Fifth and final stop on our winery tour by AAA Tours and Charters (Margaret River) - Gracetown. The town is well known for its many surfing spots. The Gracetown Grommets is a popular and historical junior surfing event. Extended Family Trip to Western Australia from 7 to 16 Jun 2016. (photo by Ben Cho)

This is Part 33 of 50 in an extended, slow-moving but still going series. Be warned: This is a long one.

 

You know how there are some people who get about halfway through a good book, but then get so eager to see how it turns out that they flip to the back and read the last chapter? I feel like those are the people who were settling the United States in the middle of the 19th century. Here you had a thriving collection of states filling up the eastern half of the continent, and then just as wagons started crossing the Mississippi River, somebody decides to jump ahead and smear a bunch of states on the West Coast. They weren't even waiting to make sure the eastern half of the country didn't split itself in two. They just wanted to sign up and get things settled NOW!

 

And so, here we have Oregon. And sure, California's already a thing just to the south, but you had to go a thousand miles to get to Oregon from any other established state in 1859. It was a slog, and a lot of the people who tried it died of dysentery along the way. But still, people came.

 

You May: Start the Trail

 

The earliest artifact of humanity ever found in Oregon is a pair of sandals that date to around 13,200 years ago, which is kind of funny when you consider the state's eventual relationship with shoes. So people were in Oregon early, though native groups over the the millennia tended to stay small and isolated by the state's rugged coastal mountains or wide river valleys or vast eastern deserts. At the time the Europeans showed up, the natives mostly lived either in little fishing villages along the Columbia or Willamette Rivers, or else they were plains people who wandered the dry grasslands over toward Idaho. But I'll save any specific discussions of these people for the Washington or Idaho stories.

 

You May: Look At the Map

 

It took a while for Europeans to get to Oregon, thanks to that big, 9,000-mile wall of continent in the way. As I said a couple of states ago, the Pacific Coast of California was remote, and Oregon perched on top is just that much farther. The entire Pacific Northwest is so remote, in fact, that it's one of the last significant pieces of coastal land to be mapped. And the funny thing is, nobody's sure who got to Oregon first.

 

The first guess is that it was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, that Spaniard who poked along the California coast in 1542 and then broke his leg stepping off a boat onto Catalina Island. But most scholars say Cabrillo only made it as far north as the Russian River, which is about 260 miles short of Oregon. So it probably wasn't him.

 

The next option didn't come along until 1592, when a Greek navigator piloted a ship sailed by a Spanish captain under a Spanish flag up the West Coast past all the way to Vancouver Island. The navigator's name was Ioannis Phokas, which history has Spanishized into Juan de Fuca, and for some reason he gets all the credit for this voyage even though he was just the navigator. But his life serves as a good illustration of the importance of primary sources, as it's entirely possible he never actually existed. He still wound up with a strait and a tectonic plate named after him, but most of that's up in Washington, though, so I'll save his story for that post.

 

Once Juan de Fuca passed Oregon by, the Spanish didn't do much with the place. As I've mentioned before, while the Spanish claimed the entire western third of North America based on various treaties going all the way back to Tordesillas in 1494, they kept their attention in North America on Mexico. A few Spanish priests trickled north into places that would become Texas and the desert Southwest, and there was that whole mission network in California, but they all stopped well short of Oregon. The Spanish ships that spent a couple of centuries sailing back and forth between Acapulco and Manilla usually stopped in California for supplies, but the only ships that ever went to Oregon did it by accident when they were blown off course, and most of them wrecked. So Oregon and Washington and British Columbia all stayed blank spots on everybody's map.

 

You May: Change Pace

 

What finally kicked things into gear for Euro-Oregon was this idea the Spanish got all of the sudden that other folks might want to go there, too, especially the Russians. And really, if you're an 18th century European empire starting to feel your age and are maybe worried you've gotten a little soft in the colonies, the last thing you want to see is a bunch of backward Russians encroaching on all those lands you've been holding onto for a rainy day. But that's just what started happening in the late 1740s. The Russians, who'd pushing across Siberia since the days of Peter the Great, finally figured out boats and hopped into Alaska. They kept moving along the coast over the next several decades, and by the 1770s, Russian fur trappers were taking excursions as far south as Oregon and California.

 

The Spanish response was to scramble a bunch of last-minute expeditions up the coast to fill in the maps they should have drawn up a century ago while reminding everyone that they'd been there first. One 1774 expedition charted a bunch of the more famous rocks on the Oregon coast. Another expedition in 1775 finally noticed the mouth of the Columbia River. But it all came too late. And Spain would soon have other worries anyway, once France went bankrupt and then insane right next door to the homeland, and that constant cycle of European war pushed everybody back home toward economic ruin.

 

So nobody said anything when famous British Supercaptain James Cook came along and drew his own map of the Pacific Northwest in 1778. Or when a few dozen British and American ships associated with the maritime fur trade started hunting otters along the coast in the 1780s. Or when Lewis and Clark finished up their great expedition on the Oregon side of the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805.

 

And then in 1810, the colony of New Spain decided it wanted to be its own thing and started fighting a five-year war to change its name to Mexico, and that was the end of Spain in Oregon. And, it turned out, all of North America. The Spanish stopped long enough on their way out in 1819 to sign a treaty surrendering Florida to the United States, and since they were already doing the paperwork, they went ahead and finally established the official border between Alta California and the Oregon Country at the 42nd parallel, where the Oregon-California border is today. Of course, Mexico wasn't thrilled with Spain for making that kind of deal after the Mexicans thought they'd already won their independence, but they eventually went along with it and signed a treaty of their own with the U.S. a decade later.

 

Meanwhile, Russia's flirtation with America's West Coast turned out to be a fad, and they'd eventually sign away whatever ambitions they might have had for anything south of Alaska with a couple of treaties in the 1820s. Which whittled the fight for ownership of the Pacific Northwest to two final players: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the United States of America.

 

Getting Furs

 

The first big American push into Oregon came in 1811, when a bunch of trappers and traders working for John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company followed the path Lewis and Clark had charted to the mouth of the Columbia River and built a little trading post fort, which they called Fort Astoria. But this turned out to be bad timing Astor. Tensions had been running high between the U.S. and Great Britain since the Revolution, and folks back east were itching for another war. There wasn't any American military presence in the Oregon Country, and Astor figured that Great Britain would seize all his assets as soon as war was declared. So early in 1812, he jumped all the guns and sold out to the North West Company, a British fur enterprise based in Montreal that had come into Oregon overland through Canada. But American trappers stayed in the area anyway, even as the War of 1812 raged back east.

 

But then a weird thing happened after the war. It turned out to be a draw that didn't solve much of anything, but the British were worn out from two decades of near-constant war in Europe, and the Americans so were relieved to have not lost the Great Lakes or the Lower Mississippi that they were thrilled to have a little peace. Nobody was in a mood to fight over Oregon, so in 1818, the two powers worked out a joint custody agreement known as the Anglo-American Convention. Since nobody could decide who should own what (the Americans would have liked a line drawn at the 49th parallel; Great Britain preferred a border along the Columbia River), they decided on a co-parenting scheme where the two nations would manage the entire disputed territory jointly.

 

And that sounds great, except you already know it was doomed. It lasted longer than you might guess, but little arguments started breaking out in the 1820s over who should get custody of Oregon on the weekends and whether the Columbia River would spend Christmas with the Thames or the Potomac, and tensions built through the 1830s and into the 1840s. And by the time the U.S. Presidential election of 1844 came along, the "Oregon Question" had blown up into one of those all-consuming, existential dilemmas of the sort that makes an American drunk on notions of Manifest Destiny ready to start shooting some red coats ... or whatever the Brits were wearing now.

 

It didn't bode well when that election brought James K. Polk to the Presidency. I've talked about Polk in a couple of these state origin stories and in a few other places over the years. Polk was the guy who goaded Mexico into starting the Mexican-American War so he'd have an excuse to go grab California, and he wasn't beyond using that same kind of bluster against the British over Oregon. In December of 1845, Polk went before Congress and anticipated John Wayne by at least a century, giving the British exactly one year to get out of town. Polk wanted everything west of the Continental Divide and south of 54°40′ north latitude. Or else.

 

"Or else" to Great Britain might have meant using the best navy in the world to blow up a lot of American boats and maybe retake the Great Lakes. But the powers that were in Britain had other things on their minds. The 1840s were a rough time in Europe, with a deepening economic depression affecting the entire continent. On top of that, the potato harvests in Ireland were starting to look pretty bleak, and the guys in Parliament figured they might need to buy some American wheat before long. So they suggested a compromise. "54°40′ north latitude is idiotic," they said. "That would mean we'd never get to build Vancouver, and people are going to love Vancouver. So how about we split the entire continent, everything from the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota all the way to the Pacific, along that 49th parallel line that you guys asked for 30 years ago and call it a day?" It turned out that Polk didn't really want to go to war anyway, and the 49th parallel sounded pretty sweet to him, so they all shook hands and signed the Oregon Treaty of 1846. And that's how we finally got that straight line that still defines the northern border of the United States west of the Great Lakes.

 

The Oregon Trail

 

The marketing folks for the Oregon Country had one big advantage in the first half of the 19th century. People were realizing a lot of the land Jefferson had bought from Napoleon was waterless territory unfit for the kind of agriculture a 19th century farmer could manage. But the Oregon Country? With all those green trees and fertile valleys and coastal Pacific Northwest rain? Oregon was just the thing for a nation full of expansionist-minded folks following Manifest Destiny dreams.

 

They started coming well before the thing was made legal, with all those fur trappers and mountain men followed by misfits and criminals and outcast religious sects, all the people who always seemed to be in the colonial bow shock. By the middle of the 1830s, enough people had marched to Oregon to beat a path that new settlers could pretend was an actual road, running from Independence, Missouri, up through future Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and beyond all the way to the Columbia River and the Willamette Valley. And by the time the British signed the Oregon Treaty and moved north, the road had become famous as the Oregon Trail. Over the next few decades, nearly a half-million settlers would brave the broken wagon wheels and bad weather and bouts of dysentery or measles that plagued that road, all for the hope of settling in Oregon's Willamette Valley.

 

In 1843, these settlers put together their own representative legislature and assembled their own legal code, called the Organic Laws. One of these Organic Laws offered free land to any white people who wanted to follow the Oregon Trail. In 1846, after the treaty made Oregon an official U.S. territory, those laws became the basis of a new constitution. In 1850, an elected delegate from Oregon named Samuel Thurston talked the U.S. Congress into passing the Donation Land Claim Act, which legitimized the offer of free land and made it federal law. Any single white man who followed the trail would get 320 acres, free of charge. Any white married couple would get twice that. And any potential settler of color would get ... well, kicked out. Because while Oregon had no interest in slavery -- everybody knew Oregon was going to be a free state -- it wasn't about to let itself become some refuge for formal slaves.

 

But there were plenty of white people following the trail to the Columbia and the Willamette and the Oregon coast as the 1850s drew to a close, and they'd already started platting out Portland. It was enough that on February 14, 1859, Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.

 

Considering where we were on the slavery issue in 1859, it's surprising that nobody back East kicked up a snit about the admission of another free state, though I suspect that Oregon's position on the issue had been set long enough before that nobody thought it was worth the argument. But that does bring our total up to 18 free states versus 15 slave states. Henry Clay's numerical balance was officially dead. The next time I write one of these, things are going to get bloody.

The Great Patriotic War (Russian: Вели́кая Оте́чественная война́, romanized: Velikaja Otečestvennaja vojna) is a term used in Russia and some other former republics of the Soviet Union to describe the conflict fought during the period from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 along the many fronts of the Eastern Front of World War II, primarily between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. For some legal purposes, this period may be extended to 11 May 1945 to include the end of the Prague offensive.

 

History

The term Patriotic War refers to the Russian resistance to the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon I, which became known as the Patriotic War of 1812. In Russian, the term отечественная война originally referred to a war on one's own territory (otechestvo means "the fatherland"), as opposed to a campaign abroad (заграничная война), and later was reinterpreted as a war for the fatherland, i.e. a defensive war for one's homeland. Sometimes the Patriotic War of 1812 was also referred to as the Great Patriotic War (Великая отечественная война); the phrase first appeared in 1844 and became popular on the eve of the centenary of the Patriotic War of 1812.

 

After 1914, the phrase was applied to World War I. It was the name of a special war-time appendix to the magazine Theater and Life (Театр и жизнь) in Saint Petersburg, and referred to the Eastern Front of World War I, where Russia fought against the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The phrases Second Patriotic War (Вторая отечественная война) and Great World Patriotic War (Великая всемирная отечественная война) were also used during World War I in Russia.

