title: Jewish history

text: These Talmudic Yeshiva academies of Babylonia followed the era of the Amoraim ("expounders")—the sages of the Talmud who were active (both in the Land of Israel and in Babylon) during the end of the era of the sealing of the Mishnah and until the times of the sealing of the Talmud (220CE – 500CE), and following the Savoraim ("reasoners")—the sages of beth midrash (Torah study places) in Babylon from the end of the era of the Amoraim (5th century) and until the beginning of the era of the Geonim. The Geonim (Hebrew: גאונים) were the presidents of the two great rabbinical colleges of Sura and Pumbedita, and were the generally accepted spiritual leaders of the worldwide Jewish community in the early medieval era, in contrast to the Resh Galuta (Exilarch) who wielded secular authority over the Jews in Islamic lands. According to traditions, the Resh Galuta were descendants of Judean kings, which is why the kings of Parthia would treat them with much honour.


title: Jewish history

text: For the Jews of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the yeshivot of Babylonia served much the same function as the ancient Sanhedrin—that is, as a council of Jewish religious authorities. The academies were founded in pre-Islamic Babylonia under the Zoroastrian Sassanid dynasty and were located not far from the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, which at that time was the largest city in the world. After the conquest of Persia in the 7th century, the academies subsequently operated for four hundred years under the Islamic caliphate. The first gaon of Sura, according to Sherira Gaon, was Mar bar Rab Chanan, who assumed office in 609. The last gaon of Sura was Samuel ben Hofni, who died in 1034; the last gaon of Pumbedita was Hezekiah Gaon, who was tortured to death in 1040; hence the activity of the Geonim covers a period of nearly 450 years.


title: Jewish history

text: One of principal seats of Babylonian Judaism was Nehardea, which was then a very large city made up mostly of Jews. A very ancient synagogue, built, it was believed, by King Jehoiachin, existed in Nehardea. At Huzal, near Nehardea, there was another synagogue, not far from which could be seen the ruins of Ezra's academy. In the period before Hadrian, Akiba, on his arrival at Nehardea on a mission from the Sanhedrin, entered into a discussion with a resident scholar on a point of matrimonial law (Mishnah Yeb., end). At the same time there was at Nisibis (northern Mesopotamia), an excellent Jewish college, at the head of which stood Judah ben Bathyra, and in which many Judean scholars found refuge at the time of the persecutions. A certain temporary importance was also attained by a school at Nehar-Pekod, founded by the Judean immigrant Hananiah, nephew of Joshua ben Hananiah, which school might have been the cause of a schism between the Jews of Babylonia and those of Judea-Israel, had not the Judean authorities promptly checked Hananiah's ambition.


title: Jewish history

text: Jews were also widespread throughout the Roman Empire, and this carried on to a lesser extent in the period of Byzantine rule in the central and eastern Mediterranean. The militant and exclusive Christianity and caesaropapism of the Byzantine Empire did not treat Jews well, and the condition and influence of diaspora Jews in the Empire declined dramatically.


title: Jewish history

text: It was official Christian policy to convert Jews to Christianity, and the Christian leadership used the official power of Rome in their attempts. In 351 CE the Jews revolted against the added pressures of their Governor, Constantius Gallus. Gallus put down the revolt and destroyed the major cities in the Galilee area where the revolt had started. Tzippori and Lydda (site of two of the major legal academies) never recovered.


title: Jewish history

text: In this period, the Nasi in Tiberias, Hillel II, created an official calendar, which needed no monthly sightings of the moon. The months were set, and the calendar needed no further authority from Judea. At about the same time, the Jewish academy at Tiberius began to collate the combined Mishnah, braitot, explanations, and interpretations developed by generations of scholars who studied after the death of Judah HaNasi. The text was organized according to the order of the Mishna: each paragraph of Mishnah was followed by a compilation of all of the interpretations, stories, and responses associated with that Mishnah. This text is called the "Jerusalem Talmud."


title: Jewish history

text: The Jews of Judea received a brief respite from official persecution during the rule of the Emperor Julian the Apostate. Julian's policy was to return the Roman Empire to Hellenism, and he encouraged the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem. As Julian's rule lasted only from 361 to 363, the Jews could not rebuild sufficiently before Roman Christian rule was restored over the Empire. Beginning in 398 with the consecration of St. John Chrysostom as Patriarch, Christian rhetoric against Jews grew sharper; he preached sermons with titles such as "Against the Jews" and "On the Statues, Homily 17," in which John preaches against "the Jewish sickness". Such heated language contributed to a climate of Christian distrust and hate toward the large Jewish settlements, such as those in Antioch and Constantinople.


title: Jewish history

text: In the beginning of the 5th century, the Emperor Theodosius issued a set of decrees establishing official persecution of Jews. Jews were not allowed to own slaves, build new synagogues, hold public office or try cases between a Jew and a non-Jew. Intermarriage between Jew and non-Jew was made a capital offence, as was the conversion of Christians to Judaism. Theodosius did away with the Sanhedrin and abolished the post of Nasi. Under the Emperor Justinian, the authorities further restricted the civil rights of Jews, and threatened their religious privileges. The emperor interfered in the internal affairs of the synagogue, and forbade, for instance, the use of the Hebrew language in divine worship. Those who disobeyed the restrictions were threatened with corporal penalties, exile, and loss of property. The Jews at Borium, not far from Syrtis Major, who resisted the Byzantine General Belisarius in his campaign against the Vandals, were forced to embrace Christianity, and their synagogue was converted to a church.


title: Jewish history

text: Justinian and his successors had concerns outside the province of Judea, and he had insufficient troops to enforce these regulations. As a result, the 5th century was a period when a wave of new synagogues were built, many with beautiful mosaic floors. Jews adopted the rich art forms of the Byzantine culture. Jewish mosaics of the period portray people, animals, menorahs, zodiacs, and Biblical characters. Excellent examples of these synagogue floors have been found at Beit Alpha (which includes the scene of Abraham sacrificing a ram instead of his son Isaac along with a zodiac), Tiberius, Beit Shean, and Tzippori.


title: Jewish history

text: The precarious existence of Jews under Byzantine rule did not long endure, largely due to the explosion of the Muslim religion out of the remote Arabian peninsula (where large populations of Jews resided, see History of the Jews under Muslim Rule for more). The Muslim Caliphate ejected the Byzantines from the Holy Land (or the Levant, defined as modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) within a few years of their victory at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636. Numerous Jews fled the remaining Byzantine territories in favour of residence in the Caliphate over the subsequent centuries.


title: Jewish history

text: The size of the Jewish community in the Byzantine Empire was not affected by attempts by some emperors (most notably Justinian) to forcibly convert the Jews of Anatolia to Christianity, as these attempts met with very little success. Historians continue to research the status of the Jews in Asia Minor under Byzantine rule. (for a sample of views, see, for instance, J. Starr "The Jews in the Byzantine Empire, 641–1204"; S. Bowman, "The Jews of Byzantium"; R. Jenkins "Byzantium"; Averil Cameron, "Byzantines and Jews: Recent Work on Early Byzantium", "Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies" 20 (1996)). No systematic persecution of the type endemic at that time in Western Europe (pogroms, the stake, mass expulsions, etc.) has been recorded in Byzantium. Much of the Jewish population of Constantinople remained in place after the conquest of the city by Mehmet II.


title: Jewish history

text: Perhaps in the 4th century, the Kingdom of Semien, a Jewish nation in modern Ethiopia was established, lasting until the 17th century.


title: Jewish history

text: In 638 CE the Byzantine Empire lost control of the Levant. The Arab Islamic Empire under Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem and the lands of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. As a political system, Islam created radically new conditions for Jewish economic, social, and intellectual development. Caliph Omar permitted the Jews to reestablish their presence in Jerusalem–after a lapse of 500 years. Jewish tradition regards Caliph Omar as a benevolent ruler and the Midrash (Nistarot de-Rav Shimon bar Yoḥai) refers to him as a "friend of Israel."


title: Jewish history

text: According to the Arab geographer Al-Muqaddasi, the Jews worked as "the assayers of coins, the dyers, the tanners and the bankers in the community". During the Fatimid period, many Jewish officials served in the regime. Professor Moshe Gil believes that at the time of the Arab conquest in the 7th century CE, the majority of the population was Christian and Jewish.


title: Jewish history

text: During this time Jews lived in thriving communities all across ancient Babylonia. In the Geonic period (650–1250 CE), the Babylonian Yeshiva Academies were the chief centers of Jewish learning; the Geonim (meaning either "Splendor" or "Geniuses"), who were the heads of these schools, were recognized as the highest authorities in Jewish law.


title: Jewish history

text: In the 7th century, the new Muslim rulers institute the kharaj land tax, which led to mass migration of Babylonian Jews from the countryside to cities like Baghdad. This in turn led to greater wealth and international influence, as well as a more cosmopolitan outlook from Jewish thinkers such as Saadiah Gaon, who now deeply engaged with Western philosophy for the first time. When the Abbasid Caliphate and the city of Baghdad declined in the 10th century, many Babylonian Jews migrated to the Mediterranean region, contributing to the spread of Babylonian Jewish customs throughout the Jewish world.


title: Jewish history

text: The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, a period of Muslim rule throughout much of the Iberian Peninsula. During that time, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life blossomed.


title: Jewish history

text: A period of tolerance thus dawned for the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, whose number was considerably augmented by immigration from Africa in the wake of the Muslim conquest. Especially after 912, during the reign of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his son, Al-Hakam II, the Jews prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading in silk and slaves, in this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Jewish economic expansion was unparalleled. In Toledo, Jews were involved in translating Arabic texts to the Romance languages, as well as translating Greek and Hebrew texts into Arabic. Jews also contributed to botany, geography, medicine, mathematics, poetry and philosophy.


