title: Reconquista

text: Despite numerous battles, neither the Umayyads nor the Asturians had sufficient forces to secure control over these northern territories. Under the reign of Ramiro, famed for the highly legendary Battle of Clavijo, the border began to slowly move southward and Asturian holdings in Castile, Galicia, and Leon were fortified, and an intensive program of re-population of the countryside began in those territories. In 924 the Kingdom of Asturias became the Kingdom of León, when Leon became the seat of the royal court (it didn't bear any official name).


title: Reconquista

text: Alfonso III of Asturias repopulated the strategically important city Leon and established it as his capital. King Alfonso began a series of campaigns to establish control over all the lands north of the Douro river. He reorganized his territories into the major duchies (Galicia and Portugal) and major counties (Saldaña and Castile), and fortified the borders with many castles. At his death in 910 the shift in regional power was completed as the kingdom became the Kingdom of León. From this power base, his heir Ordoño II was able to organize attacks against Toledo and even Seville.


title: Reconquista

text: The Caliphate of Córdoba was gaining power, and began to attack Leon. King Ordoño allied with Navarre against Abd-al-Rahman, but they were defeated in Valdejunquera in 920. For the next 80 years, the Kingdom of León suffered civil wars, Moorish attack, internal intrigues and assassinations, and the partial independence of Galicia and Castile, thus delaying the reconquest and weakening the Christian forces. It was not until the following century that the Christians started to see their conquests as part of a long-term effort to restore the unity of the Visigothic kingdom.


title: Reconquista

text: The only point during this period when the situation became hopeful for Leon was the reign of Ramiro II. King Ramiro, in alliance with Fernán González of Castile and his retinue of "caballeros villanos", defeated the Caliph in Simancas in 939. After this battle, when the Caliph barely escaped with his guard and the rest of the army was destroyed, King Ramiro obtained 12 years of peace, but he had to give González the independence of Castile as payment for his help in the battle. After this defeat, Moorish attacks abated until Almanzor began his campaigns. Alfonso V finally regained control over his domains in 1002. Navarre, though attacked by Almanzor, remained intact.


title: Reconquista

text: The conquest of Leon did not include Galicia which was left to temporary independence after the withdrawal of the Leonese king. Galicia was conquered soon after (by Ferdinand, son of Sancho the Great, around 1038). However, this brief period of independence meant that Galicia remained a kingdom and fief of Leon, which is the reason it is part of Spain and not Portugal. Subsequent kings titled themselves kings of Galicia and Leon, instead of merely king of Leon as the two were united personally and not in union.


title: Reconquista

text: Ferdinand I of Leon was the leading king of the mid-11th century. He conquered Coimbra and attacked the taifa kingdoms, often demanding the tributes known as parias. Ferdinand's strategy was to continue to demand parias until the taifa was greatly weakened both militarily and financially. He also repopulated the Borders with numerous "fueros". Following the Navarrese tradition, on his death in 1064 he divided his kingdom between his sons. His son Sancho II of Castile wanted to reunite the kingdom of his father and attacked his brothers, with a young noble at his side: Rodrigo Díaz, later known as El Cid Campeador. Sancho was killed in the siege of Zamora by the traitor Bellido Dolfos (also known as Vellido Adolfo) in 1072. His brother Alfonso VI took over Leon, Castile and Galicia.


title: Reconquista

text: Alfonso VI the Brave gave more power to the "fueros" and repopulated Segovia, Ávila and Salamanca. Once he had secured the Borders, King Alfonso conquered the powerful Taifa kingdom of Toledo in 1085. Toledo, which was the former capital of the Visigoths, was a very important landmark, and the conquest made Alfonso renowned throughout the Christian world. However, this "conquest" was conducted rather gradually, and mostly peacefully, during the course of several decades. It was not until after sporadic and consistent population resettlements had taken place that Toledo was decisively conquered.


title: Reconquista

text: Alfonso VI was first and foremost a tactful monarch who chose to understand the kings of taifa and employed unprecedented diplomatic measures to attain political feats before considering the use of force. He adopted the title "Imperator totius Hispaniae" ("Emperor of all Hispania", referring to all the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, and not just the modern country of Spain). Alfonso's more aggressive policy towards the taifas worried the rulers of those kingdoms, who called on the African Almoravids for help.


title: Reconquista

text: The Kingdom of Pamplona primarily extended along either side of the Pyrenees on the Atlantic Ocean. The kingdom was formed when local leader Íñigo Arista led a revolt against the regional Frankish authority and was elected or declared King in Pamplona (traditionally in 824), establishing a kingdom inextricably linked at this stage to their kinsmen, the muwallad Banu Qasi of Tudela.


title: Reconquista

text: Although relatively weak until the early 11th century, Pamplona took a more active role after the accession of Sancho the Great (1004–1035). The kingdom expanded greatly under his reign, as it absorbed Castile, Leon, and what was to be Aragon, in addition to other small counties that would unite and become the Principality of Catalonia. This expansion also led to the independence of Galicia, as well as gaining overlordship over Gascony.


title: Reconquista

text: In the 12th century, however, the kingdom contracted to its core, and in 1162 King Sancho VI declared himself king of Navarre. Throughout its early history, the Navarrese kingdom engaged in frequent skirmishes with the Carolingian Empire, from which it maintained its independence, a key feature of its history until 1513.


title: Reconquista

text: The Kingdom of Aragon started off as an offshoot of the Kingdom of Navarre. It was formed when Sancho III of Navarre decided to divide his large realm among all his sons. Aragon was the portion of the realm which passed to Ramiro I of Aragon, an illegitimate son of Sancho III. The kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre were several times united in personal union until the death of Alfonso the Battler in 1135.


title: Reconquista

text: In 1137 the heiress of the kingdom married the count of Barcelona, and their son Alfonso II ruled from 1162 the combined possessions of his parents, resulting in the composite monarchy that modern historians call the Crown of Aragon. Alfonso successfully reincorporated the Principality of Tarragona into their realm, expelling the Norman d'Aguiló family.


title: Reconquista

text: In the following centuries, the Crown of Aragon conquered a number of territories in the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean, including the kingdom of Valencia and the kingdom of Mallorca. James I of Aragon, also known as James the Conqueror, expanded his territories to the north, south and east. James also signed the Treaty of Corbeil (1258), in which the French king renounced to any feudal claim over Catalonia.


title: Reconquista

text: Early in his reign, James attempted to reunite the Aragonese and Navarrese crowns through a treaty with the childless Sancho VII of Navarre. But the Navarrese nobles rejected him, and chose Theobald IV of Champagne in his stead.


title: Reconquista

text: Later on, Ferdinand II of Aragon, married Isabella of Castile, leading to a dynastic union which eventually gave birth to modern Spain, after the conquest of Upper Navarre (Navarre south of the Pyrenees) and the Emirate of Granada.


title: Reconquista

text: In 1139, after an overwhelming victory in the Battle of Ourique against the Almoravids, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed the first King of Portugal by his troops. According to the legend, Christ announced from heaven Afonso's great deeds, whereby he would establish the first Portuguese Cortes at Lamego and be crowned by the Primate Archbishop of Braga. In 1142 a group of Anglo-Norman crusaders on their way to the Holy Land helped King Afonso Henriques in a failed Siege of Lisbon (1142). In the Treaty of Zamora in 1143, Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile recognized Portuguese independence from the Kingdom of León.


title: Reconquista

text: In 1147, Portugal captured Santarém, and seven months later the city of Lisbon was also brought under Portuguese control after the Siege of Lisbon. By the papal bull Manifestis Probatum, Pope Alexander III recognized Afonso Henriques as King of Portugal in 1179.


title: Reconquista

text: With Portugal finally recognized as an independent kingdom by its neighbours, Afonso Henriques and his successors, aided by Crusaders and the military monastic orders the Knights Templar, the Order of Aviz or the Order of Saint James, pushed the Moors to the Algarve on the southern coast of Portugal. After several campaigns, the Portuguese part in the "Reconquista" came to an end with the definitive capture of the Algarve in 1249. With all of Portugal now under the control of Afonso III of Portugal, religious, cultural and ethnic groups became gradually homogenized.


title: Reconquista

text: After the completion of the "Reconquista", the Portuguese territory was a Roman Catholic realm. Nonetheless, Denis of Portugal carried out a short war with Castile for possession of the towns of Serpa and Moura. After this, Denis avoided war. In 1297, he signed the Treaty of Alcanizes with Ferdinand IV of Castile, establishing a permanent border between the two kingdoms.


title: Reconquista

text: During the suppression of the Knights Templar all over Europe, under the influence of Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V requesting its annihilation by 1312, King Denis reinstituted the Templars of Tomar as the Order of Christ in 1319. Denis believed that the Order's assets should by their nature stay in any given Order instead of being taken by the King, largely for the Templars' contribution to the "Reconquista" and the reconstruction of Portugal after the wars.


title: Reconquista

text: The experience gained during the battles of the "Reconquista" was fundamental to Conquest of Ceuta, the first step to the establishment of the Portuguese Empire. Likewise, the contact with Muslim's navigation techniques and sciences enabled the creation of Portuguese nautical innovations such as the caravel – the principal Portuguese ship during their voyages of exploration in the Age of Discovery.


title: Reconquista

text: Minor Christian realms were the Kingdom of Viguera (970–1005), the Lordship of Albarracín (1167–1300), the Principality of Tarragona (1129–1173), and the (1094–1102).


title: Reconquista

text: During the 9th century the Berbers returned to North Africa in the aftermath of revolts. Many governors of large cities distant from the capital, Córdoba, had planned to establish their independence. Then, in 929, the Emir of Córdoba (Abd-ar-Rahman III), the leader of the Umayyad dynasty, declared himself Caliph, independent from the Abbasids in Baghdad. He took all the military, religious, and political power and reorganised the army and the bureaucracy.


