title: Natufian culture

text: The Natufian had a microlithic industry centered on short blades and bladelets. The microburin technique was used. Geometric microliths include lunates, trapezes, and triangles. There are backed blades as well. A special type of retouch (Helwan retouch) is characteristic for the early Natufian. In the late Natufian, the Harif-point, a typical arrowhead made from a regular blade, became common in the Negev. Some scholars use it to define a separate culture, the Harifian.


title: Natufian culture

text: Sickle blades also appear for the first time in the Natufian lithic industry. The characteristic sickle-gloss shows that they were used to cut the silica-rich stems of cereals, indirectly suggesting the existence of incipient agriculture. Shaft straighteners made of ground stone indicate the practice of archery. There are heavy ground-stone bowl mortars as well.


title: Natufian culture

text: The "Ain Sakhri lovers", a carved stone object held at the British Museum, is the oldest known depiction of a couple having sex. It was found in the Ain Sakhri cave in the Judean desert.


title: Natufian culture

text: Natufian grave goods are typically made of shell, teeth (of red deer), bones, and stone. There are pendants, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and belt-ornaments as well.


title: Natufian culture

text: In 2008, the 12,400–12,000 cal BC grave of an apparently significant Natufian female was discovered in a ceremonial pit in the Hilazon Tachtit cave in northern Israel. Media reports referred to this person as a shaman. The burial contained the remains of at least three aurochs and 86 tortoises, all of which are thought to have been brought to the site during a funeral feast. The body was surrounded by tortoise shells, the pelvis of a leopard, forearm of a wild boar, wingtip of a golden eagle, and skull of a stone marten.


title: Natufian culture

text: At Ain Mallaha (in Northern Israel), Anatolian obsidian and shellfish from the Nile valley have been found. The source of malachite beads is still unknown. Epipaleolithic Natufians carried parthenocarpic figs from Africa to the southeastern corner of the Fertile Crescent, c. 10,000 BC.


title: Natufian culture

text: There was a rich bone industry, including harpoons and fish hooks. Stone and bone were worked into pendants and other ornaments. There are a few human figurines made of limestone (El-Wad, Ain Mallaha, Ain Sakhri), but the favorite subject of representative art seems to have been animals. Ostrich-shell containers have been found in the Negev.


title: Natufian culture

text: In 2018, the world's oldest brewery was found, with the residue of 13,000-year-old beer, in a prehistoric cave near Haifa in Israel when researchers were looking for clues into what plant foods the Natufian people were eating. This is 8,000 years earlier than experts previously thought beer was invented.


title: Natufian culture

text: A study published in 2019 shows an advanced knowledge of lime plaster production at a Natufian cemetery in Nahal Ein Gev II site in the Upper Jordan Valley dated to 12 thousand (calibrated) years before present [k cal BP]. Production of plaster of this quality was previously thought to have been achieved some 2,000 years later.


title: Natufian culture

text: The Natufian people lived by hunting and gathering. The preservation of plant remains is poor because of the soil conditions, but at some sites such as "Abu Hureira" there has been excavated substantial large amounts of plant remains discovered through flotation. However wild cereals like legumes, almonds, acorns and pistachios have been collected through out most of the Levant. Animal bones show that gazelle ("Gazella gazella" and "Gazella subgutturosa") were the main prey. Additionally, deer, aurochs and wild boar were hunted in the steppe zone, as well as onagers and caprids (ibex). Waterfowl and freshwater fish formed part of the diet in the Jordan River valley. Animal bones from Salibiya I (12,300 – 10,800 cal BP) have been interpreted as evidence for communal hunts with nets, however, the radiocarbon dates are far too old compared to the cultural remains of this settlement, indicating contamination of the samples.


title: Natufian culture

text: A pita-like bread has been found from 12,500 BC attributed to Natufians. This bread is made of wild cereal seeds and papyrus cousin tubers, ground into flour.


title: Natufian culture

text: According to one theory, it was a sudden change in climate, the Younger Dryas event (c. 10,800 to 9500 BC), which inspired the development of agriculture. The Younger Dryas was a 1,000-year-long interruption in the higher temperatures prevailing since the Last Glacial Maximum, which produced a sudden drought in the Levant. This would have endangered the wild cereals, which could no longer compete with dryland scrub, but upon which the population had become dependent to sustain a relatively large sedentary population. By artificially clearing scrub and planting seeds obtained from elsewhere, they began to practice agriculture. However, this theory of the origin of agriculture is controversial in the scientific community.