title: Jewish history

text: 'Abd al-Rahman's court physician and minister was Hasdai ben Isaac ibn Shaprut, the patron of Menahem ben Saruq, Dunash ben Labrat, and other Jewish scholars and poets. Jewish thought during this period flourished under famous figures such as Samuel Ha-Nagid, Moses ibn Ezra, Solomon ibn Gabirol Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides. During 'Abd al-Rahman's term of power, the scholar Moses ben Enoch was appointed rabbi of Córdoba, and as a consequence al-Andalus became the center of Talmudic study, and Córdoba the meeting-place of Jewish savants.


title: Jewish history

text: The Golden Age ended with the invasion of al-Andalus by the Almohades, a conservative dynasty originating in North Africa, who were highly intolerant of religious minorities.


title: Jewish history

text: Sermonical messages to avenge the death of Jesus encouraged Christians to participate in the Crusades. The twelfth century Jewish narration from R. Solomon ben Samson records that crusaders en route to the Holy Land decided that before combating the Ishmaelites they would massacre the Jews residing in their midst to avenge the crucifixion of Christ. The massacres began at Rouen and Jewish communities in Rhine Valley were seriously affected.


title: Jewish history

text: Crusading attacks were made upon Jews in the territory around Heidelberg. A huge loss of Jewish life took place. Many were forcibly converted to Christianity and many committed suicide to avoid baptism. A major driving factor behind the choice to commit suicide was the Jewish realisation that upon being slain their children could be taken to be raised as Christians. The Jews were living in the middle of Christian lands and felt this danger acutely. This massacre is seen as the first in a sequence of anti-Semitic events which culminated in the Holocaust. Jewish populations felt that they had been abandoned by their Christian neighbors and rulers during the massacres and lost faith in all promises and charters.


title: Jewish history

text: Many Jews chose self-defence. But their means of self-defence were limited and their casualties only increased. Most of the forced conversions proved ineffective. Many Jews reverted to their original faith later. The pope protested this but Emperor Henry IV agreed to permitting these reversions. The massacres began a new epoch for Jewry in Christendom. The Jews had preserved their faith from social pressure, now they had to preserve it at sword point. The massacres during the crusades strengthened Jewry from within spiritually. The Jewish perspective was that their struggle was Israel's struggle to hallow the name of God.


title: Jewish history

text: In 1099, Jews helped the Arabs to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders. When the city fell, the Crusaders gathered many Jews in a synagogue and set it on fire. In Haifa, the Jews almost single-handedly defended the town against the Crusaders, holding out for a month, (June–July 1099). At this time there were Jewish communities scattered all over the country, including Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza. As Jews were not allowed to hold land during the Crusader period, they worked at trades and commerce in the coastal towns during times of quiescence. Most were artisans: glassblowers in Sidon, furriers and dyers in Jerusalem.


title: Jewish history

text: During this period, the Masoretes of Tiberias established the "niqqud", a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Numerous piyutim and midrashim were recorded in Palestine at this time.


title: Jewish history

text: Maimonides wrote that in 1165 he visited Jerusalem and went to the Temple Mount, where he prayed in the "great, holy house". Maimonides established a yearly holiday for himself and his sons, the 6th of Cheshvan, commemorating the day he went up to pray on the Temple Mount, and another, the 9th of Cheshvan, commemorating the day he merited to pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.


title: Jewish history

text: In 1141 Yehuda Halevi issued a call to Jews to emigrate to the land of Israel and took on the long journey himself. After a stormy passage from Córdoba, he arrived in Egyptian Alexandria, where he was enthusiastically greeted by friends and admirers. At Damietta, he had to struggle against his heart, and the pleadings of his friend Ḥalfon ha-Levi, that he remain in Egypt, where he would be free from intolerant oppression. He started on the rough route overland. He was met along the way by Jews in Tyre and Damascus. Jewish legend relates that as he came near Jerusalem, overpowered by the sight of the Holy City, he sang his most beautiful elegy, the celebrated "Zionide" ("Zion ha-lo Tish'ali"). At that instant, an Arab had galloped out of a gate and rode him down; he was killed in the accident.


title: Jewish history

text: Nahmanides is recorded as settling in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1267. He moved to Acre, where he was active in spreading Jewish learning, which was at that time neglected in the Holy Land. He gathered a circle of pupils around him, and people came in crowds, even from the district of the Euphrates, to hear him. Karaites were said to have attended his lectures, among them Aaron ben Joseph the Elder. He later became one of the greatest Karaite authorities. Shortly after Nahmanides' arrival in Jerusalem, he addressed a letter to his son Nahman, in which he described the desolation of the Holy City. At the time, it had only two Jewish inhabitants—two brothers, dyers by trade. In a later letter from Acre, Nahmanides counsels his son to cultivate humility, which he considers to be the first of virtues. In another, addressed to his second son, who occupied an official position at the Castilian court, Nahmanides recommends the recitation of the daily prayers and warns above all against immorality. Nahmanides died after reaching seventy-six, and his remains were interred at Haifa, by the grave of Yechiel of Paris.


title: Jewish history

text: Yechiel had emigrated to Acre in 1260, along with his son and a large group of followers. There he established the Talmudic academy "Midrash haGadol d'Paris". He is believed to have died there between 1265 and 1268. In 1488 Obadiah ben Abraham, commentator on the Mishnah, arrived in Jerusalem; this marked a new period of return for the Jewish community in the land.


title: Jewish history

text: During the Middle Ages, Jews were generally better treated by Islamic rulers than Christian ones. Despite second-class citizenship, Jews played prominent roles in Muslim courts, and experienced a Golden Age in Moorish Spain about 900–1100, though the situation deteriorated after that time. Riots resulting in the deaths of Jews did however occur in North Africa through the centuries and especially in Morocco, Libya and Algeria, where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos.


title: Jewish history

text: During the 11th century, Muslims in Spain conducted pogroms against the Jews; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. During the Middle Ages, the governments of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen enacted decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues. At certain times, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad. The Almohads, who had taken control of much of Islamic Iberia by 1172, surpassed the Almoravides in fundamentalist outlook. They treated the "dhimmis" harshly. They expelled both Jews and Christians from Morocco and Islamic Spain. Faced with the choice of death or conversion, many Jews emigrated. Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled south and east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.


title: Jewish history

text: According to the American writer James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."


title: Jewish history

text: Jewish populations have existed in Europe, especially in the area of the former Roman Empire, from very early times. As Jewish males had emigrated, some sometimes took wives from local populations, as is shown by the various MtDNA, compared to Y-DNA among Jewish populations. These groups were joined by traders and later on by members of the diaspora. Records of Jewish communities in France (see History of the Jews in France) and Germany (see History of the Jews in Germany) date from the 4th century, and substantial Jewish communities in Spain were noted even earlier.


title: Jewish history

text: The historian Norman Cantor and other 20th-century scholars dispute the tradition that the Middle Ages was a uniformly difficult time for Jews. Before the Church became fully organized as an institution with an increasing array of rules, early medieval society was tolerant. Between 800 and 1100, an estimated 1.5 million Jews lived in Christian Europe. As they were not Christians, they were not included as a division of the feudal system of clergy, knights and serfs. This means that they did not have to satisfy the oppressive demands for labor and military conscription that Christian commoners suffered. In relations with the Christian society, the Jews were protected by kings, princes and bishops, because of the crucial services they provided in three areas: finance, administration and medicine. The lack of political strengths did leave Jews vulnerable to exploitation through extreme taxation.


title: Jewish history

text: Christian scholars interested in the Bible consulted with Talmudic rabbis. As the Roman Catholic Church strengthened as an institution, the Franciscan and Dominican preaching orders were founded, and there was a rise of competitive middle-class, town-dwelling Christians. By 1300, the friars and local priests staged the Passion Plays during Holy Week, which depicted Jews (in contemporary dress) killing Christ, according to Gospel accounts. From this period, persecution of Jews and deportations became endemic. Around 1500, Jews found relative security and a renewal of prosperity in present-day Poland.


title: Jewish history

text: After 1300, Jews suffered more discrimination and persecution in Christian Europe. Europe's Jewry was mainly urban and literate. The Christians were inclined to regard Jews as obstinate deniers of the truth because in their view the Jews were expected to know of the truth of the Christian doctrines from their knowledge of the Jewish scriptures. Jews were aware of the pressure to accept Christianity. As Catholics were forbidden by the church to loan money for interest, some Jews became prominent moneylenders. Christian rulers gradually saw the advantage of having such a class of people who could supply capital for their use without being liable to excommunication. As a result, the money trade of western Europe became a specialty of the Jews. But, in almost every instance when Jews acquired large amounts through banking transactions, during their lives or upon their deaths, the king would take it over. Jews became imperial "servi cameræ", the property of the King, who might present them and their possessions to princes or cities.


title: Jewish history

text: Jews were frequently massacred and exiled from various European countries. The persecution hit its first peak during the Crusades. In the People's Crusade (1096) flourishing Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed. In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. They were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by massive expulsions, including the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290; in 1396 100,000 Jews were expelled from France; and in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Over this time many Jews in Europe, either fleeing or being expelled, migrated to Poland, where they prospered into another .