 

The term Great Patriotic War re-appeared in the official newspaper of the CPSU, Pravda, on 23 June 1941, just a day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. It was found in the title of "The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People" (Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna Sovetskogo Naroda), a long article by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, a member of Pravda editors' collegium. The phrase was intended to motivate the population to defend the Soviet fatherland and to expel the invader, and a reference to the Patriotic War of 1812 was seen as a great morale booster. During the Soviet period, historians engaged in huge distortions to make history fit with Communist ideology, with Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov and Prince Pyotr Bagration transformed into peasant generals, Alexander I alternatively ignored or vilified, and the war becoming a massive "People's War" fought by the ordinary people of Russia with almost no involvement on the part of the government. The invasion by Germany was called the Great Patriotic War by the Soviet government to evoke comparisons with the victory by Tsar Alexander I over Napoleon's invading army.

 

The term Отечественная война (Patriotic War or Fatherland War) was officially recognized by establishment of the Order of the Patriotic War on 20 May 1942, awarded for heroic deeds.

 

The term is not generally used outside the former Soviet Union, and the closest term is the Eastern Front of World War II (1941–1945). Neither term covers the initial phase of World War II in Eastern Europe, during which the USSR, then still in a non-aggression pact with Germany, invaded eastern Poland (1939), the Baltic states (1940), Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (1940) and Finland (1939–1940). The term also does not cover the Soviet–Japanese War (1945) nor the Battles of Khalkhin Gol (1939).

 

In Russia and some other post-Soviet countries, the term is given great significance; it is accepted as a representation of the most important part of World War II. Until 2014, Uzbekistan was the only nation in the Commonwealth of Independent States that had not recognized the term, referring to it as World War II on the state holiday - the Day of Remembrance and Honour.

 

On 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament replaced the term Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) (Velyka vitchyzniana viina) in the country's law with the "Second World War (1939–1945)" (Druha svitova viina), as part of a set of decommunization laws. Also in 2015, Ukraine's "Victory Day over Nazism in World War II" was established as a national holiday in accordance with the law of "On Perpetuation of Victory over Nazism in World War II 1939–1945". The new holiday was celebrated on May 9 and replaced the Soviet-Russian Victory Day, which is celebrated on May 9. These laws were adopted by the Ukrainian parliament within the package of laws on decommunization. In 2023 Ukraine abolished the 2015 9 May "Victory Day over Nazism" holiday and replaced it with the new public holiday "Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in World War II 1939 – 1945" which is celebrated on 8 May annually.

 

Voronezh is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects western Russia with the Urals and Siberia, the Caucasus and Ukraine, and the M4 highway (Moscow–Voronezh–Rostov-on-Don–Novorossiysk). In recent years the city has experienced rapid population growth, rising in 2021 to 1,057,681, up from 889,680 recorded in the 2010 Census, making it the 14th-most populous city in the country.

 

History

The first chronicle references to the word "Voronezh" are dated 1177, when the Ryazan prince Yaropolk, having lost the battle, fled "to Voronozh" and there was moving "from town to town". Modern data of archeology and history interpret Voronezh as a geographical region, which included the Voronezh river (tributary of the Don) and a number of settlements. In the lower reaches of the river, a unique Slavic town-planning complex of the 8th – early 11th century was discovered, which covered the territory of the present city of Voronezh and its environs (about 42 km long, about 13 forts and many unfortified villages). By the 12th – 13th centuries, most of the old towns were desolate, but new settlements appeared upstream, closer to Ryazan.

 

For many years, the hypothesis of the Soviet historian Vladimir Zagorovsky dominated: he produced the toponym "Voronezh" from the hypothetical Slavic personal name Voroneg. This man allegedly gave the name of a small town in the Chernigov Principality (now the village of Voronezh in Ukraine). Later, in the 11th or 12th century, the settlers were able to "transfer" this name to the Don region, where they named the second city Voronezh, and the river got its name from the city. However, now many researchers criticize the hypothesis, since in reality neither the name of Voroneg nor the second city was revealed, and usually the names of Russian cities repeated the names of the rivers, but not vice versa.

 

The linguistic comparative analysis of the name "Voronezh" was carried out by the Khovansky Foundation in 2009. There is an indication of the place names of many countries in Eurasia, which may partly be not only similar in sound, but also united by common Indo-European languages: Varanasi, Varna, Verona, Brno, etc.

 

A comprehensive scientific analysis was conducted in 2015–2016 by the historian Pavel Popov. His conclusion: "Voronezh" is a probable Slavic macrotoponym associated with outstanding signs of nature, has a root voron- (from the proto-Slavic vorn) in the meaning of "black, dark" and the suffix -ezh (-azh, -ozh). It was not “transferred” and in the 8th - 9th centuries it marked a vast territory covered with black forests (oak forests) - from the mouth of the Voronezh river to the Voronozhsky annalistic forests in the middle and upper reaches of the river, and in the west to the Don (many forests were cut down). The historian believes that the main "city" of the early town-planning complex could repeat the name of the region – Voronezh. Now the hillfort is located in the administrative part of the modern city, in the Voronezh upland oak forest. This is one of Europe's largest ancient Slavic hillforts, the area of which – more than 9 hectares – 13 times the area of the main settlement in Kyiv before the baptism of Rus.

 

In it is assumed that the word "Voronezh" means bluing - a technique to increase the corrosion resistance of iron products. This explanation fits well with the proximity to the ancient city of Voronezh of a large iron deposit and the city of Stary Oskol.

 

Folk etymology claims the name comes from combining the Russian words for raven (ворон) and hedgehog (еж) into Воронеж. According to this explanation two Slavic tribes named after the animals used this combination to name the river which later in turn provided the name for a settlement. There is not believed to be any scientific support for this explanation.

 

In the 16th century, the Middle Don basin, including the Voronezh river, was gradually conquered by Muscovy from the Nogai Horde (a successor state of the Golden Horde), and the current city of Voronezh was established in 1585 by Feodor I as a fort protecting the Muravsky Trail trade route against the slave raids of the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. The city was named after the river.

 

17th to 19th centuries

In the 17th century, Voronezh gradually evolved into a sizable town. Weronecz is shown on the Worona river in Resania in Joan Blaeu's map of 1645. Peter the Great built a dockyard in Voronezh where the Azov Flotilla was constructed for the Azov campaigns in 1695 and 1696. This fleet, the first ever built in Russia, included the first Russian ship of the line, Goto Predestinatsia. The Orthodox diocese of Voronezh was instituted in 1682 and its first bishop, Mitrofan of Voronezh, was later proclaimed the town's patron saint.

 

Owing to the Voronezh Admiralty Wharf, for a short time, Voronezh became the largest city of South Russia and the economic center of a large and fertile region. In 1711, it was made the seat of the Azov Governorate, which eventually morphed into the Voronezh Governorate.

 

In the 19th century, Voronezh was a center of the Central Black Earth Region. Manufacturing industry (mills, tallow-melting, butter-making, soap, leather, and other works) as well as bread, cattle, suet, and the hair trade developed in the town. A railway connected Voronezh with Moscow in 1868 and Rostov-on-Don in 1871.

 

20th century

World War II

During World War II, Voronezh was the scene of fierce fighting between Soviet and combined Axis troops. The Germans used it as a staging area for their attack on Stalingrad, and made it a key crossing point on the Don River. In June 1941, two BM-13 (Fighting machine #13 Katyusha) artillery installations were built at the Voronezh excavator factory. In July, the construction of Katyushas was rationalized so that their manufacture became easier and the time of volley repetition was shortened from five minutes to fifteen seconds. More than 300 BM-13 units manufactured in Voronezh were used in a counterattack near Moscow in December 1941. In October 22, 1941, the advance of the German troops prompted the establishment of a defense committee in the city. On November 7, 1941, there was a troop parade, devoted to the anniversary of the October Revolution. Only three such parades were organized that year: in Moscow, Kuybyshev, and Voronezh. In late June 1942, the city was attacked by German and Hungarian forces. In response, Soviet forces formed the Voronezh Front. By July 6, the German army occupied the western river-bank suburbs before being subjected to a fierce Soviet counter-attack. By July 24 the frontline had stabilised along the Voronezh River as the German forces continued southeast into the Great Bend of the Don. The attack on Voronezh represented the first phase of the German Army's 1942 campaign in the Soviet Union, codenamed Case Blue.

 

Until January 25, 1943, parts of the Second German Army and the Second Hungarian Army occupied the western part of Voronezh. During Operation Little Saturn, the Ostrogozhsk–Rossosh Offensive, and the Voronezhsko-Kastornenskoy Offensive, the Voronezh Front exacted heavy casualties on Axis forces. On January 25, 1943, Voronezh was liberated after ten days of combat. During the war the city was almost completely ruined, with 92% of all buildings destroyed.

 

Post-war

By 1950, Voronezh had been rebuilt. Most buildings and historical monuments were repaired. It was also the location of a prestigious Suvorov Military School, a boarding school for young boys who were considered to be prospective military officers, many of whom had been orphaned by war.

 

In 1950–1960, new factories were established: a tire factory, a machine-tool factory, a factory of heavy mechanical pressing, and others. In 1968, Serial production of the Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic plane was established at the Voronezh Aviation factory. In October 1977, the first Soviet domestic wide-body plane, Ilyushin Il-86, was built there.

 

In 1989, TASS published details of an alleged UFO landing in the city's park and purported encounters with extraterrestrial beings reported by a number of children. A Russian scientist that was cited in initial TASS reports later told the Associated Press that he was misquoted, cautioning, "Don't believe all you hear from TASS," and "We never gave them part of what they published", and a TASS correspondent admitted the possibility that some "make-believe" had been added to the TASS story, saying, "I think there is a certain portion of truth, but it is not excluded that there is also fantasizing".

 

21st century

From 10 to 17 September 2011, Voronezh celebrated its 425th anniversary. The anniversary of the city was given the status of a federal scale celebration that helped attract large investments from the federal and regional budgets for development.

 

On December 17, 2012, Voronezh became the fifteenth city in Russia with a population of over one million people.

 

Today Voronezh is the economic, industrial, cultural, and scientific center of the Central Black Earth Region. As part of the annual tradition in the Russian city of Voronezh, every winter the main city square is thematically drawn around a classic literature. In 2020, the city was decorated using the motifs from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. In the year of 2021, the architects drew inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen as well as the animation classic The Snow Queen from the Soviet Union. The fairy tale replica city will feature the houses of Kai and Gerda, the palace of the snow queen, an ice rink, and illumination.

 

In June 2023, during the Wagner Group rebellion, forces of the Wagner Group claimed to have taken control of military facilities in the city. Later they were confirmed to have taken the city itself.

 

Administrative and municipal status

Voronezh is the administrative center of the oblast.[1] Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is incorporated as Voronezh Urban Okrug—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts.[1] As a municipal division, this administrative unit also has urban okrug status.

 

City divisions

The city is divided into six administrative districts:

 

Zheleznodorozhny (183,17 km²)

Tsentralny (63,96 km²)

Kominternovsky (47,41 km²)

Leninsky (18,53 km²)

Sovetsky (156,6 km²)

Levoberezhny (123,89 km²)

 

Economy

The leading sectors of the urban economy in the 20th century were mechanical engineering, metalworking, the electronics industry and the food industry.

 

In the city are such companies as:

Tupolev Tu-144

Voronezhselmash (agricultural engineering)

Sozvezdie[36] (headquarter, JSC Concern “Sozvezdie”, in 1958 the world's first created mobile telephony and wireless telephone Altai

Verofarm (pharmaceutics, owner Abbott Laboratories),

Voronezh Mechanical Plant[37] (production of missile and aircraft engines, oil and gas equipment)

Mining Machinery Holding - RUDGORMASH[38] (production of drilling, mineral processing and mining equipment)

VNiiPM Research Institute of Semiconductor Engineering (equipment for plasma-chemical processes, technical-chemical equipment for liquid operations, water treatment equipment)

KBKhA Chemical Automatics Design Bureau with notable products:.

Pirelli Voronezh.

On the territory of the city district government Maslovka Voronezh region with the support of the Investment Fund of Russia, is implementing a project to create an industrial park, "Maslowski", to accommodate more than 100 new businesses, including the transformer factory of Siemens. On September 7, 2011 in Voronezh there opened a Global network operation center of Nokia Siemens Networks, which was the fifth in the world and the first in Russia.

 

Construction

In 2014, 926,000 square meters of housing was delivered.

 

Clusters of Voronezh

In clusters of tax incentives and different preferences, the full support of the authorities. A cluster of Oil and Gas Equipment, Radio-electronic cluster, Furniture cluster, IT cluster, Cluster aircraft, Cluster Electromechanics, Transport and logistics cluster, Cluster building materials and technologies.

