Lima-based trade. One of his rulings was to split a region from the Viceroyalty of Perú and create instead the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, with Buenos Aires as the capital. However, Charles's placating actions did not have the desired effect, and the "porteños", some of them versed in the ideology of the French Revolution, instead became even more convinced of the need for independence from Spain.


title: Buenos Aires

text: During the British invasions of the Río de la Plata, British forces attacked Buenos Aires twice. In 1806 the British successfully invaded Buenos Aires, but an army from Montevideo led by Santiago de Liniers defeated them. In the brief period of British rule, the viceroy Rafael Sobremonte managed to escape to Córdoba and designated this city as capital. Buenos Aires became the capital again after its recapture by Argentine forces, but Sobremonte could not resume his duties as viceroy. Santiago de Liniers, chosen as new viceroy, prepared the city against a possible new British attack and repelled a second invasion by Britain in 1807. The militarization generated in society changed the balance of power favorably for the criollos (in contrast to peninsulars), as well as the development of the Peninsular War in Spain.


title: Buenos Aires

text: An attempt by the peninsular merchant Martín de Álzaga to remove Liniers and replace him with a Junta was defeated by the criollo armies. However, by 1810 it would be those same armies who would support a new revolutionary attempt, successfully removing the new viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros. This is known as the May Revolution, which is now celebrated as a national holiday. This event started the Argentine War of Independence, and many armies left Buenos Aires to fight the diverse strongholds of royalist resistance, with varying levels of success. The government was held first by two Juntas of many members, then by two triumvirates, and finally by a unipersonal office, the Supreme Director. Formal independence from Spain was declared in 1816, at the Congress of Tucumán. Buenos Aires managed to endure the whole Spanish American wars of independence without falling again under royalist rule.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Historically, Buenos Aires has been Argentina's main venue of liberal, free-trading, and foreign ideas. In contrast, many of the provinces, especially those to the city's northwest, advocated a more nationalistic and Catholic approach to political and social issues. In fact, much of the internal tension in Argentina's history, starting with the centralist-federalist conflicts of the 19th century, can be traced back to these contrasting views. In the months immediately following said "May Revolution", Buenos Aires sent a number of military envoys to the provinces with the intention of obtaining their approval. Instead, the enterprise fueled tensions between the capital and the provinces; many of these missions ended in violent clashes.


title: Buenos Aires

text: In the 19th century the city was blockaded twice by naval forces: by the French from 1838 to 1840, and later by an Anglo-French expedition from 1845 to 1848. Both blockades failed to bring the Argentine government to the negotiating table, and the foreign powers eventually desisted from their demands.


title: Buenos Aires

text: During most of the 19th century, the political status of the city remained a sensitive subject. It was already the capital of Buenos Aires Province, and between 1853 and 1860 it was the capital of the seceded State of Buenos Aires. The issue was fought out more than once on the battlefield, until the matter was finally settled in 1880 when the city was federalized and became the seat of government, with its mayor appointed by the president. The Casa Rosada became the seat of the president.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Health conditions in poor areas were appalling, with high rates of tuberculosis. Contemporaneous public health physicians and politicians typically blamed both the poor themselves and their ramshackle tenement houses (conventillos) for the spread of the dreaded disease. People ignored public-health campaigns to limit the spread of contagious diseases, such as the prohibition of spitting on the streets, the strict guidelines to care for infants and young children, and quarantines that separated families from ill loved ones.


title: Buenos Aires

text: In addition to the wealth generated by customs duties and Argentine foreign trade in general, as well as the existence of fertile pampas, railroad development in the second half of the 19th century increased the economic power of Buenos Aires as raw materials flowed into its factories. A leading destination for immigrants from Europe, particularly Italy and Spain, from 1880 to 1930, Buenos Aires became a multicultural city that ranked itself alongside the major European capitals. During this time, the Colón Theater became one of the world's top opera venues, and the city became the regional capital of radio, television, cinema, and theater. The city's main avenues were built during those years, and the dawn of the 20th century saw the construction of South America's tallest buildings and its first underground system. A second construction boom, from 1945 to 1980, reshaped downtown and much of the city.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires also attracted migrants from Argentina's provinces and neighboring countries. Shanty towns ("villas miseria") started growing around the city's industrial areas during the 1930s, leading to pervasive social problems and social contrasts with the largely upwardly-mobile Buenos Aires population. These laborers became the political base of Peronism, which emerged in Buenos Aires during the pivotal demonstration of 17 October 1945, at the Plaza de Mayo. Industrial workers of the Greater Buenos Aires industrial belt have been Peronism's main support base ever since, and Plaza de Mayo became the site for demonstrations and many of the country's political events; on 16 June 1955, however, a splinter faction of the Navy bombed the Plaza de Mayo area, killing 364 civilians (see "Bombing of Plaza de Mayo"). This was the only time the city was attacked from the air, and the event was followed by a military uprising which deposed President Perón, three months later (see "Revolución Libertadora").