title: Jewish history

text: Historians who study modern Jewry have identified four different paths by which European Jews were "modernized" and thus integrated into the mainstream of European society. A common approach has been to view the process through the lens of the European Enlightenment as Jews faced the promise and the challenges posed by political emancipation. Scholars that use this approach have focused on two social types as paradigms for the decline of Jewish tradition and as agents of the sea changes in Jewish culture that led to the collapse of the ghetto. The first of these two social types is the Court Jew who is portrayed as a forerunner of the modern Jew, having achieved integration with and participation in the proto-capitalist economy and court society of central European states such as the Habsburg Empire. In contrast to the cosmopolitan Court Jew, the second social type presented by historians of modern Jewry is the "maskil", (learned person), a proponent of the Haskalah (Enlightenment). This narrative sees the maskil's pursuit of secular scholarship and his rationalistic critiques of rabbinic tradition as laying a durable intellectual foundation for the secularization of Jewish society and culture. The established paradigm has been one in which Ashkenazic Jews entered modernity through a self-conscious process of westernization led by "highly atypical, Germanized Jewish intellectuals". Haskalah gave birth to the Reform and Conservative movements and planted the seeds of Zionism while at the same time encouraging cultural assimilation into the countries in which Jews resided.


title: Jewish history

text: At around the same time that Haskalah was developing, Hasidic Judaism was spreading as a movement that preached a world view almost opposed to the Haskalah.


title: Jewish history

text: In the 1990s, the concept of the "Port Jew" has been suggested as an "alternate path to modernity" that was distinct from the European Haskalah. In contrast to the focus on Ashkenazic Germanized Jews, the concept of the Port Jew focused on the Sephardi conversos who fled the Inquisition and resettled in European port towns on the coast of the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Eastern seaboard of the United States.


title: Jewish history

text: Court Jews were Jewish bankers or businessmen who lent money and handled the finances of some of the Christian European noble houses. Corresponding historical terms are "Jewish bailiff" and "shtadlan".


title: Jewish history

text: Examples of what would be later called court Jews emerged when local rulers used services of Jewish bankers for short-term loans. They lent money to nobles and in the process gained social influence. Noble patrons of court Jews employed them as financiers, suppliers, diplomats and trade delegates. Court Jews could use their family connections, and connections between each other, to provision their sponsors with, among other things, food, arms, ammunition and precious metals. In return for their services, court Jews gained social privileges, including up to noble status for themselves, and could live outside the Jewish ghettos. Some nobles wanted to keep their bankers in their own courts. And because they were under noble protection, they were exempted from rabbinical jurisdiction.


title: Jewish history

text: From medieval times, court Jews could amass personal fortunes and gained political and social influence. Sometimes they were also prominent people in the local Jewish community and could use their influence to protect and influence their brethren. Sometimes they were the only Jews who could interact with the local high society and present petitions of the Jews to the ruler. However, the court Jew had social connections and influence in the Christian world mainly through his Christian patrons. Due to the precarious position of Jews, some nobles could just ignore their debts. If the sponsoring noble died, his Jewish financier could face exile or execution.


title: Jewish history

text: Significant repression of Spain's numerous community occurred during the 14th century, notably a major pogrom in 1391 which resulted in the majority of Spain's 300,000 Jews converting to Catholicism. With the conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada in 1492, the Catholic monarchs issued the Alhambra Decree whereby Spain's remaining 100,000 Jews were forced to choose between conversion and exile. As a result, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Jews left Spain, the remainder joining Spain's already numerous Converso community. Perhaps a quarter of a million Conversos thus were gradually absorbed by the dominant Catholic culture, although those among them who secretly practiced Judaism were subject to 40 years of intense repression by the Spanish Inquisition. This was particularly the case up until 1530, after which the trials of Conversos by the Inquisition dropped to 3% of the total. Similar expulsions of Sephardic Jews occurred 1493 in Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Spanish Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa and Portugal. A small number also settled in Holland and England.


title: Jewish history

text: The Port Jew is a descriptive term for Jews who were involved in the seafaring and maritime economy of Europe, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries. Helen Fry suggests that they can be considered "the earliest modern Jews". According to Fry, Port Jews frequently arrived as "refugees from the Inquisition" and the expulsion of Jews from Iberia. They were allowed to settle in port cities because merchants granted them permission to trade in ports such as Amsterdam, London, Trieste and Hamburg. Fry notes that their connections to the Jewish Diaspora and their expertise in maritime trade made them particularly valuable to the mercantilist governments of Europe. Lois Dubin describes Port Jews as Jewish merchants who were "valued for their engagement in the international maritime trade upon which such cities thrived". Sorkin and others have characterized the socio-cultural profile of these men as marked by a flexibility towards religion and a "reluctant cosmopolitanism that was alien to both traditional and 'enlightened' Jewish identities".


title: Jewish history

text: From the 16th to the 18th century, Jewish merchants dominated the chocolate and vanilla trade, exporting to Jewish centers across Europe, mainly Amsterdam, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Hamburg and Livorno.


title: Jewish history

text: During the Classical Ottoman period (1300–1600), the Jews, together with most other communities of the empire, enjoyed a certain level of prosperity. Compared with other Ottoman subjects, they were the predominant power in commerce and trade as well in diplomacy and other high offices. In the 16th century especially, the Jews were the most prominent under the "millets", the apogee of Jewish influence could arguably be the appointment of Joseph Nasi to Sanjak-bey ("governor", a rank usually only bestowed upon Muslims) of the island of Naxos.


title: Jewish history

text: At the time of the Battle of Yarmuk when the Levant passed under Muslim Rule, thirty Jewish communities existed in Haifa, Sh’chem, Hebron, Ramleh, Gaza, Jerusalem, and many in the north. Safed became a spiritual centre for the Jews and the Shulchan Aruch was compiled there as well as many Kabbalistic texts. The first Hebrew printing press, and the first printing in Western Asia began in 1577.


title: Jewish history

text: Jews lived in the geographic area of Asia Minor (modern Turkey, but more geographically either Anatolia or Asia Minor) for more than 2,400 years. Initial prosperity in Hellenistic times had faded under Christian Byzantine rule, but recovered somewhat under the rule of the various Muslim governments that displaced and succeeded rule from Constantinople. For much of the Ottoman period, Turkey was a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution, and it continues to have a small Jewish population today. The situation where Jews both enjoyed cultural and economical prosperity at times but were widely persecuted at other times was summarised by G.E. Von Grunebaum :


title: Jewish history

text: It would not be difficult to put together the names of a very sizeable number of Jewish subjects or citizens of the Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would again not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.


title: Jewish history

text: In the 17th century, there were many significant Jewish populations in Western and Central Europe. The relatively tolerant Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe that dated back to 13th century and enjoyed relative prosperity and freedom for nearly four hundred years. However, the calm situation ended when Polish and Lithuanian Jews of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands by Ukrainian Cossacks during the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648) and by the Swedish wars (1655). Driven by these and other persecutions, some Jews moved back to Western Europe in the 17th century, notably to Amsterdam. The last ban on Jewish residency in a European nation was revoked in 1654, but periodic expulsions from individual cities still occurred, and Jews were often restricted from land ownership, or forced to live in ghettos.


title: Jewish history

text: With the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, the Polish-Jewish population was split between the Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary, and German Prussia, which divided Poland among themselves.


title: Jewish history

text: During the period of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, significant changes occurred within the Jewish community. The Haskalah movement paralleled the wider Enlightenment, as Jews in the 18th century began to campaign for emancipation from restrictive laws and integration into the wider European society. Secular and scientific education was added to the traditional religious instruction received by students, and interest in a national Jewish identity, including a revival in the study of Jewish history and Hebrew, started to grow. Haskalah gave birth to the Reform and Conservative movements and planted the seeds of Zionism while at the same time encouraging cultural assimilation into the countries in which Jews resided. At around the same time another movement was born, one preaching almost the opposite of Haskalah, Hasidic Judaism. Hasidic Judaism began in the 18th century by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, and quickly gained a following with its more exuberant, mystical approach to religion. These two movements, and the traditional orthodox approach to Judaism from which they spring, formed the basis for the modern divisions within Jewish observance.


title: Jewish history

text: At the same time, the outside world was changing, and debates began over the potential emancipation of the Jews (granting them equal rights). The first country to do so was France, during the French Revolution in 1789. Even so, Jews were expected to assimilate, not continue their traditions. This ambivalence is demonstrated in the famous speech of Clermont-Tonnerre before the National Assembly in 1789:


title: Jewish history

text: We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals. We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they should only have our judges. We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be allowed to form in the state either a political body or an order. They must be citizens individually. But, some will say to me, they do not want to be citizens. Well then! If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so, and then, we should banish them. It is repugnant to have in the state an association of non-citizens, and a nation within the nation...


title: Jewish history

text: Hasidic Judaism is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith. Hasidism comprises part of contemporary Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, alongside the previous Talmudic Lithuanian-Yeshiva approach and the Oriental Sephardi tradition.


title: Jewish history

text: It was founded in 18th-century Eastern Europe by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov as a reaction against overly legalistic Judaism. Opposite to this, Hasidic teachings cherished the sincerity and concealed holiness of the unlettered common folk, and their equality with the scholarly elite. The emphasis on the Immanent Divine presence in everything gave new value to prayer and deeds of kindness, alongside Rabbinic supremacy of study, and replaced historical mystical (kabbalistic) and ethical (musar) asceticism and admonishment with optimism, encouragement, and daily fervour. This populist emotional revival accompanied the elite ideal of nullification to paradoxical Divine Panentheism, through intellectual articulation of inner dimensions of mystical thought. The adjustment of Jewish values sought to add to required standards of ritual observance, while relaxing others where inspiration predominated. Its communal gatherings celebrate soulful song and storytelling as forms of mystical devotion.


