title: Montana

text: Montana provides year-round outdoor recreation opportunities for residents and visitors. Hiking, fishing, hunting, watercraft recreation, camping, golf, cycling, horseback riding, and skiing are popular activities.


title: Montana

text: Montana has been a destination for its world-class trout fisheries since the 1930s. Fly fishing for several species of native and introduced trout in rivers and lakes is popular for both residents and tourists throughout the state. Montana is the home of the Federation of Fly Fishers and hosts many of the organization's annual conclaves. The state has robust recreational lake trout and kokanee salmon fisheries in the west, walleye can be found in many parts of the state, while northern pike, smallmouth and largemouth bass fisheries as well as catfish and paddlefish can be found in the waters of eastern Montana. Robert Redford's 1992 film of Norman Mclean's novel, "A River Runs Through It", was filmed in Montana and brought national attention to fly fishing and the state. Fishing makes up a sizeable component of Montana's total tourism economic output: in 2017, nonresidents generated $4.7 billion in economic output, of which, $1.3 billion was generated by visitor groups participating in guided fishing experiences.


title: Montana

text: There are fall bow and general hunting seasons for elk, pronghorn antelope, whitetail deer and mule deer. A random draw grants a limited number of permits for moose, mountain goats and bighorn sheep. There is a spring hunting season for black bear and limited hunting of bison that leave Yellowstone National Park has been allowed. Current law allows both hunters and trappers specified numbers ("limits") of wolves and mountain lions. Trapping of assorted fur-bearing animals is allowed in certain seasons and many opportunities exist for migratory waterfowl and upland bird hunting. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which protects wildlife habitat and promotes hunting heritage, was founded in Montana.


title: Montana

text: Both downhill skiing and cross-country skiing are popular in Montana, and there are 15 developed downhill ski areas open to the public, including:


title: Montana

text: Big Sky Resort and Whitefish Mountain Resort are destination resorts, while the remaining areas do not have overnight lodging at the ski area, though several host restaurants and other amenities.


title: Montana

text: Montana also has millions of acres open to cross-country skiing on nine of its national forests and in Glacier National Park. In addition to cross-country trails at most of the downhill ski areas, there are also 13 private cross-country skiing resorts. Yellowstone National Park also allows cross-country skiing.


title: Montana

text: Snowmobiling is popular in Montana, which boasts over 4,000 miles of trails and frozen lakes available in winter. There are 24 areas where snowmobile trails are maintained, most also offering ungroomed trails. West Yellowstone offers a large selection of trails and is the primary starting point for snowmobile trips into Yellowstone National Park, where "oversnow" vehicle use is strictly limited, usually to guided tours, and regulations are in considerable flux.


title: Montana

text: Snow coach tours are offered at Big Sky, Whitefish, West Yellowstone and into Yellowstone National Park. Equestrian skijoring has a niche in Montana, which hosts the World Skijoring Championships in Whitefish as part of the annual Whitefish Winter Carnival.


title: Montana

text: Montana does not have a Trauma I hospital but does have Trauma II hospitals in Missoula, Billings, and Great Falls. In 2013, "AARP The Magazine" named the Billings Clinic one of the safest hospitals in the United States.


title: Montana

text: Montana had a suicide rate of 26.1 per 100,000 in 2020, which is the 3rd-highest among U.S. states; high suicide rates are common among sparsely-populated states in the United States


title: Montana

text: As of 2010, Missoula is the 166th largest media market in the United States as ranked by Nielsen Media Research, while Billings is 170th, Great Falls is 190th, the Butte/Bozeman area 191st, and Helena is 206th. There are 25 television stations in Montana, representing each major U.S. network. As of August 2013, there are 527 FCC-licensed FM radio stations broadcast in Montana, with 114 such AM stations.


title: Montana

text: During the age of the Copper Kings, each Montana copper company had its own newspaper. This changed in 1959 when Lee Enterprises bought several Montana newspapers. Montana's largest circulating daily city newspapers are the "Billings Gazette" (circulation 39,405), "Great Falls Tribune" (26,733), and "Missoulian" (25,439).


title: Montana

text: Railroads have been an important method of transportation in Montana since the 1880s. Historically, the state was traversed by the main lines of three east–west transcontinental routes: the Milwaukee Road, the Great Northern, and the Northern Pacific. Today, the BNSF Railway is the state's largest railroad, its main transcontinental route incorporating the former Great Northern main line across the state. Montana RailLink, a privately held Class II railroad, operates former Northern Pacific trackage in western Montana.


title: Montana

text: In addition, Amtrak's "Empire Builder" train runs through the north of the state, stopping in Libby, Whitefish, West Glacier, Essex, East Glacier Park, Browning, Cut Bank, Shelby, Havre, Malta, Glasgow, and Wolf Point.


title: Montana

text: Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport is the busiest airport in the state of Montana, surpassing Billings Logan International Airport in the spring of 2013. Montana's other major airports include Missoula International Airport, Great Falls International Airport, Glacier Park International Airport, Helena Regional Airport, Bert Mooney Airport and Yellowstone Airport. Eight smaller communities have airports designated for commercial service under the Essential Air Service program.


title: Montana

text: Historically, U.S. Route 10 was the primary east–west highway route across Montana, connecting the major cities in the southern half of the state. Still, the state's most important east–west travel corridor, the route is today served by Interstate 90 and Interstate 94 which roughly follow the same route as the Northern Pacific. U.S. Routes 2 and 12 and Montana Highway 200 also traverse the entire state from east to west.


title: Montana

text: Montana's only north–south Interstate Highway is Interstate 15. Other major north–south highways include U.S. Routes 87, 89, 93 and 191.


title: Montana

text: Montana and South Dakota are the only states to share a land border that is not traversed by a paved road. Highway 212, the primary paved route between the two, passes through the northeast corner of Wyoming between Montana and South Dakota.


title: Montana

text: Montana is governed by a constitution. The first constitution was drafted by a constitutional convention in 1889, in preparation for statehood. Ninety percent of its language came from an 1884 constitution which was never acted upon by Congress for national political reasons. The 1889 constitution mimicked the structure of the United States Constitution, as well as outlining almost the same civil and political rights for citizens. However, the 1889 Montana constitution significantly restricted the power of state government, the legislature was much more powerful than the executive branch, and the jurisdiction of the District Courts very specifically described. Montana voters amended the 1889 constitution 37 times between 1889 and 1972. In 1914, Montana granted women the vote. In 1916, Montana became the first state to elect a woman, Progressive Republican Jeannette Rankin, to Congress.


title: Montana

text: In 1971, Montana voters approved the call for a state constitutional convention. A new constitution was drafted, which made the legislative and executive branches much more equal in power and which was much less prescriptive in outlining powers, duties, and jurisdictions. The draft included an expanded, more progressive list of civil and political rights, extended these rights to children for the first time, transferred administration of property taxes to the counties from the state, implemented new water rights, eliminated sovereign immunity, and gave the legislature greater power to spend tax revenues. The constitution was narrowly approved, 116,415 to 113,883, and declared ratified on June 20, 1972. Three issues that the constitutional convention was unable to resolve were submitted to voters simultaneously with the proposed constitution. Voters approved the legalization of gambling, a bicameral legislature, and retention of the death penalty.


title: Montana

text: The 1972 constitution has been amended 31 times as of 2015. Major amendments include establishment of a reclamation trust (funded by taxes on natural resource extraction) to restore mined land (1974); restoration of sovereign immunity, when such immunity has been approved by a two-thirds vote in each house (1974); establishment of a 90-day biennial (rather than annual) legislative session (1974); establishment of a coal tax trust fund, funded by a tax on coal extraction (1976); conversion of the mandatory decennial review of county government into a voluntary one, to be approved or disallowed by residents in each county (1978); conversion of the provision of public assistance from a mandatory civil right to a non-fundamental legislative prerogative (1988); a new constitutional right to hunt and fish (2004); a prohibition on gay marriage (2004); and a prohibition on new taxes on the sale or transfer of real property (2010). In 1992, voters approved a constitutional amendment implementing term limits for certain statewide elected executive branch offices (governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state auditor, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction) and for members of the Montana Legislature. Extensive new constitutional rights for victims of crime were approved in 2016.


title: Montana

text: The 1972 constitution requires that voters determine every 20 years whether to hold a new constitutional convention. Voters turned down a new convention in 1990 (84 percent no) and again in 2010 (58.6 percent no).


title: Montana

text: Montana has three branches of state government: legislative, executive, and judicial. The executive branch is headed by an elected governor. The governor is Greg Gianforte, a Republican elected in 2020. There are also nine other statewide elected offices in the executive branch: Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Auditor (who also serves as Commissioner of Securities and Insurance), and Superintendent of Public Instruction. There are five public service commissioners, who are elected on a regional basis. (The Public Service Commission's jurisdiction is statewide.)


title: Montana

text: There are 18 departments and offices which make up the executive branch: Administration; Agriculture; Auditor (securities and insurance); Commerce; Corrections; Environmental Quality; Fish, Wildlife & Parks; Justice; Labor and Industry; Livestock; Military Affairs; Natural Resources and Conservation; Public Health and Human Services; Revenue; State; and Transportation. Elementary and secondary education are overseen by the Office of Public Instruction (led by the elected superintendent of public instruction), in cooperation with the governor-appointed Board of Public Education. Higher education is overseen by a governor-appointed Board of Regents, which in turn appoints a commissioner of higher education. The Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education acts in an executive capacity on behalf of the regents and oversees the state-run Montana University System.


title: Montana

text: Independent state agencies not within a department or office include the Montana Arts Council, Montana Board of Crime Control, Montana Historical Society, Montana Public Employees Retirement Administration, Commissioner of Political Practices, the Montana Lottery, Office of the State Public Defender, Public Service Commission, the Montana School for the Deaf and Blind, the Montana State Fund (which operates the state's unemployment insurance, worker compensation, and self-insurance operations), the Montana State Library, and the Montana Teachers Retirement System.


title: Montana

text: Montana is an alcoholic beverage control state. It is an equitable distribution and no-fault divorce state. It is one of five states to have no sales tax.