 

Geography

Urban layout

Information about the original urban layout of Voronezh is contained in the "Patrol Book" of 1615. At that time, the city fortress was logged and located on the banks of the Voronezh River. In plan, it was an irregular quadrangle with a perimeter of about 238 meter. inside it, due to lack of space, there was no housing or siege yards, and even the cathedral church was supposed to be taken out. However, at this small fortress there was a large garrison - 666 households of service people. These courtyards were reliably protected by the second line of fortifications by a standing prison on taras with 25 towers covered with earth; behind the prison was a moat, and beyond the moat there were stakes. Voronezh was a typical military settlement (ostrog). In the city prison there were only settlements of military men: Streletskaya, Kazachya, Belomestnaya atamanskaya, Zatinnaya and Pushkarskaya. The posad population received the territory between the ostrog and the river, where the Monastyrskaya settlements (at the Assumption Monastery) was formed. Subsequently, the Yamnaya Sloboda was added to them, and on the other side of the fort, on the Chizhovka Mountain, the Chizhovskaya Sloboda of archers and Cossacks appeared. As a result, the Voronezh settlements surrounded the fortress in a ring. The location of the parish churches emphasized this ring-like and even distribution of settlements: the Ilyinsky Church of the Streletskaya Sloboda, the Pyatnitskaya Cossack and Pokrovskaya Belomestnaya were brought out to the passage towers of the prison. The Nikolskaya Church of the Streletskaya Sloboda was located near the marketplace (and, accordingly, the front facade of the fortress), and the paired ensemble of the Rozhdestvenskaya and Georgievskaya churches of the Cossack Sloboda marked the main street of the city, going from the Cossack Gate to the fortress tower.

 

Climate

Voronezh experiences a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfb) with long, cold winters and short, warm summers.

 

Transportation

Air

The city is served by the Voronezh International Airport, which is located north of the city and is home to Polet Airlines. Voronezh is also home to the Pridacha Airport, a part of a major aircraft manufacturing facility VASO (Voronezhskoye Aktsionernoye Samoletostroitelnoye Obshchestvo, Voronezh aircraft production association) where the Tupolev Tu-144 (known in the West as the "Concordski"), was built and the only operational unit is still stored. Voronezh also hosts the Voronezh Malshevo air force base in the southwest of the city, which, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council report, houses nuclear bombers.[citation needed]

 

Rail

Since 1868, there is a railway connection between Voronezh and Moscow. Rail services form a part of the South Eastern Railway of the Russian Railways. Destinations served direct from Voronezh include Moscow, Kyiv, Kursk, Novorossiysk, Sochi, and Tambov. The main train station is called Voronezh-1 railway station and is located in the center of the city.

 

Bus

There are three bus stations in Voronezh that connect the city with destinations including Moscow, Belgorod, Lipetsk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, and Astrakhan.

 

Education and culture

Aviastroiteley Park

The city has seven theaters, twelve museums, a number of movie theaters, a philharmonic hall, and a circus. It is also a major center of higher education in central Russia. The main educational facilities include:

 

Voronezh State University

Voronezh State Technical University

Voronezh State University of Architecture and Construction

Voronezh State Pedagogical University

Voronezh State Agricultural University

Voronezh State University of Engineering Technologies

Voronezh State Medical University named after N. N. Burdenko

Voronezh State Academy of Arts

Voronezh State University of Forestry and Technologies named after G.F. Morozov

Voronezh State Institute of Physical Training

Voronezh Institute of Russia's Home Affairs Ministry

Voronezh Institute of High Technologies

Military Educational and Scientific Center of the Air Force «N.E. Zhukovsky and Y.A. Gagarin Air Force Academy» (Voronezh)

Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (Voronezh branch)

Russian State University of Justice

Admiral Makarov State University of Sea and River Fleet (Voronezh branch)

International Institute of Computer Technologies

Voronezh Institute of Economics and Law

and a number of other affiliate and private-funded institutes and universities. There are 2000 schools within the city.

 

Theaters

Voronezh Chamber Theatre

Koltsov Academic Drama Theater

Voronezh State Opera and Ballet Theatre

Shut Puppet Theater

 

Festivals

Platonov International Arts Festival

 

Sports

ClubSportFoundedCurrent LeagueLeague

RankStadium

Fakel VoronezhFootball1947Russian Premier League1stTsentralnyi Profsoyuz Stadion

Energy VoronezhFootball1989Women's Premier League1stRudgormash Stadium

Buran VoronezhIce Hockey1977Higher Hockey League2ndYubileyny Sports Palace

VC VoronezhVolleyball2006Women's Higher Volleyball League A2ndKristall Sports Complex

 

Religion

Annunciation Orthodox Cathedral in Voronezh

Orthodox Christianity is the predominant religion in Voronezh.[citation needed] There is an Orthodox Jewish community in Voronezh, with a synagogue located on Stankevicha Street.

 

In 1682, the Voronezh diocese was formed to fight the schismatics. Its first head was Bishop Mitrofan (1623-1703) at the age of 58. Under him, the construction began on the new Annunciation Cathedral to replace the old one. In 1832, Mitrofan was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

In the 1990s, many Orthodox churches were returned to the diocese. Their restoration was continued. In 2009, instead of the lost one, a new Annunciation Cathedral was built with a monument to St. Mitrofan erected next to it.

 

Cemeteries

There are ten cemeteries in Voronezh:

Levoberezhnoye Cemetery

Lesnoye Cemetery

Jewish Cemetery

Nikolskoye Cemetery

Pravoberezhnoye Cemetery

Budyonnovskoe Cemetery

Yugo-Zapadnoye Cemetery

Podgorenskоye Cemetery

Kominternovskoe Cemetery

Ternovoye Cemetery is а historical site closed to the public.

 

Born in Voronezh

18th century

Yevgeny Bolkhovitinov (1767–1837), Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia

Mikhail Pavlov (1792–1840), Russian academic and professor at Moscow University

19th century

1801–1850

Aleksey Koltsov (1809–1842), Russian poet

Ivan Nikitin (1824–1861), Russian poet

Nikolai Ge (1831–1894), Russian realist painter famous for his works on historical and religious motifs

Vasily Sleptsov (1836–1878), Russian writer and social reformer

Nikolay Kashkin (1839–1920), Russian music critic

1851–1900

Valentin Zhukovski (1858–1918), Russian orientalist

Vasily Goncharov (1861–1915), Russian film director and screenwriter, one of the pioneers of the film industry in the Russian Empire

Anastasiya Verbitskaya (1861–1928), Russian novelist, playwright, screenplay writer, publisher and feminist

Mikhail Olminsky (1863–1933), Russian Communist

Serge Voronoff (1866–1951), French surgeon of Russian extraction

Andrei Shingarev (1869–1918), Russian doctor, publicist and politician

Ivan Bunin (1870–1953), the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature

Alexander Ostuzhev (1874–1953), Russian and Soviet drama actor

Valerian Albanov (1881–1919), Russian navigator and polar explorer

Jan Hambourg (1882–1947), Russian violinist, a member of a famous musical family

Volin (1882–1945), anarchist

Boris Hambourg (1885–1954), Russian cellist who made his career in the USA, Canada, England and Europe

Boris Eikhenbaum (1886–1959), Russian and Soviet literary scholar, and historian of Russian literature

Anatoly Durov (1887–1928), Russian animal trainer

Samuil Marshak (1887–1964), Russian and Soviet writer, translator and children's poet

Eduard Shpolsky (1892–1975), Russian and Soviet physicist and educator

George of Syracuse (1893–1981), Eastern Orthodox archbishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

Yevgeny Gabrilovich (1899–1993), Soviet screenwriter

Semyon Krivoshein (1899–1978), Soviet tank commander; Lieutenant General

Andrei Platonov (1899–1951), Soviet Russian writer, playwright and poet

Ivan Pravov (1899–1971), Russian and Soviet film director and screenwriter

William Dameshek (1900–1969), American hematologist

20th century

1901–1930

Ivan Nikolaev (1901–1979), Soviet architect and educator

Galina Shubina (1902–1980), Russian poster and graphics artist

Pavel Cherenkov (1904–1990), Soviet physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1958 with Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm for the discovery of Cherenkov radiation, made in 1934

Yakov Kreizer (1905–1969), Soviet field commander, General of the army and Hero of the Soviet Union

Iosif Rudakovsky (1914–1947), Soviet chess master

Pawel Kassatkin (1915–1987), Russian writer

Alexander Shelepin (1918–1994), Soviet state security officer and party statesman

Grigory Baklanov (1923–2009), Russian writer

Gleb Strizhenov (1923–1985), Soviet actor

Vladimir Zagorovsky (1925–1994), Russian chess grandmaster of correspondence chess and the fourth ICCF World Champion between 1962 and 1965

Konstantin Feoktistov (1926–2009), cosmonaut and engineer

Vitaly Vorotnikov (1926–2012), Soviet statesman

Arkady Davidowitz (1930), writer and aphorist

1931–1950

Grigory Sanakoev (1935), Russian International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster, most famous for being the twelfth ICCF World Champion (1984–1991)

Yuri Zhuravlyov (1935), Russian mathematician

Mykola Koltsov (1936–2011), Soviet footballer and Ukrainian football children and youth trainer

Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov (1936), Russian composer

Iya Savvina (1936–2011), Soviet film actress

Tamara Zamotaylova (1939), Soviet gymnast, who won four Olympic medals at the 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics

Yury Smolyakov (1941), Soviet Olympic fencer

Yevgeny Lapinsky (1942–1999), Soviet Olympic volleyball player

Galina Bukharina (1945), Soviet athlete

Vladimir Patkin (1945), Soviet Olympic volleyball player

Vladimir Proskurin (1945), Soviet Russian football player and coach

Aleksandr Maleyev (1947), Soviet artistic gymnast

Valeri Nenenko (1950), Russian professional football coach and player

1951–1970

Vladimir Rokhlin, Jr. (1952), Russian-American mathematician and professor of computer science and mathematics at the Yale University

Lyubov Burda (1953), Russian artistic gymnast

Mikhail Khryukin (1955), Russian swimmer

Aleksandr Tkachyov (1957), Russian gymnast and two times Olympic Champion

Nikolai Vasilyev (1957), Russian professional football coach and player

Aleksandr Babanov (1958), Russian professional football coach and player

Sergey Koliukh (1960), Russian political figure; 4th Mayor of Voronezh

Yelena Davydova (1961), Soviet gymnast

Aleksandr Borodyuk (1962), Russian football manager and former international player for USSR and Russia

Aleksandr Chayev (1962), Russian swimmer

Elena Fanailova (1962), Russian poet

Alexander Litvinenko (1962–2006), officer of the Russian FSB and political dissident

Yuri Shishkin (1963), Russian professional football coach and player

Yuri Klinskikh (1964–2000), Russian musician, singer, songwriter, arranger, founder rock band Sektor Gaza

Yelena Ruzina (1964), athlete

Igor Bragin (1965), footballer

Gennadi Remezov (1965), Russian professional footballer

Valeri Shmarov (1965), Russian football player and coach

Konstantin Chernyshov (1967), Russian chess grandmaster

Igor Pyvin (1967), Russian professional football coach and player

Vladimir Bobrezhov (1968), Soviet sprint canoer

1971–1980

Oleg Gorobiy (1971), Russian sprint canoer

Anatoli Kanishchev (1971), Russian professional association footballer

Ruslan Mashchenko (1971), Russian hurdler

Aleksandr Ovsyannikov (1974), Russian professional footballer

Dmitri Sautin (1974), Russian diver who has won more medals than any other Olympic diver

Sergey Verlin (1974), Russian sprint canoer

Maxim Narozhnyy (1975–2011), Paralympian athlete

Aleksandr Cherkes (1976), Russian football coach and player

Andrei Durov (1977), Russian professional footballer

Nikolai Kryukov (1978), Russian artistic gymnast

Kirill Gerstein (1979), Jewish American and Russian pianist

Evgeny Ignatov (1979), Russian sprint canoeist

Aleksey Nikolaev (1979), Russian-Uzbekistan footballer

Aleksandr Palchikov (1979), former Russian professional football player

Konstantin Skrylnikov (1979), Russian professional footballer

Aleksandr Varlamov (1979), Russian diver

Angelina Yushkova (1979), Russian gymnast

Maksim Potapov (1980), professional ice hockey player

1981–1990

Alexander Krysanov (1981), Russian professional ice hockey forward

Yulia Nachalova (1981–2019), Soviet and Russian singer, actress and television presenter

Andrei Ryabykh (1982), Russian football player

Maxim Shchyogolev (1982), Russian theatre and film actor

Eduard Vorganov (1982), Russian professional road bicycle racer

Anton Buslov (1983–2014), Russian astrophysicist, blogger, columnist at The New Times magazine and expert on transportation systems

Dmitri Grachyov (1983), Russian footballer

Aleksandr Kokorev (1984), Russian professional football player

Dmitry Kozonchuk (1984), Russian professional road bicycle racer for Team Katusha