title: Reconquista

text: After regaining control over the dissident governors, Abd-ar-Rahman III tried to conquer the remaining Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, attacking them several times and forcing them back beyond the Cantabrian Mountains. Abd-ar-Rahman's grandson later became a puppet in the hands of the great Vizier Almanzor ("al-Mansur", "the victorious"). Almanzor waged several campaigns attacking and sacking Burgos, Leon, Pamplona, Barcelona, and Santiago de Compostela before his death in 1002.


title: Reconquista

text: Between Almanzor's death and 1031, Al-Andalus suffered many civil wars, which ended in the division into the Taifa kingdoms. The taifas were small kingdoms, established by the city governors. The result was many (up to 34) small kingdoms, each centered upon its capital. Their governors had no larger-scale vision of the Moorish presence in the Iberian peninsula and had no qualms about attacking their neighbouring kingdoms whenever they could gain advantage by doing so.


title: Reconquista

text: The split into the taifa states weakened the Islamic presence, and the Christian kingdoms further advanced as Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile conquered Toledo in 1085. Surrounded by enemies, taifa rulers sent a desperate appeal to the Berber chieftain Yusuf ibn Tashfin, leader of the Almoravids. "Taifas" reemerged when the Almoravid dynasty collapsed in the 1140s, and again when the Almohad Caliphate declined in the 1220s.


title: Reconquista

text: The Almoravids were a Muslim militia composed of Berbers, and unlike previous Muslim rulers, they were not so tolerant towards Christians and Jews. Their armies entered the Iberian peninsula on several occasions (1086, 1088, 1093) and defeated King Alfonso at the Battle of Sagrajas in 1086, but initially their purpose was to unite all the taifas into a single Almoravid Caliphate. Their actions halted the southward expansion of the Christian kingdoms. Their only defeat came at Valencia in 1094, due to the actions of El Cid.


title: Reconquista

text: Meanwhile, Navarre lost all importance under King Sancho IV, for he lost Rioja to Sancho II of Castile, and nearly became the vassal of Aragon. At his death, the Navarrese chose as their king Sancho Ramírez, King of Aragon, who thus became Sancho V of Navarre and I of Aragon. Sancho Ramírez gained international recognition for Aragon, uniting it with Navarre and expanding the borders south, conquering "Wasqa" Huesca deep in the valleys in 1096 and building a fort, El Castellar, 25 km from "Saraqusta" Zaragoza.


title: Reconquista

text: Catalonia came under intense pressure from the taifas of Zaragoza and Lérida, as well as from internal disputes, as Barcelona suffered a dynastic crisis that led to open war among the smaller counties. But by the 1080s, the situation had calmed down, and the dominion of Barcelona over the smaller counties was restored.


title: Reconquista

text: After a brief period of disintegration (the second Taifa period), the Almohads, the rising power in North Africa, took over most of "Al-Andalus". However they were decisively defeated at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) by a Christian coalition, losing almost all the remaining lands of "Al-Andalus" in the following decades. By 1252 only the Emirate of Granada remained intact but as a vassal state of Castile.


title: Reconquista

text: Ferdinand and Isabella completed the "Reconquista" with a war against the Emirate of Granada that started in 1482 and ended with Granada's surrender on 2 January 1492. The Moors in Castile previously numbered "half a million within the realm". By 1492 some 100,000 had died or been enslaved, 200,000 had emigrated, and 200,000 remained in Castile. Many of the Muslim elite, including Granada's former Emir Muhammad XII, who had been given the area of the Alpujarras mountains as a principality, found life under Christian rule intolerable and emigrated to Tlemcen in North Africa.


title: Reconquista

text: In 1497 Spanish forces took Melilla, west of Oran, and the island of Djerba, south of Tunis, and went on to more important gains, with the bloody seizure of Oran in 1509, and the capture of Bougie and Tripoli in 1510. The Spanish capture of Tripoli cost them some 300 men, while the inhabitants suffered between 3,000 and 5,000 killed and another 5,000–6,000 carried off as slaves. Soon thereafter, however, they faced competition from the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire in the east and were pushed back.


title: Reconquista

text: Clashes and raids on bordering Andalusian lands did not keep the Christian kingdoms from battling among themselves or allying with Muslim kings. Some Muslim kings had Christian-born wives or mothers. Some Christian mercenaries, like El Cid, were contracted by taifa kings to fight against their neighbours. Indeed, El Cid's first battle experience was gained fighting for a Muslim state against a Christian state. At the Battle of Graus in 1063, he and other Castilians fought on the side of al-Muqtadir, Muslim sultan of Zaragoza, against the forces of Ramiro I of Aragon. There is even an instance of a crusade being declared against another Christian king in Hispania. Although Christian rulers Fernán González of Castile and Ramiro II of León had cooperated to defeat the Muslims at the Battle of Simancas (939), Fernán attacked Ramiro soon after and the Leonese–Castilian war that followed lasted until Ramiro's victory in 944. Ramiro II's death caused the war of the Leonese succession (951–956) between his sons, and the winner Ordoño III of León concluded peace with caliph Abd al-Rahman III of Córdoba.


title: Reconquista

text: After the defeat of Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, at Alarcos, Kings Alfonso IX of Leon and Sancho VII of Navarre entered an alliance with the Almohads and invaded Castile in 1196. By the end of the year Sancho VII had dropped out of the war under Papal pressure. Early in 1197, at the request of Sancho I, King of Portugal, Pope Celestine III declared a crusade against Alfonso IX and released his subjects from their responsibilities to the king, declaring that "the men of his realm shall be absolved from their fidelity and his dominion by authority of the apostolic see." Together the Kings of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon invaded Leon. In the face of this onslaught combined with pressure from the Pope, Alfonso IX was finally forced to sue for peace in October 1197.


title: Reconquista

text: In the late years of "Al-Andalus", Castile had the might to conquer the remnants of the kingdom of Granada, but the kings preferred to wait and claim the tribute of the Muslim "parias". The trade of Granadan goods and the parias were a major means by which African gold entered medieval Europe.


title: Reconquista

text: Similarly, there was frequent Muslim infighting throughout the existence of al-Andalus. The Abbasid Revolution (747–750) divided Muslim rulers in Iberia into the pro-Abbasid Caliphate faction (based in Baghdad) and the pro-Umayyad faction (reconstituted as the Emirate of Córdoba). Charlemagne's failed 778 campaign into Iberia was prompted by the invitation of the pro-Abbasid governor of Barcelona, Sulayman al-Arabi, which led to a brief Abbasid-Carolingian Alliance against the Umayyads. During the Fitna of al-Andalus (1009–1031), the Umayyad-run Caliphate of Córdoba fell apart into rival taifas headed by Islamic emirs warring each other. After the Christian king of Castile and León conquered Toledo in 1085, the emirs requested Yusuf ibn Tashfin, leader of the strict Islamic Almoravid sect, to come to their defence, which he did at the Battle of Sagrajas (1086). However, Yusuf soon turned on the Muslim emirs of Spain, defeating them all and conquering their lands by 1091. A similar scenario occurred in 1147–1157, when the Almoravid dynasty fell, a Second Taifas period happened, and the Muslim-controlled cities of al-Andalus were conquered by the new Almohad Caliphate. The War of the Granada succession (1482–1492) took place after the deposition of emir Abu'l-Hasan Ali of Granada by his son Muhammad XII of Granada; the deposed emir's brother Muhammad XIII of Granada also joined the fight. This succession conflict took place simultaneously with the Granada War, and was ended only by the Castilian conquest in 1492.


title: Reconquista

text: The "Reconquista" was a process not only of war and conquest, but also of repopulation. Christian kings moved their own people to locations abandoned by Muslims in order to have a population capable of defending the borders. The main repopulation areas were the Douro Basin (the northern plateau), the high Ebro valley (La Rioja) and central Catalonia. The repopulation of the Douro Basin took place in two distinct phases. North of the river, between the 9th and 10th centuries, the "pressure" (or "presura") system was employed. South of the Douro, in the 10th and 11th centuries, the "presura" led to the "charters" ("forais" or "fueros"). "Fueros" were used even south of the Central Range.


title: Reconquista

text: The "presura" referred to a group of peasants who crossed the mountains and settled in the abandoned lands of the Douro Basin. Asturian laws promoted this system, for instance granting a peasant all the land he was able to work and defend as his own property. Of course, Asturian and Galician minor nobles and clergymen sent their own expeditions with the peasants they maintained. This led to very feudalised areas, such as Leon and Portugal, whereas Castile, an arid land with vast plains and harsh climate, only attracted peasants with no hope in Biscay. As a consequence, Castile was governed by a single count, but had a largely non-feudal territory with many free peasants. "Presuras" also appear in Catalonia, when the count of Barcelona ordered the Bishop of Urgell and the count of Gerona to repopulate the plains of Vic.


title: Reconquista

text: During the 10th century and onwards, cities and towns gained more importance and power, as commerce reappeared and the population kept growing. "Fueros" were charters documenting the privileges and usages given to all the people repopulating a town. The "fueros" provided a means of escape from the feudal system, as "fueros" were only granted by the monarch. As a result, the town council was dependent on the monarch alone and, in turn, was required to provide "auxilium" – aid or troops – for their monarch. The military force of the towns became the "caballeros villanos". The first "fuero" was given by count Fernán González to the inhabitants of Castrojeriz in the 940's. The most important towns of medieval Hispania had "fueros", or "forais". In Navarre, "fueros" were the main repopulating system. Later on, in the 12th century, Aragon also employed the system; for example, the "fuero" of Teruel, which was one of the last fueros, in the early 13th century.


title: Reconquista

text: From the mid-13th century on, no more charters were granted, as the demographic pressure had disappeared and other means of re-population were created. "Fueros" remained as city charters until the 18th century in Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia and until the 19th century in Castile and Navarre. "Fueros" had an immense importance for those living under them, who were prepared to go to war to defend their rights under the charter. In the 19th century, the abolition of the "fueros" in Navarre would be one of the causes of the Carlist Wars. In Castile, disputes over the system contributed to the war against Charles I (Castilian War of the Communities).


