title: Lok Sabha

text: After the Question Hour, the House takes up miscellaneous items of work before proceeding to the main business of the day. These may consist of one or more of the following: Adjournment Motions, Questions involving breaches of Privileges, Papers to be laid on the Table, Communication of any messages from Rajya Sabha, Intimations regarding President's assent to Bills, Calling Attention Notices, Matters under Rule 377, Presentation of Reports of Parliamentary Committee, Presentation of Petitions, miscellaneous statements by Ministers, Motions regarding elections to Committees, Bills to be withdrawn or introduced.


title: Lok Sabha

text: The main business of the day may be consideration of a bill or financial business or consideration of a resolution or a motion.


title: Lok Sabha

text: Legislative proposals in the form of a bill can be brought forward either by a minister or by an individual member. In the former case, it is known as a government bill and in the latter case, it is known as a private members' bill. Every bill passes through three stages—each called readings—before it is passed. To become law it must be passed by both the houses of Parliament, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and then assented to by the president.


title: Lok Sabha

text: The presentation, discussion of, and voting on the annual general and railways budgets—followed by the passing of the appropriations Bill and the finance bill—is a long, drawn-out process that takes up a major part of the time of the House during its budget session every year.


title: Lok Sabha

text: Among other kinds of business that come up before the House are resolutions and motions. Resolutions and motions may be brought forward by the government or by individual members. The government may move a resolution or a motion for obtaining the sanction to a scheme or opinion of the house on an important matter of policy or a grave situation. Similarly, an individual member may move a resolution or motion to draw the attention of the house and the government to a particular problem. The last two and half hours of sitting every Friday are generally allotted for the transaction of individual members' business. While private members' bills are taken up on one Friday, private members' resolutions are taken up on the succeeding Friday, and so on.


title: Lok Sabha

text: Most of the business of drafting a bill or amendments is initially discussed and debated in the parliamentary committees. Since the time for legislation is limited, the work of all departments of the government and any special focus tasks are delegated to the committees, wherein the committees shall prepare the initial draft of the bill/amendment for consideration by both the houses. They consist of members of both houses.


title: Lok Sabha

text: A half-an-hour discussion can be raised on a matter of sufficient public importance which has been the subject of a recent question in Lok Sabha irrespective of the fact whether the question was answered orally or the answer was laid on the Table of the House and the answer which needs elucidation on a matter of fact. Normally not more than half an hour is allowed for such a discussion. Usually, the half-an-hour discussion is listed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays only. In one session, a member is allowed to raise not more than two half-hour discussions. During the discussion, the member, who has given notice, makes a short statement, and not more than four members, who have intimated earlier and have secured one of the four places on the ballot, are permitted to ask a question each for further elucidating any matter of fact. Thereafter, the minister makes replies. There is no formal motion before the house nor voting.


title: Lok Sabha

text: Members may raise discussions on matters of urgent public importance with the permission of the Speaker. Such discussions may take place two days a week. No formal motion is moved in the House nor is there any voting on such a discussion.


title: Lok Sabha

text: After the member who initiates discussion on an item of business has spoken, other members can speak on that item of business in such order as the Speaker may call upon them. Only one member can speak at a time and all speeches are directed to the chair. A matter requiring the decision of the House is decided to employ a question put by the Speaker on a motion made by a member.


title: Lok Sabha

text: A division is one of the forms in which the decision of the House is ascertained. Normally, when a motion is put to the House members for and against it indicate their opinion by saying "Aye" or "No" from their seats. The Chair goes by the voices and declares that the motion is either accepted or rejected by the House. If a member challenges the decision, the Chair orders that the lobbies be cleared. Then the division bell is rung and an entire network of bells installed in the various parts and rooms in Parliament House and Parliament House Annexe rings continuously for three and a half minutes. Members and Ministers rush to the Chamber from all sides. After the bell stops, all the doors to the Chamber are closed and nobody can enter or leave the Chamber till the division is over. Then the Chair puts the question for a second time and declares whether in its opinion the "Ayes" or the "Noes", have it. If the opinion so declared is again challenged, the Chair asks the votes to be recorded by operating the Automatic Vote Recording Equipment.


title: Lok Sabha

text: With the announcement of the Speaker for recording the votes, the Secretary-General of the Lok Sabha presses the button of a keyboard. Then a gong sounds, serving as a signal to members for casting their votes. To vote, each member present in the chamber has to flip a switch and then operate one of the three pushbuttons fixed in their seat. The push switch must be kept pressed simultaneously until the gong sounds for the second time after 10 seconds. There are two indicator boards installed in the wall on either side of the Speaker's chair in the chamber. Each vote cast by a member is flashed here. Immediately after the votes are cast, they are totalled mechanically and the details of the results are flashed on the result indicator boards installed in the railings of the Speakers and diplomatic galleries.


title: Lok Sabha

text: Divisions are normally held with the aid of automatic vote recording equipment. Where so directed by the Speaker in terms of the relevant provision in the Rules of Procedure etc. In the Lok Sabha, divisions may be held either by the distribution of 'Aye'/'No' and 'Abstention' slips to members in the House or by the members recording their votes by going into the lobbies. There is an indicator board in the machine room showing the name of each member. The result of the division and vote cast by each member with the aid of automatic vote recording equipment also appear on this board and immediately a photograph of the indicator board is taken. Later the photograph is enlarged and the names of members who voted 'Ayes' and for 'Noes' are determined with the help of the photograph and incorporated in Lok Sabha debates.


title: Lok Sabha

text: Three versions of Lok Sabha debates are prepared: the Hindi version, the English version, and the original version. Only the Hindi and English versions are printed. The original version, in cyclostyled form, is kept in the Parliament Library for record and reference. The Hindi version contains proceedings (all questions asked and answers are given thereto and speeches made) in Hindi and verbatim Hindi translation of proceedings in English or regional languages. The English version contains proceedings in English and the English translation of the proceedings take place in Hindi or any regional language. The original version, however, contains proceedings in Hindi or English as they actually took place in the House and also the English/Hindi translation of speeches made in regional languages.


title: Lok Sabha

text: If conflicting legislation is enacted by the two Houses, a joint sitting is held to resolve the differences. In such a session, the members of the Lok Sabha would generally prevail, since the Lok Sabha includes more than twice as many members as the Rajya Sabha.


title: Lok Sabha

text: As per "Article 93" of the Indian Constitution, the Lok Sabha has a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker. In the Lok Sabha, both presiding officers—the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker- are elected from among its members by a simple majority of members present and voting in the House. No specific qualifications are prescribed for being elected Speaker; the Constitution only requires that Speaker should be a member of the House. But an understanding of the Constitution and the laws of the country and the rules of procedure and conventions of Parliament is considered a major asset for the holder of the office of the Speaker. Vacation and resignation of, and removal from, the offices of Speaker and Deputy Speaker are mentioned under Article 94 of the Constitution of India. As per "Article 94" of the Indian Constitution, a Speaker or a Deputy Speaker should vacate their office, a) if they cease to be a member of the House of the People, b) they resign, or c) is removed from office by a resolution of the House passed by a majority.


title: Lok Sabha

text: The Secretariat of Lok Sabha was set up according to the provisions contained in Article 98 of the Constitution. The said Article, which provides for a separate secretarial staff for each House of Parliament, reads as follows:- 98. Secretariat of Parliament – Each House of Parliament shall have a separate secretarial staff: Provided that nothing in this clause shall be construed as preventing the creation of posts common to both Houses of Parliament. (2) Parliament may by law regulate the recruitment and the conditions of service of persons appointed to the secretarial staff of either House of Parliament.


title: Persian language

text: Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, "", ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian (officially known as "Persian"), Dari Persian (officially known as "Dari" since 1964) and Tajiki Persian (officially known as "Tajik" since 1999). It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivation of the Cyrillic script.


title: Persian language

text: Modern Persian is a continuation of Middle Persian, an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian, which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Pars (Persia) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages.


title: Persian language

text: Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in Western Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia. Old Persian is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic-derived scripts (Pahlavi and Manichaean) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia, since then adopting the Arabic script.


