A00061 - Kayahan Acar, Turkish Singer and Songwriter

Acar, Kayahan
Kayahan Açar, stage name Kayahan, (March 29, 1949 – April 3, 2015) was a Turkish pop music singer and songwriter. He was an accomplished composer, consistently ranking among the best-selling Turkish musicians of all time. Kayahan composed all of his own material and released more than eight best-selling albums during a career spanning three decades.

Kayahan was born in Izmir, Turkey, on March 29, 1949. He spent his childhood and young adulthood years in Ankara before moving to Istanbul. 

Kayahan, whose full name was Kayahan Acar, released his first album in 1975 and went on to release nearly two dozen more. Best known for his love songs, he built his musical legacy on his use of idiomatic Turkish to describe emotions. Many of his songs are considered pop classics.

He first won global recognition at the 1986 International Mediterranean Music Contest in Antalya, a Turkish Mediterranean town, and in 1990 he represented Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest with his composition "Gozlerinin Hapsindeyim" (“I Am Entrapped by Your Eyes”). The song did not win, but it became a hit in Turkey.

Açar was married three times. He made his first marriage to Nur in 1973. From this marriage, which lasted 24 years long, he became father of a daughter Beste (Turkish for music composition), born in 1975. Beste was runner-up for Miss Turkey in 1995. Kayahan remarried to Lale Yılmaz in 1990. The couple divorced in 1996. In 1999, at age fifty, he remarried to his third wife,1976-born İpek Tüter. In August 2000, İpek gave birth to their daughter Aslı Gönül.

A00060 - Ibn Badis, Author of Staff of the Scribes

Al- Muʻizz ibn Bādīs (Arabic:  المعز بن باديس‎); 1008–1062) was the fourth ruler of the Zirids in Ifriqiya, reigning from 1016 to 1062.

Al-Muizz ascended the throne as a minor following the death of his father Badis ibn Mansur,  with his aunt acting as regent. In 1016 there was a bloody revolt in Ifriqiya in which the Fatimid residence Al-Mansuriya was completely destroyed and 20,000 Shiites were massacred. The unrest forced a ceasefire in the conflict with the Hammadids of Algeria, and their independence was finally recognized in 1018.

Al-Muizz took over the government in 1022 following the overthrow of his aunt. The relationship with the Fatimids was strained, when in 1027 they supported a revolt of the Zanatas in Tripolitania which resulted in permanent loss of control of the region. His son Abdallah shortly ruled Sicily in 1038-1040, after intervening with a Zirid army in the civil war that broke out in the island.

The political turmoil notwithstanding, the general economic well-being initially made possible an extensive building program. However, the kingdom found itself in economic crisis in the 1040s, reflected in currency devaluation, epidemic and famine. This may have been related to the high level of tribute which the Zirids were compelled to pay annually to the Fatimids (one million gold dinars a year).

When al-Muizz (under the influence of Sunni jurists in Kairouan, growing Sunni public pressure in his realm and a violent backlash against the Shi'ite minority) recognized the Abbasids in Baghdad as rightful Caliphs in 1045 and adopted Sunni orthodoxy, the break with the Fatimids was complete. He even denounced the Fatimids and their followers as heretics in newly minted coinage.

The Fatimids then deported the Bedouin tribes of the Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaym fromEgypt to Ifriqiya. The invasion of the Bedouin (1051–1052) led to great hardship after the defeat at Jabal Haydaran, severely impacting agriculture in Ifriqiya. The conquest of Kairouan in 1057 resulted in further anarchy. The Zirids lost control over the hinterland and were only able to retain the coastal areas, the capital being moved to Mahdia. With the growth of Bedouin Emirates and the continuing insecurity inland, the economy of Ifriqiya looked increasingly towards the Mediterranean, with the result the coastal cities grew in importance through maritime trade and piracy.

Al-Muizz was succeeded by his son Tamim ibn Muizz. 

Al-Muizz ibn Badis is usually thought to be the author of the famous Kitab `umdat al-kuttab wa `uddat dhawi al-albab (Staff of the Scribes). It is divided in twelve chapters.  Al-Muizz wrote on (amongst others) on the excellence of the pen, on the preparation of types of inks, the preparation of colored inks, metallic inks (including ones prepared from silver filings and alcohol), the coloring of dyes and mixtures, secret writing, the making of paper and the Arabic gum and glue. 