title: Montana

text: The Montana Legislature is bicameral and consists of the 50-member Montana Senate and the 100-member Montana House of Representatives. The legislature meets in the Montana State Capitol in Helena in odd-numbered years for 90 days, beginning the first weekday of the year. The deadline for a legislator to introduce a general bill is the 40th legislative day. The deadline for a legislator to introduce an appropriations, revenue, or referendum bill is the 62nd legislative day. Senators serve four-year terms, while Representatives serve two-year terms. All members are limited to serving no more than eight years in a single 16-year period.


title: Montana

text: The Courts of Montana are established by the Constitution of Montana. The constitution requires the establishment of a Montana Supreme Court and Montana District Courts, and permits the legislature to establish Justice Courts, City Courts, Municipal Courts, and other inferior courts such as the legislature sees fit to establish.


title: Montana

text: The Montana Supreme Court is the court of last resort in the Montana court system. The constitution of 1889 provided for the election of no fewer than three Supreme Court justices, and one chief justice. Each court member served a six-year term. The legislature increased the number of justices to five in 1919. The 1972 constitution lengthened the term of office to eight years and established the minimum number of justices at five. It allowed the legislature to increase the number of justices by two, which the legislature did in 1979. The Montana Supreme Court has the authority to declare acts of the legislature and executive unconstitutional under either the Montana or U.S. constitutions. Its decisions may be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Clerk of the Montana Supreme Court is also an elected position and serves a six-year term. Neither justices nor the clerk is term-limited.


title: Montana

text: Montana District Courts are the courts of general jurisdiction in Montana. There are no intermediate appellate courts. District Courts have jurisdiction primarily over most civil cases, cases involving a monetary claim against the state, felony criminal cases, probate, and cases at law and in equity. When so authorized by the legislature, actions of executive branch agencies may be appealed directly to a District Court. The District Courts also have "de novo" appellate jurisdiction from inferior courts (city courts, justice courts, and municipal courts), and oversee naturalization proceedings. District Court judges are elected and serve six-year terms. They are not term-limited. There are 22 judicial districts in Montana, served by 56 District Courts and 46 District Court judges. The District Courts suffer from excessive workload, and the legislature has struggled to find a solution to the problem.


title: Montana

text: Montana Youth Courts were established by the Montana Youth Court Act of 1974. They are overseen by District Court judges. They consist of a chief probation officer, one or more juvenile probation officers, and support staff. Youth Courts have jurisdiction over misdemeanor and felony acts committed by those charged as a juvenile under the law. There is a Youth Court in every judicial district, and decisions of the Youth Court are appealable directly to the Montana Supreme Court.


title: Montana

text: The Montana Worker's Compensation Court was established by the Montana Workers' Compensation Act in 1975. There is a single Workers' Compensation Court. It has a single judge, appointed by the governor. The Worker's Compensation Court has statewide jurisdiction and holds trials in Billings, Great Falls, Helena, Kalispell, and Missoula. The court hears cases arising under the Montana Workers' Compensation Act and is the court of original jurisdiction for reviews of orders and regulations issued by the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. Decisions of the court are appealable directly to the Montana Supreme Court.


title: Montana

text: The Montana Water Court was established by the Montana Water Court Act of 1979. The Water Court consists of a chief water judge and four district water judges (Lower Missouri River Basin, Upper Missouri River Basin, Yellowstone River Basin, and Clark Fork River Basin). The court employs 12 permanent special masters. The Montana Judicial Nomination Commission develops short lists of nominees for all five Water Judges, who are then appointed by the Chief justice of the Montana Supreme Court (subject to confirmation by the Montana Senate). The Water Court adjudicates water rights claims under the Montana Water Use Act of 1973 and has statewide jurisdiction. District Courts have the authority to enforce decisions of the Water Court, but only the Montana Supreme Court has the authority to review decisions of the Water Court.


title: Montana

text: From 1889 to 1909, elections for judicial office in Montana were partisan. Beginning in 1909, these elections became nonpartisan. The Montana Supreme Court struck down the nonpartisan law in 1911 on technical grounds, but a new law was enacted in 1935 which barred political parties from endorsing, making contributions to, or making expenditures on behalf of or against judicial candidates. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Montana's judicial nonpartisan election law in Although candidates must remain nonpartisan, spending by partisan entities is now permitted. Spending on state supreme court races exponentially increased to $1.6 million in 2014, and to more than $1.6 million in 2016 (both new records).


title: Montana

text: The U.S. Constitution provides each state with two senators. Montana's two U.S. senators are Jon Tester (Democrat), who was reelected in 2018, and Steve Daines (Republican), first elected in 2014 and later reelected in 2020. The U.S. Constitution provides each state with a single representative, with additional representatives apportioned based on population. From statehood in 1889 until 1913, Montana was represented in the United States House of Representatives by a single representative, elected at-large. Montana received a second representative in 1913, following the 1910 census and reapportionment. Both members, however, were still elected at-large. Beginning in 1919, Montana moved to district, rather than at-large, elections for its two House members. This created Montana's 1st congressional district in the west and Montana's 2nd congressional district in the east. In the reapportionment following the 1990 census, Montana lost one of its House seats. The remaining seat was again elected at-large. Matt Rosendale is the current officeholder.


title: Montana

text: In the reapportionment following the 2020 census, Montana regained a House seat, increasing the state's number of representatives in the House to two after a thirty-year break, starting from 2023.


title: Montana

text: Montana's Senate district is the fourth largest by area, behind Alaska, Texas, and California. The most notorious of Montana's early senators was William A. Clark, a "Copper King" and one of the 50 richest Americans ever. He is well known for having bribed his way into the U.S. Senate. Among Montana's most historically prominent senators are Thomas J. Walsh (serving from 1913 to 1933), who was President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt's choice for attorney general when he died; Burton K. Wheeler (serving from 1923 to 1947), an oft-mentioned presidential candidate and strong supporter of isolationism; Mike Mansfield, the longest-serving Senate majority leader in U.S. history; Max Baucus (served 1978 to 2014), longest-serving U.S. senator in Montana history, and the senator who shepherded the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through the Senate in 2010; and Lee Metcalf (served 1961 to 1978), a pioneer of the environmental movement.


title: Montana

text: Montana's House district is the largest congressional district in the United States by population, with just over 1,023,000 constituents. It is the second-largest House district by area, after Alaska's at-large congressional district. Of Montana's House delegates, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman to hold national office in the United States when she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1916. Also notable is Representative (later Senator) Thomas H. Carter, the first Catholic to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee (from 1892 to 1896).


title: Montana

text: Federal courts in Montana include the United States District Court for the District of Montana and the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Montana. Three former Montana politicians have been named judges on the U.S. District Court: Charles Nelson Pray (who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1907 to 1913), James F. Battin (who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1969), and Paul G. Hatfield (who served as an appointed U.S. Senator in 1978). Brian Morris, who served as an associate justice of the Montana Supreme Court from 2005 to 2013, currently serves as a judge on the court.


title: Montana

text: Elections in the state have been historically competitive, particularly for state-level offices. The Democratic Party's strength in the state is gained from support among unionized miners and railroad workers, while farmers generally vote Republican.


title: Montana

text: Montana has a history of voters splitting their tickets and filling elected offices with individuals from both parties. Through the mid-20th century, the state had a tradition of "sending the liberals to Washington and the conservatives to Helena". Between 1988 and 2006, the pattern flipped, with voters more likely to elect conservatives to federal offices. There have also been long-term shifts in party control. From 1968 through 1988, the state was dominated by the Democratic Party, with Democratic governors for a 20-year period, and a Democratic majority of both the national congressional delegation and during many sessions of the state legislature. This pattern shifted, beginning with the 1988 election when Montana elected a Republican governor for the first time since 1964 and sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1948. This shift continued with the reapportionment of the state's legislative districts that took effect in 1994, when the Republican Party took control of both chambers of the state legislature, consolidating a Republican party dominance that lasted until the 2004 reapportionment produced more swing districts and a brief period of Democratic legislative majorities in the mid-2000s.


title: Montana

text: Montana has voted for the Republican nominee in all but two presidential elections since 1952. The state last supported a Democrat for president in 1992, when Bill Clinton won a plurality victory. However, since 1889 the state has voted for Democratic governors 60 percent of the time, and Republican governors 40 percent of the time. In the 2008 presidential election, Montana was considered a swing state and was ultimately won by Republican John McCain by a narrow margin of two percent.


title: Montana

text: At the state level, the pattern of split-ticket voting and divided government holds. Democrats hold one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats with Jon Tester. The lone congressional district has been Republican since 1996, and its Class 2 Senate seat has been held by Republican Steve Daines since 2014. The two chambers of the state's legislature had split party control from 2004 to 2010, when that year's mid-term elections decisively returned both branches to Republican control. The Montana Senate is, as of 2021, controlled by Republicans 31 to 19, and the House of Representatives is currently 67 to 33. Historically, Republicans are strongest in the east, while Democrats are strongest in the west.


title: Montana

text: Montana has only one representative in the U.S. House, having lost its second district in the 1990 census reapportionment. However, it will get its second district back due to reapportionment following the 2020 census. Montana's at-large congressional district holds the largest population of any district in the country, which means its one member in the House of Representatives represents more people than any other member of the U.S. House (see List of U.S. states by population). Montana's population grew at about the national average during the 2000s, but it failed to regain its second seat in 2010.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Nathan Fillion (; born March 27, 1971) is a Canadian-American actor. He played the leading roles of Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds on "Firefly" and its film continuation "Serenity", and Richard Castle on "Castle". , he was starring as John Nolan on "The Rookie".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion has acted in traditionally distributed films like "Slither" and "Trucker", Internet-distributed films like "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", television soap operas, sitcoms and theater. His voice is also featured in animation and video games, such as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern in various DC Comics projects, the Bungie games "Halo 3", "", "", "Destiny" and "Destiny 2", along with the 343 Industries game "", and Wonder Man in Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017) and "M.O.D.O.K." (2021).