title: Persian language

text: Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world, with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. As British scholar David G. Hogarth stated, "Never has captor more swiftly and subtly been captured by his captive than Arabic by Persia". It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia, the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages, the Turkic, Armenian, Georgian, and Indo-Aryan languages. It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages.


title: Persian language

text: Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the "Shahnameh" by Ferdowsi, the works of Rumi, the "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám", the "Panj Ganj" of Nizami Ganjavi, "The" "Divān "of Hafez, "The Conference of the Birds" by Attar of Nishapur, and the miscellanea of "Gulistan" and "Bustan" by Saadi Shirazi, are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij, Ahmad Shamlou, Simin Behbahani, Sohrab Sepehri, Rahi Mo'ayyeri, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Forugh Farrokhzad.


title: Persian language

text: There are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians, Lurs, Tajiks, Hazaras, Iranian Azeris, Iranian Kurds, Balochs, Tats, and Aimaqs. The term "Persophone" might also be used to refer to a speaker of Persian.


title: Persian language

text: Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages, which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision. The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are the most widely spoken.


title: Persian language

text: The term "Persian" is an English derivation of Latin , the adjectival form of , itself deriving from Greek (), a Hellenized form of Old Persian (), which means "Persia" (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars). According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the term "Persian" as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century.


title: Persian language

text: ', which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name "Persian" is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym ' is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that "Persian" is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater, founder of the "Encyclopædia Iranica" and Columbia University's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology, rejecting the use of "" in foreign languages.


title: Persian language

text: Etymologically, the Persian term derives from its earlier form ( in Middle Persian), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term "Persian". In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from to is due to the influence of Arabic in the Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme in Standard Arabic.


title: Persian language

text: The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from "Persian" and "Farsi", by names such as "Iranian Persian" and "Western Persian", exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as "Persian" (, ).


title: Persian language

text: The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named "Dari" (, ) since 1958. Also referred to as "Afghan Persian" in English, it is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto. The term "Dari", meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon, which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia (Parthian).


title: Persian language

text: Tajik Persian (, ), the standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as "Tajik" (, ) since the time of the Soviet Union. It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general.


title: Persian language

text: The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code codice_1 for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the code codice_2 for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari (codice_3) and Iranian Persian (codice_4). It uses codice_5 for Tajik, separately.


title: Persian language

text: In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being the next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire, and New era being the period afterward down to present day.


title: Persian language

text: According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian."


title: Persian language

text: As a written language, Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription, dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania (Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt. Old Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages which is attested in original texts.


title: Persian language

text: According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called "Parsuwash", who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became the official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, "Parsuwash" (along with "Matai", presumably Medians) are first mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III. The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian itself coming directly from the older word . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median, according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before the formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians.


title: Persian language

text: Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts.


title: Persian language

text: The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed the ezāfe construction, expressed through "ī" (modern "e/ye"), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system.


title: Persian language

text: Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism.


title: Persian language

text: Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was "Parsig" or "Parsik", after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of "Pars"", Old Persian "Parsa", New Persian "Fars". This is the origin of the name "Farsi" as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the collapse of the Sassanid state, "Parsik" came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script. From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called "Pahlavi", which was actually but one of the "writing systems" used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between "Pahlavi" (i.e. Parthian) and "Persian" (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.


title: Persian language

text: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable.


title: Persian language

text: New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as "pārsīk", commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan, known as Dari. The region, which comprised the present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language, which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian.


title: Persian language

text: The transition to New Persian was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903) and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time.


title: Persian language

text: The first poems of the Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki. He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in the "Kalila wa Dimna".


title: Persian language

text: The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca, a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model: Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai Turkic, Dobhashi Bengali, and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian.


title: Persian language

text: "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry.


title: Persian language

text: This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under the "Persianized" Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries.


title: Persian language

text: Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent.


title: Persian language

text: It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids, Tahirids, Ziyarids, the Mughal Empire, Timurids, Ghaznavids, Karakhanids, Seljuqs, Khwarazmians, the Sultanate of Rum, Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia, Delhi Sultanate, the Shirvanshahs, Safavids, Afsharids, Zands, Qajars, Khanate of Bukhara, Khanate of Kokand, Emirate of Bukhara, Khanate of Khiva, Ottomans, and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad.


title: Persian language

text: Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China.


title: Persian language

text: A branch of the Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum, took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans, who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, took this tradition over. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of the Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I, despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam. It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi's "Hasht Bihisht", which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the "Salim-Namah", a glorification of Selim I. After a period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, which was even able to satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and was taught in state schools.


title: Persian language

text: The Persian language influenced the formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia, Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent. It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors.


title: Persian language

text: The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of the reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah, is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez; a poem which can be found in the "Divan of Hafez" today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi; meaning "mixed language". Dobhashi Bengali was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal, and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion.


title: Persian language

text: Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent. Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in the region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire, preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia.


title: Persian language

text: Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi-Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani), Punjabi, Kashmiri, and Sindhi. There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak a Dari dialect.


title: Persian language

text: In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty, the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule numerous Russian, French, and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology.


title: Persian language

text: The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name "Academy of Iran". It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi, and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi, all prominent names in the nationalist movement of the time.


title: Persian language

text: The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic, Russian, French, and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created a literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian".


title: Persian language

text: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility. Nevertheless, the "Encyclopædia Iranica" notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist.


title: Persian language

text: The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects:


title: Persian language

text: Historically, Persian distinguished length. Early New Persian had a series of five long vowels (, , , , and ) along with three short vowels , , and . At some point prior to the 16th century in the general area now modern Iran, and merged into , and and merged into . Thus, older contrasts such as "shēr" "lion" vs. "shīr" "milk", and "zūd" "quick" vs "zōr" "strength" were lost. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and in some words, "ē" and "ō" are merged into the diphthongs and (which are descendants of the diphthongs and in Early New Persian), instead of merging into and . Examples of the exception can be found in words such as (bright). Numerous other instances exist.


title: Persian language

text: However, in Dari, the archaic distinction of and (respectively known as "Yā-ye majhūl" and "Yā-ye ma'rūf") is still preserved as well as the distinction of and (known as "Wāw-e majhūl" and "Wāw-e ma'rūf"). On the other hand, in standard Tajik, the length distinction has disappeared, and merged with and with . Therefore, contemporary Afghan Dari dialects are the closest to the vowel inventory of Early New Persian.


title: Persian language

text: According to most studies on the subject (e.g. Samareh 1977, Pisowicz 1985, Najafi 2001), the three vowels traditionally considered long (, , ) are currently distinguished from their short counterparts (, , ) by position of articulation rather than by length. However, there are studies (e.g. Hayes 1979, Windfuhr 1979) that consider vowel length to be the active feature of the system, with , , and phonologically long or bimoraic and , , and phonologically short or monomoraic.


title: Persian language

text: There are also some studies that consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system (such as Toosarvandani 2004). That offers a synthetic analysis including both quality and quantity, which often suggests that Modern Persian vowels are in a transition state between the quantitative system of Classical Persian and a hypothetical future Iranian language, which will eliminate all traces of quantity and retain quality as the only active feature.


title: Persian language

text: The length distinction is still strictly observed by careful reciters of classic-style poetry for all varieties (including Tajik).


title: Persian language

text: Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender in modern Persian, and pronouns are not marked for natural gender. In other words, in Persian, pronouns are gender neutral. When referring to a masculine or a feminine subject the same pronoun is used (pronounced "ou", ū).


title: Persian language

text: Normal declarative sentences are structured as "(S) (PP) (O) V": sentences have optional subjects, prepositional phrases, and objects followed by a compulsory verb. If the object is specific, the object is followed by the word "rā" and precedes prepositional phrases: "(S) (O + "rā") (PP) V".


title: Persian language

text: Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns, and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivational agglutination to form new words from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by compounding – two existing words combining into a new one.


