title: Robert Kubica

text: On 8 June 2008 at the , Kubica achieved his first Formula 1 victory. He started second on the grid and passed race leader Lewis Hamilton in the first round of pitstops after the BMW Sauber pit crew completed a faster pitstop. On leaving the pits, Kubica and Kimi Räikkönen's Ferrari halted at the pit lane exit, waiting for the red pit exit light to change. Hamilton, running immediately behind them, missed the light and crashed into Räikkönen's Ferrari, eliminating both cars from the race. Kubica rejoined the race well positioned for the eventual victory. He passed Heidfeld's sister BMW Sauber, running one refuelling stop to Kubica's two stop strategy, and gained the necessary 24 seconds over Heidfeld to ensure that he maintained the lead after his second stop 22 laps later. The BMW Saubers remained first and second to the end of the race. Kubica later joked that he should thank Hamilton for electing to crash into Räikkönen instead of him. The win gave Kubica the lead in the Drivers' Championship.


title: Robert Kubica

text: BMW Sauber's results were weaker over the second half of the season. At the at Magny-Cours, Kubica finished 5th, reporting that this was a lost race, complaining about aerodynamic problems with the car. Kubica's strongest result of the latter part of the year was in Japan where he qualified sixth. At the start, several drivers braked too late for the first corner. Kubica took an inside line overtaking several cars and emerged in the lead. He led for 16 laps, but lost his lead to Fernando Alonso at the first round of pit stops. Kubica finished second after defending his position towards the end of the race against Räikkönen in a faster Ferrari (his fastest race lap was 0.6 seconds quicker than the Pole's) Apart from that, Kubica achieved podiums in a race in Valencia and in the rain affected race at Monza. Kubica finished the year fourth in the Drivers' Championship.


title: Robert Kubica

text: At the season opener in Melbourne, Kubica qualified fourth on the grid. During the race, he was in third place and closing the gap to the front two cars before making contact with Sebastian Vettel while trying to overtake him. After the incident, Kubica continued briefly, but crashed into a wall at the next corner because his front wing had become stuck under the car. Vettel was later deemed responsible for the accident, and given a 10-place penalty on the grid for the next race in Malaysia.


title: Robert Kubica

text: BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen claimed that Kubica would have won the race ahead of Jenson Button had it not been for Vettel.


title: Robert Kubica

text: At the , Kubica qualified in eighth place, but was promoted to sixth following Vettel's ten-place grid penalty for causing the crash in Australia, and Rubens Barrichello's five-place grid drop for changing his gearbox. However, he retired very early in the race with engine problems. The next two races, the and the were disappointing for the BMW Sauber team as both Kubica and his teammate Heidfeld finished outside the points with a non-competitive car.


title: Robert Kubica

text: For the next race in Barcelona, BMW Sauber prepared a modified version of the F1.09. The car proved more competitive but a mistake in fitting the tyres to Kubica's car during Q3 meant he could only qualify in 10th position. In the race, after a bad start (due to a clutch issue) he finished once more out of the points. Kubica had an engine failure during second practice in Monaco, and retired from the Grand Prix due to a brake issue. At the , the team introduced the double diffuser. The car's performance improved and Kubica managed to score his first points of the season with a 7th place. In the next 3 races both BMW Sauber drivers finished outside the points again, but during the European and Belgian Grands Prix again proved to be competitive, scoring 8th and 4th positions respectively. In Italy, Kubica had engine trouble in qualifying and then retired from the race due to an oil leak. At the , Kubica finished 8th, defending his position from Kazuki Nakajima and Räikkönen in the last laps. He later stated it was "the most difficult point I have ever scored". At the , Kubica scored his first podium of the season despite engine temperature problems by finishing in 2nd place, 7.6 seconds behind winner Mark Webber. The podium was BMW's second of the season.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 29 July 2009, BMW announced that they would leave Formula One at the end of 2009, which made Kubica a free agent for the season. For the 2010 season, it was announced that he had signed for Renault F1, the team he tested for during his junior career.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Kubica moved to the Renault team for . His position was briefly put in doubt, however, by the team evaluating its future in the sport following the 2009 season in the wake of the "Crashgate" scandal and the parent company's financial problems. This resulted in a Luxembourg-based investment firm, Genii Capital, taking a 75% stake in the team; Renault retained the remaining 25%. Eric Boullier was also appointed as the new team manager. Kubica said he might not stay with Renault, as his contract was only valid if the parent company had a controlling stake in the team, but he then decided to remain with them. On 31 January 2010, it was announced that Vitaly Petrov was to be Kubica's teammate.


title: Robert Kubica

text: It was reported in "Autosport" that Ferrari driver Felipe Massa had until the 2010 British Grand Prix to prove to the Maranello outfit that he was worth hanging onto: if not, Kubica would take his seat in . However, Ferrari re-signed Massa for 2011, leaving Kubica without a drive at the Italian team.


title: Robert Kubica

text: At the opening race of the season in Bahrain, Kubica was tagged by Adrian Sutil and spun on the opening lap but recovered to 11th. At the next race in Australia, he finished second after starting in ninth position. Fourth in Malaysia and fifth in China left him in seventh place in the Drivers' Championship, 20 points behind championship leader Jenson Button. Kubica felt that had there not been a second safety car period in China he could have finished on the podium. In Spain he finished eighth, but followed this up with another podium in Monaco, holding third throughout after losing second at the start to Sebastian Vettel. At the , he was held up behind Nico Rosberg for the second time in the season after Malaysia, and finished sixth.


title: Robert Kubica

text: In Canada, Kubica finished seventh after an eventful race and problems with tyre degradation which made his race difficult, but did set the first fastest lap of his career in the race's closing stages. He added a fifth in Valencia and seventh in Germany before taking his third podium of the season in Belgium. He was competitive throughout the weekend, qualifying third, and only a bungled pitstop cost him second to Mark Webber. In Singapore, he qualified eighth in front of Schumacher. During the late stages of the race, he was forced to pit from sixth place due to a puncture. He was released from the pits to twelfth place, but with the help from superior grip and a series of overtaking moves—his move against Sutil was favourably compared to the incident between Webber and Hamilton—was able to claim seventh place, ultimately gaining a place from his qualifying result. In Suzuka, he managed to trail the Red Bulls throughout the weekend and translated it into a strong third place in qualifying. However, despite getting a good start and overtaking Webber at the start of the race, but would retire during the safety car period after losing one of his rear tyres.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Formula One journalist Mark Hughes remarked that Kubica was currently "arguably the best driver", considering the season so far. He emphasised Kubica's strong showing in tracks where Hughes believed that the differences in driver skills are able to overwhelm the differences in the capability of the cars; namely, Monaco, Spa and Suzuka. Kubica managed to finish on the podium behind the Red Bulls except in Suzuka where he was strong throughout the weekend nevertheless, despite retiring from the race through no fault of his own.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Kubica was retained by Renault – rebranded as Lotus Renault GP through Lotus Cars sponsorship – into the season, again partnered with Petrov. He tested the team's new car, the Renault R31, for the first time in Valencia on 2 February. On the last day of testing in Valencia he set the fastest time of the session.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 6 February 2011, Kubica was injured in a crash on the first stage of the Ronde di Andora rally. He was driving a Super 2000-specification Škoda Fabia in Testico when his car left the road at high speed and hit a crash barrier, near the church of San Sebastiano. Kubica was trapped in the car for more than an hour before rescue workers were able to extricate him. He was flown by helicopter to Santa Corona Hospital in Pietra Ligure near Savona, where it was confirmed that he had a partial amputation of his forearm, compound fractures to his right elbow, shoulder and leg, as well as significant loss of blood. The severity of his injuries was the result of the crash barrier penetrating the car's cockpit, and hitting Kubica, while leaving his co-driver unscathed. Kubica underwent a seven-hour operation by seven doctors split into two teams, without complications. Two more lengthy operations to repair fractures to his leg, shoulder and arm were performed successfully a few days later. The condition of his hand was not clear for some time and as a result he missed the 2011 season. As he was unable to start the season, Lotus Renault signed his former BMW Sauber teammate Nick Heidfeld as his replacement on 16 February, while Kubica still remained signed with the team for the 2011 season. Bruno Senna replaced Heidfeld later in the season, at the . Kubica was released from hospital to begin his rehabilitation on 24 April 2011. In November 2011 it was announced that Kubica would not be ready for the beginning of the season, forcing Renault (who at which point had changed their name to Lotus) to begin the season with two other drivers, Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean. In an interview in 2018 Kubica revealed that he had signed for Ferrari for the season.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Kubica's recovery was dealt another setback after he re-broke his right leg, when he reportedly slipped on ice near his home in Italy, on 11 January 2012. He remained out of competitive racing for most of 2012, but returned to compete in the Ronde Gomitolo Di Lana in a WRC car on 9 September. He won the rally, finishing one minute ahead of the second placed driver.