title: Buenos Aires

text: In the 1970s the city suffered from the fighting between left-wing revolutionary movements (Montoneros, ERP and F.A.R.) and the right-wing paramilitary group Triple A, supported by Isabel Perón, who became president of Argentina in 1974 after Juan Perón's death.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The March 1976 coup, led by General Jorge Videla, only escalated this conflict; the "Dirty War" resulted in 30,000 "desaparecidos" (people kidnapped and killed by the military during the years of the junta). The silent marches of their mothers (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) are a well-known image of Argentines' suffering during those times. The dictatorship's appointed mayor, Osvaldo Cacciatore, also drew up plans for a network of freeways intended to relieve the city's acute traffic gridlock. The plan, however, called for a seemingly indiscriminate razing of residential areas and, though only three of the eight planned were put up at the time, they were mostly obtrusive raised freeways that continue to blight a number of formerly comfortable neighborhoods to this day.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city was visited by Pope John Paul II twice, firstly in 1982 and again in 1987; on these occasions gathered some of the largest crowds in the city's history. The return of democracy in 1983 coincided with a cultural revival, and the 1990s saw an economic revival, particularly in the construction and financial sectors.


title: Buenos Aires

text: On 17 March 1992, a bomb exploded in the Israeli Embassy, killing 29 and injuring 242. Another explosion, on 18 July 1994, destroyed a building housing several Jewish organizations, killing 85 and injuring many more, these incidents marked the beginning of Middle Eastern terrorism to South America. Following a 1993 agreement, the Argentine Constitution was amended to give Buenos Aires autonomy and rescinding, among other things, the president's right to appoint the city's mayor (as had been the case since 1880). On 30 June 1996, voters in Buenos Aires chose their first elected mayor, Jefe de Gobierno.


title: Buenos Aires

text: In 1996, following the 1994 reform of the Argentine Constitution, the city held its first mayoral elections under the new statutes, with the mayor's title formally changed to "Head of Government". The winner was Fernando de la Rúa, who would later become President of Argentina from 1999 to 2001.


title: Buenos Aires

text: De la Rúa's successor, Aníbal Ibarra, won two popular elections, but was impeached (and ultimately deposed on 6 March 2006) as a result of the fire at the República Cromagnon nightclub. In the meantime, Jorge Telerman, who had been the acting mayor, was invested with the office. In the 2007 elections, Mauricio Macri of the Republican Proposal (PRO) party won the second-round of voting over Daniel Filmus of the Frente para la Victoria (FPV) party, taking office on 9 December 2007. In 2011, the elections went to a second round with 60.96 percent of the vote for PRO, compared to 39.04 percent for FPV, thus ensuring Macri's reelection as mayor of the city with María Eugenia Vidal as deputy mayor.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The 2015 elections were the first to use an electronic voting system in the city, similar to the one used in Salta Province. In these elections held on 5 July 2015, Macri stepped down as mayor and pursue his presidential bid and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta took his place as the mayoral candidate for PRO. In the first round of voting, FPV's Mariano Recalde obtained 21.78% of the vote, while Martín Lousteau of the ECO party obtained 25.59% and Larreta obtained 45.55%, meaning that the elections went to a second round since PRO was unable to secure the majority required for victory. The second round was held on 19 July 2015 and Larreta obtained 51.6% of the vote, followed closely by Lousteau with 48.4%, thus, PRO won the elections for a third term with Larreta as mayor and Diego Santilli as deputy. In these elections, PRO was stronger in wealthier northern Buenos Aires, while ECO was stronger in the southern, poorer neighborhoods of the city.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city of Buenos Aires lies in the pampa region, with the exception of some areas such as the Buenos Aires Ecological Reserve, the Boca Juniors (football club)'s "sports city", Jorge Newbery Airport, the Puerto Madero neighborhood and the main port itself; these were all built on reclaimed land along the coasts of the Rio de la Plata (the world's widest river).


