title: Alawites

text: In older sources, Alawis are often called "Ansaris". According to Samuel Lyde, who lived among the Alawites during the mid-19th century, this was a term they used among themselves. Other sources indicate that "Ansari" is simply a Western error in the transliteration of "Nusayri". However, the term "Nusayri" had fallen out of currency by the 1920s, as a movement led by intellectuals within the community during the French Mandate sought to replace it with the modern term "Alawi".


title: Alawites

text: They characterised the older name (which implied "a separate ethnic and religious identity") as an "invention of the sect's enemies", ostensibly favouring an emphasis on "connection with mainstream Islam"—particularly the Shia branch. As such, "Nusayri" is now generally regarded as antiquated, and has even come to have insulting and abusive connotations. The term is frequently employed as hate speech by Sunni fundamentalists fighting against Bashar al-Assad's government in the Syrian civil war, who use its emphasis on Ibn Nusayr in order to insinuate that Alawi beliefs are "man-made" and not divinely inspired.


title: Alawites

text: Recent research has shown that the Alawi appellation was used by the sect's adherents since the 11th century. The following quote from Alkan (2012) illustrates this point: "In actual fact, the name 'Alawī' appears as early as in an 11th century Nuṣayrī tract (…). Moreover, the term 'Alawī' was already used at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1903 the Belgian-born Jesuit and Orientalist Henri Lammens (d. 1937) visited a certain Ḥaydarī-Nuṣayrī sheikh Abdullah in a village near Antakya and mentions that the latter preferred the name 'Alawī' for his people. Lastly, it is interesting to note that in the above-mentioned petitions of 1892 and 1909 the Nuṣayrīs called themselves the 'Arab Alawī people' (ʿArab ʿAlevī ṭāʾifesi) 'our ʿAlawī Nuṣayrī people' (ṭāʾifatunā al-Nuṣayriyya al-ʿAlawiyya) or 'signed with Alawī people' (ʿAlevī ṭāʾifesi imżāsıyla). This early self-designation is, in my opinion, of triple importance. Firstly, it shows that the word 'Alawī' was always used by these people, as ʿAlawī authors emphasize; secondly, it hints at the reformation of the Nuṣayrīs, launched by some of their sheikhs in the 19th century and their attempt to be accepted as part of Islam; and thirdly, it challenges the claims that the change of the identity and name from 'Nuṣayrī' to 'ʿAlawī' took place around 1920, in the beginning of the French mandate in Syria (1919–1938)."


title: Alawites

text: The Alawites are distinct from the "Alevi" religious sect in Turkey, although the terms share a common etymology and pronunciation.


title: Alawites

text: The origin of the genetics of Alawites is disputed. Local folklore suggests that they are descendants of the followers of the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askari (d. 873) and his pupil, Ibn Nusayr (d. 868). During the 19th and 20th centuries, some Western scholars believed that Alawites were descended from ancient Middle Eastern peoples such as the Arameans, Canaanites, Hittites, and Mardaites. Many prominent Alawite tribes are also descended from 13th century settlers from Sinjar.


title: Alawites

text: The "Tetrarchy of the Nazerini" refers to the western region, between the Orontes and the sea, which consists of a small mountain range called An-Nusayriyah Mountains bordered with a valley running from south-east to north-west known as "Al-Ghab plain"; the region was populated by a portion of Syrians, who were called Nazerini. However, scholars are reluctant to link between Nazerini and Nazarenes. Yet, the term "Nazerini" can be possibly connected to words which include the Semitic triliteral root "n-ṣ-r" such as the subject "naṣer" in Eastern Aramaic which means ""keeper of wellness"".


title: Alawites

text: Ibn Nusayr and his followers are considered the founders of the religion. After the death of the Eleventh Imam, al-Askari, problems emerged in the Shia Community concerning his succession, and then Ibn Nusayr claimed to be the Bab and Ism of the deceased Imam and that he received his secret teachings. Ibn Nusayr and his followers development seems to be one of many other early ghulat mystical Islamic sects, and were apparently excommunicated by the Shia representatives of the 12th Hidden Imam.


title: Alawites

text: The Alawites were later organised during Hamdanid rule in northern Syria (947–1008) by a follower of Muhammad ibn Nusayr known as al-Khaṣībī, who died in Aleppo about 969, after a rivalry with the Ishaqiyya sect, which claimed also to have the doctrine of Ibn Nusayr. The embrace of Alawism by the majority of the population in the Syrian coastal mountains was likely a protracted process occurring over several centuries. Modern research indicates that after its initial establishment in Aleppo, Alawism spread to Sarmin, Salamiyah, Homs and Hama before becoming concentrated in low-lying villages west of Hama, including Baarin, Deir Shamil, and Deir Mama, the Wadi al-Uyun valley, and in the mountains around Tartus and Safita.


title: Alawites

text: In 1032, al-Khaṣībī's grandson and pupil, Abu Sa'id Maymun al-Tabarani (d. 1034), moved to Latakia (then controlled by the Byzantine Empire). Al-Tabarani succeeded his mentor al-Jilli of Aleppo as head missionary in Syria and became "the last definitive scholar of Alawism", founding its calendar and giving Alawite teachings their final form, according to the historian Stefan Winter. Al-Tabarani influenced the Alawite faith through his writings and by converting the rural population of the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range. Winter argues that while it is likely the Alawite presence in Latakia dates to Tabarani's lifetime, it is unclear if Alawite teachings spread to the city's mountainous hinterland, where the Muslim population generally leaned toward Shia Islam, in the eleventh century. In the early part of the century, the Jabal al-Rawadif (part of the Syrian Coastal Mountains around Latakia) were controlled by the local Arab chieftain Nasr ibn Mushraf al-Rudafi, who vacillated between alliance and conflict with Byzantium. There is nothing in the literary sources indicating al-Rudafi patronized the Alawites. To the south of Jabal al-Rawadif, in the Jabal Bahra, a 13th-century Alawite treatise mentions the sect was sponsored by the Banu'l-Ahmar, Banu'l-Arid, and Banu Muhriz, three local families who controlled fortresses in the region in the 11th and 12th centuries. From this southern part of the Syrian coastal mountain range, a significant Alawite presence developed in the mountains east of Latakia and Jableh during the Mamluk period (1260s—1516).


title: Alawites

text: According to Bar Hebraeus, many Alawites were killed when the Crusaders initially entered Syria in 1097; however, they tolerated them when they concluded they were not a truly Islamic sect. They even incorporated them within their ranks, along with the Maronites and Turcopoles. Two prominent Alawite leaders in the following centuries, credited with uplifting the group, were Shaykhs al-Makzun (d. 1240) and al-Tubani (d. 1300), both originally from Mount Sinjar in modern Iraq.


title: Alawites

text: In the 14th century, the Alawites were forced by Mamluk sultan Baibars to build mosques in their settlements, to which they responded with token gestures described by the Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta.


title: Alawites

text: During the reign of Sultan Selim I, of the Ottoman Empire, the Alawites would again experience significant persecution; especially in Aleppo when a massacre occurred in the Great Mosque of Aleppo on 24 April 1517. The massacre was known as the "Massacre of the Telal" () in which the corpses of thousands of victims accumulated as a tell located west of the castle. The horrors of the massacre which caused the immigration of the survivors to the coastal region are documented at the National and University Library in Strasbourg, the manuscript is reserved as a letter sent by an Ottoman commander to Sultan Selim I:


title: Alawites

text: The Ottoman Empire took aggressive actions against Alawites, due to their alleged “treacherous activities” as “they had long history of betraying the Muslim governments due to their mistrust towards Sunnis.” The Alawis rose up against the Ottomans on several occasions, and maintained their autonomy in their mountains.


title: Alawites

text: During the 18th century, the Ottomans employed a number of Alawite leaders as tax collectors under the "iltizam" system. Between 1809 and 1813, Mustafa Agha Barbar, the governor of Tripoli, attacked the Kalbiyya Alawites with "marked savagery." Some Alawites supported Ottoman involvement in the Egyptian-Ottoman Wars of 1831–1833 and 1839–1841, and had careers in the Ottoman army or as Ottoman governors. Moreover, they even initiated the Alawite revolt (1834–35) against the Egyptian rule of the region, which was later suppressed by the Governor of Homs.


title: Alawites

text: By the mid-19th century, the Alawite people, customs and way of life were described by Samuel Lyde, an English missionary among them, as suffering from nothing except a gloomy plight. The 19th century historian Elias Saleh described the Alawites as living in a "state of ignorance" and having the negative traits of "laziness, lying, deceitfulness, inclination to robbery and bloodshed, and backstabbing". By the 1870s, Alawite bandits were impaled on spikes and left on crossroads as a warning, according to the historian Joshua Landis.


title: Alawites

text: Early in the 20th century, the mainly-Sunni Ottoman leaders were bankrupt and losing political power; the Alawites were poor peasants.


title: Alawites

text: After the end of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Syria and Lebanon were placed by the League of Nations under the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. On 15 December 1918, Alawite leader Saleh al-Ali called for a meeting of Alawite leaders in the town of Al-Shaykh Badr, urging them to revolt and expel the French from Syria.


title: Alawites

text: When French authorities heard about the meeting, they sent a force to arrest Saleh al-Ali. He and his men ambushed and defeated the French forces at Al-Shaykh Badr, inflicting more than 35 casualties. After this victory, al-Ali began organising his Alawite rebels into a disciplined force, with its own general command and military ranks.


title: Alawites

text: The Al-Shaykh Badr skirmish began the Syrian Revolt of 1919. Al-Ali responded to French attacks by laying siege to (and occupying) al-Qadmus, from which the French had conducted their military operations against him. In November, General Henri Gouraud mounted a campaign against Saleh al-Ali's forces in the An-Nusayriyah Mountains. His forces entered al-Ali's village of Al-Shaykh Badr, arresting many Alawi leaders; however, Al-Ali fled to the north. When a large French force overran his positions, he went underground.