title: Robert Kubica

text: In 2013, Kubica continued his return, focusing on rallying. He drove for Citroën in the European and World Rally-2 Championships. His first event was the Rally de Portugal, in which he was competitive, but crashed and issues with his car led to him finishing in 6th. Then, at the Acropolis Rally, Kubica won, finishing nearly 90 seconds ahead of second placed Yuriy Protasov. He repeated this success at the Rally d'Italia winning ahead of Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari by 4 minutes. At the 2013 Rally Finland Kubica lost to Jari Ketomaa by nearly 90 seconds. The Rallye Deutschland was a big success. Not only did the Pole win ahead of Elfyn Evans by 12.9 seconds, he became the leader of the World Rally-2 Championships. He re-gained this position (Al-Kuwari became the leader in Australia) at the Rallye de France, again beating Evans, this time by 4 minutes. He won again at the Rally RACC Catalunya, his fifth victory of the season. With this result he was able to clinch the championship, as his nearest rival Al-Kuwari was too far behind to regain the first position in the championship. Kubica conducted a number of simulator tests with the Mercedes Formula 1 team which showed promise, but limitations in the range of motion of his injured arm would prevent him from driving in twisty circuits like Monaco due to the tight confines of an F1 cockpit.


title: Robert Kubica

text: In 2014, Kubica started in the first round of the ERC season. He won the Internationale Jänner Rallye to claim his first victory in that championship, after coming very close on a number of occasions in 2014. His strong results in the stages for this rally eventually netted him the "Ice Master" trophy for the best driver in snow events that season. For the rest of the season, he participated in the main WRC class for the RK M-Sport, running as separate team, backed by Polish oil company Lotos. Kubica began his WRC campaign by taking the lead of the Monte Carlo Rally through the first two stages, but later retired on the second day after crashing out on SS9. Kubica suffered from a string of bad luck for the rest of the season, being fast on occasion but rarely managing to convert his speed into results. His best result was a 6th place at the Rally Argentina, a place lower than his highest finish in 2013 (5th in Germany) in a WRC-2 car. He finished the season in 16th place with 14 points. He finished the year on a positive note by winning the non-championship Monza Rally Show, beating motorcycle legend Valentino Rossi to second.


title: Robert Kubica

text: After speculation following the 2014 WRC season, Kubica announced he would be racing in 2015, still running Ford Fiesta RS WRC and backed by Lotos, albeit no longer prepared by M-Sport. In 2016 due to a lack of funding his sole WRC rally was the Monte Carlo.


title: Robert Kubica

text: In March 2016 he took part in the Mugello 12 Hours, a round of Creventic's International Endurance Series, in a GT3 Mercedes. In September 2016 he competed in the Renault Sport Trophy at the penultimate round of the season in Spa, Belgium.


title: Robert Kubica

text: In January 2017, he took part in the first round of the 24H Series, the Dubai 24 Hour, driving a Förch Racing Porsche 911 GT3 in the A6-Pro class with co-drivers Robert Lukas, Marcin Jedliński, Wolf Henzler and Santiago Creel. This ended in retirement with undisclosed mechanical problems.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 2 February 2017, Kubica was signed by the ByKolles privateer LMP1 team in the FIA World Endurance Championship. This came after he tested their car in November 2016 during the WEC rookie test at Bahrain, and lapped faster than the team's regulars managed on the race weekend. Oliver Webb will remain with the team, with a third driver for the Nissan-powered CLM P1/01 yet to be named. After the pre-season testing at Italy's Autodromo Nazionale Monza, where Kubica did not do any running, the driver announced via social media that he would not be participating in the forthcoming season.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 2 May 2017, Kubica partook in an independently organised test of a Formula E car at Donington Park, with an aim of partaking in the New York ePrix. This failed to happen.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 5 June 2017, it was announced that Kubica would be driving in a Renault-organized test of their 2012 car, the Lotus E20, at Circuit Ricardo Tormo, his first Formula One event since his accident in 2011.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Renault organised a further test, with Renault managing director Cyril Abiteboul stating that "he was still quick, still consistent and more importantly he still has the enthusiasm he always carried to the team". He added that there were "no obvious roadblocks" to a Formula One return, and told NBC Sports that Kubica could be an option for 2018.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 24 July 2017, it was announced that Kubica would participate in the test for Renault, which would be held after the conclusion of the Hungarian Grand Prix. Abiteboul, Renault's team managing director, said the test will allow the team to fully assess Kubica's current capabilities, and how likely he might be to "return to competition in the upcoming years". Kubica completed 142 laps of the Hungaroring on his return, finishing fourth-fastest nearly 1.5 seconds behind Sebastian Vettel.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 11 October 2017, Kubica completed a one-day test with Williams at Silverstone driving the 2014 FW36. On 17 October 2017, Kubica had a second day of testing with Williams at the Hungaroring.


title: Robert Kubica

text: After Felipe Massa announced his retirement from the sport for the second time, Kubica became one of the top contenders to take his seat at Williams Martini Racing. He then tested for them at the Yas Marina Circuit following the 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, completing 100 laps in his first test with the team's 2017 FW40. He completed an additional 28 laps the next day and finished seventh fastest, with Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe reporting that "there are no issues around" his injuries, though doubts soon emerged about whether certain factors had made the times look better.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 16 January 2018, it was announced that Kubica would become the reserve driver of Williams for the 2018 season. He took part in his first Grand Prix weekend since the final round of the 2010 campaign, in Friday's first practice session at the 2018 Spanish Grand Prix, outperforming teammate Lance Stroll.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Before the final round of the 2018 season, Williams announced that Kubica would race full-time for the team in 2019, partnering 2018 Formula 2 champion George Russell. Kubica chose 88 as his driver number, previously used by Rio Haryanto in 2016.


title: Robert Kubica

text: The team struggled during the season, with the FW42 being the slowest car of the field. Kubica finished in 12th place at the German Grand Prix, however was promoted to 10th following penalties for Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi, scoring his first point since his return to F1 and breaking the record of the longest time between successive points finishes.


title: Robert Kubica

text: On 19 September 2019, before the Singapore Grand Prix, Kubica announced his decision to end his stint at Williams after the end of the season. Williams released a statement shortly after, stating that Kubica would see out the remainder of the season but would vacate his driver position for the 2020 season.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Kubica's first retirement since his return to the sport came in Russia, when Williams decided to retire his car to conserve parts after teammate Russell's race ended due to a wheel nut issue. Williams were criticised for the decision, particularly by Kubica's personal sponsors PKN Orlen. At the following race in Japan, Kubica criticised the team's decision to remove an upgraded front wing from his car for the race, after he had trialled it during practice sessions.


title: Robert Kubica

text: At the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix, Kubica's Williams mechanics released him from his pit box too early, narrowly avoiding hitting Max Verstappen and holding him up in the pit lane.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Kubica ended a difficult season in 19th place in the championship with 1 point, finishing ahead of rookie teammate Russell in the standings. He decided to leave the team and was replaced by 2019 Formula 2 runner-up Nicholas Latifi.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Kubica joined Alfa Romeo Racing in a reserve driver role for the 2020 season, returning to the team he made his Formula One debut with in (when it was still known as BMW Sauber). He competed at the pre-season test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and set the fastest laptime during the fourth day of testing. He was joined by 2019 F2 Championship driver Tatiana Calderón. During the season, Kubica completed tests at the Styrian, Hungarian, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix. He also participated in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Young Drivers Test.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Full-time Alfa Romeo driver Kimi Räikkönen tested positive for COVID-19 on the weekend of the Dutch Grand Prix, with Kubica replacing him. He went on to qualify 18th and finish the race in 15th, while his teammate Antonio Giovinazzi dropped from 7th to 14th. Kubica also deputised for Räikkönen in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. After qualifying 19th, and finishing the sprint qualifying in 18th after making contact with Yuki Tsunoda on the opening lap, he eventually went on to finish the Grand Prix in 14th.


title: Robert Kubica

text: Prior to the two races in which he participated, Kubica drove in three free practice sessions in 2021 at the Spanish, Styrian and Hungarian Grands Prix, in addition to two days of Pirelli tyre testing for the 18-inch tyres.


title: Robert Kubica

text: For 2022, Kubica remained as a reserve and test driver. He took part in free practice for the Spanish, French, Hungarian and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.


title: Web server

text: A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiates communication by making a request for a web page or other resource using HTTP, and the server responds with the content of that resource or an error message. A web server can also accept and store resources sent from the user agent if configured to do so.


title: Web server

text: The hardware used to run a web server can vary according to the volume of requests that it needs to handle. At the low end of the range are embedded systems, such as a router that runs a small web server as its configuration interface. A high-traffic Internet website might handle requests with hundreds of servers that run on racks of high-speed computers.


title: Web server

text: A resource sent from a web server can be a preexisting file (static content) available to the web server, or it can be generated at the time of the request (dynamic content) by another program that communicates with the server software. The former usually can be served faster and can be more easily cached for repeated requests, while the latter supports a broader range of applications.


title: Web server

text: Technologies such as REST and SOAP, which use HTTP as a basis for general computer-to-computer communication, as well as support for WebDAV extensions, have extended the application of web servers well beyond their original purpose of serving human-readable pages.


title: Web server

text: This is a very brief history of "web server programs", so some information necessarily overlaps with the histories of the "web browsers", the "World Wide Web" and the "Internet"; therefore, for the sake of clearness and understandability, some key historical information below reported may be similar to that found also in one or more of the above-mentioned history articles.