title: Jewish history

text: Though persecution still existed, emancipation spread throughout Europe in the 19th century. Napoleon invited Jews to leave the Jewish ghettos in Europe and seek refuge in the newly created tolerant political regimes that offered equality under Napoleonic Law (see Napoleon and the Jews). By 1871, with Germany's emancipation of Jews, every European country except Russia had emancipated its Jews.


title: Jewish history

text: Despite increasing integration of the Jews with secular society, a new form of antisemitism emerged, based on the ideas of race and nationhood rather than the religious hatred of the Middle Ages. This form of antisemitism held that Jews were a separate and inferior race from the Aryan people of Western Europe, and led to the emergence of political parties in France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary that campaigned on a platform of rolling back emancipation. This form of antisemitism emerged frequently in European culture, most famously in the Dreyfus Trial in France. These persecutions, along with state-sponsored pogroms in Russia in the late 19th century, led a number of Jews to believe that they would only be safe in their own nation. See Theodor Herzl and History of Zionism.


title: Jewish history

text: During this period, Jewish migration to the United States (see American Jews) created a large new community mostly freed of the restrictions of Europe. Over 2 million Jews arrived in the United States between 1890 and 1924, most from Russia and Eastern Europe. A similar case occurred in the southern tip of the continent, specifically in the countries of Argentina and Uruguay.


title: Jewish history

text: During the 1870s and 1880s, the Jewish population in Europe began to more actively discuss immigration back to Israel and the re-establishment of the Jewish Nation in the Land of Israel, fulfilling the biblical prophecies which are related to Shivat Tzion. In 1882 the first Zionist settlement—Rishon LeZion—was founded by immigrants who belonged to the "Hovevei Zion" movement. Later on, the "Bilu" movement established many other settlements in the land of Israel.


title: Jewish history

text: The Zionist movement was officially founded after the Kattowitz convention (1884) and the World Zionist Congress (1897), and it was Theodor Herzl who initiated the struggle to establish a state for the Jews.


title: Jewish history

text: After the First World War, it seemed that the conditions which made it possible for the Jews to establish such a state had arrived: The United Kingdom captured Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and the Jews received the promise of a "National Home" from the British in the form of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, given to Chaim Weizmann.


title: Jewish history

text: In 1920, the British Mandate of Palestine was established and the pro-Jewish Herbert Samuel was appointed High Commissioner of Palestine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was established and several large Jewish immigration waves to Palestine occurred. The Arab co-inhabitants of Palestine were hostile to increasing Jewish immigration, however, and as a result, they began to express their opposition to the establishment of Jewish settlements and they also began to express their opposition to the pro-Jewish policy of the British government in violent ways.


title: Jewish history

text: Arab gangs began to commit violent acts which included the murder of individual Jews, attacks on convoys and attacks on the Jewish population. After the 1920 Arab riots and the 1921 Jaffa riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British had no desire to confront local Arab gangs and punish them for their attacks on Palestinian Jews. Believing that they could not rely on the British administration for protection from these gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah organization in order to protect its community's farms and Kibbutzim.


title: Jewish history

text: Due to the increasing violence, the United Kingdom gradually started to backtrack from its original idea of supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland and it also started to speculate on a binational solution to the crisis or the establishment of an Arab state that would have a Jewish minority.


title: Jewish history

text: Meanwhile, the Jews of Europe and the United States gained success in the fields of science, culture and the economy. Among those Jews who were generally considered the most famous were the scientist Albert Einstein and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. At that time, a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners were Jewish, as is still the case. In Russia, many Jews were involved in the October Revolution and belonged to the Communist Party.


title: Jewish history

text: In 1933, with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party's rise to power in Germany, the Jewish situation became more severe. Economic crises, racial Anti-Jewish laws, and fear of an upcoming war led many Jews to flee from Europe and settle in Palestine, the United States and the Soviet Union.


title: Jewish history

text: In 1939, World War II began and until 1945, Germany occupied almost all of Europe, including Poland—where millions of Jews were living at that time—and France. In 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Final Solution began, an extensive organized operation on an unprecedented scale, aimed at the annihilation of the Jewish people, and resulting in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe, as well as Jews in European North Africa (pro-Nazi Vichy-North Africa and Italian Libya). This genocide, in which approximately six million Jews were methodically murdered with horrifying cruelty, is known as The Holocaust or the "Shoah" (Hebrew term). In Poland, as many as one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers at the Auschwitz camp complex.


title: Jewish history

text: The massive scale of the Holocaust, and the horrors that happened during it, were only understood after the war, and they heavily affected the Jewish nation and world public opinion. Efforts were then increased to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.


title: Jewish history

text: In 1945 the Jewish resistance organizations in Palestine unified and established the Jewish Resistance Movement. The movement began guerilla attacks against Arab paramilitaries and the British authorities. Following the King David Hotel bombing, Chaim Weizmann, president of the WZO appealed to the movement to cease all further military activity until a decision would be reached by the Jewish Agency. The Jewish Agency backed Weizmann's recommendation to cease activities, a decision reluctantly accepted by the Haganah, but not by the Irgun and Lehi. The JRM was dismantled and each of the founding groups continued operating according to their own policy.


title: Jewish history

text: The Jewish leadership decided to center the struggle in the illegal immigration to Palestine and began organizing a massive number of Jewish war refugees from Europe, without the approval of the British authorities. This immigration contributed a great deal to the Jewish settlements in Israel in the world public opinion and the British authorities decided to let the United Nations decide upon the fate of Palestine.


title: Jewish history

text: On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181(II) recommending partitioning Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state and the City of Jerusalem. The Jewish leadership accepted the decision but the Arab League and the leadership of Palestinian Arabs opposed it. Following a period of civil war the 1948 Arab–Israeli War started.


title: Jewish history

text: In the middle of the war, after the last British soldiers of left the Palestine Mandate, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed on May 14, 1948, the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel to be known as the State of Israel. In 1949 the war ended and the state of Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the world.


title: Jewish history

text: Since 1948, Israel has been involved in a series of major military conflicts, including the 1956 Suez Crisis, 1967 Six-Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and 2006 Lebanon War, as well as a nearly constant series of ongoing minor conflicts.


title: Jewish history

text: Since 1977, an ongoing and largely unsuccessful series of diplomatic efforts have been initiated by Israel, Palestinian organisations, their neighbours, and other parties, including the United States and the European Union, to bring about a peace process to resolve conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, mostly over the fate of the Palestinian people.


title: Jewish history

text: Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a population of over 8 million people, of whom about 6 million are Jewish. The largest Jewish communities are in Israel and the United States, with major communities in France, Argentina, Russia, England, and Canada. For statistics related to modern Jewish demographics see "Jewish population".


title: Jewish history

text: The Jewish Autonomous Oblast, created during the Soviet period, continues to be an autonomous oblast of the Russian state. The Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan, Mordechai Scheiner, says there are 4,000 Jews in the capital city. Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has stated that he intends to, "support every valuable initiative maintained by our local Jewish organizations". The Birobidzhan Synagogue opened in 2004 on the 70th anniversary of the region's founding in 1934.