title: Alawites

text: Despite these instances of opposition, the Alawites mostly favoured French rule and sought its continuation beyond the mandate period.


title: Alawites

text: When the French began to occupy Syria in 1920, an Alawite State was created in the coastal and mountain country comprising most Alawite villages; the French justified this by citing differences between the "backwards" mountain people and the mainstream Sunnis. The division also intended to protect the Alawite people from more-powerful majorities, such as the Sunnis.


title: Alawites

text: The French also created microstates, such as Greater Lebanon for the Maronite Christians and Jabal al-Druze for the Druze. Aleppo and Damascus were also separate states. Under the Mandate, many Alawite chieftains supported a separate Alawite nation, and tried to convert their autonomy into independence.


title: Alawites

text: The French Mandate Administration encouraged Alawites to join their military forces, in part to provide a counterweight to the Sunni majority (which was more hostile to their rule). According to a 1935 letter by the French minister of war, the French considered the Alawites and the Druze the only "warlike races" in the Mandate territories. Between 1926 and 1939, the Alawites and other minority groups provided the majority of the locally recruited component of the Army of the Levant - the designation given to the French military forces garrisoning Syria and the Lebanon.


title: Alawites

text: The region was home to a mostly-rural, heterogeneous population. The landowning families and 80 percent of the population of the port city of Latakia were Sunni Muslim; however, in rural areas 62 percent of the population were Alawite peasants. According to some researchers, there was considerable Alawite separatist sentiment in the region, their evidence is a 1936 letter signed by 80 Alawi leaders addressed to the French Prime Minister which said that the "Alawite people rejected attachment to Syria and wished to stay under French protection". Among the signatories was Sulayman Ali al-Assad, father of Hafez al-Assad. However, according to associate professor Stefan Winter, this letter is a forgery. Even during this time of increased Alawite rights, the situation was still so bad for the group that many women had to leave their homes to work for urban Sunnis.


title: Alawites

text: In May 1930, the Alawite State was renamed the Government of Latakia in one of the few concessions by the French to Arab nationalists before 1936. Nevertheless, on 3 December 1936 the Alawite State was re-incorporated into Syria as a concession by the French to the National Bloc (the party in power in the semi-autonomous Syrian government). The law went into effect in 1937.


title: Alawites

text: In 1939, the Sanjak of Alexandretta (now Hatay) contained a large number of Alawites. The Hatayan land was given to Turkey by the French after a League of Nations plebiscite in the province. This development greatly angered most Syrians; to add to Alawi contempt, in 1938, the Turkish military went into İskenderun and expelled most of the Arab and Armenian population. Before this, the Alawite Arabs and Armenians comprised most of the province's population. Zaki al-Arsuzi, a young Alawite leader from Iskandarun province in the Sanjak of Alexandretta who led the resistance to the province's annexation by the Turks, later became a co-founder of the Ba'ath Party with Eastern Orthodox Christian schoolteacher Michel Aflaq and Sunni politician Salah ad-Din al-Bitar.


title: Alawites

text: After World War II, Sulayman al-Murshid played a major role in uniting the Alawite province with Syria. He was executed by the Syrian government in Damascus on 12 December 1946, only three days after a political trial.


title: Alawites

text: Syria became independent on 17 April 1946. In 1949, after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Syria experienced a number of military coups and the rise of the Ba'ath Party.


title: Alawites

text: In 1958, Syria and Egypt were united by a political agreement into the United Arab Republic. The UAR lasted for three years, breaking apart in 1961, when a group of army officers seized power and declared Syria independent.


title: Alawites

text: A succession of coups ensued until, in 1963, a secretive military committee (including Alawite officers Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid) helped the Ba'ath Party seize power. In 1966, Alawite-affiliated military officers successfully rebelled and expelled the Ba’ath Party old guard followers of Greek Orthodox Christian Michel Aflaq and Sunni Muslim Salah ad-Din al-Bitar, calling Zaki al-Arsuzi the "Socrates" of the reconstituted Ba'ath Party.


title: Alawites

text: In 1970, Air Force General Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite, took power and instigated a "Corrective Movement" in the Ba'ath Party. The coup of 1970 ended the political instability which had existed since independence. Robert D. Kaplan compared Hafez al-Assad's coming to power to "an untouchable becoming maharajah in India or a Jew becoming tsar in Russia—an unprecedented development shocking to the Sunni majority population which had monopolized power for so many centuries". In 1971, al-Assad declared himself president of Syria, a position the constitution at the time permitted only for Sunni Muslims. In 1973, a new constitution was adopted, replacing Islam as the state religion with a mandate that the president's religion be Islam, and protests erupted. In 1974, to satisfy this constitutional requirement, Musa as-Sadr (a leader of the Twelvers of Lebanon and founder of the Amal Movement, who had unsuccessfully sought to unite Lebanese Alawites and Shiites under the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council) issued a fatwa that Alawites were a community of Twelver Shiite Muslims. Under the authoritarian, secular, Assad government, religious minorities were tolerated more than before, but political dissidents were not. In 1982, when the Muslim Brotherhood mounted an anti-government Islamist insurgency, Hafez Assad staged a military offensive against them known as the Hama massacre.


title: Alawites

text: During the Syrian Civil War, many pro-opposition pundits believe the Alawites have suffered as a result of their support for the Assad government against the mainly Sunni opposition, with one journalist claiming up to a third of young Alawite men killed in the increasingly sectarian conflict. Some have claimed many Alawites fear a negative outcome for the government in the conflict would result in an existential threat to their community. In May 2013, pro opposition SOHR stated that out of 94,000 Syrian regime soldiers killed during the war, at least 41,000 were Alawites. In April 2017, a pro-opposition source claimed 150,000 young Alawites had died. However, these claims by pro-opposition pundits and sources have been considered highly exaggerated, unsubstantiated (statistically or scientifically), among neutral observers across the globe.


title: Alawites

text: The Alawites faced during the Syrian Civil War; particularly from Islamic groups who were a part of the opposition, though often denied by secular oppositionists.


title: Alawites

text: In 2022, a professor in the opposition-founded Idlib University (internationally unrecognized) performed a speech in which he expressed negative views on the ethnoreligious minority saying "the Alawite sect has only been able to produce violent mercenaries", claiming there are no scientists or intellectuals descending from the minority. Notably, Uğur Şahin; descending from an Alawite family from the city of Iskenderun in which the ethnoreligious group has a significant presence, has been internationally accredited for being the developer of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 and the CEO of BioNTech.


title: Alawites

text: (Yaron Friedman, for example, in his scholarly work on the sect, has written that the Alawi religious material quoted in his book came only from "public libraries and printed books" since the "sacred writings" of the Alawi "are kept secret"); some tenets of the faith are kept secret from most Alawi and known only to a select few, they have therefore been described as a mystical sect. Alawite doctrines originated from the teachings of Iraqi priest Muhammad ibn Nusayr who claimed Prophethood and declared himself as the ""Bab" (door) of the Imams" and attributed Divinity to Hasan al-Askari. Al-Askari denounced Ibn Nusayr and Islamic authorities expelled his disciples, most of whom emigrated to the Coastal Moutains of Syria wherein they established a distinct community.


title: Alawites

text: Alawite beliefs have never been confirmed by their modern religious authorities. Alawites tend to conceal their beliefs ("taqiyya") due to historical persecution.


title: Alawites

text: Alawite doctrine incorporates elements of Pheonician mythology, Gnosticism, neo-Platonism, Christian Trinitarianism (for example, they celebrate Mass including the consecration of bread and wine); blending them with Islamic themes and has, therefore, been described as syncretic.


title: Alawites

text: Alawite Trinity envisions God as being composed of three distinct manifestations, "Ma'na" (meaning), "Ism" (Name) and "Bab" (Door); which together constitute an "indivisible Trinity". "Ma'na" symbolises the "source and meaning of all things" in Alawite mythology. According to Alawite doctrines, "Ma'na" generated the "Ism", which in turn built the "Bab". These beliefs are closely tied to the Alawite doctrine of re-incarnations of the Trinity.


title: Alawites

text: "The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World" classifies Alawites as part of extremist Shia sects referred to as the "ghulat" which are unrelated to Sunni Islam; owing to the secretive nature of the Alawite religious system and heirarchy. Due to their esoteric doctrines of strict secrecy, conversions into the community were also forbidden.


title: Alawites

text: Alawites hold that they were originally stars or divine lights that were cast out of heaven through disobedience and must undergo repeated reincarnation (or metempsychosis) before returning to heaven.


title: Alawites

text: Alawites divide history into seven eras, associating each era with one of the seven re-incarnations of the Alawite Trinity ("Ma'na", "Ism", "Bab"). The seven re-incarnations of the Trinity in the Alawite faith consists of:


title: Alawites

text: The last triad of re-incarnations in the Nusayri Trinity consists of Ali ("Ma'na"), Muhammad ("Ism") and Salman al-Farsi ("Bab"). Alawites depict them as the sky, the sun and the moon respectively. They deify Ali as the "last and supreme manifestation of God" who built the universe, attributing him with divine superiority and believe that Ali created Muhammad, bestowing upon him the mission to spread Qur'anic teachings on earth.


title: Alawites

text: Israeli Begin–Sadat Center for Strategic Studies describes the Alawite faith as Judeophilic and "anti-Sunni" since they believe that God's incarnations consist of Israelite Prophet Joshua who conquered Canaan, in addition to the fourth Caliph, Ali. Furthermore, Alawites consider themselves to be an ethno-religious group of independent ancestral lineage distinct from the Arabs.


title: Alawites

text: Other beliefs and practices include: the consecration of wine in a secret form of Mass performed only by males; frequently being given Christian names; entombing the dead in sarcophagi above ground; observing Epiphany, Christmas and the feast days of John Chrysostom and Mary Magdalene; the only religious structures they have are the shrines of tombs; the book "Kitab al-Majmu", which is allegedly a central source of Alawite doctrine, where they have their own trinity, comprising Mohammed, Ali, and Salman the Persian.