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion first gained recognition for his work on "One Life to Live" in the contract role of Joey Buchanan, for which he was nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series, as well as for his supporting role as Johnny Donnelly in the sitcom "Two Guys and a Girl".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion was born on March 27, 1971, in Edmonton, Alberta, the younger of two sons of Robert "Bob" Fillion and June "Cookie" Early, both retired English teachers. Both sides of his father's family were part of the Quebec diaspora in Fall River, Massachusetts, and his mother had a Norwegian maternal grandfather and a Finnish maternal grandmother.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion was raised in Edmonton's Mill Woods neighbourhood and completed his secondary and post-secondary education in Edmonton, attending Holy Trinity Catholic High School, Concordia University College of Alberta, and the University of Alberta, where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Society. He has been a U.S. citizen since 1997.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: After working in several theatre, television, and film productions, including Theatresports with Rapid Fire Theatre and the improvised soap opera "Die-Nasty", Fillion moved to New York City in 1994 where he acted in the soap opera "One Life to Live" as Joey Buchanan, for which he was nominated in 1996 for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series. In 1997, he left the series to pursue other projects (returning for a brief guest appearance in 2007).


title: Nathan Fillion

text: After moving to Los Angeles, he played a supporting role in the sitcom "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place", and was cast as James Frederick "The Minnesota" Ryan in Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In 2002, Fillion starred as Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the Joss Whedon science fiction television series "Firefly", for which he won the Cinescape Genre Face of the FutureMale award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA. Fillion also won the Syfy Genre Awards in 2006 for Best Actor/Television and was runner-up for Best Actor/Movie. Fillion called his time on "Firefly" the best acting job he ever had, and compares every job he has had to it. Although the show was cancelled, it was adapted to the big screen; he reprised his role as Mal in Whedon's movie "Serenity" (2005).


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In 2003, Fillion had a recurring role as Caleb in the final five episodes of Joss Whedon's series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion lent his voice to the animated series "King of the Hill" in 2001, the video game "Jade Empire" (as the voice of Gao the Lesser), and the animated series "Justice League Unlimited" (as Vigilante in the episodes "Hunter's Moon" and "Patriot Act") in 2005–06. He portrayed Green Lantern/Hal Jordan in "", "", "" and "" and "The Death of Superman". Fillion starred in James Gunn's 2006 horror film "Slither". For his starring role as Bill Pardy, he garnered a 2006 "Fangoria" Chainsaw Awards nomination in the category of "Dude You Don't Wanna Mess With".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion starred in the romantic comedy film "Waitress", written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2007, and opened in theaters on May 2, 2007. Fillion starred in "". He made one appearance in the 2006–2007 season of the television show "Lost", as Kevin, Kate's ex-husband.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In October 2006, Fillion signed a talent holding contract with the Fox Broadcasting Company, and in December 2006, "The Hollywood Reporter" confirmed that Fillion was cast as Alex Tully in the series "Drive", which debuted on Fox in the spring of 2007. "Drive" was created by Tim Minear. Ivan Sergei played Alex Tully in the original pilot episode of "Drive". The first two "Drive" episodes premiered on April 13, 2007, in Canada (April 15, 2007, in the United States). However, the show did not deliver the ratings Fox desired, and on April 25, 2007, the network announced that the series was cancelled.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: The final two produced episodes were supposed to air back-to-back on Fox in July 2007 but did not actually become available until July 15 when they were posted on the "Drive" MySpace page.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion reprised his 1990s role as "One Life to Live" Joey for the series' 9,999th and 10,000th episodes, aired August 16 and 17, 2007.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion joined the cast of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" at the beginning of the fall 2007 season (season 4), portraying Dr. Adam Mayfair. His first appearance was in the episode "Now You Know", which aired on September 30, 2007. His final appearance was the final episode of season 4, in 2008.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion voiced the role of an ODST Gunnery sergeant in the Xbox 360 game "Halo 3", alongside fellow "Firefly" stars Alan Tudyk and Adam Baldwin. At one point early in the first mission, he identifies himself as "[Sergeant] Reynolds" over the radio, referring to his character's name from the TV series "Firefly". All three actors are given personalities in the game that match those of their characters from "Firefly". He provides the voice, portrayed likeness, and motion capture performance for Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck in "", "", and a brief appearance in "".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In March 2009, the first episode of the ABC television series "Castle" aired, in which Fillion starred as the titular character Richard Castle, a mystery novelist who helps the NYPD solve (frequently bizarre) murders. In 2009, Fillion was nominated for Satellite Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama for his performance in "Castle". The show was cancelled by ABC in 2016, with the final episode airing on May 16 of that year.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: BuddyTV ranked him No. 10 on its list of "TV's 100 Sexiest Men of 2009", No. 19 in 2010, No. 20 in 2011 and No. 39 in 2012; No. 7 on its list of "The 15 Best Drama Lead Actors of the 2011-2012 TV Season"; named his character's relationship with the other main character as No. 18 (and the Best Flirting Relationship) on its list "Love Is All Around: Best TV Relationships of 2010", No. 13 (and the Best Delayed Relationship) on its list of "The Best Relationships of 2011", No. 15 on its list of "The Special Relationships: TV’s Top 50 Love Stories of the Past Decade", No. 1 on its list "Love... Or Not: The Top 12 Will-They-or-Won't-They Couples of 2012" and No. 2 on its list "Lip Smacking Good: The Best Kisses of 2012"; named "Castle" as No. 6 on its list of "The 11 Best Returning TV Shows of 2011", No. 11 on "The 15 Best Dramas of the 2011-2012 TV Season" and No. 12 on "The 12 Best Dramas of 2012".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion was featured in a spoof porn web video on Spike called "Nailing Your Wife", part of James Gunn's "PG Porn" series. Fillion made a brief cameo appearance in the season 5 episode "Revolving Doors" of the web series "The Guild". In late September 2011, Fillion guest starred as the Action Sports 1 anchor in the web series "Husbands". He played Dogberry in the independent film "Much Ado About Nothing" (2012), based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, written, directed and produced by Joss Whedon.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Since 2011, Fillion has appeared as the recurring Space Western character Cactoid Jim in performances of the podcasted live show "The Thrilling Adventure Hour", a stage show premised on the idea that actors are performing as characters in a radio show. The character of Cactoid Jim first appeared as part of the recurring segment "Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars", but was soon given his own segment, called "Cactoid Jim: King of the Martian Frontier". Fillion has advertised his participation as a guest star on "The Thrilling Adventure Hour" by means of including filmed elements of the live show on the DVD set for season 4 of Castle.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In 2012, he appeared in the episode "The Daly Superheroes" of the web series "The Daly Show". On February 17, 2013, Fillion hosted the 2013 WGA West Coast Awards.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In 2014 he appeared in the video game "Destiny" as the character Cayde-6. Over the next few years his role became larger with expansions to the game. Fillion returned to the role in the 2017 sequel "Destiny 2", and featured prominently in the game until the release of "", where the character was instead voiced by Nolan North up to his death.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In 2015 and 2016, Fillion worked with Alan Tudyk on a web series called "Con Man", loosely based on their experiences on the convention circuit after "Firefly".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In 2017, Fillion was cast in the recurring role of Gary West on the Netflix horror-comedy series "Santa Clarita Diet". In the same year, Fillion was cast in the recurring role of Jacques Snicket on the second season of the Netflix comedy drama series "A Series of Unfortunate Events".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In February 2018, Fillion was cast to star as John Nolan in the new ABC TV series "The Rookie", which was created by former "Castle" executive producer Alexi Hawley.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: On July 16, 2018, Fillion and director Allan Ungar released a live action short film based on the Naughty Dog franchise "Uncharted". The short immediately went viral and was praised for its witty humor, action, and ability to stay true to the source material. Fans and critics took to social media and began campaigning for Netflix to turn it into a series while referring to it as one of the best adaptations of a video game.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion has been associated with the public artist Martin Firrell since 2009. He is the subject of two works of contemporary public art by Firrell: "Complete Hero" (digital projections of text and video portraiture to the West and North elevations of the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, London, 2009) and Metascifi (a digital app investigating American television science fiction series for ideas and strategies for living well).


title: Nathan Fillion

text: Fillion was the 'face' of "Complete Hero". The artist explained the choice of Fillion as follows: "I wanted to make a piece of work that looked at all kinds of heroism, not just the usual derring-do of white square-jawed men. But I thought it would be interesting to start with a white, square-jawed man and Nathan Fillion agreed to take part."


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In Metascifi, Fillion discusses the deeper significance of his "Firefly" character Captain Mal Reynolds, reflecting on some of the universal preoccupations of any human life: death, love, evil, intimacy, power, vulnerability, violence and freedom.


title: Nathan Fillion

text: For August 7 and 8, 2021, the Edmonton city hall was renamed the "Nathan Fillion Civilian Pavilion" after a petition from fans with over 27,000 signatures and support from Fillion's costars in "The Suicide Squad".


title: Nathan Fillion

text: In 2007, Fillion and author PJ Haarsma co-founded the non-profit organization Kids Need to Read, to help inspire children's imaginations by getting more books into underfunded libraries.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above sea level. Its last recorded population was 1,578,722 in 2015. Its estimated metro population in 2020 is 2.042million, making it the third-most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. Pilgrims more than triple this number every year during the pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Hijri month of .


title: Mecca

text: Mecca is generally considered "the fountainhead and cradle of Islam". Mecca is revered in Islam as the birthplace of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The Hira cave atop the ("Mountain of Light"), just outside the city, is where Muslims believe the Quran was first revealed to Muhammad. Visiting Mecca for the is an obligation upon all able Muslims. The Great Mosque of Mecca, known as the , is home to the Ka'bah, believed by Muslims to have been built by Abraham and Ishmael. It is one of Islam's holiest sites and the direction of prayer for all Muslims ().


title: Mecca

text: Muslim rulers from in and around the region long tried to take the city and keep it in their control, and thus, much like most of the Hejaz region, the city has seen several regime changes. The city was most recently conquered in the Saudi conquest of Hejaz by Ibn Saud and his allies in 1925. Since then, Mecca has seen a tremendous expansion in size and infrastructure, with newer, modern buildings such as the Abraj Al Bait, the world's fourth-tallest building and third-largest by floor area, towering over the Great Mosque. The Saudi government has also carried out the destruction of several historical structures and archaeological sites, such as the Ajyad Fortress. Non-Muslims are strictly prohibited from entering the city.