title: Jewish history

text: The number of people who identified as Jews in England and Wales rose slightly between 2001 and 2011, with the growth being attributed to the higher birth rate of the Haredi community. The estimated British Jewish population in England as of 2011 stands at 263,346.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Hong Xiuquan (1 January 1814 – 1 June 1864), born Hong Huoxiu and with the courtesy name Renkun, was a Chinese revolutionary who was the leader of the Taiping Rebellion against the Qing dynasty. He established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom over varying portions of southern China, with himself as the "Heavenly King" and self-proclaimed younger brother of Jesus Christ.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Hong Xiuquan (), born "Hong Huoxiu", was the third and youngest son of a Hakka family. Some sources claim his family was "well to do". He was born in Fuyuan Springs, Hua county (now part of Huadu District) in Canton (Guangzhou), Guangdong to Hong Jingyang, a farmer and elected headman, and Madam Wang. He and his family moved to Guanlubu Village shortly after his birth. Upon marrying his wife Lai Xiying, Hong received the courtesy name "Renkun." His sister, Hong Xuanjiao, became the commander of the female battalion during the Taiping Rebellion.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Hong showed an interest in scholarship at an early age, so his family made financial sacrifices to provide a formal education for him, in the hope that he could one day complete all of the civil service examinations. Hong began studying at a primary school in his village at the age of five. He was able to recite the Four Books after five or six years. He then took the local xiucai preliminary civil service examinations and placed first. A few years later, he traveled to the nearby city of Guangzhou to take the imperial examinations. He was unsuccessful and, his parents being unable to afford to continue his education, he was forced to return to agricultural work. The next year, he accompanied a wealthy schoolmate elsewhere for a year of study and became a village schoolteacher upon his return.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: In 1836, at the age of 22, Hong returned to Guangzhou to retake the imperial examinations. While in Guangzhou, Hong heard Edwin Stevens, a foreign missionary, and his interpreter preaching about Christianity. From them, Hong received a set of pamphlets entitled "Good Words for Exhorting the Age", which were written by Liang Fa, Stevens's assistant, and contained excerpts from the Bible along with homilies and other material prepared by Liang. Supposedly, Hong only briefly looked over these pamphlets and did not pay much attention to them at the time. Unsurprisingly, he again failed the imperial examinations, which had a pass rate of less than one percent.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: In 1837, Hong attempted and failed the imperial examinations for a third time, leading to a nervous breakdown. He was delirious for days to the point that his family feared for his life. While convalescing, Hong dreamed of visiting Heaven, where he discovered that he possessed a celestial family distinct from his earthly family, which included a heavenly father, mother, elder brother, sister-in-law, wife, and son. His heavenly father, wearing a black dragon robe and high-brimmed hat with a long golden beard, lamented that men were worshiping demons rather than he himself, and presented Hong with a sword and golden seal with which to slay the demons infesting Heaven. Furthermore, he did so with the help of his celestial older-brother and a heavenly army. The father figure later informed Hong that his given name violated taboos and had to be changed, suggesting as one option the "Hong Xiuquan" moniker ultimately adopted by Hong. In later embellishments, Hong would declare that he also saw Confucius being punished by Hong's celestial father for leading the people astray. His acquaintances would later claim that after awakening from his dreams Hong became more careful, friendly, and open, while his pace became imposing and firm and his height and size increased. Hong stopped studying for the imperial examinations and sought work as a teacher. For the next several years Hong taught at several schools around the area of his hometown.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: In 1843, Hong failed the imperial examinations for the fourth and final time. It was only then, prompted by a visit by his cousin, that Hong took time to carefully examine the Christian pamphlets he had received. After reading these pamphlets, Hong came to believe that they had given him the key to interpreting his visions: his celestial father was God the Father (whom he identified with Shangdi from Chinese tradition), the elder brother that he had seen was Jesus Christ, and he had been directed to rid the world of demon worship. This interpretation led him to conclude that he was the literal son of God and younger brother to Jesus. In contrast to some of the later leaders of his movement, Hong appears to have genuinely believed in his ascent to Heaven and divine mission. After coming to this conclusion Hong began destroying idols and enthusiastically preaching his interpretation of Christianity. As a symbolic gesture to purge China of Confucianism, he and the cousin asked for two giant swords, three "chi" () long and nine "jin" (about 4.5 kg), called the "demon-slaying swords" (), to be forged.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Hong began by burning all Confucian and Buddhist statues and books in his house, and began preaching to his community about his visions. Some of his earliest converts were relatives of his who had also failed their examinations and belonged to the Hakka minority, Feng Yunshan and Hong Rengan. He collaborated with them to destroy holy statues in small villages, to the ire of local citizens and officials. Hong and his converts' acts were considered sacrilegious and they were persecuted by Confucians who forced them to leave their positions as village tutors. In April 1844, Hong, Feng Yunshan, and two other relatives of Hong left Hua county to travel and preach. They first journeyed to Guangzhou and preached in the outlying areas before heading northwest to White Tiger Village. There, Hong and Feng Yunshan parted ways before traveling some to the southwest to the village of Sigu, Guiping county, Guangxi, where distant relatives of Hong's resided, including two early converts who had returned home. It is in or near Sigu that Hong begins to draft "Exhortations to Worship the One True God", his first substantial work. In November 1844, after having preached in Guangxi for five months, Hong returned home without Feng and resumed his previous job as a village teacher, while continuing to write religious tracts.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: In 1847, Hong Xiuquan was invited by a member of the Chinese Union to study with the American Southern Baptist missionary, Reverend Issachar Jacox Roberts. Hong accepted the invitation and traveled to Guangzhou with his cousin, Hong Rengan. Once there, Hong studied Karl Gützlaff's translations of the Old and New Testaments, converted to Protestantism and requested to be baptized by Roberts. Roberts refused to do so, possibly due to Hong being tricked by the other converts into requesting monetary aid from Roberts. Hong left Guangzhou on 12 July 1847 to search for Feng Yunshan. Although robbed of all of his possessions, including his demon-slaying sword, by bandits in the town of Meizixun, he eventually reached Thistle Mountain on 27 August 1847. There, he reunited with Feng and discovered the "Society of God-Worshippers" that Feng had founded.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: In January 1848, Feng Yunshan was arrested and banished to Guangdong, and Hong Xiuquan left for Guangdong shortly thereafter to once again reunite with Feng. In Feng and Hong's absence, Yang Xiuqing and Xiao Chaogui jointly emerged to lead the "God Worshipers" themselves. Both claimed to enter trances which allowed them to speak as a member of the Trinity; God the Father in the case of Yang and Jesus Christ in the case of Xiao. When Hong and Feng returned in the summer of 1849, they investigated Yang and Xiao's claims and declared them to be genuine. Hong ministered to the faithful in outdoor meetings strongly resembling the Baptist tent revivals he had witnessed with Issachar Roberts.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Most of Hong Xiuquan's knowledge of the scriptures came from the books known as "Good Words to Admonish the Age" written by the Chinese preacher Liang Fa, as well as a localized Bible translated into Chinese. Many Western missionaries grew jealous of Hong and his local ministry. These competing missionaries were fond of spreading defamatory rumors such as his "lack of baptism." (Hong and his cousin were in fact both baptized according to the way prescribed in the pamphlet "Good words to admonish the age").


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: In 1847, Hong began his translation and adaptation of the Bible, what came to be known as "Authorized Taiping Version of the Bible", or "The Taiping Bible", which he based on Gutzlaff's translation. He presented his followers with the Bible as a vision of the authentic religion that had existed in ancient China before it was wiped out by Confucius and the imperial system. The deity of the Old Testament punished evil nations and rewarded those who followed his commandments, even music, food, and marriage laws.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Hong made some minor changes in the text, such as correcting misprints and improving the prose style, but adapted the meaning elsewhere to fit his own theology and moral teachings. For instance, in Genesis 27:25 the Israelites did not drink wine, and in Genesis 38:16-26 he omitted the sexual relations between the father and his son's widow. Hong preached a mixture of communal utopianism, evangelism and oriental syncretism. While proclaiming sexual equality, the sect segregated men from women and encouraged all its followers to pay their assets into a communal treasury.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: When Hong returned to Guangxi, he found that Feng Yunshan had accumulated a following of around 2,000 converts. Guangxi was a dangerous area at this time with many bandit groups based in the mountains and pirates on the rivers. Perhaps due to these more pressing concerns, the authorities were largely tolerant of Hong and his followers. However, the instability of the region meant that Hong's followers were inevitably drawn into conflict with other groups, not least because of their predominantly Hakka ethnicity. There are records of numerous incidents when local villages and clans, as well as groups of pirates and bandits, came into conflict with the authorities, and responded by fleeing to join Hong's movement. The rising tension between the sect and the authorities was probably the most important factor in Hong's eventual decision to rebel.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: By 1850, Hong had between 10,000 and 30,000 followers. The authorities were alarmed at the growing size of the sect, and ordered them to disperse. A local force was sent to attack them when they refused, but the imperial troops were routed and a deputy magistrate killed. A full-scale attack was launched by government forces in the first month of 1851, in what came to be known as the Jintian Uprising, named after the town of Jintian (present-day Guiping, Guangxi) where the sect was based. Hong's followers emerged victorious and beheaded the Manchu commander of the government army. Hong declared the founding of the "Heavenly Kingdom of Transcendent Peace" on 11 January 1851.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Despite this evidence of planning, Hong and his followers faced immediate challenges. The local Green Standard Army outnumbered them ten to one, and had recruited the help of the river pirates to keep the rebellion contained to Jintian. After a month of preparation the rebels managed to break through the blockade and fight their way to the town of Yongan (not to be confused with Yong'an), which fell to them on 25 September 1851.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Hong and his troops remained in Yongan for three months, sustained by local landowners who were hostile to the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty. The imperial army regrouped and launched another attack on the rebels in Yongan. Having run out of gunpowder, Hong's followers fought their way out by sword, and made for the city of Guilin, to which they laid siege. However, the fortifications of Guilin proved too strong, and Hong and his followers eventually gave up and set out northwards, towards Hunan. Here, they encountered an elite militia created by a local member of the gentry specifically to put down peasant rebellions. The two forces fought at Soyi Ford on 10 June 1852 where the rebels were forced into retreat, and 20% of their troops were killed. However, in March 1853, Hong's forces managed to take Nanjing and turned it into the capital of their movement.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: After establishing his capital at Nanjing Hong implemented an ambitious reform and modernization program. He created an elaborate civil bureaucracy, reformed the calendar used in his kingdom, outlawed opium use, and introduced a number of reforms designed to make women more socially equal to men. Hong ruled by making frequent proclamations from his Heavenly Palace, demanding strict compliance with various moral and religious rules. Most trade was suppressed, and some communal land ownership was introduced. Polygamy was forbidden and men and women were separated, although Hong and other leaders maintained groups of concubines.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Yang Xiuqing, also known as the "Eastern King", was a fellow Taiping leader who had directed successful military campaigns, and who often claimed to speak with the voice of God. Hong became increasingly suspicious of Yang's ambitions and his network of spies. In 1856, he and others in the Taiping élite had Yang and his family murdered in a purge that subsequently spun out of control, resulting in the further purge of its main perpetrator Wei Changhui.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Following a failed attempt by the Taiping rebels to take Shanghai in 1860, Qing government forces, aided by Western officers, slowly gained ground.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: In the spring of 1864, Tianjing was besieged and dangerously low on food supplies. Hong's solution was to order his subjects to eat manna, which had been translated into Chinese as sweetened dew and a medicinal herb. Hong himself gathered weeds from the grounds of his palace, which he then ate. Hong fell ill in April 1864, possibly due to his ingestion of the weeds, and died on 1 June 1864. Although Hong likely died of his illness, suicide by poison has also been suggested. He was buried in a yellow-silk shroud without a coffin in the bare ground, per Taiping custom, near the former Ming Imperial Palace. He was succeeded by his teenage son, Hong Tianguifu.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: On 30 July 1864, Qing forces exhumed, beheaded, and cremated Hong Xiuquan's body. Zeng Guofan had ordered this done to verify Hong Xiuquan's death. The ashes were blasted out of a cannon in order to ensure that his remains have no resting place as eternal punishment for the uprising.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: The following poem, titled "Poem on Executing the Evil and Preserving the Righteous" (), written in 1837 by Hong Xiuquan, illustrates his religious thinking and goal that later led to the establishment of the "Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping". Note that in the seventh line, the name of the then yet-to-come kingdom is mentioned.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: Views and opinions on Hong differ greatly. The Communists under Mao Zedong generally admired Hong and his rebellion as a legitimate peasant uprising that anticipated their own. Sun Yat-sen came from the same area as Hong and was said to have identified with Hong since his childhood days.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: To honor his legacy, the People's Republic of China established a small museum in 1959, the "Hong Xiuquan's Former Residence Memorial Museum" (), in his birthplace, where there is a longan tree planted by him. The museum's plate is written by the famous literary figure Guo Moruo (1892–1978). The residence and Book Chamber Building were renovated in 1961.