title: Alawites

text: In addition, they celebrate different holidays such as Old New Year, Akitu, Eid al-Ghadir, Mid-Sha'ban and Eid il-Burbara. They also believe in intercession of certain legendary saints such as Khidr (Saint George) and Simeon Stylites.


title: Alawites

text: Yaron Friedman and many researchers of Alawi doctrine write that the founder of the religion, Ibn Nusayr, did not necessarily believe he was representative of a splinter, rebel group of the Shias, but rather believed he held the true doctrine of the Shias, and most of the aspects that are similar to Christianity are considered more a coincidence and not a direct influence from it, as well as other external doctrines that were actually popular among Shia esoteric groups in Basra in the 8th century. According to Friedman and other scholars, the Alawi movement started as many other mystical ghulat sects with an explicit concentration on an allegorical and esoteric meaning of the Quran and other mystical practices, and not as a pure syncretic sect, though later, they embraced some other practices as they believed all religions had the same "Batin" core.


title: Alawites

text: Journalist Robert F. Worth argues that the idea that the Alawi religion as a branch of Islam is a rewriting of history made necessary by the French colonialists' abandonment of the Alawi and departure from Syria. Worth describes the "first ... authentic source for outsiders about the religion" (written by Soleyman of Adana – a 19th-century Alawi convert to Christianity who broke his oath of secrecy on the religion) explaining that the Alawi (according to Soleyman) deified Ali, venerated Christ, Muhammad, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, and held themselves apart from Muslims and Christians, whom they considered heretics.


title: Alawites

text: According to a disputed letter, in 1936, six Alawi notables petitioned the French colonialists not to merge their Alawi enclave with the rest of Syria, insisting that "the spirit of hatred and fanaticism embedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non-Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion". However, according to associate professor Stefan Winter, this letter is a forgery. According to Worth, later "fatwas" declaring Alawi to be part of the Shia community were by Shia clerics "eager for Syrian patronage" from Syria's Alawi president Hafez al-Assad, who was eager for Islamic legitimacy in the face of the hostility of Syria's Muslim majority.


title: Alawites

text: According to Peter Theo Curtis, the Alawi religion underwent a process of "Sunnification" during the years under Hafez Al Assad's rule, so that Alawites became not Shia, but effectively Sunni. Public manifestation or "even mentioning of any Alawite religious activities" was banned, as were any Alawite religious organizations or "any formation of a unified religious council" or a higher Alawite religious authority. "Sunni-style" mosques were built in every Alawite village, and Alawi were encouraged to perform Hajj.


title: Alawites

text: The Sunni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, issued a "fatwa" recognizing them as part of the Muslim community in the interest of Arab nationalism. However, other Sunni scholars such as the Syrian historian Ibn Kathir have categorised Alawites as non-Muslim and mushrikeen (polytheists), in their writings; with Ibn Taymiyya arguably being the most virulent anti-Alawite in his fatwas, accusing them of aiding the Crusader and Mongol enemies of the Muslims. Other Sunni scholars, such as Al-Ghazali, also considered them as non-Muslims. Benjamin Disraeli, in his novel "Tancred", also expressed the view that Alawites are not Shia Muslims.


title: Alawites

text: Historically, Twelver Shia scholars (such as Shaykh Tusi) did not consider Alawites as Shia Muslims while condemning their heretical beliefs. Ibn Taymiyyah also said that Alawites are not Muslims.


title: Alawites

text: In 2016, according to several international media reports, an unspecified number of Alawite community leaders released a "Declaration of an Alawite Identity Reform" (of the Alawite community). The manifesto presents Alawism a current "within Islam" and rejects attempts to incorporate the Alawite community into Twelver Shiism. The document was interpreted as an attempt by representatives of the Alawite community to overcome the sectarian polarisation and to distance themselves from the growing Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East.


title: Alawites

text: The Christian elements in the Nusayri religion are unmistakable. They include the concept of trinity; the celebration of Christmas, the consecration of the Qurbana, that is, the sacrament of the flesh and blood which Christ offered to his disciples, and, most important, the celebration of the Quddas (a lengthy prayer proclaiming the divine attributes of Ali and the personification of all the biblical patriarchs from Adam to Simon Peter, founder of the Church, who is seen, paradoxically, as the embodiment of true Islam).


title: Alawites

text: Barry Rubin has suggested that Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad and his son and successor Bashar al-Assad pressed their fellow Alawites "to behave like 'regular Muslims', shedding (or at least concealing) their distinctive aspects". During the early 1970s, a booklet, "al-'Alawiyyun Shi'atu Ahl al-Bait" ("The Alawites are Followers of the Household of the Prophet") was published, which was "signed by numerous 'Alawi' men of religion", described the doctrines of the Imami Shia as Alawite. Additionally, there has been a recent movement to unite Alawism and the other branches of Twelver Islam through educational exchange programs in Syria and Qom.


title: Alawites

text: Some sources have discussed the "Sunnification" of Alawites under the al-Assad regime. Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies, writes that Hafiz al-Assad "tried to turn Alawites into 'good' (read Sunnified) Muslims in exchange for preserving a modicum of secularism and tolerance in society". On the other hand, Al-Assad "declared the Alawites to be nothing but Twelver Shiites". In a paper, "Islamic Education in Syria", Landis wrote that "no mention" is made in Syrian textbooks (controlled by the Al-Assad regime) of Alawites, Druze, Ismailis or Shia Islam; Islam was presented as a monolithic religion.


title: Alawites

text: Alawites have traditionally lived in the Coastal Mountain Range, along the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Latakia and Tartus are the region's principal cities. They are also concentrated in the plains around Hama and Homs. Alawites also live in Syria's major cities, and are estimated at 11 percent of the country's population


title: Alawites

text: There are four Alawite confederations — Kalbiyya, Khaiyatin, Haddadin, and Matawirah – each divided into tribes based on their geographical origins or their main religious leader, such as Ḥaidarīya of Alī Ḥaidar, and Kalāziyya of Sheikh Muḥammad ibn Yūnus from the village Kalāzū near Antakya. Those Alawites are concentrated in the Latakia region of Syria, extending north to Antioch (Antakya), Turkey, and in and around Homs and Hama.


title: Alawites

text: Before 1953, Alawites held specifically reserved seats in the Syrian Parliament, in common with all other religious communities. After that (including the 1960 census), there were only general Muslim and Christian categories, without mention of subgroups, to reduce sectarianism ("taifiyya").


title: Alawites

text: To avoid confusion with the ethnic-Turkish and Kurdish Alevis, the Alawites call themselves "Arap Alevileri" ("Arab Alevis") in Turkish. The term "Nusayrī", previously used in theological texts, has been revived in recent studies. In Çukurova, Alawites are known as "Fellah" and "Arabuşağı" (although the latter is considered offensive) by the Sunni population. A quasi-official name used during the 1930s by Turkish authorities was "Eti Türkleri" ("Hittite Turks"), to conceal their Arabic origins. Although this term is obsolete, it is still used by some older people as a euphemism.


title: Alawites

text: In 1939, the Alawites accounted for some 40 percent of the population of the province of Iskenderun. According to French geographer Fabrice Balanche, relations between the Alawites of Turkey and the Alawites of Syria are limited. Community ties were broken by the Turkification policy and the decades-long closure of the Syria-Turkey border.


title: Alawites

text: The exact number of Alawites in Turkey is unknown; there were 185,000 in 1970. As Muslims, they are not recorded separately from Sunnis. In the 1965 census (the last Turkish census where informants were asked their mother tongue), 185,000 people in the three provinces declared their mother tongue as Arabic; however, Arabic-speaking Sunnis and Christians were also included in this figure. Turkish Alawites traditionally speak the same dialect of Levantine Arabic as Syrian Alawites. Arabic is preserved in rural communities and in Samandağ. Younger people in the cities of Çukurova and İskenderun tend to speak Turkish. The Turkish spoken by Alawites is distinguished by its accents and vocabulary. Knowledge of the Arabic alphabet is confined to religious leaders and men who have worked or studied in Arab countries.


title: Alawites

text: Alawites demonstrate considerable social mobility. Until the 1960s, they were bound to Sunni "aghas" (landholders) around Antakya and were poor. Alawites are prominent in the sectors of transportation and commerce and a large, professional middle class has emerged. Male exogamy has increased, particularly by those who attend universities or live in other parts of Turkey. These marriages are tolerated; however, female exogamy (as in other patrilineal groups) is discouraged.


title: Alawites

text: Alawites, like Alevis, have strong leftist political beliefs. However, some people in rural areas (usually members of notable Alawite families) may support secular, conservative parties such as the Democratic Party. Most Alawites feel oppressed by the policies of the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Turkey ("Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı").


title: Alawites

text: There are an estimated 40,000 Alawites in Lebanon, where they have lived since at least the 16th century. They are one of the 18 official Lebanese sects; due to the efforts of their leader, Ali Eid, the Taif Agreement of 1989 gave them two reserved seats in Parliament. Lebanese Alawites live primarily in the Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood of Tripoli and in 10 villages in the Akkar District, and are represented by the Arab Democratic Party. Their Mufti is Sheikh Assad Assi. The Bab al-Tabbaneh–Jabal Mohsen conflict between pro-Syrian Alawites and anti-Syrian Sunnis has affected Tripoli for decades.


title: Alawites

text: There are also about 3,900 Alawites living in the village of Ghajar, which is located on the border between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In 1932, the residents of Ghajar were given the option of choosing their nationality, and overwhelmingly chose to be a part of Syria, which has a sizable Alawite minority. Before the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the residents of Ghajar were counted in the 1960 Syrian census. According to Joshua Project, after Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, and after implementing Israeli civil law in 1981, the Alawite community chose to become Israeli citizens. However, according to Al-Marsad, Alawites were forced to undergo a process of naturalisation.