Alexander Khatuntsev (1985), Russian professional road bicycle racer

Egor Vyaltsev (1985), Russian professional basketball player

Samvel Aslanyan (1986), Russian handball player

Maksim Chistyakov (1986), Russian football player

Yevgeniy Dorokhin (1986), Russian sprint canoer

Daniil Gridnev (1986), Russian professional footballer

Vladimir Moskalyov (1986), Russian football referee

Elena Danilova (1987), Russian football forward

Sektor Gaza (1987–2000), punk band

Regina Moroz (1987), Russian female volleyball player

Roman Shishkin (1987), Russian footballer

Viktor Stroyev (1987), Russian footballer

Elena Terekhova (1987), Russian international footballer

Natalia Goncharova (1988), Russian diver

Yelena Yudina (1988), Russian skeleton racer

Dmitry Abakumov (1989), Russian professional association football player

Igor Boev (1989), Russian professional racing cyclist

Ivan Dobronravov (1989), Russian actor

Anna Bogomazova (1990), Russian kickboxer, martial artist, professional wrestler and valet

Yuriy Kunakov (1990), Russian diver

Vitaly Melnikov (1990), Russian backstroke swimmer

Kristina Pravdina (1990), Russian female artistic gymnast

Vladislav Ryzhkov (1990), Russian footballer

1991–2000

Danila Poperechny (1994), Russian stand-up comedian, actor, youtuber, podcaster

Darya Stukalova (1994), Russian Paralympic swimmer

Viktoria Komova (1995), Russian Olympic gymnast

Vitali Lystsov (1995), Russian professional footballer

Marina Nekrasova (1995), Russian-born Azerbaijani artistic gymnast

Vladislav Parshikov (1996), Russian football player

Dmitri Skopintsev (1997), Russian footballer

Alexander Eickholtz (1998) American sportsman

Angelina Melnikova (2000), Russian Olympic gymnast

Lived in Voronezh

Aleksey Khovansky (1814–1899), editor

Ivan Kramskoi (1837–1887), Russian painter and art critic

Mitrofan Pyatnitsky (1864–1927), Russian musician

Mikhail Tsvet (1872–1919), Russian botanist

Alexander Kuprin (1880–1960), Russian painter, a member of the Jack of Diamonds group

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937), Russian writer, went to school in Voronezh

Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), Russian poet

Nadezhda Mandelstam (1899-1980), Russian writer

Gavriil Troyepolsky (1905–1995), Soviet writer

Nikolay Basov (1922–2001), Soviet physicist and educator

Vasily Peskov (1930–2013), Russian writer, journalist, photographer, traveller and ecologist

Valentina Popova (1972), Russian weightlifter

Igor Samsonov, painter

Tatyana Zrazhevskaya, Russian boxer

United States Air Force Mc Donnell Douglas KC-10A Extender, 86-0033.

C/n 48246.

Shannon 17th October 2015.

BLUE 61 from 60AMW exits Rwy 06 via Taxiway Charlie.

Trikomo is a town in Cyprus. It is under the de facto control of Northern Cyprus and is the administrative center of the Iskele District of Northern Cyprus, which mainly extends into the Karpas Peninsula , while de jure it belongs to the Famagusta District of the Republic of Cyprus . It gained municipality status in 1998. Before 1974 Trikomo was a mixed village with a Greek Cypriot majority.

 

In 2011 Trikomo had 1948 inhabitants.

 

Trikomo is located in the north-eastern part of the Messaria plain , 9 km south of the village of Ardana , about two kilometers from the Bay of Famagusta and four kilometers north-west of the village of Sygkrasi .

 

In Greek Trikomo means "three houses". In 1975 the Turkish Cypriots renamed it Yeni İskele to commemorate the origins of the town's current inhabitants. In Larnaca before 1974 Turkish Cypriots resided in the neighborhood called Skala ("İskele" in Turkish), so that when they settled in the village they renamed it with the same name (lit. "new İskele", later shortened to İskele ). Yeni means "new", so Yeni İskele literally means "New Scale/İskele".

 

Before the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus , the population of Trikomo consisted almost entirely of Greek Cypriots , most of whom fled during the conflict while the rest were subsequently deported to the south. Among these, worthy of mention is Georgios Grivas (1898-1974), general of the Greek army , leader of the guerrilla organization EOKA, protagonist of the liberation struggle against the English and of the paramilitary organization EOKA B.

 

The Turkish Cypriot municipality of Larnaca which had been established in 1958 moved to Trikomo in 1974, soon after the Turkish invasion of the island .

 

In Trikomo is the Church of the Panagia Theotokos , deconsecrated and home to an icon museum displaying rare examples of medieval iconography in Cyprus. The church is divided into two sections, one Orthodox and one Catholic. The first is the oldest, dating back to the Byzantine era , while the second was built in the 12th century, during the period in which the island was ruled by the Lusignans

 

Before 1974 Trikomo was a mixed village with a Greek Cypriot majority. In the 1831 Ottoman census, Muslims made up approximately 18.4% of the population. However, by 1891 this percentage dropped significantly to 3.4%. In the first half of the 20th century the population of the village increased steadily, from 1,247 inhabitants in 1901 to 2,195 in 1960.

 

Most of Trikomo's Greek Cypriots were displaced in August 1974, although some remained in the town after the Turkish army took control. In October 1975 there were still 92 Greek Cypriots in the city, but in 1978 they were moved to the south side of the Green Line . Currently, like the rest of the displaced Greek Cypriots, Trikomo Greek Cypriots are scattered across the south of the island, especially in the cities. The number of Greek Cypriots from Trikomo displaced in 1974-78 was approximately 2,330 (2,323 in the 1960 census).

 

Today the village is inhabited mainly by displaced Turkish Cypriots from the south of the island, especially from the city of Larnaca and its district . In 1976-77, some families from Turkey, especially from the province of Adana , also settled in the village . Since the 2000s, many wealthy Europeans, Turks and Turkish Cypriots from other areas of the north of the island (including returnees from abroad) have purchased properties, built houses and settled in the vicinity of the city. According to the 2006 Turkish Cypriot census, the population of Trikomo/İskele was 3,657.

 

The city annually hosts the Iskele Festival , which takes place for ten days in summer, and is the oldest annual festival in Cyprus, having first been held in Larnaca in 1968. In 1974, the event was moved to Trikomo together to the Turkish Cypriot inhabitants of Larnaca who had moved there. The program includes an international folk dance festival, concerts by Turkish Cypriot and mainland Turkish musicians, various sports tournaments, stalls offering food and various competitions, along with other performances and competitions highlighting the city's cultural heritage.

 

The current mayor of the city is Hasan Sadıkoğlu, who was first elected in 2014 as an independent candidate. It was re-elected in 2018 as the candidate of the right-wing National Unity Party (UBP), winning with 54.6% of the vote. In the 2018 local elections, four members of the UBP, two members of the pro-settler Renaissance Party (YDP), and two members of the left-wing Turkish Republican Party (CTP) were elected to the eight-member city council .

 

Trikomo is twinned with:

Flag of Türkiye Beykoz, Istanbul

Flag of Türkiye Büyükçekmece, Istanbul

Flag of Türkiye Finike, Antalya , since 2015

Flag of Türkiye Mamak, Ankara

Flag of Türkiye Pendik, Istanbul

Flag of Türkiye Samsung , since 2006

 

Turkish Cypriot sports club Larnaka Gençler Birliği (also called İskele Gençlerbirliği ) was founded in 1934 in Larnaca, and was playing in the Süper Lig of the Northern Cyprus Football Federation in the 2018–19 season

 

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.

 

A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.

 

Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

 

Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.

 

Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

 

Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.

 

The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.

 

Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.

 

Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.

 

By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.

 

EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.

 

However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.

 

On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.

 

In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.

 

By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.

 

In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.

 

The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.

 

After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".

 

As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.

 

Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

 

On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.

 

The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.

 

Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.

 

The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.

 

Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.

 

Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria

An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."

 

In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.

 

Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.

 

In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.

 

Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.

 

Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.

 

Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.

 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:

 

UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.

 

The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.

 

By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."

 

After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.

 

On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.

 

The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.

 

During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.

 

In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.

 

Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.

 

A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.

100’ aerial ladder extended straight up

47816 is seen passing Saltley carrying large logo livery. This had just been renumbered from 47661 following the fitting of extended range fuel tanks. It had originally been numbered 47066.

20120823-IMG_3396

Legs fully extended with braces locked straight he is able to stand To purchase these or other braces for the legs or other parts of the body contact me at my1970junk@msn.com. Many different styles and options available

Architect: karlundp Architekten (Extension & Modification)

Built: End of 19th century

Modificated & Extended: 2003 & 2005

'Extend - a work that follows on from my overclocking series. Obviously I want to push the lettering as far as I can - and then some more.. Have been interested in very complex designs lately

 

video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsdr6gXoa7E

Muscat (Arabic: مَسْقَط, Masqaṭ pronounced [ˈmasqatˤ]) is the capital and most populated city in Oman. It is the seat of the Governorate of Muscat. According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the total population of Muscat Governorate was 1.72 million as of September 2022. The metropolitan area spans approximately 3,500 km2 (1,400 sq mi) and includes six provinces called wilayats, making it the largest city in the Arabian Peninsula by area.[citation needed] Known since the early 1st century AD as an important trading port between the west and the east, Muscat was ruled by various indigenous tribes as well as foreign powers such as the Persians, the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire at various points in its history. A regional military power in the 18th century, Muscat's influence extended as far as East Africa and Zanzibar. As an important port-town in the Gulf of Oman, Muscat attracted foreign traders and settlers such as the Persians, Balochs and Sindhis. Since the accession of Qaboos bin Said as Sultan of Oman in 1970, Muscat has experienced rapid infrastructural development that has led to the growth of a vibrant economy and a multi-ethnic society. Muscat is termed as a Beta - Global City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.

 

The Hajar Mountains dominate the landscape of Muscat. The city lies on the Arabian Sea along the Gulf of Oman and is in the proximity of the strategic Straits of Hormuz. Low-lying white buildings typify most of Muscat's urban landscape, while the port-district of Muttrah, with its corniche and harbour, form the north-eastern periphery of the city. Muscat's economy is dominated by trade, petroleum, liquified natural gas and porting.

 

Toponymy

Ptolemy's Map of Arabia identifies the territories of Cryptus Portus and Moscha Portus. Scholars are divided in opinion on which of the two is related to the city of Muscat. Similarly, Arrianus references Omana and Moscha in Voyage of Nearchus. Interpretations of Arrianus' work by William Vincent and Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville conclude that Omana was a reference to Oman, while Moscha referred to Muscat. Similarly, other scholars identify Pliny the Elder's reference to Amithoscuta to be Muscat.

 

The origin of the word Muscat is disputed. Some authors claim that the word has Arabic origins – from moscha, meaning an inflated hide or skin. Other authors claim that the name Muscat means anchorage or the place of "letting fall the anchor". Other derivations include muscat from Old Persian, meaning strong-scented, or from Arabic, meaning falling-place, or hidden. Cryptus Portus is synonymous with Oman ("hidden land"). But "Ov-man" (Omman), and the old Sumerian name Magan (Maa-kan), means sea-people in Arabic. An inhabitant is a Muscatter, Muscatian, Muscatite or Muscatan. In 1793 AD the capital was transferred from Rustaq to Muscat.

 

History

See also: Timeline of Muscat, Oman

Evidence of communal activity in the area around Muscat dates back to the 6th millennium BC in Ras al-Hamra, where burial sites of fishermen have been found. The graves appear to be well formed and indicate the existence of burial rituals. South of Muscat, remnants of Harappan pottery indicate some level of contact with the Indus Valley civilisation. Muscat's notability as a port was acknowledged as early as the 1st century AD by the Greek geographer Ptolemy, who referred to it as Cryptus Portus (the Hidden Port), and by Pliny the Elder, who called it Amithoscuta.

 

The port fell to a Sassanid invasion in the 3rd century AD, under the rule of Shapur I, while conversion to Islam occurred during the 7th century. Muscat's importance as a trading port continued to grow in the centuries that followed, under the influence of the Azd dynasty, a local tribe. The establishment of the First Imamate in the 9th century was the first step in consolidating disparate Omani tribal factions under the banner of an Ibadi state. However, tribal skirmishes continued, allowing the Abbasids of Baghdad to conquer Oman. The Abbasids occupied the region until the 11th century, when they were driven out by the local Yahmad tribe. Power over Oman shifted from the Yahmad tribe to the Azdi Nabahinah clan, during whose rule, the people of coastal ports such as Muscat prospered from maritime trade and close alliances with the Indian subcontinent, at the cost of the alienation of the people of the interior of Oman.

 

The Portuguese admiral Afonso de Albuquerque sailed to Muscat in 1507, in an attempt to establish trade relations. As he approached the harbour, his ships were fired on. He then decided to conquer Muscat. Most of the city burned to the ground during and after the fighting.