title: Persian language

text: While having a lesser influence on Arabic and other languages of Mesopotamia and its core vocabulary being of Middle Persian origin, New Persian contains a considerable number of Arabic lexical items, which were Persianized and often took a different meaning and usage than the Arabic original. Persian loanwords of Arabic origin especially include Islamic terms. The Arabic vocabulary in other Iranian, Turkic, and Indic languages is generally understood to have been copied from New Persian, not from Arabic itself.


title: Persian language

text: John R. Perry, in his article "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic", estimates that about 20 percent of an everyday vocabulary of 20,000 words in current Persian, and around 25 percent of the vocabulary of classical and modern Persian literature, are of Arabic origin. The text frequency of these loan words is generally lower and varies by style and topic area. It may approach 25 percent of a text in literature. According to another source, about 40% of everyday Persian literary vocabulary is of Arabic origin. Among the Arabic loan words, relatively few (14 percent) are from the semantic domain of material culture, while a larger number are from domains of intellectual and spiritual life. Most of the Arabic words used in Persian are either synonyms of native terms or could be glossed in Persian.


title: Persian language

text: The inclusion of Mongolic and Turkic elements in the Persian language should also be mentioned, not only because of the political role a succession of Turkic dynasties played in Iranian history, but also because of the immense prestige Persian language and literature enjoyed in the wider (non-Arab) Islamic world, which was often ruled by sultans and emirs with a Turkic background. The Turkish and Mongolian vocabulary in Persian is minor in comparison to that of Arabic and these words were mainly confined to military, pastoral terms and political sector (titles, administration, etc.). New military and political titles were coined based partially on Middle Persian (e.g. for "army", instead of the Uzbek ; ; ; etc.) in the 20th century. Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially other Indo-European languages such as Armenian, Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi; the latter three through conquests of Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan invaders; Turkic languages such as Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Azeri, Uzbek, and Karachay-Balkar; Caucasian languages such as Georgian, and, to a lesser extent, Avar and Lezgin; Afro-Asiatic languages like Assyrian (List of loanwords in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) and Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic; and even Dravidian languages indirectly especially Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Brahui; as well as Austronesian languages such as Indonesian and Malaysian Malay. Persian has also had a significant lexical influence, via Turkish, on Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, particularly as spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina.


title: Persian language

text: Use of occasional foreign synonyms instead of Persian words can be a common practice in everyday communications as an alternative expression. In some instances in addition to the Persian vocabulary, the equivalent synonyms from multiple foreign languages can be used. For example, in Iranian colloquial Persian (not in Afghanistan or Tajikistan), the phrase "thank you" may be expressed using the French word (stressed, however, on the first syllable), the hybrid Persian-Arabic phrase ( being "thankful" in Arabic, commonly pronounced in Persian, and the verb "am" meaning "I am" in Persian), or by the pure Persian phrase .


title: Persian language

text: The vast majority of modern Iranian Persian and Dari text is written with the Arabic script. Tajiki, which is considered by some linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by Russian and the Turkic languages of Central Asia, is written with the Cyrillic script in Tajikistan (see Tajik alphabet). There also exist several romanization systems for Persian.


title: Persian language

text: Modern Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian are written using the Persian alphabet which is a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet, which uses different pronunciation and additional letters not found in Arabic language. After the Arab conquest of Persia, it took approximately 200 years before Persians adopted the Arabic script in place of the older alphabet. Previously, two different scripts were used, Pahlavi, used for Middle Persian, and the Avestan alphabet (in Persian, Dīndapirak, or Din Dabire—literally: religion script), used for religious purposes, primarily for the Avestan but sometimes for Middle Persian.


title: Persian language

text: In the modern Persian script, historically short vowels are usually not written, only the historically long ones are represented in the text, so words distinguished from each other only by short vowels are ambiguous in writing: Iranian Persian ' "worm", ' "generosity", ' "cream", and ' "chrome" are all spelled "" () in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. The Arabic system of vocalization marks known as "harakat" is also used in Persian, although some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, a "ḍammah" is pronounced , while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced . This system is not used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all) dictionaries.


title: Persian language

text: There are several letters generally only used in Arabic loanwords. These letters are pronounced the same as similar Persian letters. For example, there are four functionally identical letters for (), three letters for (), two letters for (), two letters for ().


title: Persian language

text: Historically, there was also a special letter for the sound . This letter is no longer used, as the -sound changed to , e.g. archaic > 'language'


title: Persian language

text: The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters of the Arabic alphabet. For example, "alef with hamza below" ( ) changes to "alef" ( ); words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that becomes ) even though the latter has been accepted in Arabic since the 80s; and "teh marbuta" ( ) changes to "heh" ( ) or "teh" ( ).


title: Persian language

text: However, in shape and form is the traditional Arabic style that continues in the Nile Valley, namely, Egypt, Sudan, and South Sudan.


title: Persian language

text: The International Organization for Standardization has published a standard for simplified transliteration of Persian into Latin, ISO 233-3, titled "Information and documentation – Transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters – Part 3: Persian language – Simplified transliteration" but the transliteration scheme is not in widespread use.


title: Persian language

text: Another Latin alphabet, based on the Common Turkic Alphabet, was used in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favor of Cyrillic in the late 1930s.


title: Persian language

text: Fingilish is Persian using ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails, and SMS applications. The orthography is not standardized, and varies among writers and even media (for example, typing 'aa' for the phoneme is easier on computer keyboards than on cellphone keyboards, resulting in smaller usage of the combination on cellphones).


title: Persian language

text: The Cyrillic script was introduced for writing the Tajik language under the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing the Latin alphabet that had been used since the October Revolution and the Persian script that had been used earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Persian script were banned in the country.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh Fazil (8 August 1982) is an Indian actor and film producer who predominantly works in Malayalam cinema and has appeared in few Tamil and Telugu films. He has acted in more than 50 films and has received several awards, including a National Film Award, four Kerala State Film Awards and three Filmfare Awards South.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh is the son of filmmaker Fazil. Fahadh began his film career at the age of 19 by starring in the leading role in his father Fazil's 2002 romantic film "Kaiyethum Doorath", which was a critical and commercial failure. After a gap of 7 years, Fahadh made his comeback with the anthology film "Kerala Cafe" (2009), in the short film "Mrityunjayam". He attained public attention for his role as Arjun in the thriller film "Chaappa Kurishu" (2011). Fahadh won his first Kerala State Film Award, the Best Supporting Actor Award for his performance in "Chaappa Kurishu" along with his performance in "Akam". He achieved critical acclaim and recognition for his roles as Cyril in "22 Female Kottayam" (2012) and Dr. Arun Kumar in "Diamond Necklace" (2012). He won his first Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his role in "22 Female Kottayam".


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh achieved further critical and commercial success for his films in 2013, including his performances in the romantic-drama film "Annayum Rasoolum", the black-comedy satire film "Amen", the road movie "North 24 Kaatham", the drama film "Artist", and the romantic-comedy "Oru Indian Pranayakadha". He won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor for his performances as Michael in "Artist" and Harikrishnan in "North 24 Kaatham". He also won his second Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his role in "North 24 Kaatham". He followed it up by starring as Shivadas in the coming-of-age drama film "Bangalore Days" (2014), which ranks among the highest-grossing Malayalam films. He produced and starred as Aloshy in the 2014 period film "Iyobinte Pusthakam" under his production company, Fahadh Fazil and Friends Pvt Ltd. Fahadh also has a Digital Entertainment Company/Movie Production House named Bhavana Studios partnered with Dileesh Pothan and Syam Pushkaran.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh had roles as Mahesh Bhavana in "Maheshinte Prathikaaram" (2016), Indian diplomat Manoj Abraham in "Take Off" (2017), and Prasad in "Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum" (2017), with "Maheshinte Prathikaaram" and "Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum" winning the Best Feature Film in Malayalam Award at the 64th and 65th National Film Awards. He won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in "Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum" (2017) and his third Filmfare Award for Best Actor – Malayalam. In 2018, he acted as Prakashan in the film "Njan Prakashan" which ranks among highest-grossing Malayalam films and as Aby in the film "Varathan". In 2021, Fahadh portrayed the titular anti-hero in the crime drama "Joji" which received acclaim and later received nationwide acclaim from critics for his performance in the political thriller "Malik".