title: Reconquista

text: Jim Bradbury (2004) noted that the Christian belligerents in the "Reconquista" were not all equally motivated by religion, and that a distinction should be made between 'secular rulers' on the one hand, and on the other hand Christian military orders which came from elsewhere (including the three main orders of Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights), or were established inside Iberia (such as those of Santiago, Alcántara and Calatrava). '[The Knights] were more committed to religious war than some of their secular counterparts, were opposed to treating with Muslims and carried out raids and even atrocities, such as decapitating Muslim prisoners.'


title: Reconquista

text: On the other hand, Christian armies sometimes forged temporary alliances with Islamic emirs, and Christian mercenaries were quite willing to fight for Arab and Berber rulers if the price was right. El Cid is a well-known example of a Christian mercenary leader who was in paid military service of the Islamic kings of Zaragoza for years. Mercenaries were an important factor, as many kings did not have enough soldiers available. Norsemen, Flemish spearmen, Frankish knights, Moorish mounted archers (archers who travelled on horseback), and Berber light cavalry were the main types of mercenaries available and used in the conflict.


title: Reconquista

text: Medieval Christian armies mainly comprised two types of forces: the cavalry (mostly nobles, but including commoner knights from the 10th century on) and the infantry, or "peones" (peasants). Infantry only went to war if needed, which was not frequent. In an atmosphere of constant conflict, warfare and daily life were strongly intertwined during this period. These armies reflected the need for society to be on constant alert during the first chapters of the Reconquista. These forces were capable of moving long distances in short times.


title: Reconquista

text: Cavalry tactics in Hispania involved knights approaching the enemy, throwing javelins, then withdrawing to a safe distance before commencing another assault. Once the enemy formation was sufficiently weakened, the knights charged with thrusting spears (lances did not arrive in Hispania until the 11th century). There were three types of knights ("caballeros"): royal knights, noble knights ("caballeros hidalgos"), and commoner knights ("caballeros villanos", or "mounted soldier from a villa"). Royal knights were mainly nobles with a close relationship with the king, and thus claimed a direct Gothic inheritance.


title: Reconquista

text: Royal knights in the early stages of the Reconquista were equipped with mail hauberk, kite shield, a long sword (designed to fight from the horse), javelins, spears and an axe. Noble knights came from the ranks of the "infanzones" or lower nobles, whereas the commoner knights were not noble but were wealthy enough to afford a horse. Uniquely in Europe, these horsemen comprised a militia cavalry force with no feudal links, being under the sole control of the king or the count of Castile because of "fueros" (charters) with the crown. Both noble and common knights wore padded armour and carried javelins, spears and round-tasselled shield (influenced by Moorish shields), as well as a sword.


title: Reconquista

text: The "peones" were peasants who went to battle in service of their feudal lord. Poorly equipped, with bows and arrows, spears and short swords, they were mainly used as auxiliary troops. Their function in battle was to contain the enemy troops until the cavalry arrived and to block the enemy infantry from charging the knights. The longbow, the composite bow, and the crossbow were the basic types of bows and were especially popular in the infantry.


title: Reconquista

text: In the early Middle Ages in Hispania, armour was typically made of leather, with iron scales. Head protections consisted of a round helmet with nose protector (influenced by the designs used by Vikings, who attacked during the 8th and 9th centuries) and a chain mail headpiece. Shields were often round or kidney-shaped, except for the kite-shaped designs used by the royal knights. Usually adorned with geometric designs, crosses or tassels, shields were made out of wood and had a leather cover.


title: Reconquista

text: Steel swords were the most common weapon. The cavalry used long double-edged swords and the infantry short, single-edged ones. Guards were either semicircular or straight, but always highly ornamented with geometrical patterns. Spears and javelins were up to 1.5 metres long and had an iron tip. The double-axe – made of iron, 30 cm long, and possessing an extremely sharp edge – was designed to be equally useful as a thrown weapon or in close combat. Maces and hammers were not common, but some specimens have remained and are thought to have been used by members of the cavalry.


title: Reconquista

text: This style of warfare remained dominant in the Iberian Peninsula until the late 11th century, when lance tactics entered from France, although the traditional horse javelin-shot techniques continued to be used. In the 12th and 13th centuries, soldiers typically carried a sword, a lance, a javelin, and either bow and arrows or crossbow and darts/bolts. Armor consisted of a coat of mail over a quilted jacket, extending at least to the knees, a helmet or iron cap, and bracers protecting the arms and thighs, either metal or leather.


title: Reconquista

text: Shields were round or triangular, made of wood, covered with leather, and protected by an iron band; the shields of knights and nobles would bear the family's coat of arms. Knights rode in both the Muslim style, "a la jineta" (i.e. the equivalent of a modern jockey's seat), a short stirrup strap and bended knees allowed for better control and speed, or in the French style, "a la brida", a long stirrup strap allowed for more security in the saddle (i.e. the equivalent of the modern cavalry seat, which is more secure) when acting as heavy cavalry. Horses were occasionally fitted with a coat of mail as well.


title: Reconquista

text: Around the 14th and 15th centuries heavy cavalry gained a predominant role, including knights wearing full plate armor.


title: Reconquista

text: The new Christian hierarchy demanded heavy taxes from non-Christians and gave them rights, such as in the Treaty of Granada (1491) only for Moors in recently Islamic Granada. On 30 July 1492, all the Jewish community – some 200,000 people – were forcibly expelled. The next year, the Alhambra decree ordered the expulsion of practicing Jews, leading many of them to convert to Catholicism. In 1502, Queen Isabella I declared that conversion to Catholicism was compulsory within the Kingdom of Castile. King Charles V imposed the same religious requirement on Moors in the Kingdom of Aragon in 1526, forcing its Muslim population to convert during the Revolt of the Germanies.


title: Reconquista

text: Making things more complex were the many former Muslims and Jews known as "Moriscos", "Marranos", and "Conversos", who shared ancestors in common with many Christians, especially among the aristocracy, causing much concern over loyalty and attempts by the aristocracy to hide their non-Christian ancestry. Some – the numbers are debated – continued to secretly practice their religions and use their languages well into the sixteenth century. Those that the Spanish Inquisition found to be secretly practicing Islam or Judaism were executed, imprisoned, or exiled.


title: Reconquista

text: Nevertheless, all those deemed to be "New Christians" were repeatedly suspected of illegally continuing in secret to practice their religions various crimes against the Spanish state including continued practice of Islam or Judaism. New Christians were subject to many discriminatory practices starting in the sixteenth century.


title: Reconquista

text: Since the 19th century, traditional Western and especially Iberian historiography has stressed the existence of the "Reconquista", a continual phenomenon by which the Christian Iberian kingdoms opposed and conquered the Muslim kingdoms, understood as a common enemy who had militarily seized territory from native Iberian Christians. However, modern scholarship has challenged this concept of a "reconquista" as a national myth tied to Spanish nationalism. The concept has served the idea "that Spain is a nation shaped against Islam," contributing to "a largely biased and distorted vision of the Iberian medieval past, aimed at delegitimizing the Islamic presence (al-Andalus) and therefore at legitimizing the Christian conquest of the Muslim territory." Among other arguments, one of those advanced by scholars is that "no military campaign lasts eight centuries." The term "reconquista" in this sense first appeared in the 19th century, and only entered the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1936, with the rise of Francisco Franco. The concept of the reconquista continues to have significance and has even experienced a resurgence in modern politics—especially for the extreme right Spanish party Vox, but also more broadly among xenophobic and especially Islamophobic conservatives in the West, with the influence of the doctrine of a ""Clash of Civilizations"".


title: Reconquista

text: Real, legendary, and fictional episodes from the "Reconquista" are the subject of much of medieval Galician-Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan literature such as the "cantar de gesta".


title: Reconquista

text: Some noble genealogies show the close, though not numerous, relations between Muslims and Christians. For example, Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir, whose rule is considered to have marked the peak of power for Moorish "Al-Andalus" Hispania, married Abda, daughter of Sancho Garcés II of Navarra, who bore him a son, named Abd al-Rahman and commonly known in a pejorative sense as Sanchuelo ("Little Sancho"; in Arabic: "Shanjoul").


title: Reconquista

text: After his father's death, Sanchuelo/Abd al-Rahman, as a son of a Christian princess, was a strong contender to take over the ultimate power in Muslim al-Andalus. A hundred years later, King Alfonso VI of Castile, regarded as one of the greatest medieval Spanish kings, designated his son (also named Sancho) by the Muslim princess refugee Zaida of Seville, as his heir.


title: Reconquista

text: The "Reconquista" was a war with long periods of respite between the adversaries, partly for pragmatic reasons and also due to infighting among the Christian kingdoms of the North spanning over seven centuries. Some populations practiced Islam or Christianity as their own religion during these centuries, so the identity of contenders changed over time.


title: Reconquista

text: Currently, festivals called "moros y cristianos" (Castilian), "moros i cristians" (Catalan), "mouros e cristãos" (Portuguese) and "mouros e cristiáns" (Galician), which all mean "Moors and Christians", recreate the fights as colorful parades with elaborate garments and many fireworks, especially on the central and southern towns of the Land of Valencia, like Alcoi, Ontinyent or Villena.


title: Reconquista

text: A 2016 study found that the "rate of Reconquest"—how rapidly the Christian frontier was expanded—has persistent effects on the Spanish economy to this day. After an initial phase of military conquest, Christians states incorporated the conquered land. When large frontier regions were incorporated at once, the land was mostly given to the nobility and the military orders, with negative effects on long-term development. The incorporation of small regions, on the other hand, generally allowed for the participation of individual settlers and was more likely to fall under the auspices of the crown. This led to a more equitable distribution of land and greater social equality, with positive effects on long-term development.