 

The Portuguese maintained a hold on Muscat for over a century, despite challenges from Persia and a bombardment of the town by the Ottoman Turks in 1546. The Turks twice captured Muscat from the Portuguese, in the Capture of Muscat (1552) and 1581–88. The election of Nasir bin Murshid Al-Ya'rubi as Imam of Oman in 1624 changed the balance of power again in the region, from the Persians and the Portuguese to local Omanis. Among the most important castles and forts in Muscat, the Al Jalali Fort and the Al-Mirani Fort are the most prominent buildings left by the Portuguese. On August 16, 1648 the Imam dispatched an army to Muscat, which captured and demolished the high towers of the Portuguese, weakening their grip over the town. Decisively, in 1650, a small but determined body of the Imam's troops attacked the port at night, forcing an eventual Portuguese surrender on January 23, 1650. A civil war and repeated incursions by the Persian king Nader Shah in the 18th century destabilised the region, and further strained relations between the interior and Muscat. This power vacuum in Oman led to the emergence of the Al Bu Sa‘id dynasty, which has ruled Oman ever since.

 

Muscat's naval and military supremacy was re-established in the 19th century by Said bin Sultan, who signed a treaty with U.S. President Andrew Jackson's representative Edmund Roberts on September 21, 1833. Having gained control over Zanzibar, in 1840 Said moved his capital to Stone Town, the ancient quarter of Zanzibar City; however, after his death in 1856, control over Zanzibar was lost when it became an independent sultanate under his sixth son, Majid bin Said (1834/5–1870), while the third son, Thuwaini bin Said, became the Sultan of Oman.

 

By the 19th century, a large Hindu merchant community in the port city dominated its commercial life. It is argued that their settlement at least since the fifteenth century; one of the reasons is that the Portuguese relied heavily on them to secure a trade monopoly in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf area. The Sindhis were amongst the first during this era, followed by the Kutchis. The merchant community played an important role in expelling the Europeans in 1650. They were not affected by civil war that established the Al Bu Sa‘id dynasty and continued to prosper under Ahmad bin Said al-Busaidi. Important trade existed between the city and Thatta, and later, Kutch, expanding to other parts of India.

 

During the second half of the 19th century, the fortunes of the Al Bu Sa‘id declined and friction with the Imams of the interior resurfaced. Muscat and Muttrah were attacked by tribes from the interior in 1895 and again in 1915. A tentative ceasefire was brokered by the British, which gave the interior more autonomy. However, conflicts among the disparate tribes of the interior, and with the Sultan of Muscat and Oman continued into the 1950s, and eventually escalated into the Dhofar Rebellion (1962). The rebellion forced the Sultan Said bin Taimur to seek the assistance of the British in quelling the uprisings from the interior. The failed assassination attempt of April 26, 1966 on Said bin Taimur led to the further isolation of the Sultan, who had moved his residence from Muscat to Salalah, amidst the civilian armed conflict. On July 23, 1970, Qaboos bin Said, son of the Sultan, staged a bloodless coup d'état in the Salalah palace with the assistance of the British, and took over as ruler.

 

With the assistance of the British, Qaboos bin Said put an end to the Dhofar uprising and consolidated disparate tribal territories. He renamed the country the Sultanate of Oman (called Muscat and Oman hitherto), in an attempt to end to the interior's isolation from Muscat. Qaboos enlisted the services of capable Omanis to fill positions in his new government, drawing from such corporations as Petroleum Development Oman. New ministries for social services such as health and education were established. The construction of Mina Qaboos, a new port conceived initially by Sa‘id bin Taimur, was developed during the early days of Qaboos' rule. Similarly, a new international airport was developed in Muscat's Seeb district. A complex of offices, warehouses, shops and homes transformed the old village of Ruwi in Muttrah into a commercial district. The first five-year development plan in 1976 emphasised infrastructural development of Muscat, which provided new opportunities for trade and tourism in the 1980s–1990s, attracting migrants from around the region. On June 6, 2007, Cyclone Gonu hit Muscat causing extensive damage to property, infrastructure and commercial activity.

 

Geography and geology

Muscat is located in northeast Oman. The Tropic of Cancer passes south of the area. It is bordered to its west by the plains of the Al Batinah Region and to its east by Ash Sharqiyah Region. The interior plains of Ad Dakhiliyah Region border Muscat to the south, while the Gulf of Oman forms the northern and western periphery of the city. The water along the coast of Muscat runs deep, forming two natural harbours, in Muttrah and Muscat. The Central Hajar Mountains run through the northern coastline of the city.

 

Volcanic rocks, predominantly serpentinite and diorite are apparent in the Muscat area and extend along the Gulf of Oman coast for ten or twelve 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from the district of Darsait to Yiti. Plutonic rocks constitute the hills and mountains of Muscat and span approximately 30 miles (48 km) from Darsait to Ras Jissah. These igneous rocks consists of serpentinite, greenstone, and basalt, typical of rocks in southeastern regions of the Arabian Peninsula. South of Muscat, the volcanic rock strata are broken up and distorted, rising to a maximum height of 6,000 feet (1,800 m) in Al-Dakhiliyah, a region which includes Jebel Akhdar, the country's highest range. The hills in Muscat are mostly devoid of vegetation but are rich in iron.

 

The halophytic sabkha type desert vegetation is predominant in Muscat. The Qurum Nature Reserve contains plants such as the Arthrocnemum Macrostachyum and Halopeplis Perfoliata. Coral reefs are common in Muscat. Acropora reefs exist in the sheltered bays of the satellite towns of Jussah and Khairan. Additionally, smaller Porites reef colonies exist in Khairan, which have fused to form a flat-top pavement that is visible at low tide. Crabs and spiny crayfish are found in the waters of the Muscat area, as are sardines and bonito. Glassfish are common in freshwater estuaries, such as the Qurum Nature Reserve.

 

The Sultan Qaboos Street forms the main artery of Muscat, running west-to-east through the city. The street eventually becomes Al Nahdah Street near Al Wattayah. Several inter-city roads such as Nizwa Road and Al Amrat Road, intersect with Al Sultan Qaboos Road (in Rusail and Ruwi, respectively). Muttrah, with the Muscat Harbour, Corniche, and Mina Qaboos, is located in the north-eastern coastline of the city, adjacent to the Gulf of Oman. Other coastal districts of Muscat include Darsait, Mina Al Fahal, Ras Al Hamar, Al Qurum Heights, Al Khuwair, and Al Seeb. Residential and commercial districts further inland include Al Hamriyah, Al Wadi Al Kabir, Ruwi, Al Wattayah, Madinat Qaboos, Al Azaiba and Al Ghubra.

 

Climate

Muscat features a hot, arid climate (Köppen climate classification BWh) with long, sweltering summers and warm "winters". Annual rainfall in Muscat is about 10 centimetres or 4 inches, falling mostly from December to April. In general, precipitation is scarce in Muscat, with the months May to November typically receiving only a trace of rainfall. However, in recent years, heavy precipitation events from tropical systems originating in the Arabian Sea have struck the city. Cyclone Gonu in June 2007 and Cyclone Phet in June 2010 affected the city with damaging winds and rainfall amounts exceeding 100 millimetres or 4 inches in just a single day. The climate generally is very hot and also very humid in the summer, with temperatures sometimes reaching as high as 45 °C or 113 °F.

 

Economy

Muscat's economy, like that of Oman, is dominated by trade. The more traditional exports of the city included dates, mother of pearl, and fish. Many of the souks of Muttrah sell these items and traditional Omani artefacts. Petroleum Development Oman has been central to Muscat's economy since at least 1962 and is the country's second largest employer, after the government. Its major shareholders include Shell, Total, and Partex and its production is estimated to be about 720,000 barrels per day (114,000 m3/d). Muscat also has major trading companies such as the Suhail Bahwan Group, which is a trading partner for corporations such as Toshiba, Subaru, Seiko, Hewlett-Packard, General Motors, RAK Ceramics; Saud Bahwan Group whose trading partners are Toyota, Daihatsu, KIA and Hertz Rent-a-Car; Zubair Automotive whose trading partners include Mitsubishi, and Chrysler brands such as Dodge; and Moosa AbdulRahman Hassan which operates as one of the oldest automotive agencies in the entire region having been established in 1927. The private Health Care sector of Muscat, Oman has numerous hospitals and clinics.

 

The Muscat Securities Market is the principal stock exchange of Oman. It is located in Central Business District of Muscat and it was established in 1988, and has since distinguished itself as a pioneer among its regional peers in terms of transparency and disclosure regulations and requirements.

 

Mina'a Sultan Qaboos, Muscat's main trading port, is a trading hub between the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East with an annual volume of about 1.6 million tons. However, the emergence of the Jebel Ali Free Zone in neighboring Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has made that port the premier maritime trading port of the region with about 44 million tons traded in cargo annually. Many infrastructural facilities are owned and operated by the government of Oman. Omantel is the major telecommunications organization in Oman and provides local, long-distance and international dialing facilities and operates as the country's only ISP. Recent liberalization of the mobile telephone market has seen the establishment of a second provider, Ooredoo.

 

Muscat is home to multibillion-dollar conglomerate CK Industries with their headquarters located in Ruwi. Ajman based Amtek Industries also have a couple of offices around the city. It is also home to Galfar Engineering, headed by P. Mohammed Ali.

 

The airline Oman Air has its head office on the grounds of Muscat International Airport.

 

Demographics

According to the 2003 census conducted by the Oman Ministry of National Economy, the population of Muscat is over 630,000, which included 370,000 males and 260,000 females. Muscat formed the second largest governorate in the country, after Al Batinah, accounting for 27% of the total population of Oman. As of 2003, Omanis constituted 60% of the total population of Muscat, while expatriates accounted for about 40%. The population density of the city was 162.1 per km2.

  

Shangri la in Muscat

The governorate of Muscat comprises six wilayats: Muttrah, Bawshar, Seeb, Al Amrat, Muscat and Qurayyat. Seeb, located in the western section of the governorate, was the most populous (with over 220,000 residents), while Muttrah had the highest number of expatriates (with over 100,000). Approximately 71% of the population was within the 15–64 age group, with the average Omani age being 23 years. About 10% of the population is illiterate, an improvement when compared to the 18% illiteracy rate recorded during the 1993 census. Expatriates accounted for over 60% of the labour force, dominated by males, who accounted for 80% of the city's total labour. A majority of expatriates (34%) was in engineering-related occupations, while most Omanis worked in engineering, clerical, scientific or technical fields. The defense sector was the largest employer for Omanis, while construction, wholesale and retail trade employed the largest number of expatriates.

 

The ethnic makeup of Muscat has historically been influenced by people not native to the Arabian Peninsula. British Parliamentary papers dating back to the 19th century indicate the presence of a significant Hindu Gujarati merchants in the city. Indeed, four Hindu temples existed in Muscat ca. 1760. Christianity flourished in Oman (Bēṯ Mazūnāyē "land of the Maganites"; a name deriving from its Sumerian designation) from the late 4th century to the 7th century. Missionary activity by the Assyrians of the Church of the East resulted in a significant Christian population living in the region, with a bishop being attested by 424 AD under the Metropolitan of Fars and Arabia. The rise of Islam saw the Syriac and Arabic-speaking Christian population eventually disappear. It is thought to have been brought back in by the Portuguese in 1507. Protestant missionaries established a hospital in Muscat in the 19th century.

 

Like the rest of Oman, Arabic is the predominant language of the city. In addition, English, Balochi, Sindhi, Swahili and Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Tamil, Tulu, Telugu and Urdu are spoken by the residents of Muscat.

 

Islam is the predominant religion in the city, with most followers being Ibadi Muslims. Non-Muslims are allowed to practise their religion, but may not proselytize publicly or distribute religious literature. In 2017 the Sultanate of Oman unveiled the Mushaf Muscat, an interactive calligraphic Quran following a brief from the Omani Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs.

 

Notable landmarks

The city has numerous mosques including the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, Ruwi Mosque, Saeed bin Taimoor and Zawawi Mosque. A few Shi'ite mosques also exist here. Muscat has a number of museums. These include Museum of Omani Heritage, National Museum of Oman, Oman Children's Museum, Bait Al Zubair, Oman Oil and Gas Exhibition Centre, Omani French Museum, Sultan's Armed Forces Museum and the Omani Aquarium and Marine Science and Fisheries Centre. The Bait Al Falaj Fort played an important role in Muscat's military history.

 

Recent projects include an opera house which opened on October 14, 2011. One of the most notable new projects is the Oman National Museum. It is expected to be an architectural jewel along with the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Visitors are also encouraged[who?] to visit Old Muscat and the Old Palace. The main shopping district is situated in Al Qurum Commercial Area. However, shopping malls are found throughout the city. One of the largest malls in Oman is Oman Avenues Mall, located in Ghubra. The fourth largest mall is in Seeb, near the international airport, called City Centre Muscat, housing all major international brands and the largest Carrefour hypermarket. Two new megamalls opened during 2019 and 2020: in the Mabela area of Muscat are Al Araimi Boulevard and Mall of Muscat.[citation needed] The Mall of Muscat is also home to the Oman Aquarium and a snow park which opened in late 2019.[50] Mall Of Oman, the largest shopping mall in Oman was opened in Summer 2021 housing over 100+ stores including Snow Oman, Vox Cinemas, an arcade (Magic Planet) and various food chains.