title: Alawites

text: Alawites in Syria speak a special dialect (part of Levantine Arabic) famous for the usage of letter (qāf), but this feature is also shared with neighboring non-Alawites villages such as Idlib. Due to foreign occupation of Syria, the same dialect is characterized by multiple borrowings, mainly from Turkish and then French, especially terms used for imported inventions such as television, radio, elevator (ascenseur), etc.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Pornography addiction is the controversial application of an addiction model to the use of pornography. Pornography may be part of compulsive sexual behavior with negative consequences to one's physical, mental, social, or financial well-being. While the World Health Organization's ICD-11 (2022) has recognized compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD) as an "impulsive control disorder", CSBD is not an addiction, and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 (2013) and the DSM-5-TR (2022) do not classify compulsive pornography consumption as a mental disorder or a behavioral addiction.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Problematic Internet pornography viewing is viewing of Internet pornography that is problematic for an individual due to personal or social reasons, including the excessive time spent viewing pornography instead of interacting with others and the facilitation of procrastination. Individuals may report depression, social isolation, career loss, decreased productivity, or financial consequences as a result of their excessive Internet pornography viewing impeding their social life.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Universally accepted diagnostic criteria do not exist for pornography addiction or problematic pornography viewing. Pornography addiction is often defined operationally by the frequency of pornography viewing and negative consequences. The only diagnostic criteria for a behavioral addiction in the current "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" are for pathological gambling, and they are similar to those for substance abuse and dependence, such as preoccupation with the behavior, diminished ability to control the behavior, tolerance, withdrawal, and adverse psychosocial consequences. Diagnostic criteria have been proposed for other behavioral addictions, and these are usually also based on established diagnoses for substance abuse and dependence.


title: Pornography addiction

text: A proposed diagnosis for hypersexual disorder includes pornography as a subtype of this disorder. It included such criteria as time consumed by sexual activity interfering with obligations, repetitive engagement in sexual activity in response to stress, repeated failed attempts to reduce these behaviors, and distress or impairment of life functioning. A study on problematic Internet pornography viewing used the criteria of viewing Internet pornography more than three times a week during some weeks, and viewing causing difficulty in general life functioning.


title: Pornography addiction

text: According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, some psychological and behavioral changes characteristic of addiction brain changes include addictive cravings, impulsiveness, weakened executive function, desensitization, and dysphoria. BOLD fMRI results have shown that individuals diagnosed with compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) show enhanced cue reactivity in brain regions associated traditionally with drug-cue reactivity. These regions include the amygdala and the ventral striatum. Men without CSB who had a long history of viewing pornography exhibited a less intense response to pornographic images in the left ventral putamen, possibly suggestive of desensitization. ASAMs position is inconsistent with the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, who cite lack of strong evidence for such classification, describing ASAM as not informed by "accurate human sexuality knowledge".


title: Pornography addiction

text: Neuropsychopharmacological and psychological researches on pornography addiction conducted between 2015 and 2021 have concluded that most studies have been focused entirely or almost exclusively on men in anonymous settings, and the findings are contradicting. Some researchers support the idea that pornography addiction qualifies as a form of behavioral addiction into the umbrella construct of hypersexual behavior and/or a subset of compulsive sexual behavior (CSB), and should be treated as such, whereas others have detected the increased activation of ventral striatal reactivity in men for cues predicting erotic but not monetary rewards and cues signaling erotic pictures, therefore suggesting similarities between pornography addiction and conventional addiction disorders.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Despite the fact that pornography is being highly spuriously indicted as a public health crisis in the United States and elsewhere, with problematic Internet and online pornography use reported to constitute an increasing burden in public mental health since the 2000s, psychopathological models and diagnostic criteria have lacked consensus, and the body of evidence on the effectiveness of therapeutic approaches is still scarce.


title: Pornography addiction

text: The status of pornography addiction as an addictive disorder, rather than simply a compulsivity, has been hotly contested. Furthermore, research suggests that the use of a pornography addiction label may indicate a socially (as opposed to clinically) driven nosology


title: Pornography addiction

text: In November 2016, the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) issued a position statement on sex/porn addiction which states that AASECT "does not find sufficient empirical evidence to support the classification of sex addiction or porn addiction as a mental health disorder, and does not find the sexual addiction training and treatment methods and educational pedagogies to be adequately informed by accurate human sexuality knowledge. Therefore, it is the position of AASECT that linking problems related to sexual urges, thoughts or behaviors to a porn/sexual addiction process cannot be advanced by AASECT as a standard of practice for sexuality education delivery, counseling or therapy."


title: Pornography addiction

text: The "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-5) includes a new section for behavioral addictions, but includes only one disorder: pathological gambling. One other behavioral addiction, internet gaming disorder, appears in the conditions proposed for further study in DSM-5. Psychiatrists cited a lack of research support for refusing to include other behavioral disorders at this time, a decision that has been criticized by some as being “inconsistent”.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Porn addiction is not a diagnosis in DSM-5 (or any previous version). "Viewing pornography online" is mentioned verbatim in the DSM-5, but it is not considered a mental disorder either.


title: Pornography addiction

text: A number of studies have found neurological markers of addiction in internet porn users, which is consistent with a large body of research finding similar markers in other kinds of problematic internet users. Yet other studies found that critical biomarkers of addiction were missing, and most addiction biomarkers have never been demonstrated for pornography.


title: Pornography addiction

text: The International Classification of Disorders 11 (ICD-11) rejected "pornography addiction". Specifically, the World Health Organization (WHO) wrote: "Based on the limited current data, it would therefore seem premature to include [Internet use] in ICD-11."


title: Pornography addiction

text: However, ICD-11 does include the "Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder" (CSBD) in the "impulse control disorders" section. It is defined as "a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour." David J. Ley argued that that is not an endorsement of the concept of pornography addiction.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Introductory psychology textbook authors Coon, Mitterer and Martini, passingly mentioning NoFap, speak of pornography as a "supernormal stimulus" but use the model of compulsion rather than addiction. Addiction and compulsion are models of mental disorders which cancel each other out, the term "addiction" being deprecated, anyway ICD-11 does not support the existence of "porn addiction"/"sex addiction". While it has not been proven that either porn or masturbation addiction exist, porn or masturbation compulsion probably exist.


title: Pornography addiction

text: The role pornography watching plays in the development of children and youth is basically unknown, due to a lack of empirical studies. There are considerable ethical problems with performing such research. Since those problems are a huge obstacle, it is likely that such research will not be allowed, thus possibly it could never be known. Rory Reid (UCLA) declared "Universities don't want their name on the front page of a newspaper for an unethical study exposing minors to porn."


title: Pornography addiction

text: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022, does not recognize a diagnosis of sexual addiction/compulsion (which would include internet pornography viewing).


title: Pornography addiction

text: ICD-11 has added pornography to CSBD. However, this is categorized as an impulse control disorder, not an addictive disorder. It has been argued that the CSBD diagnosis is not based upon sex research.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been suggested as a possible effective treatment for pornography addiction based on its success with internet addicts, though no clinical trials have been performed to assess effectiveness among pornography addicts as of 2012. Acceptance and commitment therapy has also been shown to be a potentially effective treatment for problematic internet pornography viewing.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Some clinicians and support organizations recommend voluntary use of Internet content-control software, internet monitoring, or both, to manage online pornography use. A content analysis of the major mobile app stores found that pornography-blocking apps were the most frequently downloaded type of app for managing pornography use. Sex researcher Alvin Cooper and colleagues suggested several reasons for using filters as a therapeutic measure, including curbing accessibility that facilitates problematic behavior and encouraging clients to develop coping and relapse prevention strategies. Cognitive therapist Mary Anne Layden suggested that filters may be useful in maintaining environmental control. Internet behavior researcher David Delmonico stated that, despite their limitations, filters may serve as a "frontline of protection."


title: Pornography addiction

text: Studies of those with non-paraphilic expressions of hypersexuality have hypothesized that various mood disorders, as defined in the DSM, may occur more frequently in sexually compulsive men.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Compulsive sexual behavior has been treated with antidepressants including SSRIs and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. Naltrexone, a medication used to inhibit reward mechanisms in opiate or alcohol addictions, other mood-stabilizers, and anti-androgens.


title: Pornography addiction

text: There is only one representative sample (published in 2017) to date concerning distress about sex video use. They found that of 10,131 women surveyed, 0.5% of women agreed with the statement that they were "addicted" to pornography; 1.2% (of 4,218 who viewed) when limited to women who say they viewed sex films. The comparable figure limiting to men who view sex films was 4.4%. This was without any clinical screening that should eliminate primary disorders (e.g., depression) or religious-based concerns, so these should be considered high-end estimates for potential disorders, if any exist.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Most studies of rates use a convenience sample. One study of a convenience sample of 9,265 people found that 1% of Internet users have concerns about their Internet use and 17% of users meet criteria for problematic sexual compulsivity, meaning they score above one standard deviation of the mean on the Kalichman Sexual Compulsivity Scale. A survey of 84 college-age males found that 2060% of a sample of college-age males who use pornography found it to be problematic. Research on internet addiction disorder indicates rates may range from 1.5 to 8.2% in Europeans and Americans.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Several support groups have been founded over the years for people who wish to quit pornography use and/or believe to be addicted to pornography. Twelve-step programs such as Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA), Sexaholics Anonymous (SA), Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA), Sexual Recovery Anonymous (SRA), and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous (SCA) are fellowships of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other so they may overcome their common problem and help others recover from addiction or dependency, by using the twelve-step program borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other recovery tools.