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh is the son of film director Fazil and his wife Rozina. He has two sisters, Ahameda and Fatima, and a brother, Farhaan, also an actor. He completed his schooling from SDV Central School Alappuzha, Lawrence School Ooty and Choice School Tripunithura. He went on to pursue his degree from Sanatana Dharma College, Alleppey and M.A. in philosophy from University of Miami in the United States.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh's first film, "Kaiyethum Doorath" (2002) was directed by his father, Fazil and was a failure at the box office. Fahadh later defended his father, stating "don't blame my father for my failure because it was my mistake and I came into acting without any preparation of my own". After his debut, he moved to the United States for five years, where he pursued his studies, before returning in 2009 to act in the film "Kerala Cafe" (2009), conceived by director Ranjith. At Ranjith's behest, director Uday Ananthan cast Fahad in his "Mrityunjayam", one of the 10 shorts in the film. He played the role of a journalist in the "Mrityunjayam", a ghost film set on a spooky old 'Mana'. He was chosen to co-star in B. Unnikrishnan's "Pramani". He then appeared as a business head in the thriller "Cocktail" (2010). His next film, "Tournament", was also a thriller.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: His performance in Sameer Thahir's directorial debut "Chaappa Kurishu" (2011), a thriller in which he appeared as the head of a construction business was appreciated. "Arjun – my character in Chappa Kurishu is not a role that an actor gets often. I am very lucky and very fortunate," Fahad said. He shot a long kissing scene with his co-star Remya Nambeesan in the film – supposedly the first-ever in Malayalam cinema – which upon release was termed controversial. Fahadh's next film, "Akam" (2011) a contemporary adaptation of Malayattoor Ramakrishnan's psycho-thriller novel "Yakshi", had him playing "Srinivas", a young architect, who starts suspecting that his beautiful wife is a yakshi. "Playing Srinivas was like re-inventing myself. We had a workshop before shooting began and I had ample opportunity to explore the nuances of the character. In the process of re-inventing Srinivas, I reinvented myself," said Fahadh. The film premiered at the Dubai International Film Festival. He won the Kerala State Film Award for Second Best Actor in 2012 for his performance in "Chappa Kurishu" and "Akam."


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: In 2012, he played a negative character in "22 Female Kottayam", a rape and revenge film, which was critically acclaimed. In his next film, Lal Jose's "Diamond Necklace" (2012), he played the role of an oncologist working in Dubai and the film centred on the doctor's relationship with three different women. Both the films 22 Female Kottayam and Diamond Necklace were a commercial and critical success and ran over 100 days in theatres. In June 2012, a case was registered against Fahadh by the Kochi Town Central Police for violation of the rule against public display of images of smoking. A poster of "Diamond Necklace" that showed him smoking a cigarette had been on display before the Kavitha Theatre in Kochi since the film was released. In his next film, Lijin Jose's "Friday" (2012) he acted as an auto rickshaw driver. The same year, he appeared in "The Day of Judgement", one of the three featurettes from the portmanteau film "D Company".


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: In the year 2013, his important films were cinematographer Rajeev Ravi's directorial debut "Annayum Rasoolum", Lijo Jose Pellissery's "Amen", V. K. Prakash's "Natholi Oru Cheriya Meenalla," Salam Bappu's directorial debut "Red Wine," debutant Anil Radhakrishnan Menon's "North 24 Kaatham" and Sathyan Anthikad's "Oru Indian Pranayakatha." He won Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor for his performance in "North 24 Kaatham". "Amen" was both commercial and critical success and was named as one of the best films of the year by "Khaleej Times" while "Annayum Rasoolum" managed to be commercial success. "Oru Indian Prayankatha" was a sleeper hit.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: In 2014, he acted in the big budget movie "Iyobinte Pusthakam", which was produced by himself. Fahadh also played a major role in the multi-starrer blockbuster movie Bangalore days. It is considered one of the best Malayalam movies made during the New gen movement. The year 2015 was a dull year for him as he was unable to pull off a successful project. He starred in "Ayal Njanalla", "Haram", "Mariyam Mukku", all of which did not perform well at the box office.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: In 2016, his first release, "Monsoon Mangoes", failed at the box office, even though his performance was highly praised and the movie gathered good critic responses. His next release was on 5 February 2016 "Maheshinte Prathikaaram" which went on to become commercial success. It was highly applauded by both audience and critics,this film was a major breakthrough in his career. In 2017, he acted in four films out of which "Take Off" and "Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum" were commercial and critical success. "Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum" won three awards at the 65th National Film Awards. Besides Best Malayalam Film and Best Screenplay for the film, Fahadh won in the Best Supporting Actor category. Fahadh made his debut in Tamil cinema, through the film "Velaikkaran" starring Sivakarthikeyan, opposite whom he plays the antagonist.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh got back to back critical and box office successes with "Varathan" (2018), "Njan Prakashan" (2018) and "Kumbalangi Nights" (2019), which collectively grossed more than 100 crore at the box office. He played the character "Shammi" in "Kumbalangi Nights", which developed a cult following with many of his dialogues becoming popular. "Njan Prakashan" collected ₹52 crore from Worldwide box office, which is one of the highest grossing Malayalam film till date. His last film in 2019 was the psychological thriller "Athiran", where he played the role of a psychiatrist. It largely received positive reviews and performed well at box office. His next Tamil film was "Super Deluxe," in which he co-starred alongside Vijay Sethupathi, Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Ramya Krishnan, his performance in the film was well appreciated by critics, with them saying his character was written well.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: His first release in 2020, "Trance" received wide acclaim from critics. "The Indian Express" praised Fahadh's performance and said: "Fahadh steals the limelight by portraying a character that is hysteric and disturbing at the same time". After "Trance", Fahadh turned to do films released through OTT platforms amid the COVID-19 pandemic in India. Among this, the first movie was "C U Soon" (2020), which is India's first computer screen film. It generally received positive reviews from critics.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: His first release in 2021 was "Irul", a mystery thriller released on streaming platform Netflix on 2 April 2021. Despite the film received mixed reviews due to its complex story, Fahadh received critical acclaim for portraying a mysterious character. Five days after the release of "Irul" came out "Joji", which is a crime drama directed by Dileesh Pothan. The movie in which he played the titular anti-hero received well acclaim from critics. His performance in it is also considered one of his career best by some critics and fans. "Firstpost" wrote: "The story is unequivocally centred around Fahadh's character, and the actor plays a deceptively calm layabout simmering with rage with the sort of unassuming brilliance that is now his trademark". Nearly a week after the release of "Joji", reports came out that the Film Exhibitors United Organisation of Kerala (FEUOK) has warned Fahadh against acting in movies made for streaming through OTT platforms. It was also reported that FEUOK has also threatened that his next big movies in 2021 like "Malik" will face difficulties for screening on the big screen if he continues to cooperate with OTT platforms as a consequence. But the organisation later claimed that all such news were baseless and they no connection with them.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: Fahadh's next release in 2021 was Mahesh Narayanan's big budget political thriller "Malik". The film which was supposed to release in 2020 was also Fahadh's most expensive Malayalam film to date. Besides Fahadh, the film stars Nimisha Sajayan, Vinay Forrt, Dileesh Pothan and Joju George in pivotal roles. "Malik" received nationwide acclaim from critics and large positive feedback from fans, with many critics describing Fahadh's performance in the film as arguably his career best. Fahadh made his debut in Telugu cinema with "" (2021) as the antagonist of the film.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: On 20 January 2014, he got engaged to Malayalam film actress Nazriya Nazim whom he married on 21 August 2014 at Trivandrum. The pair got to know each other more on the sets of Anjali Menon's "Bangalore Days" (2014), in which they played the roles of husband and wife. Fahadh revealed that their parents had been pivotal in arranging the marriage.


title: Fahadh Faasil

text: He has also appeared in several advertisements for brands like Titan, Milma, Jos Alukkas, Adithi Aatta, Bombay gold and diamonds, UAE Exchange and Estilocus.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: Blue Bloods is an American police procedural drama television series that has been airing on CBS since September 2010. Its main characters are members of the fictional Reagan family, an Irish-American Catholic family in New York City with a history of work in law enforcement. "Blue Bloods" stars Tom Selleck as New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan; other main cast members include Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes and Len Cariou for all twelve seasons, plus Amy Carlson (seasons 1–7), and Sami Gayle (seasons 1–11; played by Marlene Lawston in the pilot episode).