title: Reconquista

text: As the Christian kingdoms completed their conquest of territory in the Iberian Peninsula, they shifted their impetus elsewhere, including the Maghreb across the Strait of Gibraltar. A Castilian Crown-sanctioned punitive expedition against Tetouan, a corsair stronghold, was launched as early as 1399–1400. The conquest of Ceuta in 1415 marked the beginning of Portuguese expansion in Africa. It thereby allowed Portugal to exert control over Castilian and Aragonese trade through the Strait, and to establish a powerbase for the launch of raid expeditions in Muslim-ruled lands. Some 15th-century political writers promoted the idea of a "Gothic Monarchy", heir to Rome, that included territory across the Strait. The African enterprise undertaken during the rule of the Catholic Monarchs was nominally endorsed by papal bulls and enjoyed the donation of the crusade tax, even if it was viewed with some suspicion from the Papacy. Conquest efforts in Africa on the part of the Catholic Monarchy by and large stalled following the death of Ferdinand II of Aragon. The model of conquest and repopulation by Christian powers in the Peninsula was however never reproduced in Northern Africa, and with the conquered territory — a fortified mark with very few fortresses scattered along an extensive coastline — merely adopting a defensive role, it allowed for Ottoman expansion in the region.


title: Reconquista

text: The Portuguese warred with the Ottoman Caliphate in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia as the Portuguese conquered the Ottomans' allies: the Sultanate of Adal in East Africa, the Sultanate of Delhi in South Asia and the Sultanate of Malacca in Southeast Asia.


title: Reconquista

text: Along with the rhetoric of the crusades, the rhetoric of the 'Reconquista' serves as a rallying point in the political discourse of the contemporary far right in Spain, Portugal and, more broadly, it also serves as a rallying point in the political discourse of the far-right in Europe. Frequently, references to the Reconquista and the crusades are allegorically played as internet meme by 21st-century online far-right groups which seek to convey Anti-Muslim sentiments. The theme has also been used as a major rallying point by identitarian groups in France and Italy.


title: Reconquista

text: The annual commemoration of the surrender of Sultan Boabdil in Granada on 2 January acquired a markedly nationalistic undertone during the early years of the Francoist regime and, since the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, it has served as glue for extreme right groups by facilitating their open-air physical gatherings and providing them with an occasion which they can use to explicitly state their political demands. A Spanish Legion unit usually parades and sings "El novio de la muerte" ("Boyfriend of death"). The far right has also waged a culture war by claiming dates in the history of the Reconquista, such as the aforementioned 2 January or 2 February, regional festivities for the related autonomous communities (Andalusia and Murcia).


title: Kristin Davis

text: Kristin Landen Davis (also listed as Kristin Lee Davis; born February 23, 1965) is an American actress and producer. She is known for playing Charlotte York Goldenblatt in the HBO romantic comedy series "Sex and the City" (1998–2004). She received nominations at the Emmys and the Golden Globes in 2004 for her role as Charlotte, and reprised the role in the films "Sex and the City" (2008) and "Sex and the City 2" (2010), as well as the spin-off show "And Just Like That..." (2021–present).


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis's big break came in 1995, when she was cast as the villainous Brooke Armstrong in the Fox prime time soap opera "Melrose Place" (1995–1996). Her film credits include "The Shaggy Dog" (2006), "Deck the Halls" (2006), "Couples Retreat" (2009), "" (2012) and "Holiday in the Wild" (2019). Davis made her Broadway debut playing Mabel Cantwell in the 2012 revival of "The Best Man", and her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in the original 2014 stage production of "Fatal Attraction".


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis was born in Boulder, Colorado. She is an only child, and her parents divorced when she was a baby. She was adopted by her stepfather, then-University of Colorado Boulder professor Keith Davis, after he married her mother, Dorothy, a university data analyst, in 1968. She has three half sisters from her father's first marriage. Early in her childhood, she and her parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where her father served as provost and taught psychology at the University of South Carolina.


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis wanted to be an actress from the age of 9, when she was cast in the Workshop Theatre production of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Davis lived in South Carolina until she graduated from A.C. Flora High School in 1983. She then moved to New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers University. Davis graduated with a BFA degree in acting from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1987.


title: Kristin Davis

text: After graduation in 1987, Davis moved to New York and waited tables before opening a yoga studio with a friend. In 1991, she acted in a couple of episodes of the daytime drama (soap opera) "General Hospital". She later guest-starred on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" and "ER", and acted on made-for-television movies. Her big break came in 1995 when she landed the role of villainess Brooke Armstrong Campbell on the Fox nighttime soap opera "Melrose Place". She left the show after one year when producers decided to kill off the character. The following year, Davis guest-starred in two episodes of "Seinfeld".


title: Kristin Davis

text: In 1998, Davis was cast as Charlotte York in the HBO romantic comedy series "Sex and the City" and remained an integral cast member until the series ended in 2004. In 1999, along with the rest of the cast, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television. She received Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series her role as Charlotte in the final season, and well as Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film nomination. During her time in show, Davis guest-starred on "Friends" in episode "The One with Ross's Library Book", and "Will & Grace" episode "Will & Grace & Vince & Nadine". She played leading roles in the 1999 miniseries "Atomic Train" alongside Rob Lowe, and television movies including "Blacktop" (2000), "Three Days" (2001) and "The Winning Season" (2004).


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis hosted the VH1 show "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons" in 2003. In 2005, she starred in a television pilot entitled "Soccer Moms" in which she and Gina Torres star as suburban mothers who moonlight as private detectives. She starred as Miss Spider in the animated television series "Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends" and was a guest judge on the Lifetime program "Project Runway".


title: Kristin Davis

text: In 2012, Davis starred and produced in the Lifetime television film "Of Two Minds" In 2014, she returned to series television with starring role in the short-lived CBS sitcom "Bad Teacher". In 2016, she starred in Hallmark Channel film "A Heavenly Christmas". In 2020, she hosted Fox reality series "Labor of Love".


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis made her movie debut in the 1987 comedy slasher film "Doom Asylum". In 1990s, she had secondary roles in films "Nine Months" (1995) and "Sour Grapes" (1998). Her later films include "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D" (2005), opposite David Arquette and George Lopez; the 2006 version of "The Shaggy Dog", opposite Tim Allen, and "Deck the Halls", opposite Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito.


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis appeared in 2008's "Sex and the City" feature film, under the direction of executive producer Michael Patrick King. The film was a box office success and amassed $415 million at the worldwide box office, despite mixed reviews. It was Davis first movie to reach #1 at the US box office. Davis reprised her role of Charlotte York a second time in 2010's "Sex and the City 2", which grossed $290 million worldwide but was widely panned by critics. She remained interested in a third installment of the franchise.


title: Kristin Davis

text: In 2009, Davis co-starred in the romantic comedy film "Couples Retreat", a comedy chronicling four couples who partake in therapy sessions at a tropical island resort. Jon Favreau, who also co-wrote the script, played her husband. The film opened at No. 1 during its opening weekend at the US box office, making it her second film to do so. In 2010, Davis was cast as the mother of Josh Hutcherson's character in the adventure movie "". The film opened theatrically in February 2012 and passed the $100 million mark at the US box office, being Davis' third film to achieve this.


title: Kristin Davis

text: In 2015, Davis was credited as producer on the documentary "Gardeners of Eden", that comments on the illegal ivory trade. In 2019, Davis starred in and produced romantic comedy-drama film "Holiday in the Wild" for Netflix. The film was pitched to her, after the producers had noticed her philanthropic work with elephants. She later played a leading role and produced the 2021 thriller film "Deadly Illusions" about a bestselling female novelist (Davis) who is suffering from writer's block and hires an innocent young woman to watch over her twin children.


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis made her Broadway debut in July 2012, when she replaced Kerry Butler in the revival of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man" at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. She made her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in "Fatal Attraction" at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in March 2014.


title: Kristin Davis

text: Shortly after the wide release of the "Sex and the City" feature film, in June 2008, Belk, the nation's largest privately owned department store chain, announced a partnership with Davis. The arrangement includes a ladies' apparel and accessories line that debuted in 2008 in 125 store locations and online, with eventual plans for expanding availability to other store locations. In Belk's press release about the product line launch, Davis cited her upbringing in South Carolina as part of her inspiration for working with the chain. In late 2009 Belk cancelled the arrangement, citing the difficult economic conditions prevailing, while Davis said she hoped to take the line elsewhere.


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis is a Global Ambassador for Oxfam, and has campaigned in support of their work since 2004, travelling to locations including Haiti, Mozambique, and South Africa. In 2011 she gave a tearful interview with BBC News describing the situation at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya where she witnessed the impact of drought.


title: Kristin Davis

text: During her 2009 visit to Africa, Davis, a lifelong lover of elephants, discovered an abandoned baby elephant and arranged for it to be taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center. In recognition of the attention she has brought to the plight of orphaned African elephants, Davis won the Humane Society's 2010 Wyler Award, which is bestowed on a celebrity or public figure who has made news on behalf of animals. She is also a patron of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust which works to protect elephants and other wildlife in Kenya.


title: Kristin Davis

text: Davis has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and is included on their list of "High Profile Supporters". In 2015 she visited the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Davis later filmed a fund-raising appeal supporting the UNHCR, and in 2016 visited Australia to promote the UNHCR's work, focussing on the plight of women victims of sexual violence in Congo.


title: Kristin Davis

text: In 2011, Davis adopted a daughter, Gemma Rose Davis. In 2018, she adopted a son, Wilson. They reside in the hills of Brentwood, Los Angeles, California.


title: Kristin Davis

text: She is a recovering alcoholic and says she was introduced to alcohol early as part of her Southern upbringing: "Alcohol freed me. I was really shy and I didn't know how to come out of my shell. I drank for the same reason I loved acting. I wanted to feel things and express myself and be free. And I'm not naturally that way."


title: Henry Thomas

text: Henry Jackson Thomas Jr. (born September 9, 1971) is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and had a lead role in the film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), for which he won a Young Artist Award and received Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, and Saturn Award nominations. Thomas also had roles in "Cloak & Dagger" (1984), "Fire in the Sky" (1993), "Legends of the Fall" (1994), "Suicide Kings" (1997), "All the Pretty Horses" (2000), "Gangs of New York" (2002), "" (2003), and "Dear John" (2010). Thomas was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film for his role in the television film "" (1997).