title: Web server

text: In March 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee proposed a new project to his employer CERN, with the goal of easing the exchange of information between scientists by using a hypertext system. The proposal titled ""HyperText and CERN"", asked for comments and it was read by several people. In October 1990 the proposal was reformulated and enriched (having as co-author Robert Cailliau), and finally, it was approved.


title: Web server

text: Between late 1990 and early 1991 the project resulted in Berners-Lee and his developers writing and testing several software libraries along with three programs, which initially ran on NeXTSTEP OS installed on NeXT workstations:


title: Web server

text: Those early browsers retrieved web pages from web server(s) using a new basic communication protocol that was named HTTP 0.9.


title: Web server

text: In August 1991 Tim Berner-Lee announced the "birth of WWW technology" and encouraged scientists to adopt and develop it. Soon after, those programs, along with their source code, were made available to people interested in their usage. In practice CERN informally allowed other people, including developers, etc., to play with and maybe further develop what it has been made till that moment. This was the official birth of CERN httpd. Since then Berner-Lee started promoting the adoption and the usage of those programs along with their porting to other OSs.


title: Web server

text: In December 1991 the was installed at SLAC (U.S.A.). This was a very important event because it started trans-continental web communications between web browsers and web servers.


title: Web server

text: In 1991-1993 CERN web server program continued to be actively developed by the www group, meanwhile, thanks to the availability of its source code and the public specifications of the HTTP protocol, many other implementations of web servers started to be developed.


title: Web server

text: In April 1993 CERN issued a public official statement stating that the three components of Web software (the basic line-mode client, the web server and the library of common code), along with their source code, were put in the public domain. This statement freed web server developers from any possible legal issue about the development of "derivative work" based on that source code (a threat that in practice never existed).


title: Web server

text: At the beginning of 1994, the most notable among new web servers was NCSA httpd which ran on a variety of Unix-based OSs and could serve "dynamically generated content" by implementing the codice_1 HTTP method and the CGI to communicate with external programs. These capabilities, along with the multimedia features of NCSA's Mosaic browser (also able to manage HTML FORMs in order to send data to a web server) highlighted the potential of web technology for publishing and distributed computing applications.


title: Web server

text: In the second half of 1994, the development of NCSA httpd stalled to the point that a group of external software developers, webmasters and other professional figures interested in that server, started to write and collect patches thanks to the NCSA httpd source code being available to the public domain. At the beginning of 1995 those patches were all applied to the last release of NCSA source code and, after several tests, the Apache HTTP server project was started.


title: Web server

text: At the end of 1994 a new commercial web server, named Netsite, was released with specific features. It was the first one of many other similar products that were developed first by Netscape, then also by Sun Microsystems, and finally by Oracle Corporation.


title: Web server

text: In mid-1995 the first version of IIS was released, for Windows NT OS, by Microsoft. This was a notable event because marked the entry, in the field of World Wide Web technologies, of a very important commercial developer and vendor that has played and still is playing a key role on both sides (client and server) of the web.


title: Web server

text: In the second half of 1995 CERN and NCSA web servers started to decline (in global percentage usage) because of the widespread adoption of new web servers which had a much faster development cycle along with more features, more fixes applied, and more performances than the previous ones.


title: Web server

text: At the end of 1996 there were already over fifty known (different) web server software programs that were available to everybody who wanted to own an Internet domain name and/or to host websites. Many of them lived only shortly and were replaced by other web servers.


title: Web server

text: The publication of RFCs about protocol versions HTTP/1.0 (1996) and HTTP/1.1 (1997, 1999), forced most web servers to comply (not always completely) with those standards. The use of TCP/IP persistent connections (HTTP/1.1) required web servers both to increase a lot the maximum number of concurrent connections allowed and to improve their level of scalability.


title: Web server

text: Between 1996 and 1999 Netscape Enterprise Server and Microsoft's IIS emerged among the leading commercial options whereas among the freely available and open-source programs Apache HTTP Server held the lead as the preferred server (because of its reliability and its many features).


title: Web server

text: In those years there was also another commercial, highly innovative and thus notable web server called Zeus ("now discontinued") that was known as one of the fastest and most scalable web servers available on market, at least till the first decade of 2000s, despite its low percentage of usage.


title: Web server

text: Apache resulted in the most used web server from mid-1996 to the end of 2015 when, after a few years of decline, it was surpassed initially by IIS and then by Nginx. Afterward IIS dropped to much lower percentages of usage than Apache (see also market share).


title: Web server

text: From 2005-2006 Apache started to improve its speed and its scalability level by introducing new performance features (e.g. event MPM and new content cache). As those new performance improvements initially were marked as experimental, they were not enabled by its users for a long time and so Apache suffered, even more, the competition of commercial servers and, above all, of other open-source servers which meanwhile had already achieved far superior performances (mostly when serving static content) since the beginning of their development and at the time of the Apache decline were able to offer also a long enough list of well tested advanced features.


title: Web server

text: In fact, a few years after 2000 started, not only other commercial and highly competitive web servers, e.g. LiteSpeed, but also many other open-source programs, often of excellent quality and very high performances, among which should be noted Hiawatha, Cherokee HTTP server, Lighttpd, Nginx and other derived/related products also available with commercial support, emerged.


title: Web server

text: Around 2007-2008 most popular web browsers increased their previous default limit of 2 persistent connections per host-domain (a limit recommended by RFC-2616) to 4, 6 or 8 persistent connections per host-domain, in order to speed up the retrieval of heavy web pages with lots of images, and to mitigate the problem of the shortage of persistent connections dedicated to dynamic objects used for bi-directional notifications of events in web pages. Within a year, these changes, on average, nearly tripled the maximum number of persistent connections that web servers had to manage. This trend (of increasing the number of persistent connections) definitely gave a strong impetus to the adoption of reverse proxies in front of slower web servers and it gave also one more chance to the emerging new web servers that could show all their speed and their capability to handle very high numbers of concurrent connections without requiring too many hardware resources (expensive computers with lots of CPUs, RAM and fast disks).


title: Web server

text: In 2015, RFCs published new protocol version [HTTP/2], and as the implementation of new specifications was not trivial at all, a dilemma arose among developers of less popular web servers (e.g. with a percentage of usage lower than 1% .. 2%), about adding or not adding support for that new protocol version.


title: Web server

text: In fact supporting HTTP/2 often required radical changes to their internal implementation due to many factors (practically always required encrypted connections, capability to distinguish between HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 connections on the same TCP port, binary representation of HTTP messages, message priority, compression of HTTP headers, use of streams also known as TCP/IP sub-connections and related flow-control, etc.) and so a few developers of those web servers opted for not supporting new HTTP/2 version (at least in the near future) also because of these main reasons:


title: Web server

text: Instead, developers of most popular web servers, rushed to offer the availability of new protocol, not only because they had the work force and the time to do so, but also because usually their previous implementation of SPDY protocol could be reused as a starting point and because most used web browsers implemented it very quickly for the same reason. Another reason that prompted those developers to act quickly was that webmasters felt the pressure of the ever increasing web traffic and they really wanted to install and to try - as soon as possible - something that could drastically lower the number of TCP/IP connections and speedup accesses to hosted websites.


title: Web server

text: In 2020–2021 the HTTP/2 dynamics about its implementation (by top web servers and popular web browsers) were partly replicated after the publication of advanced drafts of future RFC about HTTP/3 protocol.


title: Web server

text: The following technical overview should be considered only as an attempt to give a few very "limited examples" about "some" features that may be implemented in a web server and "some" of the tasks that it may perform in order to have a sufficiently wide scenario about the topic.


title: Web server

text: A web server program plays the role of a server in a client–server model by implementing one or more versions of HTTP protocol, often including the HTTPS secure variant and other features and extensions that are considered useful for its planned usage.


title: Web server

text: Although web server programs differ in how they are implemented, most of them offer the following common features.


title: Web server

text: A few other more advanced and popular features ("only a very short selection") are the following ones.


title: Web server

text: Once an HTTP request message has been decoded and verified, its values can be used to determine whether that request can be satisfied or not. This requires many other steps, including security checks.


title: Web server

text: Web server programs usually perform some type of URL normalization (URL found in most HTTP request messages) in order:


title: Web server

text: The term "URL normalization" refers to the process of modifying and standardizing a URL in a consistent manner. There are several types of normalization that may be performed, including the conversion of the scheme and host to lowercase. Among the most important normalizations are the removal of "." and ".." path segments and adding trailing slashes to a non-empty path component.


title: Web server

text: "URL mapping is the process by which a URL is analyzed to figure out what resource it is referring to, so that that resource can be returned to the requesting client. This process is performed with every request that is made to a web server, with some of the requests being served with a file, such as an HTML document, or a gif image, others with the results of running a CGI program, and others by some other process, such as a built-in module handler, a PHP document, or a Java servlet."


title: Web server

text: In practice, web server programs that implement advanced features, beyond the simple "static content serving" (e.g. URL rewrite engine, dynamic content serving), usually have to figure out how that URL has to be handled, e.g.:


title: Web server

text: One or more configuration files of web server may specify the mapping of parts of URL path (e.g. initial parts of file path, filename extension and other path components) to a specific URL handler (file, directory, external program or internal module).