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: The show is filmed on location in New York City with references to suburban areas as well. The series debuted on September 24, 2010, with episodes airing on Fridays following "" before being moved to Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time and 9:00 p.m. Central and Mountain time for a four-week tryout. After four weeks, it returned to its original Friday 10:00 p.m. Eastern time slot, where it has remained since. In May 2020, CBS renewed the series for an eleventh season, which premiered on December 4, 2020. In April 2021, CBS renewed the series for a twelfth season, which premiered on October 1, 2021. In April 2022, CBS renewed the series for a thirteenth season, which premiered on October 7, 2022.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: The series follows the Reagans, a family who has a history of work in law enforcement. Frank Reagan is the Police Commissioner. Frank's eldest son, Danny, is an NYPD detective, his youngest son, Jamie, is an NYPD sergeant, and his daughter, Erin, works as an assistant district attorney. Frank's second son, Joe (though the series mistakenly refers to him as the eldest in more recent episodes), was murdered by a crooked cop in the line of duty in events that predate the series, when he was involved with an FBI investigation of a group of corrupt NYPD cops known as the Blue Templar. Frank's father, Henry, is a former NYPD beat cop who rose through the ranks to become Police Commissioner.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: Each member of the family represents a different aspect of police work or the legal process: Frank as the commissioner, Danny as the detective, Jamie as the beat cop, and Erin as the prosecutor. Additionally, while each person's story might occasionally interweave with another's, the show also follows the professional, and at times, personal relationships with their respective partners and colleagues: Frank with Garrett Moore, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information and de facto Chief of Staff, Detective 1st Grade Abigail Baker, the primary aide to the commissioner, and later, Lieutenant Sidney Gormley, the Special Assistant to the Commissioner and de facto Chief of Department; Danny with Detective Jackie Curatola and later, Detective Maria Baez; Jamie with Officer Edit "Eddie" Janko; and Erin with Detective Anthony Abetemarco, who is an investigator for the DA's office.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: The Reagans are an Irish-American Catholic family that gathers for Sunday dinner each week. According to "People", "the Sunday supper is the heart of each show."


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: Both Henry's and Frank's respective wives, Betty and Mary, are deceased, as is Joe. Erin is divorced and has one daughter, college graduate Nicky, who lived with her mother until accepting a job in San Francisco in season 10. Danny is a widower with two sons, Jack and Sean. He was married to Linda, a nurse who was killed off-screen in a helicopter crash between seasons 7 and 8. Jamie married his partner, Edit "Eddie" Janko, in the season 9 finale. They acknowledged their mutual attraction during season 7 and became engaged at the end of season 8.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: The season 10 finale revealed a 24-year-old son of Joe's that neither he nor the family knew about, a young detective in the firearms unit named Joe Hill (played by Will Hochman).


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: Selleck mentioned that he was drawn to the project because of the strong pilot script and that he was concerned about becoming involved in an ongoing series because he did not want to compromise his commitment to the Jesse Stone television movies. Beginning January 19, 2011, "Blue Bloods" was moved to Wednesdays at 10 p.m. for a four-week tryout. In February 2011, the series returned to its Friday night time slot due to the series premiere of "".


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: In the United Kingdom, the show helped launch Sky Atlantic by premiering on Tuesday, February 1, 2011, at 10:30 p.m. In Australia, the show premiered in February 2011 in a primetime Wednesday slot on "Network Ten", then from February 2013 for season two was moved from the network's primary SD channel to its HD channel "one" alongside "White Collar", then on August 26, 2013, the show moved back to the primary SD channel on Mondays for season three. In New Zealand, the show premieres on July 13, 2013, on "TV3"" "replacing in a primetime Saturday slot after "".


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: On October 20, 2012, CBS announced that Jennifer Esposito was being dropped from the series, with her character, Detective Curatola, being placed on indefinite leave of absence. Esposito and CBS had been at odds over her limited availability for work after the actress was diagnosed with celiac disease. She had missed a week after collapsing on set earlier in the season. According to Esposito, CBS challenged her request for a reduced work schedule, and further, kept her from finding work elsewhere. In a press release from CBS, the network said that Esposito had "informed us that she is only available to work on a very limited part-time schedule. As a result, she's unable to perform the demands of her role and we regretfully had to put her character on a leave of absence." Curatola's last appearance was in the season three episode "Nightmares".


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: According to TV by the Numbers, by committing itself to a third season of "Blue Bloods", CBS all but guaranteed a fourth season, because, as a CBS Television Studios production, CBS had a financial incentive to produce at least the minimum number of episodes needed for stripped syndication. On March 27, 2013, CBS made it official by renewing "Blue Bloods" for a fourth season to begin in the fall of 2013. As of 2022, the show has been renewed through season 13.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: The series received $79 million in tax breaks from the state of New York for its seasons four through seven.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: In Australia, the series premiered on Network Ten's primary channel on February 2, 2011. Due to poor ratings of the first season, Ten moved the series to its HD channel One, which premiered the second season on October 31, 2011. Due to decreased viewership of Ten's primary channel, season three moved back from August 26, 2013, and season four returned on March 17, 2014. Foxtel channel TV HITS (styled TV H!TS) have started airing the series from Episode 1, weeknights at 8:30pm AEST as of March 20.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Sky Atlantic premiered the series on February 1, 2011, with season two returning on October 4, 2011, season three on December 13, 2012, and season four on November 28, 2013. Season five premiered on January 21, 2015.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: Reruns of "Blue Bloods" air nationally in the United States on Wednesdays on Ion Television, although it was briefly removed from the schedule in early 2020, NewsNation, the latter of which airs the show daily, and starting with a marathon of episodes on July 4th, 2022 Up TV began airing the program with episodes every weeknight. CBS Media Ventures currently distributes the series to local outlets on weekends, with two episodes being offered. Repeats of "Blue Bloods" air on Pick in the United Kingdom. The show airs twice a day on TV 2 Charlie in Denmark.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: Reviewers have praised the series' on-location shooting. The New York "Daily News" praised Selleck's performance as Frank Reagan, while also praising the family dinner scenes for discussion of morally complex issues.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: The "Daily News" drew comparisons between Selleck's characters Jesse Stone and Frank Reagan, saying that both Reagan and Stone are moral, principled men of few words. In "Entertainment Weekly"s annual Fall TV Preview, Ken Tucker named "Blue Bloods" one of the "5 Best New Shows" of 2010.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: In late 2014, the magazine "Slate"s Laura Hudson criticized the show for its depiction of racial incidents involving the police.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: In 2017, Selleck was nominated for a People's Choice Award for Favorite TV Crime Drama Actor for his work on the show.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: In 2011, Michael Hann, writing for "The Guardian", panned the show by calling it "predictable", "trite" and "pisspoor".


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: The pilot episode garnered 15.258 million viewers because of the Live + 7 days after with viewings from DVRs. Without the DVR adding to the live viewing the show's debut episode garnered a total of 13.02 million viewers.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: Overall, the ratings have been steady for the series, after the pilot episode. The lowest viewer total through the first seven seasons was 8.88 million in episode eight of season seven (which ran against Game 3 of the 2016 World Series); it was one of the few episodes through the first seven seasons that had fewer than 9 million initial-broadcast viewers. The second-season finale on May 11, 2012, was watched by 10.73 million viewers and received a 1.2/4 ratings/share among adults ages 18–49. The highest (non-pilot) live viewership of 12.93 million occurred in episode 14 of season four ("Manhattan Queens"), which was the series' 81st episode.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: In January 2013, CBS announced via press release that "Blue Bloods" was the first scripted Friday series in 10 years to average at least 13 million viewers (live + 7), gaining eight percent more viewers than the previous year. The in 2001 had 14.78 million viewers, while the in 2003 had 14.92 million.


title: Blue Bloods (TV series)

text: From season 8 onward, ratings have declined. Season 9 was the first season with no episodes reaching 10 million first-run viewers, although "Blue Bloods" still ranked as the eighth most watched program in 2018–19 Live + 7 viewership. Season 9 also saw the lowest first-run viewership for any episode to date (7.62 million for Ep. 14, "My Brother's Keeper").