A00059 - Ibn al-Wafid, Author of The Book of Simple Drugs

Ibn al-Wafid

Ibn al-Wafid (Ali Ibn al-Husain Ibn al-Wafid) (997-c.1074), known in Latin Europe as Abenguefit, was a pharmacologist and physician from Toledo. He was the vizier of  Al-Mamun of Toledo. His main work is Kitāb al-adwiya al-mufrada (The Book of Simple Drugs) (كتاب الأدوية المفردة, translated into Latin as De medicamentis simplicibus).

Ibn al-Wafid was mainly a pharmacist in Toledo, and he used the techniques and methods available in alchemy to extract at least 520 different kinds of medicines from various plants and herbs.

Ibn al-Wafid's student Ali Ibn al-Lukuh was the author of ʿUmdat al-Ṭabīb fī Maʿrifat al-Nabāt li kulli Labīb, a famous botanical dictionary.

Kitāb al-adwiya al-mufrada (The Book of Simple Drugs) ran to five hundred pages, taking twenty-five years to compile.  The Latin translation, De medicamentis simplicibus is only a fragment of all his work.  

As well as investigatin the action of drugs, sleep and bathing, Ibn al-Wafid also wrote on farming, because agriculture, plant cultivation, botany, chemistry and medicine were closely linked.

A00058 - Yasar Kemal, Master Turkish Novelist

Yasar Kemal, Yasar also spelled Yashar, original name Kemal Sadik Gogceli, (b. 1923, Hemite, Turkey - d. February 28, 2015, Istanbul) was a Turkish novelist of Kurdish descent best known for his stories of village life and for his outspoken advocacy on behalf of the dispossessed. 

At age five, Kemal saw his father murdered in a mosque and was himself blinded in one eye.  He left secondary school after two years and worked at a variety of odd jobs.  In 1950, he was arrested for his political activism, but he was ultimately acquitted.  The following year, Kemal moved to Istanbul and was hired as a reporter for the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, where he worked in various capacities until 1963.  During this time, he published a novella, Teneke (1955, "The Tin Pan"), and the novel Ince Memed (1955, Memed, My Hawk).  The latter, a popular tale about a bandit and folk hero, was translated into more than twenty (20) languages and was made into a movie in 1984.  Kemal wrote three more novels featuring Memed as the protagonist.  In 1962, he joined the Turkish Labour Party, and in 1967, he founded Ant, a weekly political magazine informed by Marxist ideology.  He was arrested again in 1971, and in 1996 a court sentenced him to a deferred jail term for alleged seditious statements about the Turkish government's oppression of the Kurdish people.

Kemal's other novels include the trilogy Ortadirek (1960, The Wind from the Plain); Yer demir, gok bakir (1963, Iron Earth, Copper Sky), Olmez otu (1968, The Undying Grass), and Tanyeri horozlan (2002, The Cocks of Dawn).  He also published volumes of nonfiction -- including Peri bacalan (1957, The Fairy Chimneys),  collection of reportage, and Baldaki tuz (1974, The Salt in the Honey), a book of political essays -- as well as the children's book Filler sultani ile kirmizi sakalli topal karinca (1977, The Sultan of the Elephants and the Red-Bearded Lame Ant).  In 2007, an operatic adaptation of Kemal's Teneke premiered at La Scala in Milan.

A00057 - Ibn al-Thahabi, Author of First Known Alphabetical Medical Encyclopedia

Ibn al-Thahabi
Ibn al-Thahabi (Abu Mohammed Abdellah Ibn Mohammed Al-Azdi) (Arabic: ابو محمد عبدالله بن محمد الأزدي‎) (ca. ? - 1033, in Valencia, Al-Andalus [Islamic Spain]), known also as Ibn Al-Thahabi, was an Arab physician, famous for writing the first known alphabetical encyclopedia of medicine.

He was born in Suhar, Oman.  He moved then into Basra,  then to Persia where he studied under Al-Biruni and Ibn Sina.  Later he migrated to Jerusalem and finally settled in Valencia, in Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain).

He is famous for his book Kitab al-Ma'a (The Book of Water), which is a 900 page medical encyclopedia that lists the names of diseases, its medicine and a physiological process or a treatment. It is the first known alphabetical classification of medical terms. In this encyclopedia, Ibn Al-Thahabi not only lists the names but adds numerous original ideas about the function of the human organs. It also contains a course for the treatment psychological symptoms. The main thesis of his medication is that cure must start from controlled food and exercise and if it persists then use specific individual medicines.  If it still persists, then use medical compounds. If the disease continued, surgery was performed.