title: Pornography addiction

text: NoFap is website and community forum founded in 2011 that serves as a support group for those who wish to give up pornography and masturbation. It serves as a support group for those who wish to avoid the use of pornography, masturbation, and/or sexual intercourse. Recent peer-reviewed data highlighted considerable levels of misogyny along with a poor understanding of human sexuality and relationships within this online community. "The Daily Dot" and "Der Spiegel" linked NoFap to recent gender-based murders and breeding domestic terrorism.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Fight the New Drug, a Salt Lake City-based non-profit organization, is a non-religious and non-legislative organization which seeks to inform and educate individuals regarding pornography usage with science and personal stories. It is aimed at the youth demographic to raise awareness of potential problems with pornography. There is also a PornFree reddit group which focuses on giving up porn rather than masturbation.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Celebrate Recovery is a Christian inter-denominational twelve-step program with about 35,000 available groups and is open to any person who is struggling with life's bad habits, hurts, and hang-ups. Celebrate Recovery was started in 1991 at Saddleback Church in California, and their program is based on the Beatitudes from the biblical Sermon on the Plain and the twelve-step program from Alcoholics Anonymous.


title: Pornography addiction

text: According to professor E. T. M. Laan, a sexologist working for the Academic Medical Center, it is usually the American religious right which claims the existence of pornography addiction and such claims are rare (scarce) among sexologists. A 2018 meta-analysis showed a correlation between a person being religious and perceiving themself as having a pornography addiction, possibly due to people using pornography despite their religion prohibiting it.


title: Pornography addiction

text: According to "Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants" (2019) written by Samuel L. Perry, assistant professor of Sociology and Religious studies at the University of Oklahoma, Conservative Protestants in the United States are characterized by a "sexual exceptionalism" related to their consumption of pornography due to certain pervasive beliefs within the Conservative Protestant subculture, which entails cognitive dissonance associated with the unfounded conviction to be addicted to pornography, psychological distress, and intense feelings of guilt, shame, self-loathing, depression, and sometimes withdrawal from faith altogether.


title: Pornography addiction

text: Perry's book received widespread media coverage and his findings were criticized by Lyman Stone of the Evangelical magazine "Christianity Today", which asserted that both the quantitative and qualitative statistical data collected by Perry demonstrate that the consumption of pornography in the United States is significantly lower among church-attending Protestant Christians compared to other religious groups, and declared that "Protestant men today who attend church regularly are basically the only men in America still resisting the cultural norm of regularized pornography use".


title: Pornography addiction

text: The overwhelming majority of all websites and YouTube channels devoted to anti-masturbation and anti-porn addiction propaganda, channels and websites supporting NoFap included, are, according to various sources, owned by far-right Christian fundamentalists and conservative biblical inerrantists, and also are entirely political in nature. Various psychologists, medical doctors, and social scientists noticed that the traditional Christian obsession with combating sexual thoughts, desires, and activities, including masturbation, is unhealthy and unwholesome, and this also applies to secular advocacy of anti-pornography and anti-masturbation, including 16 U.S. states' legislatures which have declared that pornography is a "public health crisis".


title: Pornography addiction

text: The American Psychiatric Association had by then already dismissed such moral panic ("political stunt") in DSM-5 (published in 2013), and DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022, does not recognize a diagnosis of sexual addiction (which would include internet pornography viewing).


title: Pornography addiction

text: Emily F. Rothman, Professor of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, stated in 2021 that "the professional public health community is not behind the recent push to declare pornography a public health crisis".


title: Pornography addiction

text: In 2013, American actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed, and starred in the comedy-drama film "Don Jon", in which the protagonist is addicted to pornography. In an interview to promote the film, Gordon-Levitt discussed what he referred to as the "fundamental difference between a human being and an image on a screen".


title: Pornography addiction

text: In 2014, American actor Terry Crews talked about his long-standing pornography addiction, which he said had seriously affected his marriage and life and which he was able to overcome only after entering rehab in 2009. He now takes an active role in speaking out about pornography addiction and its impact.


title: Pornography addiction

text: In 2015, English comedian Russell Brand appeared in videos by American anti-pornography group Fight the New Drug, in which he discussed pornography and its harmful effects. Later that year, American actress Rashida Jones produced the documentary "Hot Girls Wanted", which gave an in-depth look into the exploitation of women in the pornography industry.


title: Pornography addiction

text: In 2016, American comedian Chris Rock and his wife Malaak Compton divorced after 20 years of marriage, which Rock attributed to his infidelity and pornography addiction. He later discussed the details of his pornography addiction in his 2018 stand-up comedy special "".


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: Martha Marcy May Marlene is a 2011 American psychological thriller-drama film written and directed by Sean Durkin, and starring Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, and Hugh Dancy. The plot focuses on a young woman suffering from delusions and paranoia after returning to her family from an abusive cult in the Catskill Mountains.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: A 22-year-old woman named Martha has been living as a member of a cult in the Catskill Mountains for some time. The leader of the cult, Patrick, granted her the name Marcy May upon her initiation. Eventually, she decides to flee and escapes into the woods, arriving at a nearby town. In a diner restaurant, she is confronted by Watts, a cult member, who attempts to persuade her to return, but when she refuses, he lets her leave. Martha calls her sister Lucy, who picks her up and takes her to the vacation lake house in Connecticut that she shares with her husband, a successful and wealthy architect named Ted.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: While staying with Lucy and Ted at the lake house, Martha begins exhibiting strange behavior by skinny dipping in a public lake, sleeping all the time, not eating, and arguing with her sister and brother-in-law about how to live, specifically arguing over the need for career and possessions. Lucy reveals she abandoned Martha and is now attempting to get her back into her life, while she and Ted are also trying to have their own child. One night, Martha climbs into bed with Ted and Lucy while they are having sex, angering Ted. Martha then attempts to phone the cult, but hangs up when one of the female members answers using the code name "Marlene Lewis".


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: In flashbacks, Martha recalls a series of disturbing events that led to her escape the cult: Martha became an actual member through her friend, Zoe, that was also part of the cult. Upon her integration, she was drugged and raped by Patrick in an initiation ritual, which she later facilitated for other incoming female members. Patrick would later urge her to kill a cat, which she refused to do. She subsequently began participating in burglaries with the other cultists, including one where they murdered a homeowner who walked in on them. After witnessing the murder, Martha had a mental breakdown before Patrick forcefully subdued her and berated her for her failing to follow the cult's ideals.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: Lucy and Ted host a party at their home, inviting numerous friends from the city. Martha is visibly nervous during the gathering and has a psychotic episode when she misidentifies the bartender as a cult member, and needs to be sedated. Ted attempts to convince Lucy to send Martha to a psychiatric hospital, an idea Lucy rejects.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: Later that night, Martha has a nightmare, concerning her moments with Patrick, and suffers a panic attack. Ted tries to calm her down, but Martha kicks him down the staircase. Lucy threatens to send Martha to a psychiatric hospital, to which Martha angrily responds that Lucy will be a terrible mother. The next day, Lucy and Martha somewhat reconcile, and Martha goes swimming. She sees a man watching her across the shore and leaves the water. When Martha departs the house with Lucy and Ted, she looks behind from the backseat of the car as another driver follows them.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: Sean Durkin started writing script of "Martha Marcy May Marlene" in 2007. When researching his script, Durkin read about what he calls "the big ones" of cults: Jonestown, the Manson family, the Unification Church of the United States and David Koresh. He realised he wanted to make something more experiential than political and downplayed the ideology and goals of the cult.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: While researching, Durkin became fascinated by how someone gets into the farm or commune or group, and made a short film of the name "Mary Last Seen" about it starring Brady Corbet, who plays cult recruiter Watts in both the short and feature films. "Mary Last Seen" won the award for best short film at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival Directors' Fortnight. While "Mary Last Seen" was about how someone gets into the cult, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" was about what happens to someone when they get out of it. Durkin made the short to show the world Martha was in, and also with the intent to send it out with the script for "Martha Marcy May Marlene" to potential investors. "Mary Last Seen" was selected for the Sundance Film Festival, and Durkin was given a distribution deal with Fox Searchlight.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: Durkin and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes were inspired by the films "Rosemary's Baby", "3 Women", "Klute", "Interiors", and "Margot at the Wedding". The look of the film was particularly inspired by the last film.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: Elizabeth Olsen admitted that her nude scenes were a bit odd to film, but said that simply diving into the water was far more perilous than taking her clothes off in front of a camera because "The lake was daunting", so "Some lake scenes we could only shoot once, because it was physically too cold for a body to be in there very long."


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: "Martha Marcy May Marlene" premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in January, with Durkin winning the festival's U.S. Directing Award for Best Drama. It also screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2011. The film received a limited release in the United States on October 21, 2011.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: In its opening weekend in limited release, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" grossed $137,651 in the United States. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released "Martha Marcy May Marlene" on DVD and Blu-ray on February 21, 2012.


title: Martha Marcy May Marlene

text: "Martha Marcy May Marlene" received highly positive reviews, with Olsen's performance as the traumatized Martha met with critical acclaim; the film holds a 90% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus capsule stating, "Led by a mesmerizing debut performance from Elizabeth Olsen, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is a distinctive, haunting psychological drama." On Metacritic the film has a 75 out of 100 score on 39 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Christy Lemire of the Associated Press named "Martha Marcy May Marlene" the best film of 2011. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, describing Olsen as "a genuine discovery ... She has a wide range of emotions to deal with here, and in her first major role, she seems instinctively to know how to do that." Ebert's only major complaint was that the movie's chronological shifts were "a shade too clever. In a serious film, there is no payoff for trickery." In contrast, Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" felt that the flashbacks were "cleverly and indirectly" structured throughout the film, and ultimately rated it with four stars out of five.


title: BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century

text: The 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century is a list compiled in August 2016 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), chosen by a voting poll of 177 film critics from around the world.


text: It was compiled by collating the top ten films submitted by the critics who were asked to list the best films released since the year 2000.