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei (, ; born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia "marja'" and the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously the third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: According to his official website, Khamenei was arrested six times before being sent into exile for three years during Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's reign. After the Iranian revolution overthrowing the shah, he was the target of an attempted assassination in June 1981 that paralysed his right arm. Khamenei was one of Iran's leaders during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, and developed close ties with the now powerful Revolutionary Guards which he controls, and whose commanders are elected and dismissed by him. The Revolutionary Guards have been deployed to suppress opposition to him. Khamenei served as the third President of Iran from 1981 to 1989, while becoming a close ally of the first Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini. Shortly before his death, Khomeini had a disagreement with the heir he had chosen — Hussein Ali Montazeri — so there was no agreed on successor when Khomeini died. The Assembly of Experts elected Khamenei as the next Supreme Leader on 4 June 1989, at age 50. According to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khamenei was the man Khomeini had chosen as his successor before dying. Khamenei has been head of the servants of Astan Quds Razavi since 14 April 1979.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: As Supreme Leader, Khamenei is the most powerful political authority in the Islamic Republic. He is the head of state of Iran, the commander-in-chief of its armed forces, and can issue decrees and make the final decisions on the main policies of the government in many fields such as economy, the environment, foreign policy, and national planning in Iran. As Supreme Leader, Khamenei has either direct or indirect control over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as the military and media, according to Karim Sadjadpour. All candidates for the Assembly of Experts, the Presidency and the Majlis (Parliament) are vetted by the Guardian Council, whose members are selected directly or indirectly by the Supreme Leader of Iran. There have also been instances when the Guardian Council reversed its ban on particular people after being ordered to do so by Khamenei.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: There have been major protests during Khamenei's reign, including the 1994 Qazvin protests, the 1999 student protests, the 2009 presidential election protests, the 2011–2012 protests, the 2017–18 protests, the 2018–19 general strikes and protests, the 2019–20 protests, the 2021–22 protests, and the ongoing Mahsa Amini protests. Journalists, bloggers and other individuals have been put on trial in Iran for the charge of insulting Supreme Leader Khamenei, often in conjunction with blasphemy charges. Their sentences have included lashing and jail time; some of them have died in custody. Regarding the nuclear program of Iran, Khamenei issued a fatwa in 2003 forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Born to Seyyed Javad Khamenei, an Alim and Mujtahid born in Najaf, and Khadijeh Mirdamadi (daughter of Hashem Mirdamadi) in Mashhad, Khamenei is the second of eight children. Two of his brothers are also clerics; his younger brother, Hadi Khamenei, is a newspaper editor and cleric. His elder sister Fatemeh Hosseini Khamenei died in 2015, aged 89. His father was an ethnic Azerbaijani from Khamaneh, while his mother was an ethnic Persian from Yazd. Some of his ancestors are from Tafresh in today's Markazi Province and migrated from their original home in Tafresh to Khamaneh near the Tabriz. Khamenei's great ancestor was Sayyid Hossein Tafreshi, a descendant of the Aftasi Sayyids, whose lineage supposedly reached to Sultan ul-Ulama Ahmad, known as Sultan Sayyid, a grandchild of Shia fourth Imam, Ali ibn Husayn.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei's education began at the age of four, by learning Quran at Maktab; he spent his basic and advanced levels of seminary studies at the hawza of Mashhad, under mentors such as Sheikh Hashem Qazvini and Ayatollah Milani. Then, he went to Najaf in 1957, but soon returned to Mashhad due to his father's unwillingness to let him stay there. In 1958, he settled in Qom where he attended the classes of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini. Like many other politically active clerics at the time, Khamenei was far more involved with politics than religious scholarship.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei was a key figure in the Iranian Revolution in Iran and a close confidant of Ruhollah Khomeini.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Muhammad Sahimi claims that his political career began after the Iranian Revolution, when the former President of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then a confidant of Khomeini, brought Khamenei into Khomeini's inner circle. Later on, the current President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, then a member of Parliament, arranged for Khamenei to get his first major post in the provisional revolutionary government as deputy defense minister.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khomeini appointed Khamenei to the post of Tehran's Friday prayers Imam in 1980, after resignation of Hussein-Ali Montazeri from the post. He served briefly as the vice Minister of National Defence from late July to 6 November 1979 and as a supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. He also went to the battlefield as a representative of the defense commission of the parliament.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Mujahedin-e Khalq when a bomb, concealed in a tape recorder, exploded beside him.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: On 27 June 1981, while Khamenei had returned from the frontline, he went to the Aboozar Mosque according to his Saturdays schedule. After the first prayer, he began to give a lecture to worshipers who had written their questions on a piece of paper. Meanwhile, a tape recorder accompanied with papers was put on the desk in front of Khamenei by a young man who pressed a button. After a minute the recorder began making a whistling sound, then suddenly exploded. "A gift of Furqan Group to the Islamic Republic" was written on the inner wall of the tape recorder. Ayatollah Khamenei's treatment took several months and his arm, vocal cords and lungs were seriously injured. He was permanently injured, losing the use of his right arm.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 1981, after the assassination of Mohammad-Ali Rajai, Khamenei was elected President of Iran by a landslide vote (97%) in the October 1981 Iranian presidential election in which only four candidates were approved by the Council of Guardians. Khamenei became the first cleric to serve in the office. Ruhollah Khomeini had originally wanted to keep clerics out of the presidency but later changed his views. Khamenei was reelected in 1985 Iranian presidential election where only three candidates were approved by the Council of Guardians, receiving 87% of the votes. The only Iranian presidential election that had fewer candidates approved by the Council of Guardians was the 1989 Iranian presidential election, where only two candidates were approved by the Council of Guardians to run, and Rafsanjani easily won 96% of the votes.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In his presidential inaugural address Khamenei vowed to eliminate "deviation, liberalism, and American-influenced leftists". According to the Iran Chamber, vigorous opposition to the government, including nonviolent and violent protest, assassinations, guerrilla activity and insurrections, was answered by state repression and terror in the early 1980s, both before and during Khamenei's presidency. Thousands of rank-and-file members of insurgent groups were killed, often by revolutionary courts. By 1982, the government announced that the courts would be reined in, although various political groups continued to be repressed by the government in the first half of the 1980s.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei was one of Iran's leaders during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, and developed close ties with the now-powerful Revolutionary Guards. As president, he had a reputation of being deeply interested in the military, budget and administrative details.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In its 10 April 1997 ruling regarding the Mykonos restaurant assassinations, the German court issued an international arrest warrant for Iranian intelligence minister Ali Fallahian after declaring that the assassination had been ordered by him with knowledge of Khamenei and Rafsanjani. Iranian officials, however, have categorically denied their involvement. The then Iranian Parliament speaker Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri dismissed the ruling as being political, untrue and unsubstantiated. The ruling led to a diplomatic crisis between the governments of Iran and several European countries, which lasted until November 1997. The accused assassins, Darabi and Rhayel, were finally released from prison on 10 December 2007 and deported back to their home countries.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei has fired and reinstated Presidential cabinet appointments. Iran's Chief Justice Sadeq Larijani, a Khamenei appointee, has warned the president of Iran against voicing opposition to Khamenei.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini dismissed Ayatollah Montazeri as his political successor, giving the position to Khamenei instead. Because Khamenei was neither a marja or ayatollah, the Assembly of Experts had to modify the constitution in order to award him the position of Iran's new Supreme Leader (a decision opposed by several grand ayatollahs).