A00056 - Ibn al-Shatir, The "Father" of Copernicus' Theory

Ala Al-Din Abu'l-Hasan Ali Ibn Ibrahim Ibn al-Shatir (1304 – 1375) (Arabic: ابن الشاطر‎) was an Arab Muslim astronomer, mathematician, engineer and inventor who worked as muwaqqit (موقت, religious timekeeper) at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria.

Ibn al-Shatir conducted extensive observations which led to some of his theoretical contributions, designed and constructed new instruments, and made advanced contributions to Islamic astronomy in the field of planetary theory.

His most important astronomical treatise was the Kitāb Nihāyat al-Suʾāl fī Taṣḥīḥ al-ʾUṣūl (كتاب نهاية السؤال في تصحيح الأصول - The Final Quest Concerning the Rectification of Principles), in which he drastically reformed the Ptolemaic models of the Sun, Moon, and planets. While previous Maragha school models were just as accurate as the Ptolemaic model, Ibn al-Shatir's geometrical model was the first that was actually superior to the Ptolemaic model in terms of its better agreement with both contemporary theory and empirical observations. 

Experimentally Ibn al-Shatir employed careful eclipse observations to measure the apparent size of the Sun and Moon and found that they disagreed with Ptolemaic expectations. His work on his experiments and observations (e.g. Ta'liq al-arsad, or Accounting for Observations) has not survived, but there are references to it in his Final Quest Concerning the Rectification of Principles.

Theoretically, Ibn al-Shatir objected to Aristotle's ether, in its eternal uniformity, and argued that if one grants that the heavens must allow for a variation in composition then there's no reason to reject epicycles, while agreeing that equants and eccentrics, which violated Aristotelian principles of uniform circular motion and gravity, were impossible. He then built a model that by adding new epicycles utilizing the Tusi-couple eliminated entirely the epicycle in the solar model, the eccentrics and equants in the planetary models, and the eccentric, epicycles and equant in the lunar model. The resulting model was one in which the Earth was at the exact center of the universe around which all heavenly bodies moved in uniform circular motions, remained as accurate as Ptolemy in predicting the paths of heavenly bodies, and improved on Ptolemy by accurately predicting the apparent size and distance of the Sun and Moon.

By creating the first model of the cosmos in which physical theory, mathematical model, and empirical observation were in agreement, Ibn al-Shatir marked a turning point in astronomy which may be considered a "Scientific Revolution before the Renaissance".

Although his system was firmly geocentric — he had eliminated the Ptolemaic equant and eccentrics  — the mathematical details of his system encompassed those in Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus, which had retained the Ptolemaic eccentric.  Copernicus' lunar model was identical to the lunar model of al-Shatir.  It is noted that in Copernicus' Commentariolus that his model of Mercury is mistaken, and that since it is Ibn al-Shatir's model, this is further evidence, and perhaps the best evidence, that Copernicus was in fact copying without full understanding from some other source. All this suggests that Ibn al-Shatir's model may have influenced, if indirectly, Copernicus while constructing the latter's heliocentric model. How Copernicus would have come across al-Shatir's work, exactly, remains an open question, but there are some number of possible routes for first or secondhand transmission.

Ibn al-Shatir constructed a magnificent sundial for the minaret of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus which gave both seasonal and equinoctial hours. The fragments of this sundial in a Damascus museum make this the oldest polar-axis sundial still in existence.

Ibn al-Shatir made a timekeeping device incorporating both a universal sundial and a magnetic compass. 

The compendium, a multi-purpose astronomical instrument, was first constructed by Ibn al-Shatir. His compendium featured an alhidade and polar sundial among other things. These compendia later became popular in Renaissance Europe.

Ibn al-Shatir described another astronomical instrument which he called the "universal instrument" in his Rays of light on operations with the universal instrument (al-ʾashiʿʿa al-lāmiʿa fī al-ʿamal bi-l-āla al-jāmiʿa). A commentary on this work entitled Book of Ripe Fruits from Clusters of Universal Instrument (Kitāb al-thimār al-yāni'a ʿan qutāf al-āla al-jāmiʿa) was later written by the Ottoman astronomer and engineer Taqi al-Din, who employed the instrument at the Istanbul observatory of Taqi al-Din from 1577-1580.