title: Web server

text: When a web server implements one or more of the above-mentioned advanced features then the path part of a valid URL may not always match an existing file system path under website directory tree (a file or a directory in file system) because it can refer to a virtual name of an internal or external module processor for dynamic requests.


title: Web server

text: Web server programs are able to translate an URL path (all or part of it), that refers to a physical file system path, to an absolute path under the target website's root directory.


title: Web server

text: Website's root directory may be specified by a configuration file or by some internal rule of the web server by using the name of the website which is the host part of the URL found in HTTP client request.


title: Web server

text: The web server appends the path found in requested URL (HTTP request message) and appends it to the path of the (Host) website root directory. On an Apache server, this is commonly codice_2 (on Unix machines, usually it is: codice_3). See the following examples of how it may result.


title: Web server

text: The web server then reads the file, if it exists, and sends a response to the client's web browser. The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file itself or an error message will return saying that the file does not exist or its access is forbidden.


title: Web server

text: The web server then verifies the existence of the directory and if it exists and it can be accessed then tries to find out an index file (which in this case does not exist) and so it passes the request to an internal module or a program dedicated to directory listings and finally reads data output and sends a response to the client's web browser. The response will describe the content of the directory (list of contained subdirectories and files) or an error message will return saying that the directory does not exist or its access is forbidden.


title: Web server

text: For a "dynamic request" the URL path specified by the client should refer to an existing external program (usually an executable file with a CGI) used by the web server to generate dynamic content.


title: Web server

text: The web server executes that program, passing in the path-info and the query string codice_7 so that the program has the info it needs to run. (In this case, it will return an HTML document containing a view of forum entries ordered by thread from October 15th, 2021). In addition to this, the web server reads data sent from the external program and resends that data to the client that made the request.


title: Web server

text: Once a request has been read, interpreted, and verified, it has to be managed depending on its method, its URL, and its parameters, which may include values of HTTP headers.


title: Web server

text: If a web server program is capable of serving static content and it has been configured to do so, then it is able to send file content whenever a request message has a valid URL path matching (after URL mapping, URL translation and URL redirection) that of an existing file under the root directory of a website and file has attributes which match those required by internal rules of web server program.


title: Web server

text: That kind of content is called "static" because usually it is not changed by the web server when it is sent to clients and because it remains the same until it is modified (file modification) by some program.


title: Web server

text: NOTE: when serving static content only, a web server program usually does not change file contents of served websites (as they are only read and never written) and so it suffices to support only these HTTP methods:


title: Web server

text: If a web server program receives a client request message with an URL whose path matches one of an existing "directory" and that directory is accessible and serving directory index file(s) is enabled then a web server program may try to serve the first of known (or configured) static index file names (a regular file) found in that directory; if no index file is found or other conditions are not met then an error message is returned.


title: Web server

text: If a web server program receives a client request message with an URL whose path matches the file name of an existing "file" and that file is accessible by web server program and its attributes match internal rules of web server program, then web server program can send that file to client.


title: Web server

text: Usually, for security reasons, most web server programs are pre-configured to serve only regular files or to avoid to use "special file types" like device files, along with symbolic links or hard links to them. The aim is to avoid undesirable side effects when serving static web resources.


title: Web server

text: If a web server program is capable of serving dynamic content and it has been configured to do so, then it is able to communicate with the proper internal module or external program (associated with the requested URL path) in order to pass to it parameters of client request; after that, web server program reads from it its data response (that it has generated, often on the fly) and then it resends it to the client program who made the request.


title: Web server

text: NOTE: when serving static and dynamic content, a web server program usually has to support also the following HTTP method in order to be able to safely receive data from client(s) and so to be able to host also websites with interactive form(s) that may send large data sets (e.g. lots of data entry or file uploads) to web server / external programs / modules:


title: Web server

text: In order to be able to communicate with its internal modules and/or external programs, a web server program must have implemented one or more of the many available gateway interface(s) (see also Web Server Gateway Interfaces used for dynamic content).


title: Web server

text: A web server program may be capable to manage the dynamic generation (on the fly) of a directory index list of files and sub-directories.


title: Web server

text: If a web server program is configured to do so and a requested URL path matches an existing directory and its access is allowed and no static index file is found under that directory then a web page (usually in HTML format), containing the list of files and/or subdirectories of above mentioned directory, is "dynamically generated" (on the fly). If it cannot be generated an error is returned.


title: Web server

text: Some web server programs allow the customization of directory listings by allowing the usage of a web page template (an HTML document containing placeholders, e.g. codice_16, etc., that are replaced with the field values of each file entry found in directory by web server), e.g. codice_17 or the usage of HTML and embedded source code that is interpreted and executed on the fly, e.g. codice_18, and / or by supporting the usage of dynamic index programs such as CGIs, SCGIs, FGCIs, e.g. codice_19, codice_20, codice_21.


title: Web server

text: Usage of dynamically generated "directory listings" is usually avoided or limited to a few selected directories of a website because that generation takes much more OS resources than sending a static index page.


title: Web server

text: The main usage of "directory listings" is to allow the download of files (usually when their names, sizes, modification date-times or file attributes may change randomly / frequently) "as they are, without requiring to provide further information to requesting user".


title: Web server

text: An external program or an internal module ("processing unit") can execute some sort of application function that may be used to get data from or to store data to one or more data repositories, e.g.:


title: Web server

text: A "processing unit" can return any kind of web content, also by using data retrieved from a data repository, e.g.:


title: Web server

text: In practice whenever there is content that may vary, depending on one or more parameters contained in client request or in configuration settings, then, usually, it is generated dynamically.


title: Web server

text: An error response message may be sent because a request message could not be successfully read or decoded or analyzed or executed.


title: Web server

text: NOTE: the following sections are reported only as examples to help to understand what a web server, more or less, does; these sections are by any means neither exhaustive nor complete.


title: Web server

text: A web server program may reply to a client request message with many kinds of error messages, anyway these errors are divided mainly in two categories:


title: Web server

text: When an error response / message is received by a client browser, then if it is related to the main user request (e.g. an URL of a web resource such as a web page) then usually that error message is shown in some browser window / message.


title: Web server

text: If the authorization / access rights feature has been implemented and enabled and access to web resource is not granted, then, depending on the required access rights, a web server program:


title: Web server

text: A web server program "may" have the capability of doing URL redirections to new URLs (new locations) which consists in replying to a client request message with a response message containing a new URL suited to access a valid or an existing web resource (client should redo the request with the new URL).


title: Web server

text: Example 1: a URL path points to a directory name but it does not have a final slash '/' so web server sends a redirect to client in order to instruct it to redo the request with the fixed path name.


title: Web server

text: Example 2: a whole set of documents has been moved inside website in order to reorganize their file system paths.


title: Web server

text: Example 3: a whole set of documents has been moved to a new website and now it is mandatory to use secure HTTPS connections to access them.


title: Web server

text: A web server program is able to reply to a valid client request message with a successful message, optionally containing requested web resource data.


title: Web server

text: If web resource data is sent back to client, then it can be static content or dynamic content depending on how it has been retrieved (from a file or from the output of some program / module).


title: Web server

text: In order to speed up web server responses by lowering average HTTP response times and hardware resources used, many popular web servers implement one or more content caches, each one specialized in a content category.


title: Web server

text: Historically, static contents found in files which had to be accessed frequently, randomly and quickly, have been stored mostly on electro-mechanical disks since mid-late 1960s / 1970s; regrettably reads from and writes to those kind of devices have always been considered very slow operations when compared to RAM speed and so, since early OSs, first disk caches and then also OS file cache sub-systems were developed to speed up I/O operations of frequently accessed data / files.


title: Web server

text: Even with the aid of an OS file cache, the relative / occasional slowness of I/O operations involving directories and files stored on disks became soon a bottleneck in the increase of performances expected from top level web servers, specially since mid-late 1990s, when web Internet traffic started to grow exponentially along with the constant increase of speed of Internet / network lines.


title: Web server

text: The problem about how to further efficiently speed-up the serving of static files, thus increasing the maximum number of requests/responses per second (RPS), started to be studied / researched since mid 1990s, with the aim to propose useful cache models that could be implemented in web server programs.


title: Web server

text: In practice, nowadays, many popular / high performance web server programs include their own "userland" file cache, tailored for a web server usage and using their specific implementation and parameters.


title: Web server

text: The wide spread adoption of RAID and/or fast solid-state drives (storage hardware with very high I/O speed) has slightly reduced but of course not eliminated the advantage of having a file cache incorporated in a web server.


title: Web server

text: Dynamic content, output by an internal module or an external program, may not always change very frequently (given a unique URL with keys / parameters) and so, maybe for a while (e.g. from 1 second to several hours or more), the resulting output can be cached in RAM or even on a fast disk.


title: Web server

text: The typical usage of a dynamic cache is when a website has dynamic web pages about news, weather, images, maps, etc. that do not change frequently (e.g. every "n" minutes) and that are accessed by a huge number of clients per minute / hour; in those cases it is useful to return cached content too (without calling the internal module or the external program) because clients often do not have an updated copy of the requested content in their browser caches.