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei officially succeeded Ruhollah Khomeini after Khomeini's death, being elected as the new Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts on 4 June 1989.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Initially, the idea of leadership council was proposed by some members of Assembly of Experts. Various lists were proposed and Khamenei was named in all of them. For instance, a council of three members, Ali Meshkini, Mousavi Ardebili and Khamenei, was proposed to lead Iran. According to Rafsanjani, he and Khamenei were against the proposal while Ayatollah Haeri Shirazi and Ayatollah Ebrahim Amini were in favor of it. Supporters of the council proposal believed that having a council would produce a higher degree of unity in society and more positive characteristics would be found in a council, while the opposers believed that an individual leader was more efficient according to the past experiences in case of Judiciary council.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Ebrahim Amini listed the summary of reasons presented by the two sides. According to him the opposers rejected the proposal because: i) Evidences for Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist were true only for the guardianship of an individual and it was not clear who held the guardianship when there was a council. Guardianship of a council was not rooted in Hadiths and Islamic jurisprudence. ii) Previous council type organizations such as broadcasting council and supreme judicial council were not successful in practice and leadership council would not do well for similar reasons. iii) People were accustomed to the leadership of an individual and a council of leaders was something unfamiliar to them. iv) An individual leader could act more decisive when dealing with critical and important decisions and solving problems and crisis. On the other hand, the supporters of the proposal believed that: i) At the time, there were no "Faqih" equal to Khomeini or even two or three levels lower than him so that he could fulfill the expectation of people. ii) In case of council of leaders, the members could compensate each other, if any of them had some shortage in a field.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Finally, 45 members voted against the leadership council proposal while more than 20 people were in favor of it and the proposal was rejected. After the assembly rejected the idea of a Leadership Council, Khamenei was elected Leader by 60 of the 74 members present with Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani receiving the remaining 14 votes. Khamenei made protestations of his unworthiness -- "my nomination should make us all cry tears of blood" and debated with the mujtahids of the Assembly<ref name="www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?p=bio"></ref>—but eventually accepted the post.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Since Khamenei was not a marja' at the time—which the Iranian constitution required—he was named as the temporary Supreme Leader. Later, the constitution was amended to remove that requirement and the Assembly of Experts reconvened on 6 August 1989, to reconfirm Khamenei with 60 votes out of 64 present. On 29 April 1989, responding to the letter of Ayatollah Meshkini, the head of committee responsible for revising the Constitution, asking Khomeini's viewpoint regarding the 'marjaʿiyyat criteria, Khomeini said: "From the very beginning, I believed and insisted that there is no need for the requirements of "marjaʿiyyat" (authority in jurisprudence). A pious mujtahid (jurist-intellectual), who is approved by the esteemed Assembly of Experts ("Majlis-i Khobregan"), will suffice." In a video that surfaced during the 2017–18 Iranian protests, Khamenei is seen before the assembly saying he was not religiously qualified to be Supreme leader. Khamenei, who was ranked as a Hujjat al-Islam and not a Marja' as required by the Iranian constitution, said he would only be a "ceremonial leader", and was reassured by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani the position would be "temporary" until a referendum, apparently planned for one year later.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: On August 29, 2022, al-Haeri announced his resignation from the position of Marja, due to old age and illness. This was described as the first time in history a Marja has ever resigned from his position. He called on his followers to follow Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran as ""the best person for the leadership of our people and removing the aggressors"".


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei's era has differed from that of his predecessor. He has, however, continued Khomeini's policy of "balancing one group against another, making sure that no single side gains too much power." But lacking Khomeini's charisma and clerical standing, he has developed personal networks, first inside the armed forces, and then among the clerics, while administering the major bonyads and seminaries of Qom and Mashhad. Having been Supreme Leader for three decades, Khamenei has been able to place many loyalists throughout Iran's major institutions, "building a system that serves and protects him". Former cleric Mehdi Khalaji and Saeid Golkar, describe Khamenei's system as having creating a "parallel structure" for each of the country's institutions (army, intelligence agencies, etc.) to keep those institutions weak.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: According to Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, "[Khamenei] [took] many of the powers of the presidency with him and [turned] the office of the supreme leader into the omnipotent overseer of Iran's political scene". In Nasr's view, Khamenei is an "unusual sort of dictator". Officials under Khamenei influence the country's various powerful, and sometimes bickering, institutions, including "the parliament, the presidency, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the military, the intelligence services, the police agencies, the clerical elite, the Friday prayer leaders and much of the media", as well as various "nongovernmental foundations, organizations, councils, seminaries and business groups".


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei issues decrees and makes the final decisions on economy, environment, foreign policy and everything else in Iran. Khamenei regularly meets with president, cabinet members, head and officials of the judiciary branch, parliamentarians, among others, and tells them what to do. Khamenei has also fired and reinstated Presidential cabinet appointments. Khamenei meets with foreign dignitaries, however he does not travel overseas; if anyone wishes to see him, that person must travel to Iran. Apart from his time in Najaf as a student, Khamenei travelled to Libya during his time as president.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In his speeches Khamenei regularly mentions many familiar themes of the 1979 revolution: justice, independence, self-sufficiency, Islamic government and resolute opposition to Israel and United States, while rarely mentioning other revolutionary ideals such as democracy and greater government transparency. According to Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Khamenei has "resisted Rafsanjani's attempts to find a modus vivendi with the United States, Khatami's aspirations for a more democratic Islamic state, and Ahmadinejad's penchant for outright confrontation."


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 2007, Khamenei called for the privatization of state-owned companies, including the telephone company, three banks and dozens of small oil and petrochemical enterprises. After a few months, at a televised meeting with then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Cabinet ministers, important clerics, the leader of parliament and provincial governors, the heads of state broadcasting and the Iranian chamber of commerce, Khamenei ordered "to pass some laws, sell off some businesses, and be quick about it." Khamenei warned that "those who are hostile to these policies are the ones who are going to lose their interests and influence."


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 1994, after the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Araki, the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom declared Khamenei a new marja. Several ayatollahs, however, declined to recognize him as such. Some of those dissidents clerics included Mohammad Shirazi, Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Hassan Tabatabai-Qomi, and Yasubedin Rastegar Jooybari. In 1997, for example, Montazeri "questioned the powers of the Leader" and was subsequently punished for his comments with the closure of his religious school, an attack on his office in Qom, and a period of house arrest.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: The table below lists some of the incumbent senior officeholders in Iran directly appointed by the supreme leader (sorted by date of appointment):


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 2010, Khamenei issued a fatwa which bans any insult to the Sahabah (companions of Muhammad) as well as Muhammad's wives. The fatwa was issued in an effort to reconcile legal, social, and political disagreements between Sunni and Shia.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei is one of the Ulama signatories of the Amman Message, which gives a broad foundation for defining Muslim orthodoxy. as well as elaborating on the factors needed to create Islamic unity, he argues: "neither the Shia Muslims allied with the British MI6 are Shias, nor the Sunni mercenaries of the American CIA are Sunnis, as they are both anti-Islamic."


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei has reportedly issued a fatwa saying the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: The fatwa was cited in an official statement by the Iranian government at an August 2005 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. It's been widely discussed by international officials and specifically recognized by the US administration.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: The Iranian official website for information regarding its nuclear program has provided numerous instances of public statements by Khamenei wherein he voices his opposition to pursuit and development of nuclear weapons in moral, religious and Islamic juridical terms. Khamenei's official website specifically cites a 2010 version of these statements in the fatwa section of the website in Farsi as a fatwa on "Prohibition of Weapons of Mass Destruction".