title: Hong Xiuquan

text: There has been an active academic debate on the degree to which Hong is similar or dissimilar to Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi. Scholars that promote the opinion that a strong similarity exists between Li and Hong note that both rallied a large number of people behind a religious or spiritual cause in order to challenge the "status quo". Scholars disputing a close relationship note that Li's political intentions are debatable.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Johnny Mnemonic is a 1995 cyberpunk film directed by Robert Longo in his directorial debut. Based on the 1981 story of the same name by William Gibson, it stars Keanu Reeves and Dolph Lundgren. Reeves plays the title character, a man with an overloaded, cybernetic brain implant designed to store information. The film portrays Gibson's dystopian, prophetic view of 2021 with the world wracked by a tech-induced plague, awash with conspiracies, and dominated by megacorporations, with strong East Asian influences.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Shot on location in Canada, with Toronto and Montreal filling in for the Newark and Beijing settings, a number of local sites, including Toronto's Union Station and Montreal's skyline and Jacques Cartier Bridge, are prominently featured.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: A longer version (103 mins) of the film that is closer to the director's cut premiered in Japan on April 15, 1995, featuring a score by Mychael Danna and different editing. The film was released in the United States on May 26, 1995. In 2022, a black-and-white edition of the film, titled "Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White", was released.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerate effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome" or NAS. Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Johnny is a "mnemonic courier" who discreetly transports sensitive data for corporations in a storage device implanted in his brain at the cost of his childhood memories. His current job is for a group of scientists in Beijing. Johnny initially balks when he learns the data exceeds his memory capacity even with compression, but agrees given the large fee will be enough to cover the cost of the operation to remove the device. Johnny warns that he must have the data extracted within a few days or suffer psychological damage. The scientists encrypt the data with three random images from a television feed and start sending these images to the receiver in Newark, New Jersey, but they are attacked and killed by the Yakuza, led by a man Shinji (Akiyama) who wields a laser trip wire beam weapon, before the images can be fully transmitted. Johnny escapes with a portion of the images but is pursued by both the Yakuza as well as security forces for Pharmakom, one of the mega-corporations run by Takahashi (Kitano), both seeking the data he carries. Johnny starts witnessing brief images of a female projection of an artificial intelligence (AI) who attempts to aid Johnny, but he dismisses her.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: In Newark, Johnny meets with his handler Ralfi (Kier) to explain the situation but finds Ralfi is also working with the Yakuza and wants to kill Johnny to get the storage device. Johnny is rescued by Jane (Meyer), a cybernetically-enhanced bodyguard, and members of anti-establishment Lo-Teks and their leader J-Bone (Ice-T), while Ralfi is sliced into pieces by Shinji for getting in his way. Jane takes Johnny to a clinic run by Spider (Rollins), who had installed Jane's implants. Spider reveals he was intended to receive the Beijing scientists' data, which is the cure for NAS stolen from Pharmakom; Spider claims Pharmakom refuses to release the cure as they are profiting off the mitigation of NAS. Unfortunately, even the portion of the encryption images Johnny took and what Spider had received is not sufficient to decrypt Johnny's mind, and Spider suggests that they see Jones at the Lo-Teks' base. Just then, Karl "The Street Preacher" (Lundgren), an assassin hired by Takahashi, attacks the clinic, killing Spider as Johnny and Jane escape.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The two reach the Lo-Tek base and learn from J-Bone that Jones is a dolphin once used by the Navy that can help decrypt the data in Johnny's mind. Just as they start the procedure, Shinji and the Yakuza, Takahashi and his security forces, and the Street Preacher all attack the base. Takahashi confronts Johnny and holds him at gunpoint before being gunned down by Shinji who wants the data for himself. Johnny fights Shinji who gains the upper hand, but Johnny manages to turn the tables and behead Shinji with his own laser wire. Takahashi having a last-minute change of heart turns over a portion of the encryption key to Johnny before he dies, but this still is not enough to fully decrypt the data, and J-Bone tells Johnny that he will need to hack his own mind with Jones' help. Johnny, Jane, J Bone and the Lo Teks manage to defeat the remaining forces sent after them. The Street Preacher arrives and after a fight is defeated by Johnny and Jane by being electrocuted and burned to a crisp.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The second attempt starts, and aided by the female AI, Johnny is able to decrypt the data and at the same time recover his childhood memories. The AI is revealed to be the virtual version of Johnny's mother who was also the founder of Pharmakom, angered at the company holding back the cure. As J-Bone transmits the NAS cure information across the Internet, Johnny and Jane watch from afar as the Pharmakom headquarters goes up in flames from the public outcry. J Bone in celebration also disposes of the Street Preachers burnt corpse by having it tossed into the city waters of Newark.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Longo and Gibson originally envisioned making an art film on a small budget but failed to get financing. Longo commented that the project "started out as an arty 1½-million-dollar movie, and it became a 30-million-dollar movie because we couldn't get a million and a half." Longo's lawyer suggested that their problem was that they were not asking for enough money and that studios would not be interested in such a small project. The unbounded spread of the Internet in the early 1990s and the consequent rapid growth of high technology culture had made cyberpunk increasingly relevant, and this was a primary motivation for Sony Pictures's decision to fund the project in the tens of millions. Val Kilmer was originally cast in the title role, and Reeves replaced him when Kilmer dropped out. Reeves' Canadian nationality opened up further financial options, such as Canadian tax incentives. When "Speed" turned into a major hit in 1994, expectations were raised for "Johnny Mnemonic", and Sony saw the film as a potential blockbuster hit.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Longo's experiences with the financiers were poor, believing that their demands compromised his artistic vision. Many of the casting decisions, such as Lundgren, were forced upon him to increase the film's appeal outside of the United States. Longo and Gibson, who had no idea what to do with Lundgren, created a new character for him. Lundgren had previously starred in several action films that emphasized his physique. He intended the role of the street preacher to be a showcase for further range as an actor, but his character's monologue was cut during editing. Gibson said that the monologue, a sermon about transhumanism that Lundgren delivered naked, was cut due to fears of offending religious groups. Kitano was cast to appeal to the Japanese market. Eight minutes of extra footage starring Kitano was shot for the Japanese release of the film.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The film significantly deviates from the short story, most notably turning Johnny, not his bodyguard partner, into the primary action figure. Molly Millions is replaced with Jane, as the film rights to Molly had already been sold. Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS) is a fictional disease that is not present in the short story. NAS, also called "the black shakes", is caused by an overexposure to electromagnetic radiation from omnipresent technological devices and is presented as a raging epidemic. In the film, one pharmaceutical corporation has found a cure but chooses to withhold it from the public in favor of a more lucrative treatment program. The code-cracking Navy dolphin Jones's reliance on heroin was one of many scenes cut during an editing process. Gibson said that the film was "taken away and re-cut by the American distributor". He described the original film as "a very funny, very alternative piece of work", and said it was "very unsuccessfully chopped and cut into something more mainstream". Gibson compared this to editing "Blue Velvet" into a mainstream thriller lacking any irony. Prior to its release, critic Amy Harmon identified the film as an epochal moment when cyberpunk counterculture would enter the mainstream. News of the script's compromises spurred pre-release concerns that the film would prove a disappointment to hardcore cyberpunks.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The Japanese soundtrack was composed by Mychael Danna but re-composed by Brad Fiedel for the international version. It also contains tracks from independent industrial band Black Rain who had initially recorded a score for Robert Longo that had been rejected.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Simultaneous with Sony Pictures' release of the film, its soundtrack was released by Sony subsidiary Columbia Records, and the corporation's digital effects division Sony ImageWorks issued a CD-ROM videogame version for DOS, Mac and Windows 3.x.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The "Johnny Mnemonic" videogame, which was developed by Evolutionary Publishing, Inc. and directed by Douglas Gayeton, offered 90 minutes of full motion video storytelling and puzzles. A Mega-CD/Sega CD version of the game was also developed, but never released despite being fully completed. This version was eventually leaked on the Internet many years later. A pinball machine based on the film designed by George Gomez was released in August 1995 by Williams.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Sony realised early on the potential for reaching their target demographic through Internet marketing, and its new-technology division promoted the film with an online scavenger hunt offering $20,000 in prizes. One executive was quoted as remarking "We see the Internet as turbo-charged word-of-mouth. Instead of one person telling another person something good is happening, it's one person telling millions!". The film's website, the first official site launched by Columbia TriStar Interactive, facilitated further cross-promotion by selling Sony Signatures-issued "Johnny Mnemonic" merchandise such as a "hack your own brain" T-shirt and Pharmakom coffee cups. Screenwriter William Gibson was deployed to field questions about the videogame from fans online. The habitually reclusive novelist, who despite creating in "cyberspace" one of the core metaphors for the internet age had never personally been on the Internet, likened the experience to "taking a shower with a raincoat on" and "trying to do philosophy in Morse code."