title: Buenos Aires

text: The region was formerly crossed by different streams and lagoons, some of which were refilled and others tubed. Among the most important streams are the Maldonado, Vega, Medrano, Cildañez, and White. In 1908, as floods were damaging the city's infrastructure, many streams were channeled and rectified; furthermore, starting in 1919, most streams were enclosed. Most notably, the Maldonado was tubed in 1954; it currently runs below Juan B. Justo Avenue.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires has over 250 parks and green spaces, the largest concentration of which are on the city's eastern side in the neighborhoods of Puerto Madero, Recoleta, Palermo, and Belgrano. Some of the most important are:


title: Buenos Aires

text: Under the Köppen climate classification, Buenos Aires has a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa") with four distinct seasons. As a result of maritime influences from the adjoining Atlantic Ocean, the climate is temperate with extreme temperatures being rare. Because the city is located in an area where the Pampero and Sudestada winds pass by, the weather is variable due to these contrasting air masses.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Summers are hot and humid. The warmest month is January, with a daily average of . Heat waves are common during summers. However, most heat waves are of short duration (less than a week) and are followed by the passage of the cold, dry Pampero wind which brings violent and intense thunderstorms followed by cooler temperatures. The highest temperature ever recorded was on 29 January 1957. In January 2022, a heatwave caused power grid failure in parts of Buenos Aires metropolitan area affecting more than 700,000 households.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Winters are cool with mild temperatures during the day and chilly nights. Highs during the season average while lows average . Relative humidity averages in the upper 70s%, which means the city is noted for moderate-to-heavy fogs during autumn and winter. July is the coolest month, with an average temperature of . Cold spells originating from Antarctica occur almost every year, and can persist for several days. Occasionally, warm air masses from the north bring warmer temperatures. The lowest temperature ever recorded in central Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Central Observatory) was on 9 July 1918. Snow is very rare in the city: the last snowfall occurred on 9 July 2007 when, during the coldest winter in Argentina in almost 30 years, severe snowfalls and blizzards hit the country. It was the first major snowfall in the city in 89 years.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Spring and autumn are characterized by changeable weather conditions. Cold air from the south can bring cooler temperatures while hot humid air from the north brings hot temperatures.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city receives of precipitation per year. Because of its geomorphology along with an inadequate drainage network, the city is highly vulnerable to flooding during periods of heavy rainfall.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Since the adoption of the city's Constitution in 1996, Buenos Aires has counted with a democratically elected executive; Article 61 of the Constitution of the states that ""Suffrage is free, equal, secret, universal, compulsory and non-accumulative. Resident aliens enjoy this same right, with its corresponding obligations, on equal terms with Argentine citizens registered in the district, under the terms established by law"." The executive power is vested on the Chief of Government (), who is elected alongside a Deputy Chief of Government. In analogous fashion to the Vice President of Argentina, the Deputy Chief of Government presides over the city's legislative body, the City Legislature.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Chief of Government and the Legislature are both elected for four-year terms; half of the Legislature's members are renewed every two years. Elections use the D'Hondt method of proportional representation. The judicial branch comprises the Supreme Court of Justice ("Tribunal Superior de Justicia"), the Council of Magistracy ("Consejo de la Magistratura"), the Public Ministry, and other city courts.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Legally, the city has less autonomy than the Provinces. In June 1996, shortly before the city's first Executive elections were held, the Argentine National Congress issued the National Law 24.588 (known as Ley Cafiero, after the Senator who advanced the project) by which the authority over the 25,000-strong Argentine Federal Police and the responsibility over the federal institutions residing at the city (e.g., National Supreme Court of Justice buildings) would not be transferred from the National Government to the Autonomous City Government until a new consensus could be reached at the National Congress. Furthermore, it declared that the Port of Buenos Aires, along with some other places, would remain under constituted federal authorities. , the deployment of the Metropolitan Police of Buenos Aires is ongoing.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Beginning in 2007, the city has embarked on a new decentralization scheme, creating new Communes ("comunas") which are to be managed by elected committees of seven members each. Buenos Aires is represented in the Argentine Senate by three senators (, Federico Pinedo, Marta Varela and Pino Solanas). The people of Buenos Aires also elect 25 national deputies to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The "Guardia Urbana de Buenos Aires" (Buenos Aires Urban Guard) was a specialized civilian force of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, that used to deal with different urban conflicts with the objective of developing actions of prevention, dissuasion and mediation, promoting effective behaviors that guarantee the security and the integrity of public order and social coexistence. The unit continuously assisted the personnel of the Argentine Federal Police, especially in emergency situations, events of massive concurrence, and protection of tourist establishments. Urban Guard officials did not carry any weapons in the performing of their duties. Their basic tools were a HT radio transmitter and a whistle. , the Guardia Urbana was removed.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Buenos Aires Metropolitan Police was the police force under the authority of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. The force was created in 2010 and was composed of 1,850 officers. In 2016, the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Police and part of the Argentine Federal Police were merged to create the new Buenos Aires City Police force. The Buenos Aires City Police force began operations on 1 January 2017. Security in the city is now the responsibility of the Buenos Aires City Police. The police is headed by the Chief of Police who is appointed by the head of the executive branch of the city of Buenos Aires. Geographically, the force is divided into 56 stations throughout the city. All police station employees are civilians. The Buenos Aires City Police force is composed of over 25,000 officers.