text: BBC Culture asked 177 film critics from around the world to rank the ten films produced in the twenty-first century that they considered the greatest. Participants were permitted to choose from titles released between January 2000 to June 2016 (when all responses were collected). Each film listed in these responses was then given points based on their ranking. If a film was ranked first in a critic's list, that film would get ten points, whereas the one ranked in tenth place would get one point. The list features 102 titles because of a tie between "Carlos", "Requiem for a Dream", and "Toni Erdmann" for the 100th place ranking. With three films apiece, directors Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Haneke, and the Coen brothers have the most titles on the list. "Spirited Away" was the highest ranked animated film at #4, whilst "In the Mood for Love" was the highest ranked foreign-language film at #2 and "Children of Men" at #13 was the top film with British production input (the BBC being a British company). Only four films who have won the Academy Award for Best Picture including "No Country for Old Men" (2007), "The Hurt Locker" (2009), "12 Years a Slave" (2013), and "Spotlight" (2015).


text: A total of 177 critics from 36 countries participated in the poll, with the largest number (81) from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom. Out of the 177, 122 are men and fifty-five are women. Most participants are newspaper/magazine film reviewers, Internet film reviewers, academics, and cinema curators.


title: Get Back

text: "Get Back" is a song recorded by the British rock band the Beatles and Billy Preston, and written by Paul McCartney though credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. It was originally released as a single on 11 April 1969 and credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston". The album version of this song contains a different mix that features a studio chat between Paul McCartney and John Lennon at the beginning which lasts for 20 seconds before the song begins, also omitting the coda featured in the single version. This version became the closing track of "Let It Be" (1970), which was released just after the group split up. The single version was later issued on the compilation albums "1967–1970", "20 Greatest Hits", "Past Masters", and "1".


title: Get Back

text: The single reached number one in the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia, France, West Germany, Mexico, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium. It was the Beatles' only single that credited another artist at their request. "Get Back" was the Beatles' first single release in true stereo in the US. In the UK, the Beatles' singles remained monaural until the following release, "The Ballad of John and Yoko". It was also the only Beatles single to debut on the UK singles charts at number one.


title: Get Back

text: "Get Back" is unusual in the Beatles' canon in that almost every moment of the song's evolution has been documented, from its beginning as an offhand riff to its final mixing in several versions. That is covered in bootleg recordings, books, the 1970 documentary "Let It Be", and the 2021 Peter Jackson-directed documentary "".


title: Get Back

text: The song's melody grew out of some unstructured jamming on 7 January 1969, during rehearsal sessions on the sound stage at Twickenham Studios. After working out the rhythm and harmony of the primary riff on his Höfner bass, McCartney introduced some of the lyrics, reworking "Get back to the place you should be" from fellow Beatle George Harrison's "Sour Milk Sea" into "Get back to where you once belonged". McCartney had played bass on Jackie Lomax's recording of "Sour Milk Sea" a few months earlier. On 9 January, McCartney brought a more developed version of "Get Back" to the group, with the "Sweet Loretta" verse close to its finished version. For the press release to promote the "Get Back" single, McCartney wrote, "We were sitting in the studio and we made it up out of thin air ... we started to write words there and then ... when we finished it, we recorded it at Apple Studios and made it into a song to roller-coast by."


title: Get Back

text: At the beginning of the "Let It Be" version of the song, Lennon can be heard jokingly saying "Sweet Loretta Fart (often misheard as "fat", due to Lennon's pronunciation), she thought she was a cleaner, but she was a frying pan." The album version of the song also ends with Lennon famously quipping "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition". (He had said that at the end of their 30 January 1969 rooftop concert on the roof of Apple Studios, but Phil Spector edited it into the studio version of "Get Back" that was released on the "Let It Be" album.)


title: Get Back

text: In an interview in "Playboy" magazine in 1980, Lennon described "Get Back" as "... a better version of 'Lady Madonna'. You know, a potboiler rewrite". Lennon also said that "there's some underlying thing about Yoko in there", saying that McCartney looked at Yoko Ono in the studio every time he sang "Get back to where you once belonged."


title: Get Back

text: When McCartney introduced the song to the group during the Twickenham rehearsals, the lyrics were mostly incomplete except for the "Get Back" chorus. McCartney improvised various temporary lyrics leading to what has become known in Beatles' folklore as the "No Pakistanis" version. This version parodied the anti-immigrant views of Enoch Powell, a Member of Parliament (MP) whose racially charged speeches, particularly the Rivers of Blood speech, had recently gained much media attention. The lyrics addressed attitudes toward immigrants in the United States and the United Kingdom: "... don't need no Puerto Ricans living in the USA"; and "don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs", though these lyrics were meant to be a parody and a criticism of those prejudiced against immigrants. Later during the same session, the subject of immigration came up again in an improvised jam that has become known as "Commonwealth". The lyrics included a line "You'd better get back to your Commonwealth homes".


title: Get Back

text: On 23 January, the group (now in Apple Studios) tried to record the song properly; bootleg recordings preserve a conversation between McCartney and Harrison between takes discussing the song, and McCartney explaining the original "protest song" concept. The recording captures the group deciding to drop the third verse largely because McCartney does not feel the verse is of high enough quality, although he likes the scansion of the word "Pakistani". Here the song solidifies in its two-verse, three-solo format.


title: Get Back

text: Billy Preston, an old friend of the Beatles, was in England for some television appearances. He joined the Beatles on keyboards from 22 January. The group, with Preston playing Fender Rhodes electric piano, recorded about ten takes on 23 January. They made a concerted effort to perfect "Get Back" on 27 January, recording about 14 takes. By this time the song had the addition of a false ending and reprise coda. After numerous takes, the band jammed some old numbers and then returned to "Get Back" one last time in an attempt to record the master take. This performance (Take 11) was considered to be the best yet: it was musically tight and punchy without mistakes, though the song finishes without the restart. On the session tape, George Harrison comments "we missed that end"; this is the version heard on the "Let It Be... Naked" album. On 28 January the group attempted to recapture the previous day's performance and recorded several new takes, each including the coda. Whilst these takes were good, they did not quite achieve the quality of the best take from the previous day. The line-up for the released versions of "Get Back" was Paul McCartney, lead vocal and bass; John Lennon, lead guitar and backing vocal; George Harrison, rhythm guitar; Ringo Starr, drums; and Billy Preston, electric piano. Harrison, the usual lead guitarist, had temporarily quit the group on 10 January, so Lennon worked out the lead guitar part himself and played it on the recordings.


title: Get Back

text: The Beatles had EMI produce a mono remix of the track on 4 April, completed by Jeff Jarrett. The Beatles were unhappy with the mix and on 7 April McCartney and Glyn Johns worked at Olympic Studios to produce new remixes for the single release. They made an edited version using the best take of the main part of the song (Take 11) from 27 January and the 'best coda' ending from 28 January. The edit is so precise that it appears to be a continuous take, achieving the ending the Beatles had desired all along. This was a divergence from the concept of straight live performance without studio trickery, but a relatively minor one, and avoids the somewhat abrupt ending of the version that is used on the "Let It Be... Naked" album.


title: Get Back

text: The Beatles performed "Get Back" (along with other songs from the album) as part of The Beatles' rooftop performance, which took place on the roof of Apple Studios in Savile Row, London on 30 January 1969, an edited version of which was included in the "Let It Be" film. "Get Back" was performed in full three times. During the third, which marked the end of the rooftop performance, the Beatles were interrupted by the police who had received complaints from office workers nearby. After the police spoke to Mal Evans, he turned off Lennon and Harrison's amplifiers only for Harrison to switch them back on, insisting that they finish the song. McCartney said, "You've been playing on the roofs again, and that's no good, and you know your Mummy doesn't like that ... she gets angry ... she's gonna have you arrested! Get back!" The third rooftop performance of "Get Back" is available on "Anthology 3": the last song of the Beatles' final live performance.


title: Get Back

text: At the end of the last rooftop performance of "Get Back", the audience applauds and McCartney says "Thanks, Mo" in reply to Maureen Starkey's cheering. Lennon adds: "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition". Spector used some of the talk preceding the master take of 27 January and edited on these comments to make the album version sound different from the single.


title: Get Back

text: The stereo single version, and that of the B-side, "Don't Let Me Down", were the first Beatles recordings to feature Starr's drum kit in true stereo, mixed across the left and right channels. This utilised the then-fairly new 8-track recording technology and was a result of the growing popularity of stereo over mono. The only other Beatles' track to employ this recording method was "The End" on "Abbey Road".


title: Get Back

text: On 11 April 1969, Apple Records released "Get Back" as a single in the UK, paired with "Don't Let Me Down" on the B-side. The single began its 17-week stay in the charts on 23 April at No. 1, a position it held for six weeks. It was the first Beatles single to enter the official UK singles chart at the top. In the US, "Get Back" began its first of 12 weeks on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart the week ending 10 May. Two weeks after the song's chart debut it hit No. 1, where it stayed for five weeks. "Get Back" became the band's 17th No. 1 song in "Billboard", matching Elvis Presley's previous record of 17 number ones.


title: Get Back

text: In both the UK and US, the single was released by Apple, although EMI retained the rights to the song as part of their contract. It was the only Beatles' single to include an accompanying artist's name, crediting "Get Back/Don't Let Me Down" to "The Beatles with Billy Preston". Neither Apple nor Capitol Records created a picture sleeve for the single—it was simply packaged in a sleeve stating "The Beatles on Apple". Apple launched a print ad campaign for the song concurrent with its release showing a photo of the band with the slogan "The Beatles as Nature Intended", indicating that the sound of "Get Back" harked to the group's earlier days.


title: Get Back

text: The single version of the song contains a chamber reverb effect throughout and a coda after a false ending, with the lyrics "Get back Loretta / Your mommy's waiting for you / Wearing her high-heel shoes / And her low-neck sweater / Get back home, Loretta." This does not appear on the album version; the single version's first LP appearance would come three years later on the "1967–1970" compilation. This version also appeared in the albums "20 Greatest Hits", "Past Masters" and "1". It was also included in the original line-up of the proposed "Get Back" album that was scheduled to be released during the fall of 1969.