title: Mecca

text: Under the Saudi government, Mecca is governed by the Mecca Regional Municipality, a municipal council of 14 locally elected members headed by the mayor (called in Arabic) appointed by the Saudi government. In 2015, the mayor of the city was Osama bin Fadhel Al-Barr; , mayor of is Saleh Al-Turki. The City of Mecca , which constitutes Mecca and the surrounding region, is the capital of the Mecca Province, which includes the neighbouring cities of Jeddah and Ta'if, even though Jeddah is considerably larger in population compared to Mecca. The Provincial Governor of the province from 16 May 2007 was Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca has been referred to by many names. As with many Arabic words, its etymology is obscure. Widely believed to be a synonym for , it is said to be more specifically the early name for the valley located therein, while Muslim scholars generally use it to refer to the sacred area of the city that immediately surrounds and includes the Ka'bah.


title: Mecca

text: The Quran refers to the city as in Surah Al Imran (3), verse 96: "Indeed the first House [of worship], established for mankind was that at Bakkah". This is presumed to have been the name of the city at the time of Abraham (Ibrahim in Islamic tradition) and it is also transliterated as and , among others.


title: Mecca

text: is the official transliteration used by the Saudi government and is closer to the Arabic pronunciation. The government adopted as the official spelling in the 1980s, but it is not universally known or used worldwide. The full official name is (). is used to refer to the city in the Quran in Surah Al-Fath (48), verse 24.


title: Mecca

text: The word "Mecca" in English has come to be used to refer to any place that draws large numbers of people, and because of this some English-speaking Muslims have come to regard the use of this spelling for the city as offensive. Nonetheless, "Mecca" is the familiar form of the English transliteration for the Arabic name of the city.


title: Mecca

text: The historic consensus in academic scholarship has long been that "Macoraba", the place mentioned in Arabia Felix by Claudius Ptolemy, is Mecca. More recent study has questioned this association. Many etymologies have been proposed: the traditional one is that it is derived from the Old South Arabian root M-K-R-B which means "temple".


title: Mecca

text: Another name used for Mecca in the Quran is at 6:92 where it is called (, meaning "Mother of all Settlements"). The city has been called several other names in both the Quran and . Another name used historically for Mecca is . According to Arab and Islamic tradition, another name for Mecca, , is synonymous with the Desert of Paran mentioned in the Old Testament at Genesis 21:21. Arab and Islamic tradition holds that the wilderness of Paran, broadly speaking, is the Tihamah coastal plain and the site where Ishmael settled was Mecca. Yaqut al-Hamawi, the 12th-century Syrian geographer, wrote that was "an arabized Hebrew word, one of the names of Mecca mentioned in the Torah."


title: Mecca

text: In 2010, Mecca and the surrounding area became an important site for paleontology with respect to primate evolution, with the discovery of a "Saadanius" fossil. "Saadanius" is considered to be a primate closely related to the common ancestor of the Old World monkeys and apes. The fossil habitat, near what is now the Red Sea in western Saudi Arabia, was a damp forest area between 28 million and 29 million years ago. Paleontologists involved in the research hope to find further fossils in the area.


title: Mecca

text: The early history of Mecca is still largely disputed, as there are no unambiguous references to it in ancient literature prior to the rise of Islam. The first unambiguous reference to Mecca in external literature occurs in 741 CE, in the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, though here the author places the region in Mesopotamia rather than the Hejaz.


title: Mecca

text: The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes about Arabia in the 1st century BCE in his work "Bibliotheca historica", describing a holy shrine: "And a temple has been set up there, which is very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians". Claims have been made this could be a reference to the Ka'bah in Mecca. However, the geographic location Diodorus describes is located in northwest Arabia, around the area of Leuke Kome, within the former Nabataean Kingdom and the Roman province of Arabia Petraea.


title: Mecca

text: Ptolemy lists the names of 50 cities in Arabia, one going by the name of Macoraba. There has been speculation since 1646 that this could be a reference to Mecca. Historically, there has been a general consensus in scholarship that Macoraba mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE is indeed Mecca, but more recently, this has been questioned. Bowersock favors the identity of the former, with his theory being that "Macoraba" is the word ""Makkah"" followed by the aggrandizing Aramaic adjective "rabb" (great). The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus also enumerated many cities of Western Arabia, most of which can be identified. According to Bowersock, he did mention Mecca as "Geapolis" or "Hierapolis", the latter one meaning "holy city" potentially referring to the sanctuary of the Kaaba. Patricia Crone, from the Revisionist school of Islamic studies on the other hand, writes that "the plain truth is that the name Macoraba has nothing to do with that of Mecca [...] if Ptolemy mentions Mecca at all, he calls it Moka, a town in Arabia Petraea".


title: Mecca

text: Recent research suggests that "Mecca was small" and the population of Mecca at the time of Muhammad was around 550.


title: Mecca

text: Procopius' 6th century statement that the Ma'ad tribe possessed the coast of western Arabia between the Ghassanids and the Himyarites of the south supports the Arabic sources tradition that associates Quraysh as a branch of the Ma'add and Muhammad as a direct descendant of Ma'ad ibn Adnan.


title: Mecca

text: Historian Patricia Crone has cast doubt on the claim that Mecca was a major historical trading outpost. However, other scholars such as Glen W. Bowersock disagree and assert that Mecca was a major trading outpost. Crone later on disregarded some of her theories. She argues that Meccan trade relied on skins, hides, manufactured leather goods, clarified butter, Hijazi woollens, and camels. She suggests that most of these goods were destined for the Roman army, which is known to have required colossal quantities of leather and hides for its equipment.


title: Mecca

text: In the Islamic view, the beginnings of Mecca are attributed to the Biblical figures, Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael. The civilization of Mecca is believed to have started after Ibrāhīm (Abraham) left his son Ismāʿīl (Ishmael) and wife Hājar (Hagar) in the valley at Allah's command. Some people from the Yemeni tribe of Jurhum settled with them, and Isma'il reportedly married two women, one after divorcing the first, on Ibrahim's advice. At least one man of the Jurhum helped Ismāʿīl and his father to construct or according to Islamic narratives, reconstruct, the "Ka'bah" ('Cube'), which would have social, religious, political and historical implications for the site and region.


title: Mecca

text: Muslims see the mention of a pilgrimage at the Valley of Baca in the Old Testament chapter Psalm 84:3–6 as a reference to Mecca, similar to the Quran at Surah In the "Sharḥ al-Asāṭīr", a commentary on the Samaritan midrashic chronology of the Patriarchs, of unknown date but probably composed in the 10th century CE, it is claimed that Mecca was built by the sons of Nebaioth, the eldest son of Ismāʿīl or Ishmael.


title: Mecca

text: Some Thamudic inscriptions which were discovered in the south Jordan contained names of some individuals such as "ʿAbd Mekkat" (, "Servant of Mecca").


title: Mecca

text: There were also some other inscriptions which contained personal names such as "Makki" (, "Makkahn"), but Jawwad Ali from the University of Baghdad suggested that there's also a probability of a tribe named "Makkah".


title: Mecca

text: Sometime in the 5th century, the Ka'bah was a place of worship for the deities of Arabia's pagan tribes. Mecca's most important pagan deity was Hubal, which had been placed there by the ruling Quraish tribe. and remained until the Conquest of Mecca by Muhammad. In the 5th century, the Quraish took control of Mecca, and became skilled merchants and traders. In the 6th century, they joined the lucrative spice trade, since battles elsewhere were diverting trade routes from dangerous sea routes to more secure overland routes. The Byzantine Empire had previously controlled the Red Sea, but piracy had been increasing. Another previous route that ran through the Persian Gulf via the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was also being threatened by exploitations from the Sassanid Empire, and was being disrupted by the Lakhmids, the Ghassanids, and the Roman–Persian Wars. Mecca's prominence as a trading center also surpassed the cities of Petra and Palmyra. The Sassanids however did not always pose a threat to Mecca, as in 575 CE they protected it from a Yemeni invasion, led by its Christian leader Abraha. The tribes of southern Arabia asked the Persian king Khosrau I for aid, in response to which he came south to Arabia with foot-soldiers and a fleet of ships near Mecca.


title: Mecca

text: By the middle of the 6th century, there were three major settlements in northern Arabia, all along the south-western coast that borders the Red Sea, in a habitable region between the sea and the Hejaz mountains to the east. Although the area around Mecca was completely barren, it was the wealthiest of the three settlements with abundant water from the renowned Zamzam Well and a position at the crossroads of major caravan routes.


title: Mecca

text: The harsh conditions and terrain of the Arabian peninsula meant a near-constant state of conflict between the local tribes, but once a year they would declare a truce and converge upon Mecca in an annual pilgrimage. Up to the 7th century, this journey was intended for religious reasons by the pagan Arabs to pay homage to their shrine, and to drink Zamzam. However, it was also the time each year that disputes would be arbitrated, debts would be resolved, and trading would occur at Meccan fairs. These annual events gave the tribes a sense of common identity and made Mecca an important focus for the peninsula.


title: Mecca

text: The "Year of the Elephant" is the name in Islamic history for the year approximately equating to 570–572 CE, when, according to Islamic sources such as Ibn Ishaq, Abraha descended upon Mecca, riding an elephant, with a large army after building a cathedral at San'aa, named "al-Qullays" in honor of the Negus of Axum. It gained widespread fame, even gaining attention from the Byzantine Empire. Abraha attempted to divert the pilgrimage of the Arabs from the Ka'bah to al-Qullays, effectively converting them to Christianity. According to Islamic tradition, this was the year of Muhammad's birth. Abraha allegedly sent a messenger named Muhammad ibn Khuza'i to Mecca and Tihamah with a message that al-Qullays was both much better than other houses of worship and purer, having not been defiled by the housing of idols. When Muhammad ibn Khuza'i got as far as the land of Kinana, the people of the lowland, knowing what he had come for, sent a man of Hudhayl called ʿUrwa bin Hayyad al-Milasi, who shot him with an arrow, killing him. His brother Qays who was with him, fled to Abraha and told him the news, which increased his rage and fury and he swore to raid the Kinana tribe and destroy the Ka'bah. Ibn Ishaq further states that one of the men of the Quraysh tribe was angered by this, and going to Sana'a, entering the church at night and defiling it; widely assumed to have done so by defecating in it.