title: Buenos Aires

text: In the census of 2010 there were 2,891,082 people residing in the city. The population of Greater Buenos Aires was 13,147,638 according to 2010 census data. The population density in Buenos Aires proper was 13,680 inhabitants per square kilometer (34,800 per mi), but only about 2,400 per km (6,100 per mi) in the suburbs.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires' population has hovered around 3 million since 1947, due to low birth rates and a slow migration to the suburbs. However, the surrounding districts have expanded over fivefold (to around 10 million) since then.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The 2001 census showed a relatively aged population: with 17% under the age of fifteen and 22% over sixty, the people of Buenos Aires have an age structure similar to those in most European cities. They are older than Argentines as a whole (of whom 28% were under 15, and 14% over 60).


title: Buenos Aires

text: Two-thirds of the city's residents live in apartment buildings and 30% in single-family homes; 4% live in sub-standard housing. Measured in terms of income, the city's poverty rate was 8.4% in 2007 and, including the metro area, 20.6%. Other studies estimate that 4 million people in the metropolitan Buenos Aires area live in poverty.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city's resident labor force of 1.2 million in 2001 was mostly employed in the services sector, particularly social services (25%), commerce and tourism (20%) and business and financial services (17%); despite the city's role as Argentina's capital, public administration employed only 6%. Manufacturing still employed 10%.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city is divided into "barrios" (neighborhoods) for administrative purposes, a division originally based on Catholic "parroquias" (parishes). A common expression is that of the "Cien barrios porteños" ("One hundred "porteño" neighborhoods"), referring to a composition made popular in the 1940s by tango singer Alberto Castillo; however, Buenos Aires only consists of 48 official "barrios". There are several subdivisions of these districts, some with a long history and others that are the product of a real estate invention. A notable example is Palermo – the city's largest district – which has been subdivided into various "barrios", including Palermo Soho, Palermo Hollywood, Las Cañitas and Palermo viejo, among others. A newer scheme has divided the city into 15 "comunas" (communes).


title: Buenos Aires

text: The majority of "porteños" have European origins, mostly from the Andalusian, Galician, Asturian, and Basque regions of Spain. As well as the Italian regions of Calabria, Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, Sicily and Campania. Unrestricted waves of European immigrants to Argentina starting in the mid-19th century significantly increased the country's population, even causing the number of porteños to triple between 1887 and 1915 from 500,000 to 1.5 million.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Other significant European origins include French, Portuguese, German, Irish, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Greek, Czech, Albanian, Croatian, Slovenian, Dutch, Russian, Serbian, English, Scottish, Slovak, Hungarian and Bulgarian. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a small wave of immigration from Romania and Ukraine. There is a minority of "criollo" citizens, dating back to the Spanish colonial days. The "Criollo" and Spanish-Indigenous (mestizo) population in the city has increased mostly as a result of immigration from the inner northern provinces and from other countries such as neighboring Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile and Peru, since the second half of the 20th century.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Jewish community in Greater Buenos Aires numbers around 250,000 and is the largest in the country. The city is also eighth largest in the world in terms of Jewish population. Most are of Northern, Western, Central, and Eastern European Ashkenazi origin, primarily Swedish, Dutch, Polish, German, and Russian Jews, with a significant Sephardic minority, mostly made up of Syrian Jews and Lebanese Jews. Important Lebanese, Georgian, Syrian and Armenian communities have had a significant presence in commerce and civic life since the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Most East Asian immigration in Buenos Aires comes from China. Chinese immigration is the fourth largest in Argentina, with the vast majority of them living in Buenos Aires and its metropolitan area. In the 1980s, most of them were from Taiwan, but since the 1990s the majority of Chinese immigrants come from the Mainland Chinese province of Fukien (Fujian). The mainland Chinese who came from Fukien mainly installed supermarkets throughout the city and the suburbs; these supermarkets are so common that, in average, there is one every two and a half blocks and are simply referred to as "el chino" ("the Chinese"). Japanese immigrants are mostly from the Okinawa Prefecture. They started the dry cleaning business in Argentina, an activity that is considered idiosyncratic to the Japanese immigrants in Buenos Aires. Korean Immigration occurred after the division of Korea; they mainly settled in Flores and Once.