title: Get Back

text: In the UK and Europe "Get Back/Don't Let Me Down" was the Beatles' last single to be released in mono, but in the US the single was released in stereo. It was the Beatles' first single to be released in true stereo instead of mono as part of the "stereo only" movement gaining force in 1969. In both versions the lead guitar played by Lennon is in the left channel, and the rhythm guitar played by Harrison is in the right channel. The single was also released in the experimental PocketDisc format by Americom in conjunction with Apple and Capitol in the late 1960s.


title: Get Back

text: When Phil Spector came to remix "Get Back" he wanted to make it seem different from the version released as the single, though both versions were essentially the same take. The unreleased "Get Back" albums included elements of studio chatter to add to the live feel of the recordings. In this spirit, Spector included part of the studio chatter recorded immediately before a take recorded on 27 January, slightly crossfaded it onto the beginning of the master take (also recorded on January 27), and omitted the coda recorded on January 28, instead adding McCartney and Lennon's remarks after the close of the rooftop performance. This created the impression that the single and album versions are different takes. The single's reverb effect was also omitted from this remix.


title: Get Back

text: In 2003, "Get Back" was re-released on the "Let It Be... Naked" album, remixed by independent producers with the sanction of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, with John Lennon's and George Harrison's widows. The "Naked" version of "Get Back" is a remix of the take recorded on 27 January 1969 used for both the single and album versions, without the coda recorded the following day or the framing dialogue from the studio and rooftop concert added to the album version. The single's reverb effect was also omitted from this remix, and the song fades immediately before the final "whoo". Apple also prepared a specially-created music video of the "Let It Be ... Naked" release of the song to promote that album in 2003. This video is edited together using stock footage of the band, along with Billy Preston, George Martin and others.


title: Get Back

text: In 2006, a newly mixed version of "Get Back" produced by George Martin and his son Giles was included on the album "Love". This version incorporates elements of "A Hard Day's Night" (the intro chord), "A Day in the Life" (the improvised orchestral crescendo), "The End" (Ringo Starr's drum solo, Paul McCartney's second guitar solo, and John Lennon's last guitar solo), and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" (Take 1's drum count-off intro). However, there are several edits in this piece, including an extended intro, and the second verse is removed completely.


title: Get Back

text: Universal Music released take 8 from the recording sessions to promote the 50th anniversary edition of "Let It Be" and the . This version has McCartney ad libbing a different spoken word section over the bridge, beginning with "It's five o'clock ... your mother's got your tea on." As the band performed the song three times during their impromptu rooftop concert on 30 January 1969, all three of those versions also appear in the final episode of the mini-series, as the concert is shown in its entirety. Take 3 of the rooftop concert was released on "Anthology 3" in 1996 while the first two were released in January 2022.


title: Get Back

text: McCartney performed "Get Back" on the "Late Show with David Letterman" on 15 July 2009. Letterman's show was taped in the Ed Sullivan Theater, the same theatre that hosted the Beatles' performances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964 and 1965. McCartney's performance was not on the stage, however. Instead, he performed atop the theatre's marquee overlooking Broadway. In the interview preceding the performance, Letterman asked McCartney if he had ever played on a marquee before. "I've done a roof", McCartney replied, referring to the Beatles' 1969 performance atop the Apple Corps building in London.


title: Get Back

text: McCartney also performed the song as a kind of encore on "Saturday Night Live" on 11 December 2010. The performance was unusual for the show because McCartney had played the two standard songs that musical guests play, then had played a third song ("A Day in the Life"/"Give Peace a Chance"). At the normal conclusion of the show, when host Paul Rudd thanked the cast, McCartney took the stage again for "Get Back", the broadcast of which was partially cut off due to time constraints.


title: Get Back

text: McCartney performed this live during his 1989/1990 World Tour, and it was released on both the full-length and highlights versions of the subsequent live album "Tripping the Live Fantastic" (1990). In 2009, a performance was included on the "Good Evening New York City" album.


title: Get Back

text: McCartney and the Foo Fighters performed the song at the 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: Laurus nobilis is an aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub with green, glabrous (smooth) leaves. It is in the flowering plant family Lauraceae. It is native to the Mediterranean region and is used as bay leaf for seasoning in cooking. Its common names include bay tree (esp. United Kingdom), bay laurel, sweet bay, true laurel, Grecian laurel, or simply laurel. "Laurus nobilis" figures prominently in classical Greco-Roman culture.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: Worldwide, many other kinds of plants in diverse families are also called "bay" or "laurel", generally due to similarity of foliage or aroma to "Laurus nobilis".


title: Laurus nobilis

text: The laurel is an evergreen shrub or small tree, variable in size and sometimes reaching tall. The genus "Laurus" includes four accepted species, whose diagnostic key characters often overlap.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: The bay laurel is dioecious (unisexual), with male and female flowers on separate plants. Each flower is pale yellow-green, about diameter, and they are borne in pairs beside a leaf. The leaves are glabrous, long and broad, with an entire (untoothed) margin. On some leaves the margin undulates. The fruit is a small, shiny black berry-like drupe about long that contains one seed.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: "Laurus nobilis" is a widespread relict of the laurel forests that originally covered much of the Mediterranean Basin when the climate of the region was more humid. With the drying of the Mediterranean during the Pliocene era, the laurel forests gradually retreated, and were replaced by the more drought-tolerant sclerophyll plant communities familiar today. Most of the last remaining laurel forests around the Mediterranean are believed to have disappeared approximately ten thousand years ago, although some remnants still persist in the mountains of southern Turkey, northern Syria, southern Spain, north-central Portugal, northern Morocco, the Canary Islands and in Madeira.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: The plant is the source of several popular herbs and one spice used in a wide variety of recipes, particularly among Mediterranean cuisines. Most commonly, the aromatic leaves are added whole to Italian pasta sauces. They are typically removed from dishes before serving, unless used as a simple garnish. Whole bay leaves have a long shelf life of about one year, under normal temperature and humidity. Whole bay leaves are used almost exclusively as flavor agents during the food preparation stage.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: Ground bay leaves, however, can be ingested safely and are often used in soups and stocks, as well as being a common addition to a Bloody Mary. Dried laurel berries and pressed leaf oil can both be used as robust spices, and the wood can be burnt for strong smoke flavoring.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: "Laurus nobilis" is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant in regions with Mediterranean or oceanic climates, and as a house plant or greenhouse plant in colder regions. It is used in topiary to create single erect stems with ball-shaped, box-shaped or twisted crowns; also for low hedges. However it is slow-growing and may take several years to reach the desired height. Together with a gold form, "L. nobilis" 'Aurea' and a willow-leaved form "L. nobilis" f. "angustifolia", it has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: One of the most important pests affecting ornamental laurels is caused by the jumping plant louse "Trioza alacris", which induces the curling and thickening of the edge of the leaves for the development of the insect's nymphs, eventually creating a necrosed gall. The species is also affected by the scale insect "Coccus hesperidum".


title: Laurus nobilis

text: In herbal medicine, aqueous extracts of bay laurel have been used as an astringent and salve for open wounds. It is also used in massage therapy and aromatherapy. A folk remedy for rashes caused by poison ivy, poison oak, and stinging nettle is a poultice soaked in boiled bay leaves. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder listed a variety of conditions which laurel oil was supposed to treat: paralysis, spasms, sciatica, bruises, headaches, catarrhs, ear infections, and rheumatism.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: In ancient Greece, the plant was called "daphne", after the mythic mountain nymph of the same name. In the myth of Apollo and Daphne, the god Apollo fell in love with Daphne, a priestess of Gaia (Mother Earth), and when he tried to seduce her she pleaded for help to Gaia, who transported her to Crete. In Daphne's place Gaia left a laurel tree, from which Apollo fashioned wreaths to console himself. Other versions of the myth, including that of the Roman poet Ovid, state that Daphne was transformed directly into a laurel tree.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: Bay laurel was used to fashion the laurel wreath of ancient Greece, a symbol of highest status. A wreath of bay laurels was given as the prize at the Pythian Games because the games were in honor of Apollo, and the laurel was one of his symbols. According to the poet Lucian, the priestess of Apollo known as the Pythia reputedly chewed laurel leaves from a sacred tree growing inside the temple to induce the "enthusiasmos" (trance) from which she uttered the oracular prophecies for which she was famous. Some accounts starting in the fourth century BC describe her as shaking a laurel branch while delivering her prophecies. Those who received promising omens from the Pythia were crowned with laurel wreaths as a symbol of Apollo's favor.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: The symbolism carried over to Roman culture, which held the laurel as a symbol of victory. It was also associated with immortality, with ritual purification, prosperity and health. It is also the source of the words "baccalaureate" and "poet laureate", as well as the expressions "assume the laurel" and "resting on one's laurels".


title: Laurus nobilis

text: Pliny the Elder stated that the Laurel was not permitted for "profane" uses – lighting it on fire at altars "for the propitiation of divinities" was strictly forbidden, because "...it is very evident that the laurel protests against such usage by crackling as it does in the fire, thus, in a manner, giving expression to its abhorrence of such treatment."