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The film grossed ¥73.6 million ($897,600) in its first 3 days in Japan from 14 screens in the nine key Japanese cities. It was released in the United States and Canada on May 26 in 2,030 theaters, grossing $6 million in the opening weekend. It grossed $19.1 million in total in the United States and Canada and $52.4 million worldwide against its $26 million budget.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: On August 16, 2022, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released "Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White" on Blu-ray in the United States.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: A black-and-white version of the theatrical cut, the edition was developed by Robert Longo. While not a director's cut, it is nonetheless closer to Longo's intended vision for the film, as he had desired to originally film the movie in black-and-white, but was denied the opportunity to do so. Initially, for the film's 25th anniversary, Longo had ripped a Blu-ray copy of the film and had begun to create a black-and-white version of the film himself. After contacting Don Carmody and informing him of his intention to release the new version of the film on YouTube, Carmody requested to see it first. Impressed with the result, Carmody convinced Longo to approach Sony Pictures for an official release. Sony Pictures then agreed to provide the film's footage to Longo for a professional conversion, so that they could release the new version on Blu-ray. Longo proceeded to re-grade the film's color in black-and-white, with the help of the film's original colorist Cyrus Stowe. Longo has stated that he is "happy" with the new version of the film, as he takes inspiration from black-and-white films such as "Alphaville" and "La Jetée". The new version was shown by the Tribeca and Rockaway Film Festivals at an outdoor screening, which sold out, in 2021.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The film holds an 18% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 38 reviews, with an average rating of 4.1/10. The website's consensus reads, "As narratively misguided as it is woefully miscast, "Johnny Mnemonic" brings the '90s cyberpunk thriller to inane new whoas – er, lows." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 36/100 based on 25 reviews, which the site terms "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: "Variety"s Todd McCarthy called the film "high-tech trash" and likened it to a video game. Roger Ebert, the film critic for the "Chicago Sun-Times", gave the film two stars out of four and called it "one of the great goofy gestures of recent cinema". Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" rated it C− and called it "a slack and derivative future-shock thriller". Conversely, Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" described it as "inescapably a very cool movie", and Marc Savlov wrote in "The Austin Chronicle" that the film works well for both Gibson fans and those unfamiliar with his work. Writing in "The New York Times", Caryn James called the film "a disaster in every way" and said that despite Gibson's involvement, the film comes off as "a shabby imitation of "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall"".


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: McCarthy said that the film's premise is its "one bit of ingenuity", but the plot, which he called likely to disappoint Gibson's fans, is simply an excuse for "elaborate but undramatic and unexciting computer-graphics special effects". Ebert also called the plot an excuse for the special effects, and the conceit of having to deliver important information while avoiding enemy agents struck him as "breathtakingly derivative". Ebert furthermore felt that hiring a data courier instead of transmitting encrypted data over the internet makes no sense outside the artificiality of a film. In his review for the "Los Angeles Times", Peter Rainer wrote that the film, when stripped of the cyberpunk atmosphere, is recycled from noir fiction, and LaSalle viewed it more positively as "a hard-boiled action story using technology as its backdrop". Savlov called it "an updated "D.O.A."", and Ebert said the film's plot could have worked in any genre and been set in any time period.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: James criticized the film's lack of tension, and Rainer called the film's tone too grim and lacking excitement. McCarthy criticized what he saw as a "unrelieved grimness" and "desultory, darkly staged action scenes". McCarthy felt the film's visual depiction of the future was unoriginal, and Gleiberman described the film as ""Blade Runner" with tackier sets". Savlov wrote that Longo's "attempts to out-"Blade Runner" Ridley Scott in the decaying cityscape department grow wearisome". Savlov still found the film "much better than expected". LaSalle felt the film "introduces a fantastic yet plausible vision of a computer-dominated age" and maintains a focus on humanity, in contrast to Rainer, who found the film's countercultural pose to be inauthentic and lacking humanity. James called the film murky and colorless; Rainer's review criticized similar issues, finding the film's lack of lighting and its grim set design to give everything an "undifferentiated dullness". McCarthy found the special effects to be "slick and accomplished but unimaginative", though Ebert enjoyed the special effects. Gleiberman highlighted the monofilament whip as his favorite special effect, though James found it unimpressive.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Although saying that Reeves is not a good actor, LaSalle said Reeves is still enjoyable to watch and makes for a compelling protagonist. McCarthy instead found Reeves' character to be unlikable and one-dimensional. James compared Reeves to a robot, and Gleiberman compared him to an action figure. Rainer posited that Reeves' character may seem so blank due to his memory loss. Savlov said that Reeves' wooden delivery gives the film unintentional humor, but Rainer found that the lack of humor throughout the film sapped all the acting performances of any enjoyment. Gleiberman said that Reeves' efforts to avoid Valleyspeak backfire, giving his character's lines "an intense, misplaced urgency", though he liked the unconventional casting of Lundgren as a psychopathic street preacher. Rainer highlighted Lundgren as the only actor to display mirth and said his performance was the best in the film. James called Ice-T's role stereotypical and said he deserved better.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: Reeves's performance in the film earned him a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actor (also for "A Walk in the Clouds"), but he lost to Pauly Shore for "Jury Duty". The film was filed under the Founders Award (What Were They Thinking and Why?) at the 1995 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards and was also a dishonourable mention for Worst Picture.


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: In a career retrospective of Reeves' films for "Entertainment Weekly", Chris Nashawaty ranked the film as Reeves' second worst, calling the film's fans "nuts" for liking it. While acknowledging the film's issues, critic Ty Burr attributed its poor reviews to critics' unfamiliarity with Gibson's work. "The Quietus" described the film as having "all the makings of a cult classic", and its release to streaming sites in 2021 resulted in a passionate defense by Rowan Righelato in "The Guardian", who said it was "a testament to Longo’s genius" that the film remained as eccentric as it was despite the studio's recut. "Inverse" also recommended the film. In a retrospective review from 2021, Peter Bradshaw, film critic for "The Guardian", rated it 4/5 stars and wrote, "Perhaps it's quaint, but it's also watchable, and it is the kind of sci-fi that is genuinely audacious". The Wachowskis used this film as template for "The Matrix".


title: Johnny Mnemonic (film)

text: The props from the film were transformed into sculptures by artist Dora Budor for her 2015 solo exhibition, "Spring".


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: Sidse Babett Knudsen (; born 22 November 1968) is a Danish actress who works in theatre, television, and film. Knudsen made her screen debut in the 1997 improvisational comedy "Let's Get Lost", for which she received both the Robert and Bodil awards for Best Actress.


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: Following the critical success of her debut, Knudsen has been considered one of the top Danish actresses of her generation. In 2000, she again won both best actress awards for the comedy romance "Den Eneste Ene" (English title: "The One and Only"). In 2016, she won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film "Courted" ("L'Hermine"). Knudsen has also received award nominations for her roles in "Monas Verden" ("Mona's World") and "Efter brylluppet" ("After the Wedding").


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: Knudsen achieved international recognition for her leading role as fictional Danish Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg in the Danish TV series "Borgen", and for her role as Theresa Cullen in the HBO science fiction-Western television series "Westworld".


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: Knudsen was born 22 November 1968 in Copenhagen, the daughter of Ebbe Knudsen, a photographer, and Susanne Andersen, a school teacher. During her childhood, the family lived in Tanzania where her parents did volunteer work. Upon returning to Denmark, Knudsen attended a "creative school." Knudsen is unmarried and is the mother of one son born in 2004.


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: From 1987 to 1990 Knudsen trained in acting at the Theatre de l'Ombre in Paris despite knowing little French. Upon returning to Denmark, Knudsen played roles for the experimental theatre OVINE 302 as well as at the Betty Nansen and Royal Danish Theatres in Copenhagen.


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: In 1997 Knudsen debuted in the lead role of Julie in Jonas Elmer's slice-of-life comedy "Let's Get Lost". The film's script was only an outline, requiring the actors to improvise their roles and dialogue. Knudsen said she wasn't very good at improvisation and accepted the part only because she thought it would be a lightweight summer comedy. The film became a breakout hit in Denmark and Knudsen received both the Robert Award and the Bodil Award for Best Actress. Critics called Knudsen's performance dominating. Film critic Kim Skotte of "Politiken" wrote that Knudsen had hit a new tone with a "special ability to capture the modern woman's uncertainty and strength".


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: Following her appearance in the 1998 mystery "Motello", Knudsen played the lead character in Susanne Bier's 1999 romantic comedy "Den Eneste Ene". The film became one of the decade's biggest box-office hits in Denmark. It marked a new direction in modern Danish romantic comedies with credit given to Knudsen's acting style. Knudsen's portrayal of Sus, a woman who becomes pregnant by her unfaithful husband while she loves another man, again earned her both the Robert Award and the Bodil Award for Best Actress.


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: Knudsen returned to work with Elmer in 2000 as the title character in the comedy "Mona's Verden". As in Elmer's first film, Knudsen was required to improvise her dialogue and character. Knudsen's portrayal of Mona, an uptight accountant who tries to stave off the romantic infatuation of a bank robber while being held hostage, earned her a Bodil Award nomination for Best Actress.