title: Buenos Aires

text: In the , 2.1% of the population or 61,876 persons declared to be Indigenous or first-generation descendants of Indigenous people in Buenos Aires (not including the 24 adjacent Partidos that make up Greater Buenos Aires). Amongst the 61,876 persons who are of indigenous origin, 15.9% are Quechua people, 15.9% are Guaraní, 15.5% are Aymara and 11% are Mapuche. Within the 24 adjacent Partidos, 186,640 persons or 1.9% of the total population declared themselves to be Indigenous. Amongst the 186,640 persons who are of indigenous origin, 21.2% are Guaraní, 19% are Toba, 11.3% are Mapuche, 10.5% are Quechua and 7.6% are Diaguita.


title: Buenos Aires

text: "Villas miseria" are a type of slum whose size ranges from small groups of precarious houses to large communities with thousands of residents. In rural areas, the houses in the "villas miseria" might be made of mud and wood. "Villas miseria" are found around and inside the large cities of Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba and Mendoza, among others.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires has below of green space per person, which is 90% less than New York, 85% less than Madrid and 80% less than Paris. The World Health Organization (WHO), in its concern for public health, produced a document stating that every city should have a minimum of of green space per person; an optimal amount of space per person would range from 10 to .


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires' dialect of Spanish, which is known as "Rioplatense Spanish", is distinguished by its use of "voseo", "yeísmo", and aspiration of "s" in various contexts. It is heavily influenced by the dialects of Spanish spoken in Andalusia and Murcia, and shares its features with that of other cities like Rosario and Montevideo, Uruguay. In the early 20th century, Argentina absorbed millions of immigrants, many of them Italians, who spoke mostly in their local dialects (mainly Neapolitan, Sicilian and Genoese). Their adoption of Spanish was gradual, creating a pidgin of Italian dialects and Spanish that was called "cocoliche". Its usage declined around the 1950s. A phonetic study conducted by the Laboratory for Sensory Investigations of CONICET and the University of Toronto showed that the prosody of "porteño" is closer to the Neapolitan language of Italy than to any other spoken language. Many Spanish immigrants were from Galicia, and Spaniards are still generically referred to in Argentina as "gallegos" (Galicians). Galician language, cuisine and culture had a major presence in the city for most of the 20th century. In recent years, descendants of Galician immigrants have led a mini-boom in Celtic music (which also highlighted the Welsh traditions of Patagonia). Yiddish was commonly heard in Buenos Aires, especially in the Balvanera garment district and in Villa Crespo until the 1960s. Most of the newer immigrants learn Spanish quickly and assimilate into city life.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The "Lunfardo" argot originated within the prison population, and in time spread to all "porteños". Lunfardo uses words from Italian dialects, from Brazilian Portuguese, from African and Caribbean languages and even from English. Lunfardo employs humorous tricks such as inverting the syllables within a word (vesre). Today, Lunfardo is mostly heard in tango lyrics; the slang of the younger generations has been evolving away from it. Buenos Aires was also the first city to host a Mundo Lingo event on 7 July 2011, which have been after replicated in up to 15 cities in 13 countries.