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Doubts have been cast by experts on the existence of the fatwa as it can be changed or modified as and when deemed necessary, as well as doubts on its authenticity, its impact, and its apparently religious nature. Gareth Porter believes that the fatwa is "sincere" and Gholam-Hossein Elham commented that it will not change.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Sayyid Ali Khamenei annually issues message(s) on the occasion of Hajj for all Muslims (pilgrims) in Hajj. He commenced to issue such messages since the start of his responsibility as the supreme leader of Iran (1989). He continually invites all Muslims to Tawhid, and afterwards expresses concerning the significance of Hajj in spiritual/social life. He also asks the Muslims to be aware of what he considers "the conspiracy of the enemies" by having a right comprehension, and advises them to "not be deceived by them". So far, Iran's supreme leader has issued 32 messages (since 1989). A part of his last message (6 August 2019) is as follows:


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 2000, Ali Khamenei sent a letter to the Iranian parliament forbidding the legislature from debating a revision of the Iranian press law to allow more freedom of the press. He wrote: "The present press law has succeeded to a point in preventing this big plague. The draft bill is not legitimate and in the interests of the system and the revolution."


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 1996, he issued a fatwa stating "The promotion of music [both traditional and Western] in schools is contrary to the goals and teachings of Islam, regardless of age and level of study."


title: Ali Khamenei

text: (Many music schools were closed and public (but not private) music instruction to children under the age of 16 was banned thereafter.) Khamenei stated,


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 1999, Khamenei issued a fatwa stating that it was permitted to use a third-party (donor sperm, ova or surrogacy) in fertility treatments. This was different in "both style and substance" to the fatwa on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) by Gad El-Hak Ali Gad El-Hak of Egypt's Al-Azhar University in the late 1980s which permitted ART (IVF and similar technologies) as long there is no third-party donation (of sperm, eggs, embryos, or uteruses).


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 2002, he ruled that human stem cell research was permissible under Islam, with the condition that it be used to create only parts as opposed to a whole human.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 2002, after protests erupted in the capital, Khamenei intervened against the death sentence given to Hashem Aghajari for arguing that Muslims should re-interpret Islam rather than blindly follow leaders. Khamenei ordered a review of the sentence against Aghajari and it was later commuted to a prison sentence.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Khamenei developed a cult of personality; with supporters describing him as a "divine gift to mankind" and in which Khamenei critics are persecuted.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: According to Karim Sadjadpour of the American Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, several factors have strengthened Khamenei in recent years:


title: Ali Khamenei

text: According to Christopher Dickey, in order to consolidate his power base, Khamenei has developed close relations with the security and military establishment, while also expanding the bureaucracy inside the government and around his Beit Rahbari compound.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Writing in "The Daily Telegraph", Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat observed: "The ayatollah likes to cultivate an image of austerity but receives major commissions from the Iranian oil and arms industries and there have been regular claims that he and his son have amassed a fortune running into billions of dollars." A six-month investigation by Reuters has said that Khamenei controls a "financial empire" worth approximately US$95 billion that is not overseen by the Iranian Parliament, a figure much larger than the estimated wealth of the late Shah of Iran. According to the Reuters investigation, Khamenei uses the assets of a company called "Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam" or "Setad" in Farsi, in order to increase his grip on power. Reuters "found no evidence that Khamenei is tapping Setad to enrich himself," but did find that he used Setad's funds, which "rival the holdings of the shah", for political expedience – "Setad gives him the financial means to operate independently of parliament and the national budget, insulating him from Iran's messy factional infighting." According to "The Daily Telegraph", money from Setad is used to fund Khamenei's Beit Rahbari compound, which employs over 500 stewards, as was reported in 2013. Hamid Vaezi, Setad's head of public relations, said the information "was far from realities and is not correct". The six-month investigation by Reuters into found that, regarding the source of Setad's funds, "Setad built its empire on the systematic seizure of thousands of properties belonging to ordinary Iranians: members of religious minorities like Vahdat-e-Hagh, who is Baha'i, as well as Shi'ite Muslims, business people and Iranians living abroad."


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Despite the negative accounts of Western sources, Iranian official sources depict Setad as a vast charity foundation. In an interview in October 2014 with Islamic Republic News Agency, Muhammad Mukhber, the head of Setad, stated that over 90% of profits from Setad business activities are spent on improving infrastructure in the poor regions of the country, creating jobs and improving the well-being of people in these regions reflecting the top concerns of Iran's Supreme Leader, Khamenei for the Iranian society. He state that 85 percent of Setad's charitable works take place in poor regions of Iran. He cited construction of several hundred schools, mosques and hussainiyas, as well as direct and indirect contribution to formation of over 350 thousands jobs expecting a total of 700 thousands for the upcoming three years. Mukhber also cited a sum total grant of 2.21 trillion rials of "Qard al-Hasan", interest-free loans, to 41 thousands families in poor regions of the country. He also revealed plans of gradual sell-off of Setad profitable businesses in the stock market with the aim of transferring their ownership into the hands of Iranian people. He also envisioned construction and delivery of 17 thousands housing units to families in poor regions of Iran by 2018.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In mid-August 2009, a group of unnamed former reformist lawmakers appealed to the Assembly of Experts – the constitutional body charged with electing and (in theory) supervising and removing the Leader – to investigate Leader Ali Khamenei's qualification to rule. A week later another anonymous letter was issued "calling Iran's leader a dictator and demanding his removal", this one by a group of Iranian clerics. The letters were called a blow to Khamenei's "status as a neutral arbiter and Islamic figurehead" and an "unprecedented challenge to the country's most powerful man" though not a blow to his actual power as leader. "The New York Times" reports "the phrase 'death to Khamenei' has begun appearing in graffiti on Tehran walls, a phrase that would have been almost unimaginable not long ago."


title: Ali Khamenei

text: The letter was addressed to the head of the Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a "powerful former president" who also questions the election results. According to the Associate Press it is unlikely the letter's demands would be met as "two-thirds of the 86-member assembly are considered strong loyalists of Khamenei and would oppose" any investigation of him.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: According to "The New York Times" reporting in mid-August 2009, a "prominent Iranian cleric and a former lawmaker said on Sunday that they had spoken to some of the authors and had no doubt the letter was genuine". According to this cleric, the letter's signatories number "several dozen, and are mostly midranking figures from Qum, Isfahan and Mashhad", and that "the pressure on clerics in Qum is much worse than the pressure on activists because the establishment is afraid that if they say anything they can turn the more traditional sectors of society against the regime".


title: Ali Khamenei

text: Early in his presidency, Ahmadinejad was sometimes described as "enjoy[ing] the full backing" of the Supreme Leader , and even as being his "protege." In Ahmadinejad's 2005 inauguration the supreme leader allowed Ahmadinejad to kiss his hand and cheeks in what was called "a sign of closeness and loyalty," and after the 2009 election fully endorsed Ahmadinejad against protesters. However, as early as January 2008 signs of disagreement between the two men developed over domestic policies, and by the period of 2010–11 several sources detected a "growing rift" between them. The disagreement was described as centered on Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a top adviser and close confidant of Ahmadinejad and opponent of "greater involvement of clerics in politics", who was first vice president of Iran until being ordered to resign from the cabinet by the supreme leader.


title: Ali Khamenei

text: In 2009, Ahmadinejad dismissed Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, an opponent of Mashaei. In April 2011, another Intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, resigned after being asked to by Ahmadinejad, but was reinstated by the supreme leader within hours. Ahmadinejad declined to officially back Moslehi's reinstatement for two weeks and in protest engaged in an "11-day walkout" of cabinet meetings, religious ceremonies, and other official functions. Ahmadinejad's actions led to angry public attacks by clerics, parliamentarians and military commanders, who accused him of ignoring orders from the supreme leader. Conservative opponents in parliament launched an "impeachment drive" against him, four websites with ties to Ahmadinejad reportedly were "filtered and blocked", and several people "said to be close" to the president and Mashaei (such as Abbas Amirifar and Mohammed Sharif Malekzadeh) were arrested on charges of being "magicians" and invoking djinns. On 6 May 2011, it was reported that Ahmadinejad had been given an ultimatum to accept the leader's intervention or resign, and on 8 May he "apparently bowed" to the reinstatement, welcoming back Moslehi to a cabinet meeting. The events have been said to have "humiliated and weakened" Ahmadinejad, though the president denied that there had been any rift between the two, and according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency, he stated that his relationship with the supreme leader "is that of a father and a son."