title: Henry Thomas

text: More recently, Thomas collaborated with filmmaker Mike Flanagan, appearing in the films "" (2016), "Gerald's Game" (2017) and "Doctor Sleep" (2019) as well as the television series "The Haunting of Hill House" (2018) and its follow-up series "The Haunting of Bly Manor" (2020), the former of which earned him a Saturn Award. In 2021, he had a main role in Flanagan's horror series "Midnight Mass".


title: Henry Thomas

text: Thomas was born in San Antonio, Texas. His mother, Carolyn L. (), is a homemaker and his father, Henry Jackson Thomas Sr., is a hydraulic machinist. He attended East Central High School and Blinn College.


title: Henry Thomas

text: Thomas struggled with the popularity he gained in the months following the release of "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial". In November 2019, Thomas reprised his role as Elliott for an Xfinity & Sky UK commercial, in which E.T. returns to visit a now-adult Elliott and his family for the holidays.


title: Henry Thomas

text: Since 2016, Thomas has worked frequently with filmmaker Mike Flanagan, appearing in his films "", "Gerald's Game" and "Doctor Sleep", as well as in the Netflix horror series "The Haunting of Hill House", which Flanagan created and directed. Thomas also has a role in Flanagan's follow up to "The Haunting of Hill House", "The Haunting of Bly Manor", and Flanagan's mini-series "Midnight Mass".


title: Henry Thomas

text: Thomas worked in "Stargirl" portraying Doctor Mid-Nite and voicing his A.I. counterpart "Chuck" until the latter role was recast with Alex Collins in season two.


title: Henry Thomas

text: Thomas wrote songs and played guitar for a San Antonio band, The Blue Heelers (named for the breed of dog), in the 1990s. Although the band was not signed to a record label, it self-produced an album, "Twister". Thomas continued to write and record songs. In 1998, his song "Truckstop Coffee" (recorded with the Blue Heelers) appeared on V2's soundtrack for "Niagara, Niagara". In 2003, Thomas and Nikki Sudden collaborated on the music for Mika Kaurismäki's film "Honey Baby", which featured four original songs written and performed by Thomas as the fictional musician Tom Brackett. An album was in the works, but Sudden died unexpectedly in 2006.


title: Henry Thomas

text: Thomas married actress Marie Zielcke on May 10, 2004. They had a daughter, Hazel. The couple were divorced in 2007. Thomas also has two children with his current wife Annalee, and in 2014 moved to Wilsonville, Oregon.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Gurū Nānak (15 April 1469 – 22 September 1539; Gurmukhi: ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ; pronunciation: , ), also referred to as ('father Nānak'), was the founder of Sikhism and is the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. His birth is celebrated worldwide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on "Katak Pooranmashi" ('full-moon of Kattak'), i.e. October–November.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Nanak is said to have travelled far and wide across Asia teaching people the message of "ik onkar" (), who dwells in every one of his creations and constitutes the eternal Truth. With this concept, he would set up a unique spiritual, social, and political platform based on equality, fraternal love, goodness, and virtue.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Nanak's words are registered in the form of 974 poetic hymns, or "shabda", in the holy text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, with some of the major prayers being the "Japji Sahib" (; "ji" and "sahib" are suffixes signifying respect); the "Asa di Var" ('ballad of hope'); and the "Sidh Gosht" ('discussion with the Siddhas'). It is part of Sikh religious belief that the spirit of Nanak's , divinity, and religious authority had descended upon each of the nine subsequent Gurus when the Guruship was devolved on to them.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Nanak was born on 15 April 1469 at Rāi Bhoi Kī Talvaṇḍī village (present-day Nankana Sahib, Punjab, Pakistan) in the Lahore province of the Delhi Sultanate, although according to one tradition, he was born in the Indian month of Kārtik or November, known as Kattak in Punjabi.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Most "janamsakhis" (), or traditional biographies of Nanak, mention that he was born on the third day of the bright lunar fortnight, in the Baisakh month (April) of Samvat 1526. These include the "Puratan" ('traditional' or 'ancient') "janamsakhi", "Miharban" "janamsakhi", "Gyan-ratanavali" by Bhai Mani Singh, and the "Vilayat Vali janamsakhi". The Sikh records state that Nanak died on the 10th day of the Asauj month of Samvat 1596 (22 September 1539 CE), at the age of 70 years, 5 months, and 7 days. This further suggests that he was born in the month of Vaisakh (April), not Kattak (November).


title: Guru Nanak

text: In as late as 1815, during the reign of Ranjit Singh, the festival commemorating Nanak's birthday was held in April at the place of his birth, known by then as Nankana Sahib. However, the anniversary of Nanak's birth—the Gurpurab ("gur" + )—subsequently came to be celebrated on the full moon day of the Kattak month in November. The earliest record of such a celebration in Nankana Sahib is from 1868 CE.


title: Guru Nanak

text: There may be several reasons for the adoption of the Kattak birthdate by the Sikh community. For one, it may have been the date of Nanak's enlightenment or "spiritual birth" in 1496, as suggested by the "Dabestan-e Mazaheb".


title: Guru Nanak

text: The only janamsakhi that supports the Kattak birth tradition is that of Bhai Bala. Bhai Bala is said to have obtained Nanak's horoscope from Nanak's uncle Lalu, according to which, Nanak was born on a date corresponding to 20 October 1469 CE. However, this janamsakhi was written by Handalis—a sect of Sikhs who followed a Sikh-convert known as Handal—attempting to depict the founder as superior to Nanak. According to a superstition prevailing in contemporary northern India, a child born in the Kattak month was believed to be weak and unlucky, hence why the work states that Nanak was born in that month.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Bhai Gurdas, having written on a full-moon-day of the Kattak month several decades after Nanak's death, mentions that Nanak had "obtained omniscience" on the same day, and it was now the author's turn to "get divine light."


title: Guru Nanak

text: According to Max Arthur Macauliffe (1909), a Hindu festival held in the 19th century on Kartik Purnima in Amritsar attracted a large number of Sikhs. The Sikh community leader Giani Sant Singh did not like this, thus starting a festival at the Sikh shrine of the Golden Temple on the same day, presenting it as the birth anniversary celebration of Guru Nanak.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Macauliffe also notes that Vaisakh (March–April) already saw a number of important festivals—such as Holi, Rama Navami, and Vaisakhi—therefore people would be busy in agricultural activities after the harvest festival of Baisakhi. Therefore, holding Nanak's birth anniversary celebrations immediately after Vaisakhi would have resulted in thin attendance, and therefore, smaller donations for the Sikh shrines. On the other hand, by the Kattak full moon day, the major Hindu festival of Diwali was already over, and the peasants—who had surplus cash from crop sales—were able to donate generously.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Nanak's parents, including father Kalyan Chand Das Bedi (commonly shortened to Mehta Kalu) and mother Mata Tripta, were both Hindu Khatris and employed as merchants. His father, in particular, was the local "patwari" (accountant) for crop revenue in the village of Talwandi.


title: Guru Nanak

text: According to Sikh traditions, the birth and early years of Nanak's life were marked with many events that demonstrated that Nanak had been blessed with divine grace. Commentaries on his life give details of his blossoming awareness from a young age. For instance, at the age of five, Nanak is said to have voiced interest in divine subjects. At age seven, his father enrolled him at the village school, as per custom. Notable lore recounts that, as a child, Nanak astonished his teacher by describing the implicit symbolism of the first letter of the alphabet, resembling the mathematical version of one, as denoting the unity or oneness of God. Other stories of his childhood refer to strange and miraculous events about Nanak, such as the one witnessed by Rai Bular, in which the sleeping child's head was shaded from the harsh sunlight by, in one account, by the stationary shadow of a tree or, in another, by a venomous cobra.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Nanaki, Nanak's only sister, was five years older than him. In 1475, she married and moved to Sultanpur. Jai Ram, Nanaki's husband, was employed at a "modikhana" (a storehouse for revenues collected in non-cash form), in the service of the Delhi Sultanate's Lahore governor Daulat Khan, at which Ram would help Nanak get a job. Nanak moved to Sultanpur, and started working at the modikhana around the age of 16.


title: Guru Nanak

text: They were married on 24 September 1487, in the town of Batala, and would go on to have two sons, Sri Chand and Lakhmi Chand (or Lakhmi Das). Nanak lived in Sultanpur until c. 1500, which would be a formative time for him, as the "puratan" "janamsakhi" suggests, and in his numerous allusions to governmental structure in his hymns, most likely gained at this time.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Around the age of 55, Nanak settled in Kartarpur, living there until his death in September 1539. During this period, he went on short journeys to the Nath yogi centre of Achal, and the Sufi centres of Pakpattan and Multan. By the time of his death, Nanak had acquired several followers in the Punjab region, although it is hard to estimate their number based on the extant historical evidence. The followers of Nanak were called "Kartārīs" (meaning 'the people who belonged to the village of Kartarpur') by others.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Guru Nanak appointed Bhai Lehna as the successor Guru, renaming him as Guru "Angad", meaning "one's very own" or "part of you". Shortly after proclaiming his successor, Guru Nanak died on 22 September 1539 in Kartarpur, at the age of 70. According to Sikh hagiography, Guru Nanak's body was never found. When the quarreling Hindus and Muslims tugged at the sheet covering Nanak’s body, they found instead a heap of flowers—and so Nanak’s simple faith would, in course of time, flower into a religion, beset by its own contradictions and customary practices.


title: Guru Nanak

text: During first quarter of the 16th century, Nanak went on long "udasiya" ('journeys') for spiritual pursuits. A verse authored by him states that he visited several places in ""nau-khand"" ('the nine regions of the earth'), presumably the major Hindu and Muslim pilgrimage centres.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Some modern accounts state that he visited Tibet, most of South Asia, and Arabia, starting in 1496 at age 27, when he left his family for a thirty-year period. These claims include Nanak's visit to Mount Sumeru of Indian mythology, as well as Mecca, Baghdad, Achal Batala, and Multan, where he would debate religious ideas with opposing groups. These stories became widely popular in the 19th and 20th century, and exist in many versions.