title: Buenos Aires

text: At the beginning of the twentieth century, Buenos Aires was the second-largest Catholic city in the world after Paris. Christianity is still the most prevalently practiced religion in Buenos Aires (~71.4%), a 2019 CONICET survey on religious beliefs and attitudes found that the inhabitants of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area ("Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires", AMBA) were 56.4% Catholic, 26.2% non-religious and 15% Evangelical; making it the region of the country with the highest proportion of irreligious people. A previous CONICET survey from 2008 had found that 69.1% were Catholic, 18% "indifferent", 9.1% Evangelical, 1.4% Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons and 2.3% adherents to other religions. The comparison between both surveys reveals that the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area is the region in which the decline of Catholicism was most pronounced during the last decade.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires is also home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America and the second largest in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. The Jewish community of Buenos Aires has historically been characterized by its high level of assimilation, organization and influence in the cultural history of the city.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires is the seat of a Roman Catholic metropolitan archbishop (the Catholic "primate" of Argentina), currently Archbishop Mario Poli. His predecessor, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, was elected to the Papacy as Pope Francis on 13 March 2013. There are Protestant, Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, Buddhist and various other religious minorities as well.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Primary education comprises grades 1–7. Most primary schools in the city still adhere to the traditional seven-year primary school, but kids can do grades 1–6 if their high school lasts 6 years, such as ORT Argentina. Secondary education in Argentina is called "Polimodal" (having multiple modes) since it allows the student to choose their orientation. Polimodal is usually 3 years of schooling, although some schools have a fourth year. Before entering the first year of polimodal, students choose an orientation from the following five specializations. Some high schools depend on the University of Buenos Aires, and these require an admission course when students are taking the last year of high school. These high schools are ILSE, CNBA, Escuela Superior de Comercio Carlos Pellegrini and Escuela de Educación Técnica Profesional en Producción Agropecuaria y Agroalimentaria (School of Professional Technique Education in Agricultural and Agrifood Production). The last two do have a specific orientation. In December 2006 the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Congress passed a new National Education Law restoring the old system of primary followed by secondary education, making secondary education obligatory and a right, and increasing the length of compulsory education to 13 years. The government vowed to put the law in effect gradually, starting in 2007.


title: Buenos Aires

text: There are many public universities in Argentina, as well as a number of private universities. The University of Buenos Aires, one of the top learning institutions in South America, has produced five Nobel Prize winners and provides taxpayer-funded education for students from all around the globe. Buenos Aires is a major center for psychoanalysis, particularly the Lacanian school. Buenos Aires is home to several private universities of different quality, such as: Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, CEMA University, Favaloro University, Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, University of Belgrano, University of Palermo, University of Salvador, Universidad Abierta Interamericana, Universidad Argentina John F. Kennedy, Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales, Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, Universidad Austral, Universidad CAECE and Torcuato di Tella University.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires is the financial, industrial, and commercial hub of Argentina. The economy in the city proper alone, measured by Gross Geographic Product (adjusted for purchasing power), totaled US$84.7 billion (US$34,200 per capita) in 2011 and amounts to nearly a quarter of Argentina's as a whole. Metro Buenos Aires, according to one well-quoted study, constitutes the 13th largest economy among the world's cities in 2005. The Buenos Aires Human Development Index (0.867 in 2018) is likewise high by international standards.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city's services sector is diversified and well-developed by international standards, and accounts for 76 percent of its economy (compared to 59% for all of Argentina's). Advertising, in particular, plays a prominent role in the export of services at home and abroad. However, the financial and real estate services sector is the largest and contributes to 31 percent of the city's economy. Finance (about a third of this) in Buenos Aires is especially important to Argentina's banking system, accounting for nearly half the nation's bank deposits and lending. Nearly 300 hotels and another 300 hostels and bed & breakfasts are licensed for tourism, and nearly half the rooms available were in four-star establishments or higher.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Manufacturing is, nevertheless, still prominent in the city's economy (16 percent) and, concentrated mainly in the southern part of the city. It benefits as much from high local purchasing power and a large local supply of skilled labor as it does from its relationship to massive agriculture and industry just outside the city limits. Construction activity in Buenos Aires has historically been among the most accurate indicators of national economic fortunes, and since 2006 around of construction has been authorized annually. Meat, dairy, grain, tobacco, wool and leather products are processed or manufactured in the Buenos Aires metro area. Other leading industries are automobile manufacturing, oil refining, metalworking, machine-building, and the production of textiles, chemicals, clothing and beverages.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The city's budget, per Mayor Macri's 2011 proposal, included US$6 billion in revenues and US$6.3 billion in expenditures. The city relies on local income and capital gains taxes for 61 percent of its revenues, while federal revenue sharing contributes 11 percent, property taxes, 9 percent, and vehicle taxes, 6 percent. Other revenues include user fees, fines, and gambling duties. The city devotes 26 percent of its budget to education, 22 percent for health, 17 percent for public services and infrastructure, 16 percent for social welfare and culture, 12 percent in administrative costs and 4 percent for law enforcement. Buenos Aires maintains low debt levels and its service requires less than 3 percent of the budget.