title: Laurus nobilis

text: Laurel was closely associated with the Roman Emperors, beginning with Augustus. Two Laurel trees flanked the entrance to Augustus' house on the Palatine Hill in Rome, which itself was connected to the Temple of Apollo Palatinus, which Augustus had built. Thus, the laurels had the dual purpose of advertising Augustus' victory in the Civil Wars and his close association with Apollo. Suetonius relates the story of Augustus' wife, and Rome's first Empress, Livia, who planted a sprig of laurel on the grounds of her villa at Prima Porta after an eagle dropped a hen with the sprig clutched in its beak onto her lap. The sprig grew into a full-size tree which fostered an entire grove of laurel trees, which were in turn added to by subsequent Emperors when they celebrated a triumph. The Emperors in the Julio-Claudian dynasty all sourced their Laurel wreaths from the original tree planted by Livia. It was taken as an omen of the impending end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that in the reign of Nero the entire grove died, shortly before he was assassinated. Rome's second Emperor Tiberius wore wreaths of laurel whenever there was stormy weather because it was widely believed that Laurel trees were immune to lightning strikes, affording protection to those who brandished it. One reason for this belief is because laurel does not burn easily and crackles loudly when on fire. It led ancient Romans to believe the plant was inhabited by a "heavenly fire demon", and was therefore "immune" from outer threats like fire or lightning.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: An early Chinese etiological myth for the phases of the moon involved a great forest or tree which quickly grew and lost its leaves and flowers every month. After the Sui and Tang dynasties, this was sometimes connected to a woodsman named Wu Gang, sentenced to cut at a self-repairing tree as a punishment for varying offenses. The tree was originally identified as a ("guì") and described in the terms of the osmanthus ("Osmanthus fragrans", now known in Chinese as the or ""gui" flower"), whose blossoms are still used to flavor wine and confections for the Mid-Autumn Festival. However, in English, it is often associated with the more well-known cassia ("Cinnamomum cassia", now known in Chinese as the or "meat "gui"") while, in modern Chinese, it has instead become associated with the Mediterranean laurel. By the Qing dynasty, the "chengyu" "pluck osmanthus in the Toad Palace" (, "Chángōng zhé guì") meant passing the imperial examinations, which were held around the time of the lunar festival. The similar association in Europe of laurels with victory and success led to its translation into Chinese as the or "Moon "gui"".


title: Laurus nobilis

text: The laurel leaves in the coat of arms of Kaskinen, Finland () may have been meant to refer to local flowering, but its origin may also be in the name of the family Bladh (; ‘leaf’); two members of the family - a father and a son - acquired both town rights and the status of staple town for the village at the time.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: The most abundant component found in laurel essential oil is 1,8-cineole, also called eucalyptol. The leaves contain about 1.3% essential oils ("ol. lauri folii"), consisting of 45% eucalyptol, 12% other terpenes, 8–12% terpinyl acetate, 3–4% sesquiterpenes, 3% methyleugenol, and other α- and β-pinenes, phellandrene, linalool, geraniol, and terpineol. It contains lauric acid also.


title: Laurus nobilis

text: Both essential and fatty oils are present in the fruit. The fruit is pressed and water-extracted to obtain these products. The fruit contains up to 30% fatty oils and about 1% essential oils (terpenes, sesquiterpenes, alcohols, and ketones). This laurel oil is the characteristic ingredient of Aleppo soap. The chemical compound lauroside B has been isolated from "Laurus nobilis".


title: Man with No Name

text: The Man with No Name () is the antihero character portrayed by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's ""Dollars Trilogy"" of Italian Spaghetti Western films: "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), "For a Few Dollars More" (1965), and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966). He is recognizable by his poncho, brown hat, tan cowboy boots, fondness for cigarillos, and the fact that he rarely talks.


title: Man with No Name

text: The "Man with No Name" concept was invented by the American distributor United Artists, looking for a strong angle to sell the films as a trilogy. Eastwood's character does indeed have a name and a different one in each film: "Joe", "Manco" and "Blondie", respectively.


title: Man with No Name

text: When Clint Eastwood was honored with the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, Jim Carrey gave the introductory speech and said: The Man with No Name' had no name, so we could fill in our own." In 2008, "Empire" chose the Man with No Name as the 33rd greatest movie character of all time.


title: Man with No Name

text: "A Fistful of Dollars" was directly adapted from Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (1961). It was the subject of a lawsuit by "Yojimbo"s producers. "Yojimbo"s protagonist, an unconventional rōnin (a samurai with no master) played by Toshiro Mifune, bears a striking resemblance to Eastwood's character: both are quiet, gruff, eccentric strangers with a strong but unorthodox sense of justice and extraordinary proficiency with a particular weapon (in Mifune's case, a katana; in Eastwood's, a revolver).


title: Man with No Name

text: Like Eastwood's western setting character, Mifune plays a rōnin with no name. When pressed, he gives the pseudonym "Sanjuro Kuwabatake" (meaning "30-year-old mulberry field"), a reference to his age and something he sees through a window. The convention of hiding the character's arms from view is shared as well, with Mifune's character typically wearing his arms inside his kimono, leaving the sleeves empty. Prior to signing on to "Fistful", Eastwood had seen Kurosawa's film and was impressed by the character. During filming, he did not emulate Mifune's performance beyond what was already in the script. He also insisted on removing some of the dialogue in the original script, making the character more silent and thus adding to his mystery. As the trilogy progressed, the character became even more silent and stoic.


title: Man with No Name

text: The "Man with No Name" sobriquet was actually applied after the films were made, and was a marketing device used by distributor United Artists to promote the three films together in the United States film market.


title: Man with No Name

text: The popularity of the characters brought about a series of spin-off books, dubbed the "Dollars" series due to the common theme in their titles:


title: Man with No Name

text: "A Coffin Full of Dollars" provides some background history; when he was young, The Man with No Name was a ranch hand who was continually persecuted by an older hand named Carvell. The trouble eventually led to a shootout between the two with Carvell being outdrawn and killed; however, an examination of Carvell's body revealed a scar which identified him as Monk Carver, a wanted man with a $1,000 bounty. After comparing the received bounty with his $10-a-month ranch pay, the young cowhand chose to change his life and become a bounty hunter.


title: Man with No Name

text: In July 2007, American comic book company Dynamite Entertainment announced that they were going to begin publishing a comic book featuring the character, titled "The Man With No Name". Set after the events of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", the comic is written by Christos Gage. Dynamite refers to him as "Blondie", the nickname Tuco uses for him in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". The first issue was released in March 2008, entitled, "The Man with No Name: The Good, The Bad, and The Uglier". Luke Lieberman and Matt Wolpert took over the writing for issues #7–11. Initially, Chuck Dixon was scheduled to take over the writing chores with issue #12, but Dynamite ended the series and opted to use Dixon's storyline for a new series titled "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". The new series is not an adaptation of the movie, despite its title. After releasing eight issues, Dynamite abandoned the series.


title: Django (web framework)

text: Django ( ; sometimes stylized as django) is a free and open-source, Python-based web framework that follows the model–template–views (MTV) architectural pattern. It is maintained by the Django Software Foundation (DSF), an independent organization established in the US as a 501(c)(3) non-profit.


title: Django (web framework)

text: Django's primary goal is to ease the creation of complex, database-driven websites. The framework emphasizes reusability and "pluggability" of components, less code, low coupling, rapid development, and the principle of don't repeat yourself. Python is used throughout, even for settings, files, and data models. Django also provides an optional administrative create, read, update and delete interface that is generated dynamically through introspection and configured via admin models.


title: Django (web framework)

text: Some well-known sites that use Django include Instagram, Mozilla, Disqus, Bitbucket, Nextdoor and Clubhouse.


title: Django (web framework)

text: Django was created in the fall of 2003, when the web programmers at the "Lawrence Journal-World" newspaper, Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison, began using Python to build applications. Jacob Kaplan-Moss was hired early in Django's development shortly before Simon Willison's internship ended. It was released publicly under a BSD license in July 2005. The framework was named after guitarist Django Reinhardt. Adrian Holovaty is a Romani jazz guitar player and a big fan of Django Reinhardt.


title: Django (web framework)

text: In June 2008, it was announced that a newly formed Django Software Foundation (DSF) would maintain Django in the future.


title: Django (web framework)

text: Despite having its own nomenclature, such as naming the callable objects generating the HTTP responses "views", the core Django framework can be seen as an MVC architecture. It consists of an object-relational mapper (ORM) that mediates between data models (defined as Python classes) and a relational database ("Model"), a system for processing HTTP requests with a web templating system ("View"), and a regular-expression-based URL dispatcher ("Controller").


title: Django (web framework)

text: The main Django distribution also bundles a number of applications in its "contrib" package, including:


title: Django (web framework)

text: Django's configuration system allows third party code to be plugged into a regular project, provided that it follows the reusable app conventions. More than 2500 packages are available to extend the framework's original behavior, providing solutions to issues the original tool didn't tackle: registration, search, API provision and consumption, CMS, etc.


title: Django (web framework)

text: This extensibility is, however, mitigated by internal components' dependencies. While the Django philosophy implies loose coupling, the template filters and tags assume one engine implementation, and both the auth and admin bundled applications require the use of the internal ORM. None of these filters or bundled apps are mandatory to run a Django project, but reusable apps tend to depend on them, encouraging developers to keep using the official stack in order to benefit fully from the apps ecosystem.


title: Django (web framework)

text: Django can be run in conjunction with Apache, Nginx using WSGI, Gunicorn, or Cherokee using flup (a Python module). Django also includes the ability to launch a FastCGI server, enabling use behind any web server which supports FastCGI, such as Lighttpd or Hiawatha. It is also possible to use other WSGI-compliant web servers. Django officially supports five database backends: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and Oracle. Microsoft SQL Server can be used with django-mssql while similarly external backends exist for IBM Db2, SQL Anywhere and Firebird. There is a fork named django-nonrel, which supports NoSQL databases, such as MongoDB and Google App Engine's Datastore.


title: Django (web framework)

text: Django may also be run in conjunction with Jython on any Java EE application server such as GlassFish or JBoss. In this case django-jython must be installed in order to provide JDBC drivers for database connectivity, which also can provide functionality to compile Django in to a .war suitable for deployment.


title: Django (web framework)

text: The Django team will occasionally designate certain releases to be "long-term support" (LTS) releases. LTS releases will get security and data loss fixes applied for a guaranteed period of time, typically 3+ years, regardless of the pace of releases afterwards.