 

Culture

The traditional Dhow, an enduring symbol of Oman

Outwardly, Oman shares many of the cultural characteristics of its Arab neighbours, particularly those in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Despite these similarities, important factors make Oman unique in the Middle East. These result as much from geography and history as from culture and economics. The relatively recent and artificial nature of the state of Oman makes it difficult to describe a national culture; however, sufficient cultural heterogeneity exists within its national boundaries to make Oman distinct from other Arab States of the Persian Gulf. Oman's cultural diversity is greater than that of its Arab neighbours, given its historical expansion to the Swahili Coast and the Indian Ocean.

 

Oman has a long tradition of shipbuilding, as maritime travel played a major role in the Omanis' ability to stay in contact with the civilisations of the ancient world. Sur was one of the most famous shipbuilding cities of the Indian Ocean. The Al Ghanja ship takes one whole year to build. Other types of Omani ship include As Sunbouq and Al Badan.

 

In March 2016, archaeologists working off Al-Hallaniyah Island identified a shipwreck believed to be that of the Esmeralda from Vasco da Gama's 1502–1503 fleet. The wreck was initially discovered in 1998. Later underwater excavations took place between 2013 and 2015 through a partnership between the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Blue Water Recoveries Ltd., a shipwreck recovery company. The vessel was identified through such artifacts as a "Portuguese coin minted for trade with India (one of only two coins of this type known to exist) and stone cannonballs engraved with what appear to be the initials of Vincente Sodré, da Gama's maternal uncle and the commander of the Esmeralda".

 

Notable people

Mohammed Al Barwani (born 1952), billionaire and founder of MB Holding

Avicii (1989–2018), Swedish music producer and DJ, died in Muscat Hills

Mahesh Bhupathi (born 1974), Indian tennis player. He studied at the Indian School, Muscat.

Sarah-Jane Dias (born 1974), Indian actress. She studied at the Indian School, Muscat.

Isla Fisher (born 1976), Australian actress, born to Scottish parents and lived in Australia

Tate McRae (born 2003), Canadian singer-songwriter, studied at The American International School Muscat

Ali Al-Habsi (born 1981), professional footballer, captain of the Oman national and goalkeeper for Saudi club Al Hilal

Amad Al-Hosni (born 1984), professional footballer

Ahmad Al Harthy (born 1981), racecar driver

Fatma Al-Nabhani (born 1991), tennis player

Ali bin Masoud al Sunaidy (born 1964), former Omani Minister of Commerce and Industry

Sneha Ullal (born 1987), Indian Bollywood Actress. She studied at the Indian School, Muscat.

Nitya Vidyasagar (born 1985), American actress

Al Faisal Al Zubair (born 1998), racecar driver

Hamed Al-Wahaibi (born 1968), rally driver

 

Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located in West Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, while sharing maritime borders with Iran and Pakistan. The capital and largest city is Muscat. Oman has a population of nearly 4.7 million and is ranked the 124th most-populous country. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman on the northeast. The Madha and Musandam exclaves are surrounded by United Arab Emirates on their land borders, with the Strait of Hormuz (which it shares with Iran) and the Gulf of Oman forming Musandam's coastal boundaries.

 

From the 17th century, the Omani Sultanate was an empire, vying with the Portuguese and British Empires for influence in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. At its peak in the 19th century, Omani influence and control extended across the Strait of Hormuz to Iran and Pakistan, and as far south as Zanzibar. In the 20th century, the sultanate came under the influence of the United Kingdom. For over 300 years, the relations built between the two empires were based on mutual benefit. The UK recognized Oman's geographical importance as a trading hub that secured their trading lanes in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean and protected their empire in the Indian sub-continent. Oman is an absolute monarchy led by a sultan, with power passed down through the male line. Qaboos bin Said was the Sultan from 1970 until his death on 10 January 2020. Qaboos, who died childless, had named his cousin, Haitham bin Tariq, as his successor in a letter, and the family confirmed him as the Sultan of Oman.

 

Formerly a maritime empire, Oman is the oldest continuously independent state in the Arab world. It is a member of the United Nations, the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. It has oil reserves ranked 22nd globally. In 2010, the United Nations Development Programme ranked Oman as the most improved nation in the world in terms of development during the preceding 40 years. A portion of its economy involves tourism and trading fish, dates and other agricultural produce. Oman is categorized as a high-income economy and, as of 2023, ranks as the 48th most peaceful country in the world according to the Global Peace Index.

 

Oman is the site of pre-historic human habitation, stretching back over 100,000 years. The region was impacted by powerful invaders, including other Arab tribes, Portugal and Britain. Oman once possessed the island of Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa as a colony. Oman also held Gwadar as a colony for many years.

 

Prehistoric record

In Oman, a site was discovered by Doctor Bien Joven in 2011 containing more than 100 surface scatters of stone tools belonging to the late Nubian Complex, known previously only from archaeological excavations in Sudan. Two optically stimulated luminescence age estimates place the Arabian Nubian Complex at approximately 106,000 years old. This provides evidence for a distinct Mobile Stone Age technocomplex in southern Arabia, around the earlier part of the Marine Isotope Stage 5.

 

The hypothesized departure of humankind from Africa to colonise the rest of the world involved them crossing the Straits of Bab el Mandab in the southern Red Sea and moving along the green coastlines around Arabia and thence to the rest of Eurasia. Such crossing became possible when sea level had fallen by more than 80 meters to expose much of the shelf between southern Eritrea and Yemen; a level that was reached during a glacial stadial from 60 to 70 ka as climate cooled erratically to reach the last glacial maximum. From 135,000 to 90,000 years ago, tropical Africa had megadroughts which drove the humans from the land and towards the sea shores, and forced them to cross over to other continents. The researchers used radiocarbon dating techniques on pollen grains trapped in lake-bottom mud to establish vegetation over the ages of the Malawi lake in Africa, taking samples at 300-year-intervals. Samples from the megadrought times had little pollen or charcoal, suggesting sparse vegetation with little to burn. The area around Lake Malawi, today heavily forested, was a desert approximately 135,000 to 90,000 years ago.

 

Luminescence dating is a technique that measures naturally occurring radiation stored in the sand. Data culled via this methodology demonstrates that 130,000 years ago, the Arabian Peninsula was relatively warmer which caused more rainfall, turning it into a series of lush habitable land. During this period the southern Red Sea's levels dropped and was only 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) wide. This offered a brief window of time for humans to easily cross the sea and cross the Peninsula to opposing sites like Jebel Faya. These early migrants running away from the climate change in Africa, crossed the Red Sea into Yemen and Oman, trekked across Arabia during favourable climate conditions. 2,000 kilometres of inhospitable desert lie between the Red Sea and Jebel Faya in UAE. But around 130,000 years ago the world was at the end of an ice age. The Red Sea was shallow enough to be crossed on foot or on a small raft, and the Arabian peninsula was being transformed from a parched desert into a green land.

 

There have been discoveries of Paleolithic stone tools in caves in southern and central Oman, and in the United Arab Emirates close to the Straits of Hormuz at the outlet of the Persian Gulf (UAE site (Jebel Faya). The stone tools, some up to 125,000 years old, resemble those made by humans in Africa around the same period.

 

Persian period

The northern half of Oman (beside modern-day Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, plus Balochistan and Sindh provinces of Pakistan) presumably was part of the Maka satrapy of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. By the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great, the satrapy may have existed in some form and Alexander is said to have stayed in Purush, its capital, perhaps near Bam, in Kerman province. From the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BCE, waves of Semitic speaking peoples migrated from central and western Arabia to the east. The most important of these tribes are known as Azd. On the coast Parthian and Sassanian colonies were maintained. From c. 100 BCE to c. 300 CE Semitic speakers appear in central Oman at Samad al-Shan and the so-called Pre-islamic recent period, abbreviated PIR, in what has become the United Arab Emirates. These waves continue, in the 19th century bringing Bedouin ruling families who finally ruled the Persian Gulf states.

 

The Kingdom of Oman was subdued by the Sasanian Empire's forces under Vahrez during the Aksumite–Persian wars. The 4,000-strong Sasanian garrison was headquartered at Jamsetjerd/Jamshedgird (modern Jebel Gharabeh, also known as Felej al-Sook).

 

Conversion to Islam

Oman was exposed to Islam in 630, during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad; consolidation took place in the Ridda Wars in 632.

 

In 751 Ibadi Muslims, a moderate branch of the Kharijites, established an imamate in Oman. Despite interruptions, the Ibadi imamate survived until the mid-20th century.

 

Oman is currently the only country with a majority Ibadi population. Ibadhism has a reputation for its "moderate conservatism". One distinguishing feature of Ibadism is the choice of ruler by communal consensus and consent. The introduction of Ibadism vested power in the Imam, the leader nominated by the ulema. The Imam's position was confirmed when the imam—having gained the allegiance of the tribal sheiks—received the bay'ah (oath of allegiance) from the public.

 

Foreign invasions

Several foreign powers attacked Oman. The Qarmatians controlled the area between 931 and 932 and then again between 933 and 934. Between 967 and 1053 Oman formed part of the domain of the Iranian Buyyids, and between 1053 and 1154 Oman was part of the Seljuk Empire. Seljuk power even spread through Oman to Koothanallur in southern India.

 

In 1154 the indigenous Nabhani dynasty took control of Oman, and the Nabhani kings ruled Oman until 1470, with an interruption of 37 years between 1406 and 1443.

 

The Portuguese took Muscat on 1 April 1515, and held it until 26 January 1650, although the Ottomans controlled Muscat from 1550 to 1551 and from 1581 to 1588. In about the year 1600, Nabhani rule was temporarily restored to Oman, although that lasted only to 1624 with the establishment of the fifth imamate, also known as the Yarubid Imamate. The latter recaptured Muscat from the Portuguese in 1650 after a colonial presence on the northeastern coast of Oman dating to 1508.

 

Turning the table, the Omani Yarubid dynasty became a colonial power itself, acquiring former Portuguese colonies in east Africa and engaging in the slave trade, centered on the Swahili coast and the island of Zanzibar.

 

By 1719 dynastic succession led to the nomination of Saif bin Sultan II (c. 1706–1743). His candidacy prompted a rivalry among the ulama and a civil war between the two factions, led by major tribes, the Hinawi and the Ghafiri, with the Ghafiri supporting Saif ibn Sultan II. In 1743, Persian ruler Nader Shah occupied Muscat and Sohar with Saif's assistance. Saif died, and was succeeded by Bal'arab bin Himyar of the Yaruba.

 

Persia had occupied the coast previously. Yet this intervention on behalf of an unpopular dynasty brought about a revolt. The leader of the revolt, Ahmad bin Said al-Busaidi, took advantage of the assassination of the Persian king, Nadir Shah in Khurasan in 1747 and the chaos that resulted in the Persian Empire by expelling the dwindling Persian forces. He then defeated Bal'arab, and was elected sultan of Muscat and imam of Oman.

 

The Al Busaid clan thus became a royal dynasty. Like its predecessors, Al Busaid dynastic rule has been characterized by a history of internecine family struggle, fratricide, and usurpation. Apart from threats within the ruling family, there were frequent challenges from the independent tribes of the interior. The Busaidid dynasty renounced the imamate after Ahmad bin Said. The interior tribes recognized the imam as the sole legitimate ruler, rejected the authority of the sultan, and fought for the restoration of the imamate.

 

Schisms within the ruling family became apparent before Ahmad ibn Said's death in 1783 and later manifested themselves with the division of the family into two main lines:

 

the Sultan ibn Ahmad (ruled 1792–1806) line, controlling the maritime state, with nominal control over the entire country

the Qais branch, with authority over the Al Batinah and Ar Rustaq areas

This period also included a revolt in Oman's colony of Zanzibar in the year 1784.

 

During the period of Sultan Said ibn Sultan's reign (1806–1856), Oman built up its overseas colonies, profiting from the slave trade. As a regional commercial power in the 19th century, Oman held the island of Zanzibar on the Swahili Coast, the Zanj region of the East African coast, including Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, and (until 1958) Gwadar on the Arabian Sea coast of present-day Pakistan.

 

When Great Britain prohibited slavery in the mid-19th century, the sultanate's fortunes reversed. The economy collapsed, and many Omani families migrated to Zanzibar. The population of Muscat fell from 55,000 to 8,000 between the 1850s and 1870s. Britain seized most of the overseas possessions, and by 1900 Oman had become a different country than before.

 

Late 19th and early 20th centuries

When Sultan Sa'id bin Sultan Al-Busaid died in 1856, his sons quarrelled over the succession. As a result of this struggle, the empire—through the mediation of Britain under the Canning Award—was divided in 1861 into two separate principalities: Sultanate of Zanzibar (with its African Great Lakes dependencies), and the area of "Muscat and Oman". This name was abolished in 1970 in favor of "Sultanate of Oman", but implies two political cultures with a long history:

 

The coastal tradition: more cosmopolitan, and secular, found in the city of Muscat and adjacent coastline ruled by the sultan.