title: Buenos Aires

text: According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, tourism has been growing in the Argentine capital since 2002. In a survey by the travel and tourism publication Travel + Leisure Magazine in 2008, visitors voted Buenos Aires the second most desirable city to visit after Florence, Italy. In 2008, an estimated 2.5 million visitors visited the city. Buenos Aires is an international hub of highly active and diverse nightlife with bars, dance bars and nightclubs staying open well past midnight.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Visitors have many options for travel such as going to a tango show, an estancia in the Province of Buenos Aires, or enjoying the traditional asado. New tourist circuits have recently evolved, devoted to Argentines such as Carlos Gardel, Eva Perón or Jorge Luis Borges. Before 2011, due to the Argentine peso's favorable exchange rate, its shopping centers such as Alto Palermo, Paseo Alcorta, Patio Bullrich, Abasto de Buenos Aires and Galerías Pacífico were frequently visited by tourists. Nowadays, the exchange rate has hampered tourism and shopping in particular. In fact, notable consumer brands such as Burberry and Louis Vuitton have abandoned the country due to the exchange rate and import restrictions. The city also plays host to musical festivals, some of the largest of which are Quilmes Rock, Creamfields BA, Ultra Music Festival (Buenos Aires), and the Buenos Aires Jazz Festival.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The most popular tourist sites are found in the historic core of the city, specifically, in the Montserrat and San Telmo neighborhoods. Buenos Aires was conceived around the Plaza de Mayo, the colony's administrative center. To the east of the square is the "Casa Rosada", the official seat of the executive branch of the government of Argentina. To the north, the "Catedral Metropolitana" which has stood in the same location since colonial times, and the Banco de la Nación Argentina building, a parcel of land originally owned by Juan de Garay. Other important colonial institutions were Cabildo, to the west, which was renovated during the construction of Avenida de Mayo and Julio A. Roca. To the south is the "Congreso de la Nación" (National Congress), which currently houses the "Academia Nacional de la Historia" (National Academy of History). Lastly, to the northwest, is City Hall.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires has become a recipient of LGBT tourism, due to the existence of some gay-friendly sites and the legalization of same-sex marriage on 15 July 2010, making it the first country in Latin America, the second in the Americas, and the tenth in the world to do so. Its "Gender Identity Law", passed in 2012, made Argentina the "only country that allows people to change their gender identities without facing barriers such as hormone therapy, surgery or psychiatric diagnosis that labels them as having an abnormality". In 2015, the World Health Organization cited Argentina as an exemplary country for providing transgender rights. Despite these legal advances, however, homophobia continues to be a hotly contested social issue in the city and the country.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires has various types of accommodation ranging from luxurious five star hotels in the city center to budget hotels located in suburban neighborhoods. Nonetheless, the city's transportation system allows easy and inexpensive access to the city. There were, , 23 five-star, 61 four-star, 59 three-star and 87 two or one-star hotels, as well as 25 boutique hotels and 39 apart-hotels; another 298 hostels, bed & breakfasts, vacation rentals and other non-hotel establishments were registered in the city. In all, nearly 27,000 rooms were available for tourism in Buenos Aires, of which about 12,000 belonged to four-star, five-star, or boutique hotels. Establishments of a higher category typically enjoy the city's highest occupation rates. The majority of the hotels are located in the central part of the city, in close proximity to most main tourist attractions.