title: Guru Nanak

text: In 1508, Nanak visited the Sylhet region in Bengal. The "janamsakhis" suggest that Nanak visited the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya in 1510–11 CE.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The Baghdad inscription remains the basis of writing by Indian scholars that Guru Nanak journeyed in the Middle East, with some claiming he visited Jerusalem, Mecca, Vatican, Azerbaijan and Sudan.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The hagiographic details are a subject of dispute, with modern scholarship questioning the details and authenticity of many claims. For example, Callewaert and Snell (1994) state that early Sikh texts do not contain such stories. From when the travel stories first appear in hagiographic accounts of Guru Nanak, centuries after his death, they continue to become more sophisticated as time goes on, with the late phase "Puratan" version describing four missionary journeys, which differ from the "Miharban" version.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Some of the stories about Guru Nanak's extensive travels first appear in the 19th-century "Puratan" janamsakhi, though even this version does not mention Nanak's travel to Baghdad. Such embellishments and insertion of new stories, according to Callewaert and Snell (1993), closely parallel claims of miracles by Islamic "pirs" found in Sufi "tadhkirahs" of the same era, giving reason to believe that these legends may have been written in a competition.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Another source of dispute has been the Baghdad stone, bearing an inscription in a Turkish script. Some interpret the inscription as saying "Baba Nanak Fakir" was there in 1511–1512; others read it as saying 1521–1522 (and that he lived in the Middle East for 11 years away from his family). Others, particularly Western scholars, argue that the stone inscription is from the 19th century and the stone is not a reliable evidence that Guru Nanak visited Baghdad in early 16th century. Moreover, beyond the stone, no evidence or mention of Guru Nanak's journey in the Middle East has been found in any other Middle Eastern textual or epigraphical records. Claims have been asserted of additional inscriptions, but no one has been able to locate and verify them.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Novel claims about his travels, as well as claims such as Guru Nanak's body vanishing after his death, are also found in later versions and these are similar to the miracle stories in Sufi literature about their "pirs". Other direct and indirect borrowings in the Sikh "janamsakhis" relating to legends around Guru Nanak's journeys are from Hindu epics and "puranas," and Buddhist Jataka stories.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The earliest biographical sources on Nanak's life recognised today are the "janamsakhis" ('birth stories'), which recount the circumstances of the guru's birth in great detail.


title: Guru Nanak

text: "Gyan-ratanavali" is the janamsakhi attributed to Bhai Mani Singh, a disciple of Guru Gobind Singh who was approached by some Sikhs with a request that he should prepare an authentic account of Guru Nanak's life. As such, it is said that Bhai Mani Singh wrote his story with the express intention of correcting heretical accounts of Guru Nanak.


title: Guru Nanak

text: One popular janamsakhi was allegedly written by a close companion of the Guru, Bhai Bala. However, the writing style and language employed have left scholars, such as Max Arthur Macauliffe, certain that they were composed after his death. According to such scholars, there are good reasons to doubt the claim that the author was a close companion of Guru Nanak and accompanied him on many of his travels.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Bhai Gurdas, a scribe of the Guru Granth Sahib, also wrote about Nanak's life in his "vars" ('odes'), which were compiled some time after Nanak's life, though are less detailed than the janamsakhis.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Nanak's teachings can be found in the Sikh scripture Guru Granth Sahib, as a collection of verses recorded in Gurmukhi.


title: Guru Nanak

text: There are three competing theories on Guru Nanak's teachings. The first, according to Cole and Sambhi (1995, 1997), based on the hagiographical "Janamsakhis", states that Nanak's teachings and Sikhism were revelations from God, and not a social protest movement, nor an attempt to reconcile Hinduism and Islam in the 15th century.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The second theory states that Nanak was a Guru, not a prophet. According to Singha (2009): Sikhism does not subscribe to the theory of incarnation or the concept of prophet hood. But it has a pivotal concept of Guru. He is not an incarnation of God, not even a prophet. He is an illumined soul.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The third theory is that Guru Nanak is the incarnation of God. This has been supported by many Sikhs including Bhai Gurdas, Bhai Vir Singh, Santhok Singh and is supported by the Guru Granth Sahib. Bhai Gurdas says:


title: Guru Nanak

text: O Nanak, serve the Guru, the Lord Incarnate; the Blessed Vision of His Darshan is profitable, and in the end, you shall not be called to account. ||2||


title: Guru Nanak

text: The Guru is God, and God is the Guru, O Nanak; there is no difference between the two, O Siblings of Destiny. ||4||1||8||


title: Guru Nanak

text: The hagiographical "Janamsakhis" were not written by Nanak, but by later followers without regard for historical accuracy, containing numerous legends and myths created to show respect for Nanak. In Sikhism, the term "revelation", as Cole and Sambhi clarify, is not limited to the teachings of Nanak. Rather, they include all Sikh Gurus, as well as the words of men and women from Nanak's past, present, and future, who possess divine knowledge intuitively through meditation. The Sikh revelations include the words of non-Sikh "bhagats" (Hindu devotees), some who lived and died before the birth of Nanak, and whose teachings are part of the Sikh scriptures.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The Adi Granth and successive Sikh Gurus repeatedly emphasised, suggests Mandair (2013), that Sikhism is "not about hearing voices from God, but it is about changing the nature of the human mind, and anyone can achieve direct experience and spiritual perfection at any time." Guru Nanak emphasised that all human beings can have direct access to God without rituals or priests.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The concept of man as elaborated by Guru Nanak, states Mandair (2009), refines and negates the "monotheistic concept of self/God," where "monotheism becomes almost redundant in the movement and crossings of love." The goal of man, taught the Sikh Gurus, is to end all dualities of "self and other, I and not-I," attaining the "attendant balance of separation-fusion, self-other, action-inaction, attachment-detachment, in the course of daily life."


title: Guru Nanak

text: Guru Nanak, and other Sikh Gurus emphasised "bhakti" ('love', 'devotion', or 'worship'), and taught that the spiritual life and secular householder life are intertwined. In the Sikh perspective, the everyday world is part of an infinite reality, where increased spiritual awareness leads to increased and vibrant participation in the everyday world. Guru Nanak described living an "active, creative, and practical life" of "truthfulness, fidelity, self-control and purity" as being higher than the metaphysical truth.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Guru Nanak Dev Ji is the founder of Sikhism. The fundamental beliefs of Sikhism, articulated in the sacred scripture Guru Granth Sahib, include faith and meditation on the name of the one creator; unity of all humankind; engaging in selfless service, striving for social justice for the benefit and prosperity of all; and honest conduct and livelihood while living a householder's life.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The Guru Granth Sahib is worshipped as the supreme authority of Sikhism and is considered the final and perpetual guru of Sikhism. As the first guru of Sikhism, Guru Nanak contributed a total of 974 hymns to the book.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Many Sikhs believe that Guru Nanak's message was divinely revealed, as his own words in Guru Granth Sahib state that his teachings are as he has received them from the Creator Himself. The critical event of his life in Sultanpur, in which he returned after three days with enlightenment, also supports this belief.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Many modern historians give weight to his teachings' linkage with the pre-existing "bhakti", "sant", and "wali" of Hindu/Islamic tradition. Scholars state that in its origins, Guru Nanak and Sikhism were influenced by the "nirguni" ('formless God') tradition of the Bhakti movement in medieval India. However, some historians do not see evidence of Sikhism as simply an extension of the Bhakti movement. Sikhism, for instance, disagreed with some views of Bhakti saints Kabir and Ravidas.


title: Guru Nanak

text: The roots of the Sikh tradition are perhaps in the sant-tradition of India whose ideology grew to become the Bhakti tradition. Fenech (2014) suggests that: Indic mythology permeates the Sikh sacred canon, the "Guru Granth Sahib" and the secondary canon, the "Dasam Granth" and adds delicate nuance and substance to the sacred symbolic universe of the Sikhs of today and of their past ancestors.


title: Guru Nanak

text: In a letter, dated 27 October 1985, to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of India, the Universal House of Justice stated that Guru Nanak was endowed with a "saintly character" and that he was: ...inspired to reconcile the religions of Hinduism and Islám, the followers of which religions had been in violent conflict... The Bahá'ís thus view Guru Nanak as a 'saint of the highest order'.


title: Guru Nanak

text: Guru Nanak is highly influential amongst Sindhi Hindus, where the majority follow Nanakpanthi teachings.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American actress and comedian, and one of the seven original cast members of the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" on the NBC sketch comedy show "Saturday Night Live" ("SNL"). In her routines, Radner specialized in parodies of television stereotypes, such as advice specialists and news anchors. In 1978, she won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show. She also portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979. Radner's "SNL" work established her as an iconic figure in the history of American comedy.


title: Gilda Radner

text: She died from ovarian cancer in 1989. Her autobiography dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including her struggles with that illness. Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her wish that information about her illness would be used to help other cancer victims, founding—and inspiring the founding of—organizations that emphasize early diagnosis, attention to hereditary factors and support for cancer patients. Posthumously, Radner won a Grammy Award in 1990, was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Henrietta (née Dworkin), a legal secretary, and Herman Radner, a businessman. Through her mother, Radner was a second cousin of business executive Steve Ballmer. She grew up in Detroit with a nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called "Dibby" (and on whom she based her famous character Emily Litella), and an older brother, Michael. She attended the exclusive University Liggett School in Detroit. Toward the end of her life, Radner wrote in her autobiography, "It's Always Something", that during her childhood and young adulthood she had battled numerous eating disorders: "I coped with stress by having every possible eating disorder from the time I was nine years old. I have weighed as much as 160 pounds and as little as 93. When I was a kid, I overate constantly. My weight distressed my mother and she took me to a doctor who put me on Dexedrine diet pills when I was ten years old."