title: Mecca

text: Abraha marched upon the Ka'bah with a large army, which included one or more war elephants, intending to demolish it. When news of the advance of his army came, the Arab tribes of Quraysh, Kinanah, Khuza'a and Hudhayl united in the defense of the Ka'bah and the city. A man from the Himyarite Kingdom was sent by Abraha to advise them that Abraha only wished to demolish the Ka'bah and if they resisted, they would be crushed. Abdul Muttalib told the Meccans to seek refuge in the hills while he and some members of the Quraysh remained within the precincts of the Kaaba. Abraha sent a dispatch inviting Abdul-Muttalib to meet with Abraha and discuss matters. When Abdul-Muttalib left the meeting he was heard saying: "The Owner of this House is its Defender, and I am sure he will save it from the attack of the adversaries and will not dishonor the servants of His House."


title: Mecca

text: Abraha eventually attacked Mecca. However, the lead elephant, known as Mahmud, is said to have stopped at the boundary around Mecca and refused to enter. It has been theorized that an epidemic such as by smallpox could have caused such a failed invasion of Mecca. The reference to the story in Quran is rather short. According to the 105th Surah of the Quran, Al-Fil, the next day, a dark cloud of small birds sent by Allah appeared. The birds carried small rocks in their beaks, and bombarded the Ethiopian forces, and smashed them to a state like that of eaten straw.


title: Mecca

text: Camel caravans, said to have first been used by Muhammad's great-grandfather, were a major part of Mecca's bustling economy. Alliances were struck between the merchants in Mecca and the local nomadic tribes, who would bring goods – leather, livestock, and metals mined in the local mountains – to Mecca to be loaded on the caravans and carried to cities in Shaam and Iraq. Historical accounts also provide some indication that goods from other continents may also have flowed through Mecca. Goods from Africa and the Far East passed through en route to Syria including spices, leather, medicine, cloth, and slaves; in return Mecca received money, weapons, cereals and wine, which in turn were distributed throughout Arabia. The Meccans signed treaties with both the Byzantines and the Bedouins, and negotiated safe passages for caravans, giving them water and pasture rights. Mecca became the center of a loose confederation of client tribes, which included those of the Banu Tamim. Other regional powers such as the Abyssinians, Ghassanids, and Lakhmids were in decline leaving Meccan trade to be the primary binding force in Arabia in the late 6th century.


title: Mecca

text: Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570, and thus Islam has been inextricably linked with it ever since. He was born into the faction of Banu Hashim in the ruling tribe of Quraysh. It was in the nearby mountain cave of Hira on Jabal al-Nour that Muhammad began receiving divine revelations from God through the archangel Jibreel in 610 CE, according to Islamic tradition. Advocating his form of Abrahamic monotheism against Meccan paganism, and after enduring persecution from the pagan tribes for 13 years, Muhammad emigrated to Medina ("hijrah") in 622 with his companions, the "Muhajirun", to Yathrib (later renamed Medina). The conflict between the Quraysh and the Muslims is accepted to have begun at this point. Overall, Meccan efforts to annihilate Islam failed and proved to be costly and unsuccessful. During the Battle of the Trench in 627, the combined armies of Arabia were unable to defeat Muhammad's forces.


title: Mecca

text: In 628, Muhammad and his followers wanted to enter Mecca for pilgrimage, but were blocked by the Quraysh. Subsequently, Muslims and Meccans entered into the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, whereby the Quraysh and their allies promised to cease fighting Muslims and their allies and promised that Muslims would be allowed into the city to perform the pilgrimage the following year. It was meant to be a ceasefire for 10 years; however, just two years later, the Banu Bakr, allies of the Quraish, violated the truce by slaughtering a group of the Banu Khuza'ah, allies of the Muslims. Muhammad and his companions, now 10,000 strong, marched into Mecca and conquered the city. The pagan imagery was destroyed by Muhammad's followers and the location Islamized and rededicated to the worship of Allah alone. Mecca was declared the holiest site in Islam ordaining it as the center of Muslim pilgrimage ("Hajj"), one of the faith's Five Pillars.


title: Mecca

text: Muhammad then returned to Medina, after assigning 'Akib ibn Usaid as governor of the city. His other activities in Arabia led to the unification of the peninsula under the banner of Islam. Muhammad died in 632. Within the next few hundred years, the area under the banner of Islam stretched from North Africa into Asia and parts of Europe. As the Islamic realm grew, Mecca continued to attract pilgrims from all across the Muslim world and beyond, as Muslims came to perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Mecca also attracted a year-round population of scholars, pious Muslims who wished to live close to the Kaaba, and local inhabitants who served the pilgrims. Due to the difficulty and expense of the Hajj, pilgrims arrived by boat at Jeddah, and came overland, or joined the annual caravans from Syria or Iraq.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca was never the capital of any of the Islamic states. Muslim rulers did contribute to its upkeep, such as during the reigns of 'Umar (r. 634–644 CE) and 'Uthman ibn Affan (r. 644–656 CE) when concerns of flooding caused the caliphs to bring in Christian engineers to build barrages in the low-lying quarters and construct dykes and embankments to protect the area around the Kaaba.


title: Mecca

text: Muhammad's return to Medina shifted the focus away from Mecca and later even further away when 'Ali, the fourth caliph, took power chose Kufa as his capital. The Umayyad Caliphate moved the capital to Damascus in Syria and the Abbasid Caliphate to Baghdad, in modern-day Iraq, which remained the center of the Islamic Empire for nearly 500 years. Mecca re-entered Islamic political history during the Second Fitna, when it was held by Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr and the Zubayrids. The city was twice besieged by the Umayyads, in 683 and 692 and for some time thereafter, the city figured little in politics, remaining a city of devotion and scholarship governed by various other factions. In 930, Mecca was attacked and sacked by Qarmatians, a millenarian Shi'a Isma'ili Muslim sect led by Abū-Tāhir Al-Jannābī and centered in eastern Arabia. The Black Death pandemic hit Mecca in 1349.


title: Mecca

text: One of the most famous travelers to Mecca in the 14th century was a Moroccan scholar and traveler, Ibn Battuta. In his "rihla" (account), he provides a vast description of the city. Around the year 1327 CE or 729 AH, Ibn Battuta arrived at the holy city. Immediately, he says, it felt like a holy sanctuary, and thus. he started the rites of the pilgrimage. He remained in Mecca for three years and left in 1330 CE. During his second year in the holy city, he says his caravan arrived "with a great quantity of alms for the support of those who were staying in Mecca and Medina". While in Mecca, prayers were made for (not to) the King of Iraq and also for Salaheddin al-Ayyubi, Sultan of Egypt and Syria at the Ka'bah. Battuta says the Ka'bah was large, but was destroyed and rebuilt smaller than the original and that it contained images of angels and prophets including Jesus, his mother Mary, and many others. Battuta describes the Ka'bah as an important part of Mecca due to the fact that many people make the pilgrimage to it. Battuta describes the people of the city as being humble and kind, and also willing to give a part of everything they had to someone who had nothing. The inhabitants of Mecca and the village itself, he says, were very clean. There was also a sense of elegance to the village.


title: Mecca

text: Under the OttomansIn 1517, the then Sharif of Mecca, Barakat bin Muhammad, acknowledged the supremacy of the Ottoman Caliph but retained a great degree of local autonomy. In 1803 the city was captured by the First Saudi State, which held Mecca until 1813, destroying some of the historic tombs and domes in and around the city. The Ottomans assigned the task of bringing Mecca back under Ottoman control to their powerful "Khedive" (viceroy) and "Wali" of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha. Muhammad Ali Pasha successfully returned Mecca to Ottoman control in 1813. In 1818, the Saud were defeated again but survived and founded the Second Saudi State that lasted until 1891 and led on to the present country of Saudi Arabia. In 1853, Sir Richard Francis Burton undertook the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina disguised as a Muslim. Although Burton was certainly not the first non-Muslim European to make the "Hajj" (Ludovico di Varthema did this in 1503), his pilgrimage remains one of the most famous and documented of modern times. Mecca was regularly hit by cholera outbreaks. Between 1830 and 1930, cholera broke out among pilgrims at Mecca 27 times.


title: Mecca

text: In World War I, the Ottoman Empire was at war with the Allies. It had successfully repulsed an attack on Istanbul in the Gallipoli campaign and on Baghdad in the Siege of Kut. The British intelligence agent T.E. Lawrence conspired with the Ottoman governor, Hussain bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca to revolt against the Ottoman Empire and it was the first city captured by his forces in the 1916 Battle of Mecca. Sharif's revolt proved a turning point of the war on the eastern front. Hussein declared a new state, the Kingdom of Hejaz, declaring himself the Sharif of the state and Mecca his capital. News reports in November 1916 via contact in Cairo with returning Hajj pilgrims, stated that with the Ottoman Turkish authorities gone, the Hajj of 1916 was free of the previous massive extortion and monetary demands made by the Turks who were agents of the Ottoman government.


title: Mecca

text: Following the 1924 Battle of Mecca, the Sharif of Mecca was overthrown by the Saud family, and Mecca was incorporated into Saudi Arabia. Under Saudi rule, much of the historic city has been demolished as a result of the Saudi government fearing these sites might become sites of association in worship besides Allah ("shirk"). The city has been expanded to include several towns previously considered to be separate from the holy city and now is just a few kilometers outside the main sites of the Hajj, Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat. Mecca is not served by any airport, due to concerns about the city's safety. It is instead served by the King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah (approx. 70 km away) internationally and the Ta'if Regional Airport (approx. 120 km away) for domestic flights.


title: Mecca

text: The city today is at the junction of the two most important highways in all of the Saudi Arabian highway system, Highway 40, which connects the city to Jeddah in the west and the capital, Riyadh and Dammam in the east and Highway 15, which connects it to Medina, Tabuk and onward to Jordan in the north and Abha and Jizan in the south. The Ottomans had planned to extend their railway network to the holy city, but were forced to abandon this plan due to their entry into the First World War. This plan was later carried out by the Saudi government, which connected the two holy cities of Medina and Mecca with the modern Haramain high-speed railway system which runs at 300 km/h (190 mph) and connects the two cities via Jeddah, King Abdulaziz International Airport and King Abdullah Economic City near Rabigh within two hours.