title: Buenos Aires

text: According to data released by Moovit in July 2017, the average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Buenos Aires, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 79 min. 23% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 14 min, while 20 percent of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 8.9 km, while 21% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Buenos Aires is based on a square, rectangular grid pattern, save for natural barriers or the relatively rare developments explicitly designed otherwise (most notably, the Parque Chas neighborhood). The rectangular grid provides for -long square blocks named "manzanas" . Pedestrian zones in the central business district such as Florida Street are partially car-free and always bustling, access provided by bus and the Underground (subte) Line C. Buenos Aires, for the most part, is a very walkable city and the majority of residents in Buenos Aires use public transport.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Two diagonal avenues alleviate traffic and provide better access to Plaza de Mayo and the city center in general; most avenues running into and out of it are one-way and feature six or more lanes, with computer-controlled green waves to speed up traffic outside of peak times. The city's principal avenues include the -wide July 9 Avenue, the over -long Rivadavia Avenue, and Corrientes Avenue, the main thoroughfare of culture and entertainment.


title: Buenos Aires

text: In the 1940s and 1950s, the construction of the General Paz Avenue beltway that surrounds the city along its border with Buenos Aires Province, and the freeways leading to the new international airport and to the northern suburbs, heralded a new era for Buenos Aires traffic. Encouraged by pro-automaker policies that were pursued towards the end of the Perón (1955) and Frondizi administrations (1958–62) in particular, auto sales nationally grew from an average of 30,000 during the 1920–57 era to around 250,000 in the 1970s and over 600,000 in 2008. Today, over 1.8 million vehicles (nearly one-fifth of Argentina's total) are registered in Buenos Aires.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Toll motorways opened in the late 1970s by mayor Osvaldo Cacciatore, now used by over a million vehicles daily, provide convenient access to the city center. Cacciatore likewise had financial district streets (roughly in area) closed to private cars during daytime. Most major avenues are, however, gridlocked at peak hours. Following the economic mini-boom of the 1990s, record numbers started commuting by car and congestion increased, as did the time-honored Argentine custom of taking weekends off in the countryside.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Ministro Pistarini International Airport, commonly known as "Ezeiza Airport", is located in the suburb of Ezeiza, in Buenos Aires Province, approximately 22 km south of the city. This airport handles most international air traffic to and from Argentina as well as some domestic flights.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Aeroparque Jorge Newbery airport, located in the Palermo district of the city next to the riverbank, is only within the city limits and serves primarily domestic traffic within Argentina and some regional flights to neighboring South American countries.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Other minor airports near the city are El Palomar Airport, which is located 18 km west of the city and handles some scheduled domestic flights to a number of destinations in Argentina, and the smaller San Fernando Airport which serves only general aviation.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Buenos Aires Underground (locally known as "subte", from ""subterráneo"" meaning underground or subway), is a high-yield system providing access to various parts of the city. Opened in 1913, it is the oldest underground system in the Southern Hemisphere and oldest in the Spanish-speaking world. The system has six underground lines and one overground line, named by letters (A to E, and H) and there are 100 stations, and of route, including the Premetro line. An expansion program is underway to extend existing lines into the outer neighborhoods and add a new north–south line. Route length is expected to reach by 2011.


title: Buenos Aires

text: Line A is the oldest one (service opened to public in 1913) and stations kept the "belle-époque" decoration, while the original rolling stock from 1913, affectionately known as "Las Brujas" were retired from the line in 2013. Daily ridership on weekdays is 1.7 million and on the increase. Fares remain relatively cheap, although the city government raised fares by over 125% in January 2012. A single journey, with unlimited interchanges between lines, costs AR$19, which is roughly US$0.28 as of May 2020.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The most recent expansions to the network were the addition of numerous stations to the network in 2013: San José de Flores and San Pedrito to Line A, Echeverría and Juan Manuel de Rosas to Line B and Hospitales to Line H. Current works include the completion of Line H northwards and addition of three new stations to Line E in the city center. The construction of Line F is due to commence in 2015, while two other lines are planned for construction in the future.


title: Buenos Aires

text: The Buenos Aires commuter rail system has seven lines: Belgrano Norte; Belgrano Sur; Roca; San Martín; Sarmiento; Mitre; and Urquiza. The Buenos Aires commuter network system is very extensive: every day more than 1.3 million people commute to the Argentine capital. These suburban trains operate between 4 am and 1 am. The Buenos Aires commuter rail network also connects the city with long-distance rail services to Rosario and Córdoba, among other metropolitan areas. The city center is home to four principal terminals for both long-distance and local passenger services: Constitucion, Retiro, Federico Lacroze and Once. In addition, Buenos Aires station serves as a minor terminus.