title: Web server

text: Anyway, in most cases those kind of caches are implemented by external servers (e.g. reverse proxy) or by storing dynamic data output in separate computers, managed by specific applications (e.g. memcached), in order to not compete for hardware resources (CPU, RAM, disks) with web server(s).


title: Web server

text: A web server software can be either incorporated into the OS and executed in kernel space, or it can be executed in user space (like other regular applications).


title: Web server

text: Web servers that run in kernel mode (usually called kernel space web servers) can have direct access to kernel resources and so they can be, in theory, faster than those running in user mode; anyway there are disadvantages in running a web server in kernel mode, e.g.: difficulties in developing (debugging) software whereas run-time critical errors may lead to serious problems in OS kernel.


title: Web server

text: Web servers that run in user-mode have to ask the system for permission to use more memory or more CPU resources. Not only do these requests to the kernel take time, but they might not always be satisfied because the system reserves resources for its own usage and has the responsibility to share hardware resources with all the other running applications. Executing in user mode can also mean using more buffer/data copies (between user-space and kernel-space) which can lead to a decrease in the performance of a user-mode web server.


title: Web server

text: Nowadays almost all web server software is executed in user mode (because many of the aforementioned small disadvantages have been overcome by faster hardware, new OS versions, much faster OS system calls and new optimized web server software). See also comparison of web server software to discover which of them run in kernel mode or in user mode (also referred as kernel space or user space).


title: Web server

text: To improve the user experience (on client / browser side), a web server should reply quickly (as soon as possible) to client requests; unless content response is throttled (by configuration) for some type of files (e.g. big or huge files), also returned data content should be sent as fast as possible (high transfer speed).


title: Web server

text: In other words, a web server should always be very responsive, even under high load of web traffic, in order to keep total user's wait (sum of browser time + network time + web server response time) for a response as low as possible.


title: Web server

text: For web server software, main key performance metrics (measured under vary operating conditions) usually are at least the following ones (i.e.):


title: Web server

text: Among the operating conditions, the (1 .. "n") of used during a test is an important parameter because it allows to correlate the supported by web server with results of the tested performance metrics.


title: Web server

text: ... used to implement a web server program, can bias a lot the performances and in particular the scalability level that can be achieved under heavy load or when using high end hardware (many CPUs, disks and lots of RAM).


title: Web server

text: In practice some web server software models may require more OS resources (specially more CPUs and more RAM) than others to be able to work well and so to achieve target performances.


title: Web server

text: There are many operating conditions that can affect the performances of a web server; performance values may vary depending on (i.e.):


title: Web server

text: A web server (program installation) usually has pre-defined load limits for each combination of operating conditions, also because it is limited by OS resources and because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and several tens of thousands for each active web server process, see also the C10k problem and the C10M problem).


title: Web server

text: When a web server is near to or over its load limits, it gets overloaded and so it may become unresponsive.


title: Web server

text: To partially overcome above average load limits and to prevent overload, most popular websites use common techniques like the following ones (e.g.).


title: Web server

text: Below are the latest statistics of the market share of all sites of the top web servers on the Internet by Netcraft.


title: Web server

text: NOTE: (*) percentage rounded to integer number, because its decimal values are not publicly reported by source page (only its rounded value is reported in graph).


title: Web server

text: A few other Web Server Interfaces (server or programming language specific) used for dynamic contents:


title: Social justice

text: Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets, and economic justice. Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity.


title: Social justice

text: Interpretations that relate justice to a reciprocal relationship to society are mediated by differences in cultural traditions, some of which emphasize the individual responsibility toward society and others the equilibrium between access to power and its responsible use. Hence, social justice is invoked today while reinterpreting historical figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas, in philosophical debates about differences among human beings, in efforts for gender, ethnic, and social equality, for advocating justice for migrants, prisoners, the environment, and the physically and developmentally disabled.


title: Social justice

text: While concepts of social justice can be found in classical and Christian philosophical sources, from Plato and Aristotle to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the term "social justice" finds its earliest uses in the late 18th century, albeit with unclear theoretical or practical meanings. The use of the term was early on subject to accusations of redundancy and of rhetorical flourish, perhaps but not necessarily related to amplifying one view of distributive justice. In the coining and definition of the term in the natural law social scientific treatise of Luigi Taparelli, in the early 1840s, Taparelli established the natural law principle that corresponded to the evangelical principle of brotherly love—i.e. social justice reflects the duty one has to one’s other self in the interdependent abstract unity of the human person in society. After the Revolutions of 1848 the term was popularized generically through the writings of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.


title: Social justice

text: In the late industrial revolution, Progressive Era American legal scholars began to use the term more, particularly Louis Brandeis and Roscoe Pound. From the early 20th century it was also embedded in international law and institutions; the preamble to establish the International Labour Organization recalled that "universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice." In the later 20th century, social justice was made central to the philosophy of the social contract, primarily by John Rawls in "A Theory of Justice" (1971). In 1993, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action treats social justice as a purpose of human rights education.


title: Social justice

text: The different concepts of justice, as discussed in ancient Western philosophy, were typically centered upon the community.


title: Social justice

text: After the Renaissance and Reformation, the modern concept of social justice, as developing human potential, began to emerge through the work of a series of authors. Baruch Spinoza in "On the Improvement of the Understanding" (1677) contended that the one true aim of life should be to acquire "a human character much more stable than [one's] own", and to achieve this "pitch of perfection... The chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the possession of the aforesaid character." During the enlightenment and responding to the French and American Revolutions, Thomas Paine similarly wrote in "The Rights of Man" (1792) society should give "genius a fair and universal chance" and so "the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward... all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions."


title: Social justice

text: Although there is no certainty about the first use of the term "social justice", early sources can be found in Europe in the 18th century. Some references to the use of the expression are in articles of journals aligned with the spirit of the Enlightenment, in which social justice is described as an obligation of the monarch; also the term is present in books written by Catholic Italian theologians, notably members of the Society of Jesus. Thus, according to this sources and the context, social justice was another term for "the justice of society", the justice that rules the relations among individuals in society, without any mention to socio-economic equity or human dignity.


title: Social justice

text: The usage of the term started to become more frequent by Catholic thinkers from the 1840s, beginning with the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in "Civiltà Cattolica", and based on the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. Taparelli argued that rival capitalist and socialist theories, based on subjective Cartesian thinking, undermined the unity of society present in Thomistic metaphysics as neither were sufficiently concerned with ethics. Writing in 1861, the influential British philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill stated in "Utilitarianism" his view that "Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge."


title: Social justice

text: In the later 19th and early 20th century, social justice became an important theme in American political and legal philosophy, particularly in the work of John Dewey, Roscoe Pound and Louis Brandeis. One of the prime concerns was the "Lochner era" decisions of the US Supreme Court to strike down legislation passed by state governments and the Federal government for social and economic improvement, such as the eight-hour day or the right to join a trade union. After the First World War, the founding document of the International Labour Organization took up the same terminology in its preamble, stating that "peace can be established only if it is based on social justice". From this point, the discussion of social justice entered into mainstream legal and academic discourse.


title: Social justice

text: In 1931, the Pope Pius XI explicitly referred to the expression, along with the concept of subsidiarity, for the first time in Catholic social teaching in the encyclical "Quadragesimo anno". Then again in "Divini Redemptoris", the church pointed out that the realization of social justice relied on the promotion of the dignity of human person. During the 1930s, the term was widely associated with pro-Nazi and antisemitic groups, such as the Christian Front. Social Justice was the slogan of Charles Coughlin, and the name of his newspaper. Because of the documented influence of "Divini Redemptoris" in its drafters, the Constitution of Ireland was the first one to establish the term as a principle of the economy in the State, and then other countries around the world did the same throughout the 20th century, even in socialist regimes such as the Cuban Constitution in 1976.


title: Social justice

text: In the late 20th century, several liberal and conservative thinkers, notably Friedrich Hayek rejected the concept by stating that it did not mean anything, or meant too many things. However the concept remained highly influential, particularly with its promotion by philosophers such as John Rawls. Even though the meaning of social justice varies, at least three common elements can be identified in the contemporary theories about it: a duty of the State to distribute certain vital means (such as economic, social, and cultural rights), the protection of human dignity, and affirmative actions to promote equal opportunities for everybody.


title: Social justice

text: Hunter Lewis' work promoting natural healthcare and sustainable economies advocates for conservation as a key premise in social justice. His manifesto on sustainability ties the continued thriving of human life to real conditions, the environment supporting that life, and associates injustice with the detrimental effects of unintended consequences of human actions. Quoting classical Greek thinkers like Epicurus on the good of pursuing happiness, Hunter also cites ornithologist, naturalist, and philosopher Alexander Skutch in his book Moral Foundations:


title: Social justice

text: Pope Benedict XVI cites Teilhard de Chardin in a vision of the cosmos as a 'living host' embracing an understanding of ecology that includes humanity's relationship to others, that pollution affects not just the natural world but interpersonal relations as well. Cosmic harmony, justice and peace are closely interrelated:


title: Social justice

text: In "The Quest for Cosmic Justice", Thomas Sowell writes that seeking utopia, while admirable, may have disastrous effects if done without strong consideration of the economic underpinnings that support contemporary society.