title: Mecca

text: The haram area of Mecca, in which the entry of non-Muslims is forbidden, is much larger than that of Medina.


title: Mecca

text: On 20 November 1979, two hundred armed dissidents led by Juhayman al-Otaibi, seized the Grand Mosque, claiming the Saudi royal family no longer represented pure Islam and that the Masjid al-Haram and the Ka'bah, must be held by those of true faith. The rebels seized tens of thousands of pilgrims as hostages and barricaded themselves in the mosque. The siege lasted two weeks, and resulted in several hundred deaths and significant damage to the shrine, especially the Safa-Marwah gallery. A multinational force was finally able to retake the mosque from the dissidents. Since then, the Grand Mosque has been expanded several times, with many other expansions being undertaken in the present day.


title: Mecca

text: Under Saudi rule, it has been estimated that since 1985, about 95% of Mecca's historic buildings, most over a thousand years old, have been demolished. It has been reported that there are now fewer than 20 structures remaining in Mecca that date back to the time of Muhammad. Some important buildings that have been destroyed include the house of Khadijah, the wife of Muhammad, the house of Abu Bakr, Muhammad's birthplace and the Ottoman-era Ajyad Fortress. The reason for much of the destruction of historic buildings has been for the construction of hotels, apartments, parking lots, and other infrastructure facilities for Hajj pilgrims.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca has been the site of several incidents and failures of crowd control because of the large numbers of people who come to make the Hajj. For example, on 2 July 1990, a pilgrimage to Mecca ended in tragedy when the ventilation system failed in a crowded pedestrian tunnel and 1,426 people were either suffocated or trampled to death in a stampede. On 24 September 2015, 700 pilgrims were killed in a stampede at Mina during the stoning-the-Devil ritual at Jamarat.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca holds an important place in Islam and is the holiest city in all branches of the religion. The city derives its importance from the role it plays in the Hajj and 'Umrah.


title: Mecca

text: The "Masjid al-Haram" is the site of two of the most important rites of both the Hajj and of the Umrah, the circumambulation around the Ka'bah ("tawaf") and the walking between the two mounts of Safa and Marwa ("sa'ee"). The masjid is also the site of the Zamzam Well. According to Islamic tradition, a prayer in the masjid is equal to 100,000 prayers in any other masjid around the world.


title: Mecca

text: There is a difference of opinion between Islamic scholars upon who first built the Ka'bah, some believe it was built by the angels while others believe it was built by Adam. Regardless, it was built several times before reaching its current state. The Ka'bah is also the common direction of prayer ("qibla") for all Muslims. The surface surrounding the Ka'bah on which Muslims circumambulate it is known as the Mataf.


title: Mecca

text: The Black Stone is a stone, considered by scientists to be a meteorite or of similar origin and believed by Muslims to be of divine origin. It is set in the eastern corner of the Ka’bah and it is Sunnah to touch and kiss the stone. The area around the stone is generally always crowded and guarded by policemen to ensure the pilgrims' safety.


title: Mecca

text: This is the stone that Ibraham(Abraham) stood on to build the higher parts of the Ka'bah. It contains two footprints that are comparatively larger than average modern-day human feet. The stone is raised and housed in a golden hexagonal chamber beside the Ka'bah on the Mataf plate.


title: Mecca

text: Muslims believe that in the divine revelation to Muhammad, the Quran, Allah describes the mountains of Safa and Marwah as symbols of his divinity. Walking between the two mountains seven times, 4 times from Safa to Marwah and 3 times from Marwah interchangeably, is considered a mandatory pillar ("rukn") of 'Umrah.


title: Mecca

text: The Hajj pilgrimage also called the greater pilgrimage, attracts millions of Muslims from all over the world and almost triples Mecca's population for one week in the twelfth and final Islamic month of "Dhu al-Hijjah". In 2019, the Hajj attracted 2,489,406 pilgrims to the holy city. The 'Umrah, or the lesser pilgrimage, can be done at anytime during the year. Every adult, healthy Muslim who has the financial and physical capacity to travel to Mecca must perform the Hajj at least once in a lifetime. Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, is not obligatory, but is recommended in the Quran. In addition to the "Masjid al-Haram", pilgrims also must visit the nearby towns of Mina/Muna, Muzdalifah and Mount Arafat for various rituals that are part of the Hajj.


title: Mecca

text: This is a mountain believed by Muslims to have been the place where Muhammad spent his time away from the bustling city of Mecca in seclusion. The mountain is located on the eastern entrance of the city and is the highest point in the city at 642 meters (2,106 feet).


title: Mecca

text: Situated atop Jabal an-Nur, this is the place where Muslims believe Muhammad received the first revelation from Allah through the archangel Gabriel (Jibril in Islamic tradition) at the age of 40.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca is located in the Hejaz region, a 200 km (124 mi) wide strip of mountains separating the Nafud desert from the Red Sea. The city is situated in a valley with the same name around 70 km (44 mi) west of the port city of Jeddah. Mecca is one of the lowest cities in elevation in the Hejaz region, located at an elevation of 277 m (909 ft) above sea level at 21º23' north latitude and 39º51' east longitude. Mecca is divided into 34 districts.


title: Mecca

text: The city centers on the al-Haram area, which contains the Masjid al-Haram. The area around the mosque is the old city and contains the most famous district of Mecca, Ajyad. The main street that runs to "al-Haram" is the Ibrahim al-Khalil Street, named after Ibrahim. Traditional, historical homes built of local rock, two to three stories long are still present within the city's central area, within view of modern hotels and shopping complexes. The total area of modern Mecca is over .


title: Mecca

text: Mecca is at an elevation of above sea level, and approximately 70 km (44 mi) inland from the Red Sea. It is one of the lowest in the Hejaz region. Although some mountains peaks in Mecca reach 1,000m in height.


title: Mecca

text: The city center lies in a corridor between mountains, which is often called the "Hollow of Mecca". The area contains the valley of al-Taneem, the valley of Bakkah and the valley of Abqar. This mountainous location has defined the contemporary expansion of the city.


title: Mecca

text: Due to Mecca's climatic conditions water scarcity has been an issue throughout its history. In pre-modern Mecca, the city used a few chief sources of water. Among them were local wells, such as the Zamzam Well, that produced generally brackish water. Finding a sustainable water source to supply Mecca's permanent population and the large number of annual pilgrims was an undertaking that began in the Abbasid era under the auspices of Zubayda, the wife of the caliph Harun ar-Rashid. She donated funds for the deepening of Zamzam Well and funded a massive construction project likely costing 1.75 Million gold dinars. The project encompassed the construction of an underground aqueduct from the and smaller water sources in the area to Mecca in addition to the construction of a waterworks on Mount Arafat called using a separate conduit to connect it too to Mecca and the Masjid al-Haram. Over time however the system deteriorated and failed to fulfil its function. Thus in 1245 CE, 1361 CE, 1400 CE, 1474 CE, and 1510 CE different rulers invested into extensive repairs of the system. In 1525 CE due to the system's troubles persisting however the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent began a construction project to rebuild the aqueduct in its entirety, the project took until 1571 CE to be completed. Its water quality was greatly lacking during the 19th century until a restoration and cleaning project by Osman Pasha began.


title: Mecca

text: Another source which sporadically provided water were was rainfall which was stored by the people in small reservoirs or cisterns. According to al-Kurdī, there had been 89 floods by 1965. In the last century, the most severe flood was that of 1942. Since then, dams have been built to ameliorate this problem.


title: Mecca

text: In the modern day water treatment plants and desalination facilities have been constructed and are being constructed to provide suitable amounts of water fit for human consumption to the city.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca features a hot desert climate (Köppen: "BWh"), in three different plant hardiness zones: 10, 11 and 12. Like most Saudi Arabian cities, Mecca retains warm to hot temperatures even in winter, which can range from at night to in the afternoon, but also, very rarely, fall to zero and subzero temperatures. Summer temperatures are extremely hot and consistently break the mark in the afternoon, dropping to in the evening, but humidity remains relatively low, at 30–40%. Rain usually falls in Mecca in small amounts scattered between November and January, with heavy thunderstorms also common during the winter.


title: Mecca

text: The Meccan economy has been heavily dependent on pilgrimages coming for Umrah and Hajj. Income generated through pilgrims not only powers the Meccan economy but has historically had far-reaching effects on the economy of the entire Arabian Peninsula. The income was generated in a number of ways. One method was taxing the pilgrims. Taxes were especially increased during the Great Depression, and many of these taxes existed to as late as 1972. Another way the Hajj generates income is through services to pilgrims. For example, the Saudi flag carrier, Saudia, generates 12% of its income from the pilgrimage. Fares paid by pilgrims to reach Mecca by land also generate income; as do the hotels and lodging companies that house them. The city takes in more than $100 million, while the Saudi government spends about $50 million on services for the Hajj. There are some industries and factories in the city, but Mecca no longer plays a major role in Saudi Arabia's economy, which is mainly based on oil exports. The few industries operating in Mecca include textiles, furniture, and utensils. The majority of the economy is service-oriented.


title: Mecca

text: Nevertheless, many industries have been set up in Mecca. Various types of enterprises that have existed since 1970 in the city include corrugated iron manufacturing, copper extraction, carpentry, upholstery, bakeries, farming and banking. The city has grown substantially in the 20th and 21st centuries, as the convenience and affordability of jet travel has increased the number of pilgrims participating in the Hajj. Thousands of Saudis are employed year-round to oversee the Hajj and staff the hotels and shops that cater to pilgrims; these workers in turn have increased the demand for housing and services. The city is now ringed by freeways, and contains shopping malls and skyscrapers.