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner was close to her father, who operated Detroit's Seville Hotel, where many nightclub performers and actors stayed while performing in the city. He took her on trips to New York to see Broadway shows. As Radner wrote in "It's Always Something", when she was 12, her father developed a brain tumor. The first symptoms came on suddenly: he told people that his glasses were too tight. Within days, he was bedridden and unable to communicate, and remained in that condition until his death two years later.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 1964, Radner graduated from Liggett and enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where she planned to get a degree in education.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In her senior year at the University of Michigan, Radner dropped out to follow her boyfriend, Canadian sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff, to Toronto. There, she made her professional acting debut in the 1972 production of "Godspell", with future stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, Martin Short, and Paul Shaffer. Afterward, Radner joined The Second City comedy troupe in Toronto.


title: Gilda Radner

text: From 1974 to 1975, Radner was a featured player on the "National Lampoon Radio Hour", a comedy program syndicated to some 600 U.S. radio stations. Fellow cast members included John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Richard Belzer, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Rhonda Coullet.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner gained wide recognition in 1975, as one of the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", the freshman cast of the first season of "Saturday Night Live". She was the first performer to be cast in the show, co-wrote much of the material that she performed, and collaborated with Alan Zweibel (of the show's writing staff) on the development of sketches that featured her recurring characters. Between 1975 and 1980, she created many characters, such as the obnoxious personal advice expert Roseanne Roseannadanna (modeled after a New York reporter, Rose Ann Scamardella), and "Baba Wawa", a parody of Barbara Walters. After Radner's death, Walters noted in an interview that Radner had been the "first person to make fun of news anchors, now it's done all the time."


title: Gilda Radner

text: Another of Radner’s invented characters was Emily Litella, an elderly, hearing-impaired editorialist who made irate, misinformed comments in interview sketches on "SNL"’s recurring "Weekend Update" segment. Radner also parodied celebrities such as Lucille Ball, Patti Smith, and Olga Korbut in "SNL" sketches. In 1978, she won an Emmy Award for her work on "SNL". In "Rolling Stone"s February 2015 appraisal of all 141 "SNL" cast members to date, Radner was ranked ninth in importance. "[Radner was] the most beloved of the original cast," they wrote. "In the years between Mary Tyler Moore and "Seinfeld's" Elaine, Radner was the prototype for the brainy city girl with a bundle of neuroses."


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner battled bulimia while on the show. She had a relationship with fellow "SNL" and "National Lampoon" castmate Bill Murray, which reportedly ended badly, though few details of their relationship or its end were made public. In her autobiography, Radner mentioned Murray only once, and in passing: "All the guys [in the "National Lampoon" group of writers and performers] liked to have me around because I would laugh at them till I peed in my pants and tears rolled out of my eyes. We worked together for a couple of years creating "The National Lampoon Show," writing "The National Lampoon Radio Hour," and even working on stuff for the magazine. Bill Murray joined the show and Richard Belzer ..."


title: Gilda Radner

text: Alan Zweibel, who co-created the Roseanne Roseannadanna character and co-wrote Roseanne's dialogue, recalled that Radner, one of only three original "SNL" cast members who stayed away from cocaine, chastised him for abusing it.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 1979, the new president and CEO of NBC, Fred Silverman, offered Radner her own primetime variety show, but she turned down the offer. That same year, she was a host of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly. Radner also gave the commencement address, in character as Roseanne Roseannadanna, to the 1979 graduating class at the Columbia School of Journalism.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner reportedly expressed mixed emotions about being recognized and approached in public by fans and other strangers. "SNL" historians Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad said she variously became "angry when she was approached, and upset when she wasn't".


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 1979, Radner appeared on Broadway in a successful one-woman show, "Gilda Radner – Live from New York". The show featured material that was racier than NBC censors would allow on "Saturday Night Live", such as the song "Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals". The same year, shortly before Radner's final season on "Saturday Night Live", her Broadway show was filmed by Mike Nichols and released with the title "Gilda Live". It co-starred Paul Shaffer and Don Novello, and screened in theaters nationwide in 1980, but was a box-office flop. A soundtrack album was also commercially unsuccessful. During the Broadway production, Radner met her first husband, G. E. Smith, a musician who worked on the show. They were married in a civil ceremony in 1980.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In the fall of 1980, after the departure of all the original "SNL" cast members from the show, Radner began appearing, with fellow actor Sam Waterston, in the Jean Kerr play "Lunch Hour". They played two people whose spouses are having an affair, and who, in retaliation, begin an affair of their own consisting of lunch-hour trysts. The show ran for more than seven months, playing in various US theaters, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Newspaper critics, including Tom Shales, praised both the play and Radner's performance.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner's "SNL" castmate Laraine Newman said in a 2018 interview that she believed Radner's movie career had turned out to be mostly disappointing. This was because, according to Newman, directors and producers did not know how to cast Radner in roles where her talents could best shine. Quoting her interview,


title: Gilda Radner

text: "The specific nature of her talent was she did characters, and she would probably have been better served if she had taken part in writing the things that she did," Newman asserts. "But I don't think it occurred to her. If she and Alan Zweibel had collaborated on a feature, it might have been a whole different thing."


title: Gilda Radner

text: After breaking up with Jeffrey Rubinoff, Radner had an on-again-off-again relationship with Martin Short while both were appearing in "Godspell".


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner had romantic involvements with several male "Saturday Night Live" castmates, including Bill Murray (after a previous relationship with his brother Brian Doyle-Murray) and Dan Aykroyd. Radner's friend Judy Levy recounted Radner saying she found "Ghostbusters" hard to watch since the cast included so many of her ex-boyfriends: Aykroyd, Murray, and Harold Ramis. Radner was married to musician G. E. Smith from 1980 to 1982; they met while working on "Gilda Radner – Live from New York".


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner met actor Gene Wilder on the set of the Sidney Poitier film "Hanky Panky" (released in 1982), when the two worked together making the film. She described their first meeting as "love at first sight". After meeting Wilder, her marriage to Smith deteriorated. Radner made a second film with Wilder, "The Woman in Red" (released in 1984), and their relationship deepened. The two were married on September 18, 1984, in Saint-Tropez. They made a third film together, "Haunted Honeymoon", in 1986 and remained married until her death in 1989.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Details of Radner's eating disorder were reported in a book about "Saturday Night Live" by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, which was published and received much media coverage during a period when Radner was consulting various doctors in Los Angeles about symptoms of an illness she was suffering that turned out to be cancer.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 1985, while on the set of "Haunted Honeymoon" in the United Kingdom, Radner began experiencing severe fatigue, and pain in her upper legs. She sought medical treatment, and for a period of 10 months, various doctors, most of them in Los Angeles, gave her several diagnoses that all turned out to be wrong; meanwhile, she continued to experience pain.


title: Gilda Radner

text: During those 10 months, she also faced hardships such as the publication of Hill and Weingrad's highly publicized book about "Saturday Night Live", which provided many details about her eating disorder as well as the financial failure of "Haunted Honeymoon", which had grossed only $8,000,000 in the United States, entering the box-office-returns ranking at number 8, then slipping to 14 the following week. As Radner wrote in "It's Always Something":


title: Gilda Radner

text: Finally, on October 21, 1986, Radner was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. She immediately underwent surgery and had a hysterectomy. On October 26, surgeons removed a grapefruit-size tumor from her abdomen. Radner then began chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatment, as she wrote in "It's Always Something", and the treatment caused extreme physical and emotional pain.


title: Gilda Radner

text: After her diagnosis, the "National Enquirer" ran the headline "Gilda Radner In Life-Death Struggle" in its following issue. Without asking for her comment, the editors of the publication asserted that she was dying. Radner wrote in "It's Always Something":


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner saw her "Saturday Night Live" castmates one last time at Laraine Newman's 36th birthday party (in March 1988). According to Bill Murray, when he heard she was about to leave the party, he and Dan Aykroyd carried her around the Los Angeles house where the party was held so that she could say goodbye to everyone.


title: Gilda Radner

text: After Radner was told that she had gone into remission, she wrote "It's Always Something" (a catchphrase of her character Roseanne Roseannadanna), which included details of her struggle with the illness. "Life" did a March 1988 cover story on her illness, titled "Gilda Radner's Answer to Cancer: Healing the Body with Mind and Heart." In a Showtime (TV network) broadcast on March 18, 1988, Radner guest-starred on "It's Garry Shandling's Show", mentioning on-camera that a cancer diagnosis and treatment explained the long hiatus in her entertainment career.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner was scheduled to host an episode of "Saturday Night Live" in the spring of 1988, which would have made her the first female former cast member to host the show, but a writers' strike forced production to shut down before the end of the season.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In September 1988, after tests showed no signs of cancer, Radner went on a maintenance chemotherapy treatment to prolong her remission, but three months later, in December, she learned the cancer had returned.


title: Gilda Radner

text: She and Wilder were video-recorded entering the January 28, 1989 ceremony for the 46th annual Golden Globe Awards. The video clip was shown on "Entertainment Tonight" shortly after she died.


title: Gilda Radner

text: On May 17, 1989, she was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to undergo a CT scan. She was given a sedative and went into a coma during the scan. She did not regain consciousness and died three days later, on May 20, 1989; Wilder was at her side. The cause of death was ovarian cancer.


title: Gilda Radner

text: News of Radner's death broke as Steve Martin was rehearsing for his guest-host role on that night's season finale of "Saturday Night Live". The show's performers and crew, including Lorne Michaels, Phil Hartman, and Mike Myers (who had, in his own words, "fallen in love" with Radner after playing her son in a BC Hydro commercial on Canadian television and considered her the reason he wanted to be on "SNL"), had not known how grave her situation was. Martin's planned opening monologue was scrapped; in its place a visibly upset Martin introduced a video clip of a 1978 sketch in which he and Radner had parodied Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the well-known dance routine "Dancing In The Dark" from "The Band Wagon" (1953). After the clip, Martin said it reminded him of "how great she was and of how young I looked. Gilda, we miss you." G. E. Smith, Radner's first husband, who was "Saturday Night Live"’s bandleader, wore a black armband throughout the episode.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Wilder established the Gilda Radner Hereditary Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai to screen high-risk candidates (such as women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent) and to run basic diagnostic tests. He testified before a Congressional committee that Radner's condition had been misdiagnosed and that if doctors had inquired more deeply into her family background they would have learned that her grandmother, aunt, and cousin all died of ovarian cancer, and therefore they might have attacked the disease earlier.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner's death helped raise awareness of early detection of ovarian cancer and the connection to familial epidemiology. The media attention in the two years after Radner's death led to registry of 450 families with familial ovarian cancer at the Familial Ovarian Cancer Registry, a research database registry at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York. The registry was renamed the Gilda Radner Familial Ovarian Cancer Registry (GRFOCR) in 1990 and renamed the Familial Ovarian Cancer Registry in 2013. In 1996, Wilder and Registry founder Steven Piver, one of Radner's medical consultants, published "Gilda's Disease: Sharing Personal Experiences and a Medical Perspective on Ovarian Cancer".