title: Social justice

text: Political philosopher John Rawls draws on the utilitarian insights of Bentham and Mill, the social contract ideas of John Locke, and the categorical imperative ideas of Kant. His first statement of principle was made in "A Theory of Justice" where he proposed that, "Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others." A deontological proposition that echoes Kant in framing the moral good of justice in absolutist terms. His views are definitively restated in "Political Liberalism" where society is seen "as a fair system of co-operation over time, from one generation to the next".


title: Social justice

text: All societies have a basic structure of social, economic, and political institutions, both formal and informal. In testing how well these elements fit and work together, Rawls based a key test of legitimacy on the theories of social contract. To determine whether any particular system of collectively enforced social arrangements is legitimate, he argued that one must look for agreement by the people who are subject to it, but not necessarily to an objective notion of justice based on coherent ideological grounding. Obviously, not every citizen can be asked to participate in a poll to determine his or her consent to every proposal in which some degree of coercion is involved, so one has to assume that all citizens are reasonable. Rawls constructed an argument for a two-stage process to determine a citizen's hypothetical agreement:


title: Social justice

text: This applies to one person who represents a small group (e.g., the organiser of a social event setting a dress code) as equally as it does to national governments, which are ultimate trustees, holding representative powers for the benefit of all citizens within their territorial boundaries. Governments that fail to provide for welfare of their citizens according to the principles of justice are not legitimate. To emphasise the general principle that justice should rise from the people and not be dictated by the law-making powers of governments, Rawls asserted that, "There is ... a general presumption against imposing legal and other restrictions on conduct without sufficient reason. But this presumption creates no special priority for any particular liberty." This is support for an unranked set of liberties that reasonable citizens in all states should respect and uphold — to some extent, the list proposed by Rawls matches the normative human rights that have international recognition and direct enforcement in some nation states where the citizens need encouragement to act in a way that fixes a greater degree of equality of outcome. According to Rawls, the basic liberties that every good society should guarantee are:


title: Social justice

text: Thomas Pogge's arguments pertain to a standard of social justice that creates human rights deficits. He assigns responsibility to those who actively cooperate in designing or imposing the social institution, that the order is foreseeable as harming the global poor and is reasonably avoidable. Pogge argues that social institutions have a negative duty to not harm the poor.


title: Social justice

text: Pogge speaks of "institutional cosmopolitanism" and assigns responsibility to institutional schemes for deficits of human rights. An example given is slavery and third parties. A third party should not recognize or enforce slavery. The institutional order should be held responsible only for deprivations of human rights that it establishes or authorizes. The current institutional design, he says, systematically harms developing economies by enabling corporate tax evasion, illicit financial flows, corruption, trafficking of people and weapons. Joshua Cohen disputes his claims based on the fact that some poor countries have done well with the current institutional design. Elizabeth Kahn argues that some of these responsibilities should apply globally.


title: Social justice

text: The United Nations calls social justice "an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations.


title: Social justice

text: The United Nations' 2006 document "Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations", states that "Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth..."


title: Social justice

text: The term "social justice" was seen by the U.N. "as a substitute for the protection of human rights [and] first appeared in United Nations texts during the second half of the 1960s. At the initiative of the Soviet Union, and with the support of developing countries, the term was used in the Declaration on Social Progress and Development, adopted in 1969."


title: Social justice

text: The same document reports, "From the comprehensive global perspective shaped by the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, neglect of the pursuit of social justice in all its dimensions translates into de facto acceptance of a future marred by violence, repression and chaos." The report concludes, "Social justice is not possible without strong and coherent redistributive policies conceived and implemented by public agencies."


title: Social justice

text: The same UN document offers a concise history: "[T]he notion of social justice is relatively new. None of history’s great philosophers—not Plato or Aristotle, or Confucius or Averroes, or even Rousseau or Kant—saw the need to consider justice or the redress of injustices from a social perspective. The concept first surfaced in Western thought and political language in the wake of the industrial revolution and the parallel development of the socialist doctrine. It emerged as an expression of protest against what was perceived as the capitalist exploitation of labor and as a focal point for the development of measures to improve the human condition. It was born as a revolutionary slogan embodying the ideals of progress and fraternity. Following the revolutions that shook Europe in the mid-1800s, social justice became a rallying cry for progressive thinkers and political activists... By the mid-twentieth century, the concept of social justice had become central to the ideologies and programs of virtually all the leftist and centrist political parties around the world..."


title: Social justice

text: Another key area of human rights and social justice is the United Nations's defense of children's rights worldwide. In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted and available for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25. According to OHCHR, this convention entered into force on 2 September 1990. This convention upholds that all states have the obligation to "protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse."


title: Social justice

text: "Time" magazine noted that younger Evangelicals also increasingly engage in social justice. John Stott traced the call for social justice back to the cross, "The cross is a revelation of God's justice as well as of his love. That is why the community of the cross should concern itself with social justice as well as with loving philanthropy."


title: Social justice

text: From its founding, Methodism was a Christian social justice movement. Under John Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social justice issues of the day, including the prison reform and abolition movements. Wesley himself was among the first to preach for slaves rights, attracting significant opposition.


title: Social justice

text: Today, social justice plays a major role in the United Methodist Church and the Free Methodist Church. The "Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church" says, "We hold governments responsible for the protection of the rights of the people to free and fair elections and to the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, communications media, and petition for redress of grievances without fear of reprisal; to the right to privacy; and to the guarantee of the rights to adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care." The United Methodist Church also teaches population control as part of its doctrine.


title: Social justice

text: Catholic social teaching consists of those aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine which relate to matters dealing with the respect of the individual human life. A distinctive feature of Catholic social doctrine is its concern for the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Two of the seven key areas of "Catholic social teaching" are pertinent to social justice:


title: Social justice

text: Modern Catholic social teaching is often thought to have begun with the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII.


title: Social justice

text: The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" (§§ 1928–1948) contains more detail of the church's view of social justice.


title: Social justice

text: In Muslim history, Islamic governance has often been associated with social justice. Establishment of social justice was one of the motivating factors of the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyads. The Shi'a believe that the return of the "Mahdi" will herald in "the messianic age of justice" and the Mahdi along with the Isa (Jesus) will end plunder, torture, oppression and discrimination.


title: Social justice

text: For the Muslim Brotherhood the implementation of social justice would require the rejection of consumerism and communism. The Brotherhood strongly affirmed the right to private property as well as differences in personal wealth due to factors such as hard work. However, the Brotherhood held Muslims had an obligation to assist those Muslims in need. It held that "zakat" (alms-giving) was not voluntary charity, but rather the poor had the right to assistance from the more fortunate. Most Islamic governments therefore enforce the "zakat" through taxes.


title: Social justice

text: In "To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility", Rabbi Jonathan Sacks states that social justice has a central place in Judaism. One of Judaism's most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility reflected in the concepts of simcha ("gladness" or "joy"), tzedakah ("the religious obligation to perform charity and philanthropic acts"), chesed ("deeds of kindness"), and tikkun olam ("repairing the world").


title: Social justice

text: The present-day Jāti hierarchy is undergoing changes for a variety of reasons including 'social justice', which is a politically popular stance in democratic India. Institutionalized affirmative action has promoted this. The disparity and wide inequalities in social behaviour of the jātis – exclusive, endogamous communities centred on traditional occupations – has led to various reform movements in Hinduism. While legally outlawed, the caste system remains strong in practice.


title: Social justice

text: The Chinese concept of Tian Ming has occasionally been perceived as an expression of social justice. Through it, the deposition of unfair rulers is justified in that civic dissatisfaction and economical disasters is perceived as Heaven withdrawing its favor from the Emperor. A successful rebellion is considered definite proof that the Emperor is unfit to rule.


title: Social justice

text: Social justice is also a concept that is used to describe the movement towards a socially just world, e.g., the Global Justice Movement. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality, and can be defined as ""the way in which human rights are manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society"".


title: Social justice

text: Several movements are working to achieve social justice in society. These movements are working toward the realization of a world where all members of a society, regardless of background or procedural justice, have basic human rights and equal access to the benefits of their society.


title: Social justice

text: Liberation theology is a movement in Christian theology which conveys the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions. It has been described by proponents as "an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor's suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor", and by detractors as Christianity perverted by Marxism and Communism.


title: Social justice

text: Although liberation theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s–1960s. It arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty caused by social injustice in that region. It achieved prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. The term was coined by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement's most famous books, "A Theology of Liberation" (1971). According to Sarah Kleeb, "Marx would surely take issue," she writes, "with the appropriation of his works in a religious context...there is no way to reconcile Marx's views of religion with those of Gutierrez, they are simply incompatible. Despite this, in terms of their understanding of the necessity of a just and righteous world, and the nearly inevitable obstructions along such a path, the two have much in common; and, particularly in the first edition of [A Theology of Liberation], the use of Marxian theory is quite evident."