title: Mecca

text: Formal education started to be developed in the late Ottoman period continuing slowly into Hashemite times. The first major attempt to improve the situation was made by a Jeddah merchant, Muhammad ʿAlī Zaynal Riḍā, who founded the Madrasat al-Falāḥ in Mecca in 1911–12 that cost £400,000. The school system in Mecca has many public and private schools for both males and females. As of 2005, there were 532 public and private schools for males and another 681 public and private schools for female students. The medium of instruction in both public and private schools is Arabic with emphasis on English as a second language, but some private schools founded by foreign entities such as International schools use the English language as the medium of instruction. Some of these are coeducational while other schools are not. For higher education, the city has only one university, Umm Al-Qura University, which was established in 1949 as a college and became a public university in 1981.


title: Mecca

text: Healthcare is provided by the Saudi government free of charge to all pilgrims. There are ten main hospitals in Mecca:


title: Mecca

text: There are also many walk-in clinics available for both residents and pilgrims. Several temporary clinics are set up during the Hajj to tend to wounded pilgrims.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca's culture has been affected by the large number of pilgrims that arrive annually, and thus boasts a rich cultural heritage. As a result of the vast numbers of pilgrims coming to the city each year, Mecca has become by far the most diverse city in the Muslim world.


title: Mecca

text: Al Baik, a local fast-food chain, is very popular among pilgrims and locals alike. Until 2018, it was available only in Mecca, Medina and Jeddah, and traveling to Jeddah just to get a taste of the fried chicken was common.


title: Mecca

text: In pre-modern Mecca, the most common sports were impromptu wrestling and foot races. Football is now the most popular sport in Mecca and the kingdom, and the city hosts some of the oldest sport clubs in Saudi Arabia such as Al Wahda FC (established in 1945). King Abdulaziz Stadium is the largest stadium in Mecca with a capacity of 38,000.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca is very densely populated. Most long-term residents live in the Old City, the area around the Great Mosque and many work to support pilgrims, known locally as the "Hajj" industry. 'Iyad Madani, the Saudi Arabian Minister for Hajj, was quoted saying, "We never stop preparing for the Hajj."


title: Mecca

text: Year-round, pilgrims stream into the city to perform the rites of 'Umrah, and during the last weeks of eleventh Islamic month, Dhu al-Qi'dah, on average 2–4 million Muslims arrive in the city to take part in the rites known as Hajj. Pilgrims are from varying ethnicities and backgrounds, mainly South and Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. Many of these pilgrims have remained and become residents of the city. The Burmese are an older, more established community who number roughly 250,000. Adding to this, the discovery of oil in the past 50 years has brought hundreds of thousands of working immigrants.


title: Mecca

text: Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca under Saudi law, and using fraudulent documents to do so may result in arrest and prosecution. The prohibition extends to Ahmadis, as they are considered non-Muslims. Nevertheless, many non-Muslims and Ahmadis have visited the city as these restrictions are loosely enforced. The first such recorded example of a non-Muslim entering the city is that of Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna in 1503. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, is said to have visited Mecca in December 1518. One of the most famous was Richard Francis Burton, who traveled as a Qadiriyya Sufi from Afghanistan in 1853.


title: Mecca

text: Adorning the southern facade of the Masjid al-Haram, the Abraj al-Bait Complex, which towers over the Great Mosque, is a seven-building complex with the central clock tower having a length of 601 m (1,972 feet), making it the world's fourth-tallest building. All seven buildings in the complex also form the third-largest building by floor area.


title: Mecca

text: The Mecca Gate, known popularly as the Quran Gate, on the western entrance of the city, or from Jeddah. Located on Highway 40, it marks the boundary of the Haram area where non-Muslims are prohibited from entering. The gate was designed in 1979 by an Egyptian architect, Samir Elabd, for the architectural firm IDEA Center. The structure is that of a book, representing the Quran, sitting on a "rehal", or bookrest.


title: Mecca

text: The first press was brought to Mecca in 1885 by Osman Nuri Pasha, an Ottoman Wāli. During the Hashemite period, it was used to print the city's official gazette, "Al Qibla". The Saudi regime expanded this press into a larger operation, introducing the new Saudi official gazette of Mecca, "Umm al-Qurā". Mecca also has its own paper owned by the city, "Al Nadwa". However, other Saudi newspapers are also provided in Mecca such as the "Saudi Gazette", "Al Madinah", "Okaz" and "Al Bilad," in addition to other international newspapers.


title: Mecca

text: Telecommunications in the city were emphasized early under the Saudi reign. King Abdulaziz pressed them forward as he saw them as a means of convenience and better governance. While under Hussein bin Ali, there were about 20 public telephones in the entire city; in 1936, the number jumped to 450, totaling about half the telephones in the country. During that time, telephone lines were extended to Jeddah and Ta’if, but not to the capital, Riyadh. By 1985, Mecca, like other Saudi cities, possessed modern telephone, telex, radio and television communications. Many television stations serving the city area include Saudi TV1, Saudi TV2, Saudi TV Sports, Al-Ekhbariya, Arab Radio and Television Network and various cable, satellite and other specialty television providers.


title: Mecca

text: Limited radio communication was established within the Kingdom under the Hashemites. In 1929, wireless stations were set up in various towns in the region, creating a network that would become fully functional by 1932. Soon after World War II, the existing network was greatly expanded and improved. Since then, radio communication has been used extensively in directing the pilgrimage and addressing the pilgrims. This practice started in 1950, with the initiation of broadcasts on the Day of 'Arafah (9 Dhu al-Hijjah), and increased until 1957, at which time Radio Makkah became the most powerful station in the Middle East at 50 kW. Later, power was increased 9-fold to 450 kW. Music was not immediately broadcast, but gradually folk music was introduced.


title: Mecca

text: The only airport near the city is the Mecca East airport, which is not active. Mecca is primarily served by King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah for international and regional connections and Ta'if Regional Airport for regional connections. To cater the large number of Hajj pilgrims, Jeddah Airport has Hajj Terminal, specifically for use in the "Hajj" season, which can accommodate 47 planes simultaneously and can receive 3,800 pilgrims per hour during the Hajj season.


title: Mecca

text: Mecca, similar to Medina, lies at the junction of two of the most important highways in Saudi Arabia, Highway 40, connecting it to the important port city of Jeddah in the west and the capital of Riyadh and the other major port city, Dammam, in the east. The other, Highway 15, connects Mecca to the other holy Islamic city of Medina approximately 400 km (250 mi) in the north and onward to Tabuk and Jordan. While in the south, it connects Mecca to Abha and Jizan. Mecca is served by four ring roads, and these are very crowded compared to the three ring roads of Medina.


title: Mecca

text: The Al Masha'er Al Muqaddassah Metro is a metro line in Mecca opened on 13 November 2010. The 18.1-kilometer (11.2-mile) elevated metro transports pilgrims to the holy sites of 'Arafat, Muzdalifah and Mina in the city to reduce congestion on the road and is only operational during the "Hajj" season. It consists of nine stations, three in each of the aforementioned towns.


title: Mecca

text: The Mecca Metro, officially known as Makkah Mass Rail Transit, is a planned four-line metro system for the city. This will be in addition to the Al Masha'er Al Muqaddassah Metro which carries pilgrims.


title: Mecca

text: In 2018, a high speed intercity rail line, part of the Haramain High Speed Rail Project, named the Haramain high-speed railway line entered operation, connecting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina together via Jeddah, King Abdulaziz International Airport and King Abdullah Economic City in Rabigh. The railway consists of 35 electric trains and is capable of transporting 60 million passengers annually. Each train can achieve speeds of up to 300 kmh (190 mph), traveling a total distance of 450 km (280 mi), reducing the travel time between the two cities to less than two hours.


title: John Mayer

text: John Clayton Mayer ( ; born October 16, 1977) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Born and raised in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Mayer attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, but left and moved to Atlanta in 1997 with Clay Cook. Together, they formed a short-lived two-man band called Lo-Fi Masters. After their split, Mayer continued to play local clubs, refining his skills and gaining a following. After his appearance at the 2001 South by Southwest festival, he was signed to Aware Records, and eventually to Columbia Records, which released his first extended play "Inside Wants Out". His following two studio albums—"Room for Squares" (2001) and "Heavier Things" (2003)—performed well commercially, achieving multi-platinum status. In 2003, he won the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his single "Your Body Is a Wonderland".


title: John Mayer

text: By 2005, Mayer had moved away from the acoustic music that characterized his early records, and begun performing the blues and rock music that had originally influenced him as a musician. He collaborated with blues artists such as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton. Forming the John Mayer Trio, he released a live album, "Try!", in 2005 and his third studio album "Continuum" in 2006. Both albums received positive reviews, and "Continuum" earned Mayer a 2007 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album. He also won Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Waiting on the World to Change". That album was followed by "Battle Studies" in 2009, a return to pop, with a Battle Studies World Tour.


title: John Mayer

text: After having several controversial incidents with the media, Mayer withdrew from public life in 2010 and began work on his fifth studio album, "Born and Raised", which drew inspiration from the 1970s pop music of Laurel Canyon. However, the discovery of a granuloma on his vocal cords delayed the release of the album until May 2012, and forced him to cancel the planned tour. The album received a generally favorable reception, though was less commercially successful than his previous work. Mayer began performing as a singer again in January 2013, and that year released his sixth studio album, "Paradise Valley", which incorporates country music influences. By 2014, he had sold a total of over 20 million albums worldwide. His seventh album, "The Search for Everything", a loose concept album based around the theme of a romantic break-up, was released in 2017. Mayer released his latest album, "Sob Rock", inspired by 1980s soft rock music, in July 2021.


title: John Mayer

text: In 2015, three former members of the Grateful Dead joined with Mayer and two other musicians to form the band Dead & Company. It is the latest of several reunions of the band's surviving members since Jerry Garcia's death in 1995. The band remains active and its tours have been well received.


title: John Mayer

text: Mayer's secondary career pursuits extend to television hosting, comedy, and writing; he has authored columns for magazines such as "Esquire". He supports various causes and has performed at charity benefits. He is a watch aficionado (with a collection he values in the "tens of millions" of dollars), contributing to the watch site "Hodinkee", and has been on the jury at the "".