The interior tradition: insular, tribal, and highly religious under the ideological tenets of Ibadism, found in "Oman proper" ruled by an imam.

The more cosmopolitan Muscat has been the ascending political culture since the founding of the Al Busaid dynasty in 1744, although the imamate tradition has found intermittent expression.

 

The death of Sa'id bin Sultan in 1856 prompted a further division: the descendants of the late sultan ruled Muscat and Oman (Thuwaini ibn Said Al-Busaid, r. 1856–1866) and Zanzibar (Mayid ibn Said Al-Busaid, r. 1856–1870); the Qais branch intermittently allied itself with the ulama to restore imamate legitimacy. In 1868, Azzan bin Qais Al-Busaid (r. 1868–1871) emerged as self-declared imam. Although a significant number of Hinawi tribes recognized him as imam, the public neither elected him nor acclaimed him as such.

 

Imam Azzan understood that to unify the country a strong, central authority had to be established with control over the interior tribes of Oman. His rule was jeopardized by the British, who interpreted his policy of bringing the interior tribes under the central government as a move against their established order. In resorting to military means to unify Muscat and Oman, Imam Azzan alienated members of the Ghafiri tribes, who revolted in the 1870–1871 period. The British gave financial and political support to Turki bin Said Al-Busaid, Imam Azzan's rival in exchange of controlling the area. In the Battle of Dhank, Turki bin Said defeated the forces of Imam Azzan, who was killed in battle outside Muttrah in January 1871.

 

Muscat and Oman was the object of Franco-British rivalry throughout the 18th century. During the 19th century, Muscat and Oman and the United Kingdom concluded several treaties of commerce benefitting mostly the British. In 1908 the British entered into an agreement based in the imperialistic plans to control the area. Their traditional association was confirmed in 1951 through a new treaty of commerce, based on oil reserves, and navigation by which the United Kingdom recognized the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman as a fully independent state, under their supervision and their strategic neo-colonial interest.

 

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were tensions between the sultan in Muscat and the Ibadi Imam in Nizwa. This conflict was resolved temporarily by the Treaty of Seeb, which granted the imam rule in the interior Imamate of Oman, while recognising the sovereignty of the sultan in Muscat and its surroundings.

 

Late 20th century

In 1954, the conflict flared up again, when the Treaty of Seeb was broken by the sultan after oil was discovered in the lands of the Imam. The new imam (Ghalib bin Ali) led a 5-year rebellion against the sultan's attack. The Sultan was aided by the colonial British forces and the Shah of Iran. In the early 1960s, the Imam, exiled to Saudi Arabia, obtained support from his hosts and other Arab governments, but this support ended in the 1980s. The case of the Imam was argued at the United Nations as well, but no significant measures were taken.

 

Zanzibar paid an annual subsidy to Muscat and Oman until its independence in early 1964.

 

In 1964, a separatist revolt began in Dhofar province. Aided by Communist and leftist governments such as the former South Yemen (People's Democratic Republic of Yemen), the rebels formed the Dhofar Liberation Front, which later merged with the Marxist-dominated Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG). The PFLOAG's declared intention was to overthrow all traditional Persian Gulf régimes. In mid-1974, the Bahrain branch of the PFLOAG was established as a separate organisation and the Omani branch changed its name to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO), while continuing the Dhofar Rebellion.

 

1970s

In the 1970 Omani coup d'état, Qaboos bin Said al Said ousted his father, Sa'id bin Taimur, who later died in exile in London. Al Said ruled as sultan until his death. The new sultan confronted insurgency in a country plagued by endemic disease, illiteracy, and poverty. One of the new sultan's first measures was to abolish many of his father's harsh restrictions, which had caused thousands of Omanis to leave the country, and to offer amnesty to opponents of the previous régime, many of whom returned to Oman. 1970 also brought the abolition of slavery.

 

Sultan Qaboos also established a modern governmental structure and launched a major development programme to upgrade educational and health facilities, build modern infrastructure and develop the country's natural resources.

 

In an effort to curb the Dhofar insurgency, Sultan Qaboos expanded and re-equipped the armed forces and granted amnesty to all surrendering rebels while vigorously prosecuting the war in Dhofar. He obtained direct military support from the UK, imperial Iran, and Jordan. By early 1975, the guerrillas were confined to a 50-square-kilometre (19 sq mi) area near the Yemeni border and shortly thereafter were defeated. As the war drew to a close, civil action programs were given priority throughout Dhofar and helped win the allegiance of the people. The PFLO threat diminished further with the establishment of diplomatic relations in October 1983 between South Yemen and Oman, and South Yemen subsequently lessened propaganda and subversive activities against Oman. In late 1987 Oman opened an embassy in Aden, South Yemen, and appointed its first resident ambassador to the country.

 

Throughout his reign, Sultan Qaboos balanced tribal, regional, and ethnic interests in composing the national administration. The Council of Ministers, which functions as a cabinet, consisted of 26 ministers, all of whom were directly appointed by Qaboos. The Majlis Al-Shura (Consultative Council) has the mandate of reviewing legislation pertaining to economic development and social services prior to its becoming law. The Majlis Al-Shura may request ministers to appear before it.

 

1990s

In November 1996, Sultan Qaboos presented his people with the "Basic Statutes of the State", Oman's first written "constitution". It guarantees various rights within the framework of Qur'anic and customary law. It partially resuscitated long dormant conflict-of-interest measures by banning cabinet ministers from being officers of public shareholding firms. Perhaps most importantly, the Basic Statutes provide rules for setting Sultan Qaboos' succession.

 

Oman occupies a strategic location on the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, 35 miles (56 km) directly opposite Iran. Oman has concerns with regional stability and security, given tensions in the region, the proximity of Iran and Iraq, and the potential threat of political Islam. Oman maintained its diplomatic relations with Iraq throughout the Gulf War while supporting the United Nations allies by sending a contingent of troops to join coalition forces and by opening up to pre-positioning of weapons and supplies.

 

2000s

In September 2000, about 100,000 Omani men and women elected 83 candidates, including two women, to seats in the Majlis Al-Shura. In December 2000, Sultan Qaboos appointed the 48-member Majlis Al Dowla, or State Council, including five women, which acts as the upper chamber in Oman's bicameral representative body.

 

Al Said's extensive modernization program has opened the country to the outside world and has preserved a long-standing political and military relationship with the United Kingdom, the United States, and others. Oman's moderate, independent foreign policy has sought to maintain good relations with all Middle Eastern countries.

 

Qaboos, the Arab world's longest-serving ruler, died on 10 January 2020 after nearly 50 years in power. On 11 January 2020, his cousin Haitham bin Tariq al-Said was sworn in as Oman's new sultan.

 

Rulers of Oman

of Zanzibar and Oman)

Thuwaini bin Said (19 October 1856 – 11 February 1866)

Salim bin Thuwaini (11 February 1866 – October 1868)

Azzan bin Qais (October 1868 – 30 January 1871)

Turki bin Said (30 January 1871 – 4 June 1888)

Faisal bin Turki (4 June 1888 – 15 October 1913)

Taimur bin Faisal (15 October 1913 – 10 February 1932)

Said bin Taimur (10 February 1932 – 23 July 1970)

Qaboos bin Said (23 July 1970 to 10 January 2020)

Haitham bin Tariq (11 January 2020 - present)

Hampstead pagoda and hill gardens park.

Talking about what the railing's doing here, not the economy.

In 1975, Nottingham City Transport bought a batch of six 11m Leyland Leopards fitted with Duple Dominant 'E' bodywork, which denoted bus seats within a coach shell. 10 years later, Thomas Bros of Llangadog had purchased former 746 (LAL 746P).

 

However, possibly noting the extended lives that Davies Bros of Pencader was achieving by having some of its Leopard coaches fitted with new Willowbrook Warrior bus bodies, Thomas Bros followed suit and LAL 746P received the same treatment in 1988. She therefore went from having a coach body fitted with bus seats to having a bus body with semi-coach seats, though her capacity reduced from 53 to 47.

 

She became a regular performer on Service 280 (Llandovery-Llangadog-Llandeilo-Nantgaredig-Carmarthen) until the then Dyfed County Council contract was lost to SWT in 1990 following a re-tendering exercise.

 

This scan of a slide taken in 1989 shows her picking up for Llandovery opposite the company's second depot in Rhosmaen Street, Llandeilo.

Extended breakfast

Winter Blues - 12 (of 29) - Canon PowerShot G12 with Extender & Polarizer - Photographer Russell McNeil PhD (Physics) lives on Vancouver Island, where he works as a writer.

Courtney Buses have extended their Sunday service on the 194 from The Meadows through to Camberley (as per the Mon-Sat 194) and then onto Old Dean Estate.

 

They started competing with First on some Bracknell town routes from the same time, which has unsurprisingly upset First. As well as offering free return trips when buying just a single on those town routes, they've now registered a Sunday service on the 194, numbered X94. It will leave Bracknell five minutes ahead of Courtney's service.

 

It will be interesting to see if Courtney's service lasts. They used to run the Sunday service on the 190 Bracknell - Reading when First didn't want to bother with Sundays, but they got muscled off that too.

 

It's a shame, as Courtney has nice new buses and there was a lot of interest in the service today, on just its third week.

 

YJ62 FCC is a new Slimline Solo SR Courtney have bought. Its funky purple LEDs are very evident here!

 

Charles Street, Camberley, Surrey.

SoulRider.222 / Eric Rider © 2021

Contax G2 with Contax Carl Zeiss G Biogon 21mm F2.8 T*

Slide: Fujifilm Provia RDP 100F

 

I love the sky

I long to fly.

LAFD fought an intense fire on two fronts. A brush fire along the SB 2 Fy extended into a large church adjacent to the trees. Roof collapse forced a defensive operation and firefighters worked to save important documents and religious items. Two firefighters received minor injuries.

© Photo by Landon Jensen.

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

 

Extended cab... literally.

 

De mi instagram: instagram.com/p/bjm7rGnvz0/

 

No andaba con mi cámara, tuve que tomarla con el celular =(

Quick Sample Tests of Extension Tubes and Extenders on 3 different lenses

Electric Drive - Range Extender

Chassis : Lotus Evora

 

82th Geneva International Motor Show

Internationaler Auto-Salon Genf

Suisse - Schweiz - Switzerland

March 2012

Blatherwycke, Northants.

 

Donut Falls, Big Cottonwood Canyon, UT. Long exposure.

Outfit extended to black latex business suit - I must admit I like the look, even if it might be Psycho Granny

There’s still time to have a go at the first level of DOOM, because Bethesda have extended the time it’s staying up.

  

bit.ly/28JNtyR

Shaftesbury & District's ex-British European Airways (BEA & London Transport Routemaster RMA29 this was extended with an extra bay, which came from RM 675. Eventually the bus re-emerged as RME 1. seen here at Wisley Airfield in 2004.

The Château de Chenonceau is a French château spanning the river Cher, near the small village of Chenonceaux, Indre-et-Loire, Centre-Val de Loire. It is one of the best-known châteaux of the Loire Valley.

 

The estate of Chenonceau is first mentioned in writing in the 11th century. The current château was built in 1514–1522 on the foundations of an old mill and was later extended to span the river. The bridge over the river was built (1556-1559) to designs by the French Renaissance architect Philibert de l'Orme, and the gallery on the bridge, built from 1570 to 1576 to designs by Jean Bullant.

 

An architectural mixture of late Gothic and early Renaissance, Château de Chenonceau and its gardens are open to the public. Other than the Royal Palace of Versailles, it is the most visited château in France.

 

The château has been designated as a Monument historique since 1840 by the French Ministry of Culture. Today, Chenonceau is a major tourist attraction and in 2007 received around 800,000 visitors.

 

In the 13th century, the fief of Chenonceau belonged to the Marques family. The original château was torched in 1412 to punish the owner, Jean Marques, for an act of sedition. He rebuilt a château and fortified mill on the site in the 1430s. Jean Marques' indebted heir Pierre Marques found it necessary to sell.

 

Thomas Bohier, Chamberlain to King Charles VIII of France, purchased the castle from Pierre Marques in 1513 and demolished most of it (resulting in 2013 being considered the 500th anniversary of the castle: MDXIII–MMXIII), though its 15th-century keep was left standing. Bohier built an entirely new residence between 1515 and 1521. The work was overseen by his wife Katherine Briçonnet, who delighted in hosting French nobility, including King Francis I on two occasions.

 

In 1535 the château was seized from Bohier's son [fr] by King Francis I of France for unpaid debts to the Crown. After Francis' death in 1547, Henry II offered the château as a gift to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who became fervently attached to the château along the river.[8] In 1555 she commissioned Philibert de l'Orme to build the arched bridge joining the château to its opposite bank. Diane then oversaw the planting of extensive flower and vegetable gardens along with a variety of fruit trees. Set along the banks of the river, but buttressed from flooding by stone terraces, the exquisite gardens were laid out in four triangles.