title: Social justice

text: Other noted exponents are Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Carlos Mugica of Argentina, Jon Sobrino of El Salvador, and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay.


title: Social justice

text: Social justice has more recently made its way into the field of bioethics. Discussion involves topics such as affordable access to health care, especially for low-income households and families. The discussion also raises questions such as whether society should bear healthcare costs for low-income families, and whether the global marketplace is the best way to distribute healthcare. Ruth Faden of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and Madison Powers of Georgetown University focus their analysis of social justice on which inequalities matter the most. They develop a social justice theory that answers some of these questions in concrete settings.


title: Social justice

text: Social injustices occur when there is a preventable difference in health states among a population of people. These social injustices take the form of health inequities when negative health states such as malnourishment, and infectious diseases are more prevalent in impoverished nations. These negative health states can often be prevented by providing social and economic structures such as primary healthcare which ensures the general population has equal access to health care services regardless of income level, gender, education or any other stratifying factors. Integrating social justice with health inherently reflects the social determinants of health model without discounting the role of the bio-medical model.


title: Social justice

text: The sources of health inequalities are rooted in injustices associated with racism, sex discrimination, and social class. Richard Hofrichter and his colleagues examine the political implications of various perspectives used to explain health inequities and explore alternative strategies for eliminating them.


title: Social justice

text: The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action affirm that "Human rights education should include peace, democracy, development and social justice, as set forth in international and regional human rights instruments, to achieve common understanding and awareness to strengthen universal commitment to human rights."


title: Social justice

text: Social justice principles are embedded in the larger environmental movement. The third principle of the Earth Charter is social and economic justice, which is described as seeking to eradicate poverty as an ethical, social, and environmental imperative, ensure that economic activities and institutions at all levels promote human development in an equitable and sustainable manner, affirm gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development and ensure universal access to education, health care, and economic opportunity, and uphold the right of all, without discrimination, to a natural and social environment supportive of human dignity, bodily health, and spiritual well-being, with special attention to the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities.


title: Social justice

text: The climate justice and environmental justice movements also incorporate social justice principles, ideas, and practices. Climate justice and environmental justice, as movements within the larger ecological and environmental movement, each incorporate social justice in a particular way. Climate justice includes concern for social justice pertaining to greenhouse gas emissions, climate-induced environmental displacement, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation. Environmental justice includes concern for social justice pertaining to either environmental benefits or environmental pollution based on their equitable distribution across communities of color, communities of various socio and economic stratification, or any other barriers to justice.


title: Social justice

text: Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian School of economics rejected the very idea of social justice as meaningless, self-contradictory, and ideological, believing that to realize any degree of social justice is unfeasible, and that the attempt to do so must destroy all liberty:


title: Social justice

text: Hayek argued that proponents of social justice often present it as a moral virtue but most of their descriptions pertain to impersonal states of affairs (e.g. income inequality, poverty), which are cited as "social injustice." Hayek argued that social justice is either a virtue or it is not. If it is, it can only be ascribed to the actions of individuals. However, most who use the term ascribe it to social systems, so "social justice" in fact describes a regulative principle of order; they are interested not in virtue but power. For Hayek, this notion of social justices presupposes that people are guided by specific external directions rather than internal, personal rules of just conduct. It further presupposes that one can never be held accountable for ones own behaviour, as this would be "blaming the victim." According to Hayek, the function of social justice is to blame someone else, often attributed to "the system" or those who are supposed, mythically, to control it. Thus it is based on the appealing idea of "you suffer; your suffering is caused by powerful others; these oppressors must be destroyed."


title: Battle of Karbala

text: The Battle of Karbala () was fought on 10 October 680 (10 Muharram in the year 61 AH of the Islamic calendar) between the army of the second Umayyad Caliph Yazid I and a small army led by Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, at Karbala, Sawad (modern-day southern Iraq).