In the case of lunar motion, Ibn al-Shatir corrected Ptolemy, whose imagined Moon approached far closer to the Earth than did the actual Moon.

Many believe that astronomy died with the Greeks, and was brought back to life again by Copernicus, the 15th century Polish astronomer who is famous for introducing the Sun-centered (heliocentric) theory of the solar system, which marked the beginning of modern astronomy.

However, many historians now think it is not a coincidence that his models of planetary theory are mathematically identical to those prepared by Ibn al-Shatir over a century before him.  It is known that Copernicus relied heavily on the comprehensive astronomical treatise by al-Battani, which included star catalogues and planetary tables.

The mathematical devices discovered by Muslims before Copernicus, referred to in modern terms as linkages of constant length vectors rotating at constant angular velocities, are exactly the same as those used by Copernicus.  The only, but important, differences between the two was that the Muslims' Earth was fixed in space, whereas Copernicus had it orbiting around the Sun.  Copernicus also used instruments which were particular to astronomy in the East, like the parallactic ruler, which had previously only been used in Samarkand and Maragha Observatories.

A00055 - Abdullah, Shrewd King Who Reshaped Saudi Arabia

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

Abdullah, also spelled ʿAbd Allāh, in full Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud or Abdullah ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz    (b. c. 1923— d. January 23, 2015, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), was king of Saudi Arabia from 2005 to 2015. As crown prince (1982–2005), he served as the country’s de facto ruler following the 1995 stroke of his half brother King Fahd (r. 1982–2005).  Abdullah was one of King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Sa'ud's 37 sons. For his support of Crown Prince Faysal (1964–75) during Fayṣal’s power struggle with King Sa'ud (1953–64), Abdullah was rewarded in 1962 with command of the Saudi National Guard. In 1975 King Khalid (1975–82), Fayṣal’s successor, appointed him deputy prime minister and, in 1982, King Fahd appointed him crown prince and first deputy prime minister. In 1995, Fahd suffered a debilitating stroke, and Abdullah briefly served as regent the following year. Although Fahd subsequently returned to power, Abdullah ran the daily affairs of the country and became king after Fahd died in 2005.

Abdullah was committed to preserving Arab interests, but he also sought to maintain strong ties with the West, especially with the United States. In 2001, relations between the two countries grew strained over Saudi claims that the United States government was not evenhanded in its approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The situation worsened later in the year, following the September 11 attacks against the United States and the subsequent revelation that most of the attackers were Saudi nationals. Abdullah condemned the attacks and, in a move to improve relations, proposed a peace initiative that was adopted at the 2002 Arab summit meeting. The plan called upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories (the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights) and promised in return a full Arab normalization of relations with the Jewish country. Tensions between the United States and Saudi Arabia resurfaced, however, after Abdullah refused to support a United States-led attack on Iraq or to allow the use of Saudi military facilities for such an act.

On the domestic front, Abdullah introduced a program of moderate reform to address a number of challenges facing Saudi Arabia. The country’s continued reliance on oil revenue was of particular concern, and among the economic reforms he introduced were limited deregulation, foreign investment, and privatization. He originally sought to placate extreme Islamist voices—many of which sought to end the Saʿūdī dynasty’s rule—yet the spectre of anti-Saudi and anti-Western violence within the country’s borders led him, for the first time, to order the use of force by the security services against some extremists. At the same time, in 2005, Abdullah responded to demands for greater political inclusiveness by holding the country’s first municipal elections, based on adult male suffrage. Uncertainty surrounding succession in the kingdom was a further source of domestic concern, and late the following year Abdullah issued a new law refining the country’s succession policies. Among the changes was the establishment of an Allegiance Commission, a council of Saudi princes meant to participate in the selection of a crown prince—previously the task of the king alone—and to oversee a smooth transition of power.

In February 2009, Abdullah enacted a series of broad governmental changes, which affected areas such as the judiciary, armed forces, and various ministries. Notable among his decisions were the replacement of senior individuals within the judiciary and the religious police with more moderate candidates and the appointment of the country’s first female deputy minister, who was charged with overseeing girls’ education. Upon Abdullah's death in 2015, his half-brother Salman was appointed king.