 

Diane de Poitiers was the unquestioned mistress of the castle, but ownership remained with the crown until 1555 when years of delicate legal manoeuvres finally yielded possession to her.

 

After King Henry II died in 1559, his strong-willed widow and regent Catherine de' Medici forced Diane to exchange it for the Château Chaumont. Queen Catherine then made Chenonceau her own favourite residence, adding a new series of gardens.

 

As Regent of France, Catherine spent a fortune on the château and on spectacular nighttime parties. In 1560, the first-ever fireworks display seen in France took place during the celebrations marking the ascension to the throne of Catherine's son Francis II. The grand gallery, which extended along the existing bridge to cross the entire river, was dedicated in 1577. Catherine also added rooms between the chapel and the library on the east side of the corps de logis, as well as a service wing on the west side of the entry courtyard.

 

Catherine considered an even greater expansion of the château, shown in an engraving published by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau in the second (1579) volume of his book Les plus excellents bastiments de France. If this project had been executed, the current château would have been only a small portion of an enormous manor laid out "like pincers around the existing buildings."

 

On Catherine's death, in January 1589, the château went to her daughter-in-law, Louise of Lorraine, wife of King Henry III. Louise was at Chenonceau when she learned of her husband's assassination, in August 1589, and she fell into a state of depression. Louise spent the next 11 years, until her death in January 1601, wandering aimlessly along the château's corridors dressed in mourning clothes, amidst sombre black tapestries stitched with skulls and crossbones.

 

Henri IV obtained Chenonceau for his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées by paying the debts of Catherine de' Medici, which had been inherited by Louise and were threatening to ruin her. In return, Louise left the château to her niece Françoise de Lorraine, at that time six years old and betrothed to the four-year-old César de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, the natural son of Gabrielle d'Estrées and Henri IV. The château belonged to the Duc de Vendôme and his descendants for more than a hundred years. The Bourbons had little interest in the château, except for hunting. In 1650, Louis XIV was the last king of the ancien régime to visit.

 

The Château de Chenonceau was bought by the Duke of Bourbon in 1720. Little by little, he sold off all of the castle's contents. Many of the fine statues ended up at Versailles.

 

In 1733 the estate was sold for 130,000 livres to a wealthy squire named Claude Dupin. His wife, Louise Dupin, was the natural daughter of the financier Samuel Bernard and the actress Manon Dancourt, whose mother was also an actress who had joined the Comédie Française in 1684. Louise Dupin was "an intelligent, beautiful, and highly cultivated woman who had the theatre in her blood." Claude Dupin, a widower, had a son, Louis Claude, from his first wife Marie-Aurore de Saxe, who was the grandmother of George Sand (born Aurore Dupin).

 

Louise Dupin's literary salon at Chenonceau attracted such leaders of the Enlightenment as the writers Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Fontenelle, the naturalist Buffon, the playwright Marivaux, the philosopher Condillac, as well as the Marquise de Tencin and the Marquise du Deffand. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Dupin's secretary and tutored her son. Rousseau, who worked on Émile at Chenonceau, wrote in his Confessions: "We played music there and staged comedies. I wrote a play in verse entitled Sylvie's Path, after the name of a path in the park along the Cher."

 

The widowed Louise Dupin saved the château from destruction during the French Revolution, preserving it from being destroyed by the Revolutionary Guard because "it was essential to travel and commerce, being the only bridge across the river for many miles."

 

In 1864 Marguerite Pelouze [fr ], a rich heiress, acquired the château. Around 1875 she commissioned the architect Félix Roguet to restore it. He almost completely renewed the interior and removed several of Catherine de' Medici's additions, including the rooms between the library and the chapel and her alterations to the north facade, among which were figures of Hercules, Pallas, Apollo, and Cybele that were moved to the park. With the money Marguerite spent on these projects and elaborate parties, her finances were depleted, and the château was seized and sold.

 

José-Emilio Terry, a Cuban millionaire, acquired Chenonceau from Madame Pelouze in 1891. Terry sold it in 1896 to a family member, Francisco Terry. In 1913, the château was acquired by Henri Menier, a member of the Menier family, famous for their chocolates, who still own it to this day.

 

During World War I Gaston Menier set up the gallery to be used as a hospital ward. During the Second World War, the château was bombed by the Germans in June 1940.[20] It was also a means of escaping from the Nazi-occupied zone on one side of the river Cher to the "free" zone on the opposite bank. Occupied by the Germans, the château was bombed by the Allies on 7 June 1944, when the chapel was hit and its windows destroyed.

 

In 1951, the Menier family entrusted the château's restoration to Bernard Voisin, who brought the dilapidated structure and the gardens (ravaged in the Cher flood in 1940) back to a reflection of its former glory.

 

Chenonceaux is a commune in the French department of Indre-et-Loire, and the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France.

 

It is situated in the valley of the river Cher, a tributary of the Loire, about 26 km (16 mi) east of Tours and on the right bank of the Cher.

 

The population of permanent residents hovers about 350, but there is a large influx of tourists during the summer months because the village adjoins the former royal Château de Chenonceau, one of the most popular tourist destinations in France. The château is distinctive in being built across the river. The village is also situated in Touraine-Chenonceaux wine-growing area, and bordered on its northern edge by the Forest of Amboise.

 

Name

The difference in spelling between the Château's name (Chenonceau) and the village (Chenonceaux) is attributed to Louise Dupin de Francueil, owner of the château during the French Revolution, who is said to have dropped the "x" at the end of its name to differentiate what was a symbol of royalty from the Republic. As a result of her good relations with the village, the Château was spared the iconoclastic damage suffered by many other monuments during the Revolution. Although no official sources have been found to support this claim, the Château has ever since been referred to and spelled as Chenonceau.

 

Mme Dupin hosted the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Chenonceau as tutor to her children, and among her descendants was the writer George Sand, born Aurore Dupin.

 

Philibert de l'Orme (pronounced [filibɛːʁ də lɔʁm]) (3-9 June 1514 – 8 January 1570) was a French architect and writer, and one of the great masters of French Renaissance architecture. His surname is also written De l'Orme, de L'Orme, or Delorme.

 

Biography

Early career

Philbert de l'Orme was born between 3 and 9 June 1514 in Lyon. His father was Jehan de L'Orme, a master mason and entrepreneur, who, in the 1530s, employed three hundred workers and built prestigious buildings for the elite of the city.[3] When Philibert was nineteen he departed Lyon for Italy, where he remained for three years, working on building projects for Pope Paul III. In Rome he was introduced to Cardinal Jean du Bellay, the Ambassador of King François I to the Vatican, who became his protector and client. Du Bellay was also the patron of his friend Francois Rabelais. In about 1540 de l'Orme moved to Paris, and was soon occupied with royal projects.

 

Royal architect of Henry II (1548-1559)

On April 3, 1548 he was a named architect of the King by Henry II. For a period of eleven years, he supervised all of the King's architectural projects, with the exception of changes to the Louvre, which were planned by another royal architect, Pierre Lescot. His major projects included the Château de St Maur-des-Fossés, the Château d'Anet, the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley; the royal Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne; the Château de Vincennes, and major modifications to the Palace of Fontainebleau.

 

He also made a reputation as a writer and theorist, and as an innovator in building techniques. He invented a new system for making the essential wooden frameworks for constructing stone buildings, called charpente à petits bois, which was quicker and less expensive than previous methods and used much less wood. He demonstrated it before the King in 1555, and put it to work in construction at the new royal Château de Montceaux and at the royal hunting lodge La Muette [fr] in the Forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

 

Out of favor - architectural theorist (1559-1563)

The death of Henry II of France on July 10, 1559 suddenly left him without a patron and at the mercy of rival architects who resented his success and his style. Two days later, on 10 July, he was dismissed from his official posts, and replaced by an Italian artist and architect, Francesco Primaticcio, whose work was much in fashion. He had joined a religious order, and decided to turn his attention to meditation, scholarship and writing. He made another trip to Rome to inspect the new works of Michelangelo. Beginning in 1565 wrote the first volume of a work on architectural theory, which was scientific and philosophical. It was published in 1567, and was followed by new editions after his death in 1576, 1626 and 1648.

 

Royal architect again (1563-1570)

Under Charles IX and Catherine de Medici, he returned to royal favor. He was employed on the enlargement of the Chateau of Saint Maur (1563) and, along with Jean Bullant, on additions to the Tuileries Palace (1564). He died in Paris in 1570, while this project was underway.

 

Reputation

In the 17th century, during the period of Louis XIV style that followed his death, his reputation suffered. The grand stairway that he built at the Tuileries Palace was demolished in 1664, as was his Château de Saint-Léger in 1668, to make way for classical structures. In 1683, he was denounced by François Blondel of the Royal Academy for his "villainous Gothic ornaments" and his "petty manner". Nonetheless, his two major theoretical works on construction and design continued to be important textbooks, and were regularly republished and read.

 

His reputation rose again in the 18th century, through the writings of Dezallier d'Argenville, who wrote in 1787 that he had "abandoned the Gothic covering in order to redress French architecture in the style Ancient Greece." D'Argenville wrote the first biography and catalog of works. Though few of his building survived to be studied carefully, later important academic works on de l'Orme were written in the 19th and 20th centuries by art historians including H. Clouzot and Anthony Blunt.

 

One of De l'Orme's primary accomplishments was to change the way architects trained and studied. He insisted that architects needed formal education in classical architecture, as well as in geometry and astronomy and the sciences, but also needed practical experience in construction. He himself was an accomplished scholar of ancient Greek and Roman architecture, as well as a humanist scholar. He argued that architects needed to be able to design and manage every aspect of the building, from the volumes to the lambris to adding up the cost, making detailed three-dimensional drawings of vaults, judging if wood was dry enough, and knowing to stop digging the foundation when the first sand was encountered. He had scorn for those architects who could design a facade but had no knowledge actual construction. His opponents scorned him for his background as the son of a masonry contractor. He was referred to by Bernard Palissy as "The god of the stone masons", which deeply offended him.

 

His other major accomplishment was to resist the tendency to simply copy Italian architectural styles; he traveled and studied in Italy, and borrowed much, but he always added a distinctly French look to each of his projects.

 

The first major building of de l'Orme was the Château of Saint Maur (1541), built for the Cardinal Jean du Bellay, whom de l'Orme had met during his time in Rome. Its plan showed the influence of the Italian villas; and, like the Italian buildings, it was decorated with frescoes.

 

Much of his work has disappeared, but his fame remains. He was an ardent humanist and student of the antique, he yet vindicated resolutely the French tradition in opposition to Italian tendencies; he was a man of independent mind and a vigorous originality. His masterpiece was the Château d'Anet (1552–1559), built for Diane de Poitiers, the plans of which are preserved in Jacques Androuet du Cerceau's Plus excellens bastimens de France, though only part of the building remains. His designs for the Tuileries (also given by Androuet du Cerceau), begun by Catherine de' Medici in 1565, were magnificent. His work is also seen at Chenonceau and other famous châteaux; and his tomb of Francis I at Saint Denis Basilica remains a perfect specimen of his art.

 

The most easily viewed work of de l'Orme in Paris is the court facade of the Chateau d'Anet, which was moved to Paris after a major portion of the chateau was demolished, to illustrate for students the major works of the French Renaissance. It is attached to the front wall of the chapel of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and is visible from Rue Bonaparte.

 

Partial list of works

Château de Saint-Maur (1541), demolished in 1796

Tomb of François Ie in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Paris (1547)

Château d'Anet (1547-1555), built for Diane de Poitiers. Only one wing remains.

Plans of the Chapel of Saint-Éloi, Paris (1550-1566), (Long attributed, but not documented. Only a portion of the facade remains)

Attribution du château d'Acquigny

Facade of the residence of the Vicomte of the Duchy of Uzès (attributed)

Completion of Sainte-Chapelle at the Château de Vincennes (1552)

Château de Villers-Cotterêts, southern portion( 1547-1559)

Chapel of the Château of Villers-Cotterêts (1552-1553)

Royal Château of Saint-Léger-en-Yvelines (demolished)

Château de Meudon (attributed)

Château de Montceaux

Château de Thoiry (1560s)

The bridge upon which the Château de Chenonceau is constructed

Portions of the Louvre

Portions of the new Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Portal of Château d'Écouen, now the National Museum of the French Renaissance (mid 16th century). The wing he designed was destroyed in 1787, but vestiges are displayed inside the Chateau.

Roofs of the towers of the Château de Bonnemare.

Seem to have spent most of the day installing and configuring these little rascals, or should I say WiFi extenders. It should have been straightforward but, of course, I made a small mistake which messed things up somewhat. After much reading, scratching my head and 'blueing' the air, I finally got things to work.Little rascals!

Our accommodation for the first two nights of the 10D9N trip - Blue Waters. We all agreed that the place is quite run down and nowhere near what we saw on their website. Extended Family Trip to Western Australia from 7 to 16 Jun 2016. (photo by Ben Cho)