title: Battle of Karbala

text: Prior to his death, the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I had nominated his son Yazid as his successor. Yazid's nomination was contested by the sons of a few prominent companions of Muhammad, including Husayn, son of the fourth caliph Ali, and Abd Allah ibn Zubayr, son of Zubayr ibn al-Awwam. Upon Muawiyah's death in 680 CE, Yazid demanded allegiance from Husayn and other dissidents. Husayn did not give allegiance and traveled to Mecca. The people of Kufa, an Iraqi garrison town and the center of Ali's caliphate, were averse to the Syria-based Umayyad caliphs and had a long-standing attachment to the house of Ali. They proposed Husayn overthrow the Umayyads. On Husayn's way to Kufa with a retinue of about 70 men, his caravan was intercepted by a 1,000-strong army of the caliph at some distance from Kufa. He was forced to head north and encamp in the plain of Karbala on 2 October, where a larger Umayyad army of 4,000 arrived soon afterwards. Negotiations failed after the Umayyad governor Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad refused Husayn safe passage without submitting to his authority, a condition declined by Husayn. Battle ensued on 10 October during which Husayn was killed along with most of his relatives and companions, while his surviving family members were taken prisoner. The battle was followed by the Second Fitna, during which the Iraqis organized two separate campaigns to avenge the death of Husayn; the first one by the Tawwabin and the other one by Mukhtar al-Thaqafi and his supporters.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: The Battle of Karbala galvanized the development of the pro-Alid party ("Shi'at Ali") into a unique religious sect with its own rituals and collective memory. It has a central place in Shi'a history, tradition, and theology, and has frequently been recounted in Shi'a literature. For the Shi'a, Husayn's suffering and death became a symbol of sacrifice in the struggle for right against wrong, and for justice and truth against injustice and falsehood. It also provides the members of the Shi'a faith with a catalog of heroic norms. The battle is commemorated during an annual ten-day period during the Islamic month of Muharram by Shi'a, culminating on tenth day of the month, known as the Day of "Ashura". On this day, Shi'a Muslims mourn, hold public processions, organize religious gathering, beat their chests and in some cases self-flagellate. Sunni Muslims likewise regard the incident as a historical tragedy; Husayn and his companions are widely regarded as martyrs by both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: After the third caliph Uthman's assassination by rebels in 656, the rebels and the townspeople of Medina declared Ali, a cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, caliph. Some of Muhammad's companions including Talha ibn Ubayd Allah, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (then governor of Syria), and Muhammad's widow A'isha, refused to recognize Ali. They called for revenge against Uthman's killers and the election of a new caliph through "shura" (consultation). These events precipitated the First Fitna (First Muslim Civil War). When Ali was assassinated by Abd-al-Rahman ibn Muljam, a Kharijite, in 661, his eldest son Hasan succeeded him but soon signed a peace treaty with Mu'awiya to avoid further bloodshed. In the treaty, Hasan was to hand over power to Mu'awiya on the condition that Mu'awiya be a just ruler and that he would not establish a dynasty. After the death of Hasan in 670, his younger brother Husayn became the head of the Banu Hashim clan to which the Islamic prophet Muhammad also belonged. Though his father's supporters in Kufa gave him their allegiance, he would abide to the peace treaty between Hasan and Mu'awiya as long as the latter was alive.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: The Battle of Karbala occurred within the crisis resulting from the succession of Yazid I. In 676, Mu'awiya nominated his son Yazid as successor, a move labelled by the historian Wilferd Madelung as breach of the Hasan–Muawiya treaty. With no precedence in Islamic history, hereditary succession aroused opposition from several quarters. Mu'awiya summoned a "shura", or consultative assembly, in Damascus and persuaded representatives from many provinces to agree to his plan by diplomacy and bribes. He then ordered Marwan ibn al-Hakam, then the governor of Medina, where Husayn and several other influential Muslims resided, to announce the decision. Marwan faced resistance to this announcement, especially from Husayn, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Abd Allah ibn Umar and Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, the sons of Muhammad's prominent companions, all of whom, by virtue of their descent, could also lay claim to the caliphal title. Mu'awiya went to Medina and pressed the four dissenters to accede. He followed and threatened some of them with death, but they still refused to support him. Nonetheless, Mu'awiya convinced the people of Mecca that the four had pledged their allegiance, and received allegiance from them for Yazid. On his return to Damascus, he secured allegiance from the people of Medina as well. There was no further overt protest against the plan for Yazid's succession. According to the historians Fitzpatrick and Walker, Yazid's succession, which was considered as an "anomaly in Islamic history", transformed the government from a "consultative" form to a monarchy. Before his death in April 680, Mu'awiya cautioned Yazid that Husayn and Ibn al-Zubayr might challenge his rule and instructed him to defeat them if they did. Yazid was further advised to treat Husayn with caution and not to spill his blood, since he was the grandson of Muhammad.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: On his succession, Yazid charged the governor of Medina, Walid ibn Utba ibn Abu Sufyan, to secure allegiance from Husayn, Ibn al-Zubayr and Abd Allah ibn Umar, with force if necessary. Walid sought the advice of his Umayyad relative Marwan ibn al-Hakam, who suggested that Ibn al-Zubayr and Husayn should be forced to pledge allegiance as they were dangerous, while Ibn Umar should be left alone since he posed no threat. Walid summoned the two, but Ibn al-Zubayr escaped to Mecca. Husayn answered the summons but declined to pledge allegiance in the secretive environment of the meeting, suggesting it should be done in public. Marwan told Walid to imprison or behead him, but due to Husayn's kinship with Muhammad, Walid was unwilling to take any action against him. A few days later, Husayn left for Mecca without acknowledging Yazid. He arrived in Mecca at the beginning of May 680, and stayed there until the beginning of September.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: Husayn had considerable support in Kufa, which had been the caliphal capital during the reigns of his father and brother. The Kufans had fought the Umayyads and their Syrian allies during the First Fitna, the five-year civil war which had established the Umayyad Caliphate. They were dissatisfied with Hasan's abdication and strongly resented Umayyad rule. While in Mecca, Husayn received letters from pro-Alids in Kufa informing him that they were tired of the Umayyad rule, which they considered to be oppressive, and that they had no rightful leader. They asked him to lead them in revolt against Yazid, promising to remove the Umayyad governor if Husayn would consent to aid them. Husayn wrote back affirmatively that a rightful leader is the one who acts according to the Qur'an and promised to lead them with the right guidance. Then he sent his cousin Muslim ibn Aqil to assess the situation in Kufa. Ibn Aqil attracted widespread support and informed Husayn of the situation, suggesting that he join them there. Yazid removed Nu'man ibn Bashir al-Ansari as governor of Kufa due to his inaction, and installed Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, then governor of Basra, in his place. As a result of Ibn Ziyad's suppression and political maneuvering, Ibn Aqil's following began to dissipate and he was forced to declare the revolt prematurely. It was defeated and Ibn Aqil was killed. Husayn had also sent a messenger to Basra, another garrison town in Iraq, but the messenger could not attract any following and was quickly apprehended and executed.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: Husayn was unaware of the change of political circumstances in Kufa and decided to depart. Abd Allah ibn Abbas and Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr advised him not to move to Iraq, or if he was determined, not to take women and children with him. The sincerity of Ibn al-Zubayr's advice has been doubted by many historians, however, as he had his own plans for leadership and was supposedly happy to be rid of Husayn. Nevertheless, he offered Husayn support if he would stay in Mecca and lead the opposition to Yazid from there. Husayn refused this, citing his abhorrence of bloodshed in the sanctuary, and decided to go ahead with his plan.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: Husayn left Mecca with some fifty men and his family on 9 September 680 (8 Dhu al-Hijjah 60 AH), a day before Hajj. He took the northerly route through the Arabian Desert. On persuasion of Husayn's cousin Abd Allah ibn Ja'far, the governor of Mecca Amr ibn Sa'id sent his brother and Ibn Ja'far after Husayn in order to assure him safety in Mecca and bring him back. Husayn refused to return, relating that Muhammad had ordered him in a dream to move forward irrespective of the consequences. At a place known as Tan'im, he seized a caravan carrying dyeing plants and clothes sent by the governor of Yemen to Yazid. Further on the way, at a place called Tha'labiyya, the small caravan received the news of the execution of Ibn Aqil and the indifference of the people of Kufa. Husayn at this point is reported to have considered turning back, but was persuaded to push forward by Ibn Aqil's brothers, who wanted to avenge his death; according to Madelung and I. K. A. Howard, these reports are doubtful. Later, at Zubala, Husayn learned of the capture and execution of his messenger Qays ibn Musahir al-Saydawi, whom he had sent from the Hejaz (western Arabia) to Kufa to announce his arrival. He informed his followers of the situation and asked them to leave. Most of the people who had joined him on the way left, while his companions from Mecca decided to stay with him.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: Ibn Ziyad had stationed troops on the routes into Kufa. Husayn and his followers were intercepted by the vanguard of Yazid's army, about 1,000 men led by Hurr ibn Yazid al-Tamimi, south of Kufa near Qadisiyya. Husayn said to them: I did not come to you until your letters were brought to me, and your messengers came to me saying, 'Come to us, for we have no imām. God may unite us in the truth through you.' Since this was your view, I have come to you. Therefore, if you give me what you guaranteed in your covenants and sworn testimonies, I will come to your town. If you will not and are averse to my coming, I will leave you for the place from which I came to you. He then showed them the letters he had received from the Kufans, including some in Hurr's force. Hurr denied any knowledge of the letters and stated that Husayn must go with him to Ibn Ziyad, which Husayn refused to do. Hurr responded that he would not allow Husayn to either enter Kufa or go back to Medina, but that he was free to travel anywhere else he wished. Nevertheless, he did not prevent four Kufans from joining Husayn. Husayn's caravan started to move towards Qadisiyya, and Hurr followed them. At Naynawa, Hurr received orders from Ibn Ziyad to force Husayn's caravan to halt in a desolate place without fortifications or water. One of Husayn's companions suggested that they attack Hurr and move to the fortified village of al-Aqr. Husayn refused, stating that he did not want to start the hostilities. On 2 October 680 (2 Muharram 61 AH), Husayn arrived at Karbala, a desert plain north of Kufa, and set up camp.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: On the following day, a 4,000-strong Kufan army arrived under the command of Umar ibn Sa'd. He had been appointed governor of Rayy to suppress a local rebellion, but then recalled to confront Husayn. Initially, he was unwilling to fight Husayn, but complied following Ibn Ziyad's threat to revoke his governorship. After negotiations with Husayn, Ibn Sa'd wrote to Ibn Ziyad that Husayn was willing to return. Ibn Ziyad replied that Husayn must surrender or he should be subdued by force, and that to compel him, he and his companions should be denied access to the Euphrates river. Ibn Sa'd stationed 500 horsemen on the route leading to the river. Husayn and his companions remained without water for three days before a group of fifty men led by his half-brother Abbas was able to access the river. They could only fill twenty water-skins.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: Husayn and Ibn Sa'd met during the night to negotiate a settlement; it was rumored that Husayn made three proposals: either he be allowed to return to Medina, submit to Yazid directly, or be sent to a border post where he would fight alongside the Muslim armies. According to Madelung, these reports are probably untrue as Husayn at this stage is unlikely to have considered submitting to Yazid. A "mawla" of Husayn's wife later claimed that Husayn had suggested that he be allowed to leave, so that all parties could allow the fluid political situation to clarify. Ibn Sa'd sent the proposal, whatever it was, to Ibn Ziyad, who is reported to have accepted but then persuaded otherwise by Shemr ibn Ziljawshan. Shemr argued that Husayn was in his domain and letting him go would be to demonstrate weakness. Ibn Ziyad then sent Shemr with orders to ask Husayn for his allegiance once more and to attack, kill and disfigure him if he was to refuse, as "a rebel, a seditious person, a brigand, an oppressor and he was to do no further harm after his death". If Ibn Sa'd was unwilling to carry out the attack, he was instructed to hand over command to Shemr. Ibn Sa'd cursed Shemr and accused him of foiling his attempts to reach a peaceful settlement but agreed to carry out the orders. He remarked that Husayn would not submit because there was "a proud soul in him".


title: Battle of Karbala

text: The army advanced toward Husayn's camp on the evening of 9 October. Husayn sent Abbas to ask Ibn Sa'd to wait until the next morning, so that they could consider the matter. Ibn Sa'd agreed to this respite. Husayn told his men that they were all free to leave, with his family, under the cover of night, since their opponents only wanted him. Very few availed themselves of this opportunity. Defense arrangements were made: tents were brought together and tied to one another and a ditch was dug behind the tents and filled with wood ready to be set alight in case of attack. Husayn and his followers then spent the rest of the night praying.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: After the morning prayer on 10 October, both parties took up battle positions. Husayn appointed Zuhayr ibn Qayn to command the right flank of his army, Habib ibn Muzahir to command the left flank, and his half-brother Abbas as the standard bearer. Husayn's companions, according to most accounts, numbered thirty-two horsemen and forty infantrymen; although forty-five horsemen and one hundred foot-soldiers, or a total of a few hundred men have been reported by some sources. Ibn Sa'd's army totaled 4,000. According to the Shi'a sources, however, more troops had joined Ibn Sa'd in preceding days, swelling his army to 30,000 strong. The ditch containing wood were set alight. Husayn then delivered a speech to his opponents reminding them of his status as Muhammad's grandson and reproaching them for inviting and then abandoning him. He asked to be allowed to leave. He was told that first he had to submit to Yazid's authority, which he refused to do. Husayn's speech moved Al-Hurr ibn Yazid Al-Tamimi to defect to his side.


title: Battle of Karbala

text: After Husayn's speech, Zuhayr ibn Qayn attempted to dissuade Ibn Sa'd's soldiers from killing Husayn, but in vain. Ibn Sa'd's army fired several volleys of arrows. This was followed by duels in which several of Husayn's companions were slain. The right wing of the Kufans, led by Amr ibn al-Hajjaj, attacked Husayn's force, but was repulsed. Hand-to-hand fighting paused and further volleys of arrows were exchanged. Shemr, who commanded the left wing of the Umayyad army, launched an attack, but after losses on both sides he was repulsed. This was followed by cavalry attacks. Husayn's cavalry resisted fiercely and Ibn Sa'd brought in armoured cavalry and five hundred archers. After their horses were wounded by arrows, Husayn's cavalrymen dismounted and fought on foot.