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: In 2020, she starred in the BBC drama "Roadkill" as the mistress of a British Tory politician played by Hugh Laurie.


title: Sidse Babett Knudsen

text: Knudsen reprised her role as Prime Minister Nyborg in the Netflix revival of "Borgen", which was released in 2022.


title: Airdrop (cryptocurrency)

text: An airdrop is an unsolicited distribution of a cryptocurrency token or coin, usually for free, to numerous wallet addresses. Airdrops are often associated with the launch of a new cryptocurrency or a DeFi protocol, primarily as a way of gaining attention and new followers, resulting in a larger user base and a wider disbursement of coins. Airdrops have been a more important part of ICOs since crypto entrepreneurs have started doing private sales instead of public offerings to raise initial capital. One example of this is by the company Omise, which gave away five percent of its OmiseGO cryptocurrency to Ethereum holders in September 2017.


title: Airdrop (cryptocurrency)

text: Airdrops are also often used by companies, brands and entrepreneurs to reward their current holders, investors and collectors, which may receive tokens, coins or assets for free, based on how much they invested or contributed to a certain project.


title: Airdrop (cryptocurrency)

text: Airdrops aim to take advantage of the network effect by engaging existing holders of a particular blockchain-based currency, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum in their currency or project.


title: Airdrop (cryptocurrency)

text: In the United States, the practice has raised policy issues about tax liability and whether they amount to income or capital gains.


title: House mouse

text: The house mouse (Mus musculus) is a small mammal of the order Rodentia, characteristically having a pointed snout, large rounded ears, and a long and almost hairless tail. It is one of the most abundant species of the genus "Mus". Although a wild animal, the house mouse has benefited significantly from associating with human habitation to the point that truly wild populations are significantly less common than the semi-tame populations near human activity.


title: House mouse

text: The house mouse has been domesticated as the pet or fancy mouse, and as the laboratory mouse, which is one of the most important model organisms in biology and medicine. The complete mouse reference genome was sequenced in 2002.


title: House mouse

text: House mice have an adult body length (nose to base of tail) of and a tail length of . The weight is typically . In the wild they vary in color from grey and light brown to black (individual hairs are actually agouti coloured), but domesticated fancy mice and laboratory mice are produced in many colors ranging from white to champagne to black. They have short hair and some, but not all, sub-species have a light belly. The ears and tail have little hair. The hind feet are short compared to "Apodemus" mice, only long; the normal gait is a run with a stride of about , though they can jump vertically up to . The voice is a high-pitched squeak. House mice thrive under a variety of conditions; they are found in and around homes and commercial structures, as well as in open fields and agricultural lands.


title: House mouse

text: Newborn males and females can be distinguished on close examination as the anogenital distance in males is about double that of the female. From the age of about 10 days, females have five pairs of mammary glands and nipples; males have no nipples. When sexually mature, the most striking and obvious difference is the presence of testicles on the males. These are large compared to the rest of the body and can be retracted into the body.


title: House mouse

text: The tail, which is used for balance, has only a thin covering of hair as it is the main peripheral organ of heat loss in thermoregulation along with—to a lesser extent—the hairless parts of the paws and ears. Blood flow to the tail can be precisely controlled in response to changes in ambient temperature using a system of arteriovenous anastomoses to increase the temperature of the skin on the tail by as much as to lose body heat. Tail length varies according to the environmental temperature of the mouse during postnatal development, so mice living in colder regions tend to have shorter tails. The tail is also used for balance when the mouse is climbing or running, or as a base when the animal stands on its hind legs (a behaviour known as tripoding), and to convey information about the dominance status of an individual in encounters with other mice.


title: House mouse

text: In addition to the regular pea-sized thymus organ in the chest, house mice have a second functional pinhead-sized thymus organ in the neck next to the trachea.


title: House mouse

text: Mice are mammals of the Glires clade, which means they are amongst the closest relatives of humans other than lagomorphs, treeshrews, flying lemurs and other primates.


title: House mouse

text: Many more subspecies' names have been given to house mice, but these are now regarded as synonyms of the five subspecies. Some populations are hybrids of different subspecies, including the Japanese house mouse ("M. m. molossinus").


title: House mouse

text: The standard species karyotype is composed of 40 chromosomes. Within Western Europe there are numerous populations – chromosomal races – with a reduced chromosome count arising from Robertsonian fusion.


title: House mouse

text: House mice usually run, walk, or stand on all fours, but when eating, fighting, or orienting themselves, they rear up on their hind legs with additional support from the tail – a behavior known as "tripoding". Mice are good jumpers, climbers, and swimmers, and are generally considered to be thigmotactic, i.e. usually attempt to maintain contact with vertical surfaces.


title: House mouse

text: Mice are mostly crepuscular or nocturnal; they are averse to bright lights. The average sleep time of a captive house mouse is reported to be 12.5 hours per day. They live in a wide variety of hidden places near food sources, and construct nests from various soft materials. Mice are territorial, and one dominant male usually lives together with several females and young. Dominant males respect each other's territories and normally enter another's territory only if it is vacant. If two or more males are housed together in a cage, they often become aggressive unless they have been raised together from birth.


title: House mouse

text: House mice primarily feed on plant matter, but are omnivorous. They eat their own faeces to acquire nutrients produced by bacteria in their intestines. House mice, like most other rodents, do not vomit.


title: House mouse

text: Mice are generally afraid of rats which often kill and eat them, a behavior known as muricide. Despite this, free-living populations of rats and mice do exist together in forest areas in New Zealand, North America, and elsewhere. House mice are generally poor competitors and in most areas cannot survive away from human settlements in areas where other small mammals, such as wood mice, are present. However, in some areas (such as Australia), mice are able to coexist with other small rodent species.


title: House mouse

text: The social behavior of the house mouse is not rigidly fixed into species-specific patterns but is instead adaptable to the environmental conditions, such as the availability of food and space. This adaptability allows house mice to inhabit diverse areas ranging from sandy dunes to apartment buildings.


title: House mouse

text: House mice have two forms of social behaviour, the expression of which depends on the environmental context. House mice in buildings and other urbanized areas with close proximity to humans are known as commensal. Commensal mice populations often have an excessive food source resulting in high population densities and small home ranges. This causes a switch from territorial behaviour to a hierarchy of individuals. When populations have an excess of food, there is less female-female aggression, which usually occurs to gain access to food or to prevent infanticide. Male-male aggression occurs in commensal populations, mainly to defend female mates and protect a small territory. The high level of male-male aggression, with a low female-female aggression level is common in polygamous populations. The social unit of commensal house mouse populations generally consists of one male and two or more females, usually related. These groups breed cooperatively, with the females communally nursing. This cooperative breeding and rearing by related females helps increase reproductive success. When no related females are present, breeding groups can form from non-related females.


title: House mouse

text: In open areas such as shrubs and fields, the house mouse population is known as noncommensal. These populations are often limited by water or food supply and have large territories. Female-female aggression in the noncommensal house mouse populations is much higher, reaching a level generally attributed to free-ranging species. Male aggression is also higher in noncommensal populations. In commensal populations, males come into contact with other males quite frequently due to high population densities and aggression must be mediated or the risk of injury becomes too great.


title: House mouse

text: Both commensal and noncommensal house mouse males aggressively defend their territory and act to exclude all intruders. Males mark their territory by scent marking with urine. In marked territories, intruders showed significantly lower aggression than the territory residents. House mice show a male-biased dispersal; males generally leave their birth sites and migrate to form new territories whereas females generally stay and are opportunistic breeders rather than seasonal.


title: House mouse

text: The visual apparatus of mice is basically similar to that of humans but differs in that they are dichromats and have only two types of cone cells whereas humans are trichromats and have three. This means that mice do not perceive some of the colors in the human visual spectrum. However, the ventral area of the mouse retina has a much greater density of ultraviolet-sensitive cones than other areas of the retina, although the biological significance of this structure is unknown. In 2007, mice genetically engineered to produce the third type of cone were shown to be able to distinguish a range of colors similar to that perceived by tetrachromats.


title: House mouse

text: House mice also rely on pheromones for social communication, some of which are produced by the preputial glands of both sexes. The tear fluid and urine of male mice also contains pheromones, such as major urinary proteins. Mice detect pheromones mainly with the vomeronasal organ (Jacobson's organ), located at the bottom of the nose.


title: House mouse

text: The urine of house mice, especially that of males, has a characteristic strong odor. At least 10 different compounds, such as alkanes, alcohols, etc., are detectable in the urine. Among them, five compounds are specific to males, namely 3-cyclohexene-1-methanol, aminotriazole (3-amino-s-triazole), 4-ethyl phenol, 3-ethyl-2,7-dimethyl octane and 1-iodoundecane.


title: House mouse

text: Odours from adult males or from pregnant or lactating females can speed up or retard sexual maturation in juvenile females and synchronise reproductive cycles in mature females (i.e. the Whitten effect). Odours of unfamiliar male mice may terminate pregnancies, i.e. the Bruce effect.


title: House mouse

text: Mice can sense surfaces and air movements with their whiskers which are also used during thigmotaxis. If mice are blind from birth, super-normal growth of the vibrissae occurs presumably as a compensatory response. Conversely, if the vibrissae are absent, the use of vision is intensified.


title: House mouse

text: Female house mice have an estrous cycle about four to six days long, with estrus itself lasting less than a day. If several females are held together under crowded conditions, they will often not have an estrus at all. If they are then exposed to male urine, they will come into estrus after 72 hours.


title: House mouse

text: Male house mice court females by emitting characteristic ultrasonic calls in the 30 kHz–110 kHz range. The calls are most frequent during courtship when the male is sniffing and following the female; however, the calls continue after mating has begun, at which time the calls are coincident with mounting behaviour. Males can be induced to emit these calls by female pheromones. The vocalizations appear to differ between individuals and have been compared to bird songs because of their complexity. While females have the capability to produce ultrasonic calls, they typically do not do so during mating behaviour.