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 1991, Gilda's Club, a network of affiliated clubhouses where people living with cancer, their friends, and families, can meet to learn how to live with cancer, was founded by Joanna Bull, Radner's cancer psychotherapist, along with Radner's widower, Gene Wilder (also a cancer survivor) and broadcaster Joel Siegel (who later died after a long battle with cancer). The first club opened in New York City in 1995. The organization took its name from Radner's comment that cancer gave her "membership to an elite club I'd rather not belong to". Radner's story can be read in her book, "It's Always Something".


title: Gilda Radner

text: Many Gilda's Clubs have opened across the United States and in Canada. In July 2009, Gilda's Club Worldwide merged with The Wellness Community, another established cancer support organization, to become the Cancer Support Community (CSC). As of 2012, more than 20 local affiliates of Gilda's Club were active. Although some local affiliates of Gilda's Club and The Wellness Community have retained their names, many affiliates have adopted the name Cancer Support Community following the merger.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 2002, ABC dedicated a three-hour block of programming to Radner. The evening kicked off with a one-hour special, "Gilda Radner's Greatest Moments." Hosted by "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Molly Shannon, the special featured highlights from her career and appearances by friends and co-stars Victor Garber, Kermit the Frog, Eugene Levy, Steve Martin, Paul Shaffer, Lily Tomlin and Barbara Walters. It was followed by a television movie about her life: "Gilda Radner: It's Always Something", starring Jami Gertz as Radner.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 2007, Radner was featured in "Making Trouble", a film tribute to female Jewish comedians, produced by the Jewish Women's Archive. Radner made two comic book appearances: DC Comics Young Love #122 in 1976 and Marvel Team-Up #74 from 1978.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Radner won an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in Variety or Music" for her performance on "Saturday Night Live" in 1977. She posthumously won a Grammy Award for "Best Spoken Word Or Non-Musical Recording" in 1990.


title: Gilda Radner

text: In 1992, Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame for her achievements in arts and entertainment. Through the generosity of many who participated in the 2002 ABC special, "Gilda Radner's Greatest Moments," including Lynda Carter, Victor Garber, Eric Idle, David Letterman, Eugene Levy, Peter Mann, Steve Martin, Mike Myers, Paul Shaffer, Lily Tomlin and The Jim Henson Company, producer/actor James Tumminia spearheaded a campaign to dedicate a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to Gilda. On June 27, 2003, Gilda received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6801 Hollywood Blvd. Saturday Night Live alumna Molly Shannon (and the host of the ABC special) served as Master of Ceremonies at the induction ceremony at which Laraine Newman, Gilda's Club founder Joanna Bull and Gilda's brother Michael F. Radner appeared to present the honor.


title: Gilda Radner

text: Parts of West Houston Street in New York City, Lombard Street in Toronto, and Chester Avenue in White Plains, New York, have been renamed "Gilda Radner Way". The private road off Kirk Road in Warminster Township, Pennsylvania leading to the Cancer Support Community Greater Philadelphia (formerly Gilda's Club Delaware Valley) is also thus named.


title: Demiurge

text: In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge () is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term "demiurge". Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the Creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity.


title: Demiurge

text: The word "demiurge" is an English word derived from "demiurgus", a Latinised form of the Greek or . It was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually came to mean "producer", and eventually "creator". The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Plato's "Timaeus", written  360 BC, where the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. The demiurge is also described as a creator in the Platonic ( 310–90 BC) and Middle Platonic ( 90 BC–AD 300) philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school (third century onwards), the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "the One". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. In others, including the teaching of Valentinus, the demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided.


title: Demiurge

text: Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue "Timaeus" (28a ff.),  360 BC. The main character refers to the Demiurge as the entity who "fashioned and shaped" the material world. Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, and so it desires a world as good as possible. Plato's work "Timaeus" is a philosophical reconciliation of Hesiod's cosmology in his "Theogony", syncretically reconciling Hesiod to Homer.


title: Demiurge

text: In Numenius's Neo-Pythagorean and Middle Platonist cosmogony, the Demiurge is second God as the "nous" or thought of intelligibles and sensibles.


title: Demiurge

text: Plotinus and the later Platonists worked to clarify the Demiurge. To Plotinus, the second emanation represents an uncreated second cause (see Pythagoras' Dyad). Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's "energeia" with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind ("nous"), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism (also called idealism). In order to reconcile Aristotelian with Platonian philosophy, Plotinus metaphorically identified the demiurge (or "nous") within the pantheon of the Greek Gods as Zeus.


title: Demiurge

text: The first and highest aspect of God is described by Plato as the One (Τὸ Ἕν, 'To Hen'), the source, or the Monad. This is the God above the Demiurge, and manifests through the actions of the Demiurge. The Monad emanated the demiurge or "Nous" (consciousness) from its "indeterminate" vitality due to the monad being so abundant that it overflowed back onto itself, causing self-reflection. This self-reflection of the indeterminate vitality was referred to by Plotinus as the "Demiurge" or creator. The second principle is organization in its reflection of the nonsentient force or "dynamis", also called the one or the Monad. The dyad is "energeia" emanated by the one that is then the work, process or activity called "nous", Demiurge, mind, consciousness that organizes the indeterminate vitality into the experience called the material world, universe, cosmos. Plotinus also elucidates the equation of matter with nothing or non-being in "The Enneads" which more correctly is to express the concept of idealism or that there is not anything or anywhere outside of the "mind" or "nous" (c.f. pantheism).


title: Demiurge

text: Plotinus' form of Platonic idealism is to treat the Demiurge, "nous" as the contemplative faculty ("ergon") within man which orders the force ("dynamis") into conscious reality. In this, he claimed to reveal Plato's true meaning: a doctrine he learned from Platonic tradition that did not appear outside the academy or in Plato's text. This tradition of creator God as "nous" (the manifestation of consciousness), can be validated in the works of pre-Plotinus philosophers such as Numenius, as well as a connection between Hebrew and Platonic cosmology (see also Philo).


title: Demiurge

text: The Demiurge of Neoplatonism is the "Nous" (mind of God), and is one of the three ordering principles:


title: Demiurge

text: Before Numenius of Apamea and Plotinus' "Enneads", no Platonic works ontologically clarified the Demiurge from the allegory in Plato's "Timaeus". The idea of Demiurge was, however, addressed before Plotinus in the works of Christian writer Justin Martyr who built his understanding of the Demiurge on the works of Numenius.


title: Demiurge

text: Later, the Neoplatonist Iamblichus changed the role of the "One", effectively altering the role of the Demiurge as second cause or dyad, which was one of the reasons that Iamblichus and his teacher Porphyry came into conflict.


title: Demiurge

text: The figure of the Demiurge emerges in the theoretic of Iamblichus, which conjoins the transcendent, incommunicable “One,” or Source. Here, at the summit of this system, the Source and Demiurge (material realm) coexist via the process of "henosis".


title: Demiurge

text: Iamblichus describes the One as a monad whose first principle or emanation is intellect ("nous"), while among "the many" that follow it there is a second, super-existent "One" that is the producer of intellect or soul ("psyche").


title: Demiurge

text: The "One" is further separated into spheres of intelligence; the first and superior sphere is objects of thought, while the latter sphere is the domain of thought. Thus, a triad is formed of the intelligible "nous", the intellective "nous", and the "psyche" in order to reconcile further the various Hellenistic philosophical schools of Aristotle's "actus" and "potentia" (actuality and potentiality) of the unmoved mover and Plato's Demiurge.


title: Demiurge

text: Then within this intellectual triad Iamblichus assigns the third rank to the Demiurge, identifying it with the perfect or Divine "nous" with the intellectual triad being promoted to a "hebdomad" (pure intellect).


title: Demiurge

text: In the theoretic of Plotinus, "nous" produces nature through intellectual mediation, thus the intellectualizing gods are followed by a triad of psychic gods.


title: Demiurge

text: Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God or Supreme Being and the demiurgic "creator" of the material. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in an unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine "in" materiality. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to (or, at least possibly, the problem or cause that gives rise to) the problem of evil.


title: Demiurge

text: One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφία, lit. 'wisdom'), the Demiurge's mother and partial aspect of the divine "Pleroma" or "Fullness," desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and concluded that only he existed, ignorant of the superior levels of reality.


title: Demiurge

text: The Demiurge, having received a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working, however, blindly and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word "dēmiurgos" properly describes his relation to the material; he is the "father" of that which is animal like himself.


title: Demiurge

text: Thus Sophia's power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.


title: Demiurge

text: Psalm 82 begins, "God stands in the assembly of El , in the midst of the gods he renders judgment", indicating a plurality of gods, although it does not indicate that these gods were co-actors in creation. Philo had inferred from the expression "Let us make man" of the Book of Genesis that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the latter to God, of the former to his helpers in the work of creation.