title: John Mayer

text: Mayer was born on October 16, 1977, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His father, Richard Mayer (b. 1927), was a high-school principal, and his mother, Margaret ("née" Hoffman; b. 1947), was a middle-school English teacher. He grew up in nearby Fairfield, the middle child between older half-sister Rachel, older brother Carl, and younger brother Ben. His father is Jewish, and Mayer has said that he relates to Judaism. As an elementary school student, Mayer became close friends with future tennis star James Blake, and they played Nintendo together weekday afternoons after school for three years. He attended the Center for Global Studies at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk for his junior year (then known as the Center for Japanese Studies Abroad, a magnet program for learning Japanese).


title: John Mayer

text: After watching Michael J. Fox's guitar performance as Marty McFly in "Back to the Future", Mayer became fascinated with the instrument. When he turned 13 years old, his father rented one for him. A neighbor gave Mayer a Stevie Ray Vaughan cassette, which cultivated Mayer's love of blues music. According to Mayer, his fascination with Vaughan started a "genealogical hunt" that led him to other blues guitarists, including Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Otis Rush, and Lightnin' Hopkins. Mayer started taking lessons from a local guitar shop owner, Al Ferrante, and soon became consumed. His singular focus concerned his parents, and they twice took him to see a psychiatrist, who determined him to be healthy. Mayer says that his parents' contentious marriage led him to "disappear and create my own world I could believe in". After two years of practice, he started playing at bars and other venues, while still in high school. In addition to performing solo, he was a member of a band called Villanova Junction (named for a Jimi Hendrix song) with Tim Procaccini, Joe Beleznay, and Rich Wolf.


title: John Mayer

text: When Mayer was 17, he was stricken with cardiac dysrhythmia and was hospitalized for a weekend. Reflecting on the incident, Mayer said, "That was the moment the songwriter in me was born", and he penned his first lyrics the night he left the hospital. Shortly thereafter, he began suffering from panic attacks, and says he feared having to enter a mental institution. He continues to manage such episodes with anti-anxiety medication.


title: John Mayer

text: Mayer considered skipping college to pursue music, but his parents dissuaded him. He enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in 1997 at age 19. At the urging of his college friend Clay Cook, they left Berklee after two semesters and moved to Atlanta; there, they formed a two-man band called LoFi Masters, and began performing in local coffee houses and club venues such as Eddie's Attic. According to Cook, they experienced musical differences due to Mayer's desire to move more towards pop music. The two parted ways and Mayer embarked on a solo career.


title: John Mayer

text: With the help of local producer and engineer Glenn Matullo, Mayer recorded the independent EP "Inside Wants Out". The EP includes eight songs with Mayer on lead vocals and guitars. For the opening track, "Back To You", a full band was enlisted, including the EP's co-producer David "DeLa" LaBruyere on bass guitars. Cook had co-written many of the album's songs, including its first commercial single release, "No Such Thing"; however, his only performance contribution was backing vocals on the song "Comfortable".


title: John Mayer

text: Mayer and LaBruyere performed throughout Georgia and nearby states. Also, as his career coincided with the then-nascent internet music market, Mayer benefited from an online following. Mayer came to the attention of Gregg Latterman at Aware Records through an acquaintance of Mayer's, a lawyer, who sent Aware his EP. In early 2001, after including him in Aware Festival concerts and his songs on Aware compilations, Aware released Mayer's internet-only album, "Room for Squares". During this time, Aware concluded a deal with Columbia Records that gave Columbia first pick in signing Aware artists. In September, Columbia remixed and re-released "Room for Squares". As part of the major label "debut", the album's artwork was updated, and the track "3x5" was added. The re-release included reworked studio versions of the first four songs from "Inside Wants Out".


title: John Mayer

text: By the end of 2002, "Room for Squares" had spawned several radio hits, including "No Such Thing", "Your Body Is a Wonderland", and "Why Georgia". It also received general praise critically, and Mayer drew comparisons to Dave Matthews. In 2003, Mayer won a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Your Body Is a Wonderland". In his acceptance speech he remarked, "This is very, very fast, and I promise to catch up." He also figuratively referred to himself as being 16, a remark that many mistook to mean that he was 16 years old at the time.


title: John Mayer

text: In February 2003, Mayer released a live CD and DVD of a concert in Birmingham, Alabama titled "Any Given Thursday", which included songs previously not recorded, such as "Man on the Side", "Something's Missing", and "Covered in Rain". Commercially, the album peaked at number 17 on the "Billboard" 200 chart. Its accompanying DVD release received conservative—although consistent—praise, with critics torn between his pop-idol image, and (at the time) emerging guitar prowess. Erik Crawford of AllMusic asked, "Is [Mayer] the consummate guitar hero exemplified when he plays a cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'Lenny', or is he the teen idol that the pubescent girls shriek for after he plays 'Your Body Is a Wonderland'?" That summer, Mayer went on the road with Counting Crows in a tour that spanned 42 dates between July 7 and September 2.


title: John Mayer

text: "Heavier Things", Mayer's second album, was released in 2003 to generally favorable reviews. "Rolling Stone, Allmusic," and "Blender" all gave positive, although reserved, feedback. The album was commercially successful, and while it did not sell as well as "Room for Squares", it peaked at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 chart. The song "Daughters" won the 2005 Grammy for Song of the Year, and reached #1 on the "Billboard" Adult Pop Songs chart and #19 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. He dedicated the award to his grandmother, Annie Hoffman, who had died in May 2004. He also won Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. On February 9, 2009, Mayer told Ellen DeGeneres that he thought he should not have won the Grammy for Song of the year because he thought that Alicia Keys' "If I Ain't Got You" was the better song. Because of this, he removed the top half of the Grammy and gave it to Keys, and kept the bottom part for himself. At the 37th Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in 2006, Mayer received the Hal David Starlight Award.


title: John Mayer

text: Mayer again recorded live concerts across seven nights of his U.S. tour in 2004. These recordings were released to the iTunes Store under the title "As/Is", indicating that the errors were included along with the good moments. A few months later, a "best of" CD was compiled from the "As/Is" nights. The album included a previously unreleased cover of Marvin Gaye's song "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)", featuring a solo from Mayer's supporting act—jazz and blues turntablist DJ Logic. The album covers of the "As/Is" releases feature drawings of anthropomorphic bunnies.


title: John Mayer

text: As early as 2002, Chris Willman with "Entertainment Weekly" said that Mayer was "more historically savvy, and more ambitious than you'd guess from the unforced earnestness of "[Room for] Squares". However, Mayer was largely associated with the Adult Contemporary and singer-songwriter genres. Fame allowed him access to his early influences, and he began collaborating with blues and jazz artists. He accompanied Buddy Guy in a concert at the Irving Plaza in December 2003. He toured with jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, including a show at the Bonnaroo Music Festival. He also performed on commercial releases, namely, with Eric Clapton ("Back Home", Crossroads Guitar Festival), Buddy Guy ("Bring 'Em In)", John Scofield ("That's What I Say"), and B.B. King (""). Although Mayer maintained his reputation as a singer-songwriter, he gained distinction as a guitarist.


title: John Mayer

text: Following the conclusion of his "Heavier Things" tour, Mayer began working with artists, including those from other genres of music. His voice was sampled on the song "Go" by rapper Common, and he appeared on a hidden track called "Bittersweet Poetry" from the Kanye West album "Graduation". The collaborations drew praise from rap heavyweights Jay-Z and Nelly. When asked about his presence in the hip hop community, Mayer said, "It's not music out there right now. That's why, to me, hip-hop is where rock used to be."


title: John Mayer

text: Around this time Mayer announced that he was "closing up shop on acoustic sensitivity". In the spring of 2005, Mayer formed the John Mayer Trio with bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Steve Jordan, both of whom he had met through studio sessions. The trio combined blues and rock music. In October 2005, they opened for the Rolling Stones and that November released a live album called "Try!" The band took a break in mid-2006.


title: John Mayer

text: Mayer's third studio album, titled "Continuum", was released on September 12, 2006, produced by Mayer and Steve Jordan. Mayer suggested the album was intended to combine blues and pop. In that vein, two of the tracks from his Trio release "Try!"—"Vultures" and "Gravity"—were included on "Continuum". Despite his excitement, in a "Rolling Stone" interview, Mayer recalled that after former Columbia Records head Don Ienner panned "Continuum" he briefly considered quitting music and studying design full-time.


title: John Mayer

text: The first single from "Continuum" was "Waiting on the World to Change", which debuted on "The Ron and Fez Show". The song was the third-most downloaded song of the week on the iTunes Store following its release on July 11, 2006, and debuted at number 25 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 Chart. On August 23, 2006, Mayer debuted the entire album on the Los Angeles radio station Star 98.7, offering commentary on each track. A subsequent version was released the next day on the Clear Channel Music website as a streaming sneak preview. On September 21, 2006, Mayer appeared on "", playing "Waiting on the World to Change" and "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room". The song "Gravity" was featured on the television series "House", in the episode "Cane & Able" and "Numb3rs". He recorded a session for the British program "Live from Abbey Road" at Abbey Road Studios on October 22, 2006.


title: John Mayer

text: On December 7, 2006, Mayer was nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. The Trio received a nomination for "Try!". He won two: Best Pop Song with Vocal for "Waiting on the World to Change" and Best Pop Album for "Continuum". Mayer remixed an acoustic version of his single "Waiting on the World to Change" with vocal additions from fellow musician Ben Harper. In preparation for "Continuum", Mayer had booked the Village Recorder in Los Angeles to record five acoustic versions of his songs with veteran musician Robbie McIntosh. These recordings became "The Village Sessions", an EP released on December 12, 2006. As usual, Mayer oversaw the artwork. The initial North American "Continuum" tour ended on February 28, 2007, with a show at Madison Square Garden that the "New York Post" described as "career-defining".


title: John Mayer

text: On November 20, 2007, the re-issue of "Continuum" became available online and in stores. The release contained a bonus disc of six live songs from his 2007 tour: five from "Continuum" and a cover of the Ray Charles song "I Don't Need No Doctor". His single "Say", from the film "The" "Bucket List," became available through iTunes. On December 6, 2007, "Belief" was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal for the 50th Annual Grammy Awards. He accompanied Alicia Keys on guitar on her song "No One" at the ceremony. Additionally, he was selected by the editors of "Time" magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2007, listed among artists and entertainers.