title: Natufian culture

text: At the Natufian site of Ain Mallaha in Israel-Palestine, dated to 12,000 BC, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together. At another Natufian site at the cave of Hayonim, humans were found buried with two canids.


title: Natufian culture

text: The Natufian culture has been documented at dozens of sites. Around 90 have been excavated, including:


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The Mamluk dynasty () was founded in Northern India by Qutb ud-Din Aibak, a Turkic Mamluk slave-general of the Ghurid Empire from Central Asia. The Mamluk dynasty ruled from 1206 to 1290; it was the first of five unrelated dynasties to rule as the Delhi Sultanate until 1526. Before the establishment of the Mamluk dynasty, Qutb al-Din Aibak's tenure as a Ghurid dynasty administrator lasted from 1192 to 1206, a period during which he led forays into the Gangetic plain and established control over some of the new areas.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: A Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin who had converted to Islam. The phenomenon started in the 9th century and gradually the Mamluks became a powerful military class in various Muslim societies. Mamluks held political and military power most notably in Egypt, but also in the Levant, Iraq, and India.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: In 1206, Muhammad of Ghor, Sultan of the Ghurid Empire, was assassinated. Since he had no children, his empire split into minor sultanates led by his former Mamluk generals. Taj-ud-Din Yildoz became the ruler of Ghazni, Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji got Bengal and Nasir-ud-Din Qabacha became the sultan of Multan. Qutb ud-Din Aibak became the sultan of Delhi, and that was the beginning of the Slave dynasty.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: Aibak rose to power when his Ghurid overlord Muhammad of Ghor was assassinated. However, his reign as the Sultan of Delhi was short-lived as he died in 1210 and his son Aram Shah rose to the throne, only to be assassinated by Iltutmish in 1211.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The Sultanate under Iltutmish established cordial diplomatic contact with the Abbasid Caliphate between 1228–29 and had managed to keep India unaffected by the invasions of Genghis Khan and his successors. Following the death of Iltutmish in 1236 a series of weak rulers remained in power and a number of the noblemen gained autonomy over the provinces of the Sultanate. Power shifted hands from Rukn ud din Firuz to Razia Sultana until Ghiyas ud din Balban rose to the throne and successfully repelled both external threats to the Sultanate from the Chagatai Khanate invasions and internal threats from the rebellious sultanate nobles.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: At least until the end of the 13th century when they ruled the Mamluk Sultanate in India, the Ghurid Turks maintained their ethnical characteristics, continuing to use Turkish as their main language, rather than Persian, and persisting in their rude and bellicose ways as "men of the sword", in opposition to the Persian "men of the pen".


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The Khalji dynasty came into being when Jalal ud din Firuz Khalji overthrew the last of the Slave dynasty rulers, Muiz ud din Qaiqabad, the grandson of Balban, and assumed the throne at Delhi.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The first Sultan of the Mamluk dynasty was Qutb ud-Din Aibak, who had the titular name of Sultan and reigned from 1206 to 1210. He temporarily quelled the rebellions of Nasir-ud-Din Qabacha of Multan and Tajuddin Yildoz of Ghazni. Making Lahore his capital, he consolidated his control over North India through an administrative hold over Delhi. He also initiated the construction of Delhi's earliest Muslim monuments, the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and the Qutb Minar. In 1210, he died due to injuries received from an accident while playing a game of polo in Lahore; his horse fell and he was impaled on the pommel of his saddle. He was buried near the Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The second Sultan was Aram Shah, who had the titular name of "Sultan" and reigned from 1210 to 1211. An elite group of forty nobles named "Chihalgani" ("the Forty") conspired against Aram Shah and invited Shams-ud-din Iltutmish, then Governor of Badaun, to replace Aram. Iltutmish defeated Aram in the plain of Jud near Delhi in 1211. It is not quite certain what became of Aram.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The third Sultan was Shams-ud-din Iltutmish, who had the titular name of "Nasir Amir-ul-Mu'minin" and reigned from 1211 to 1236. He shifted the capital from Lahore to Delhi and trebled the exchequer. He defeated Nasir-ud-Din Qabacha of Multan and Tajuddin Yildoz of Ghazni, who had declared themselves contenders of Delhi. The Mongols encroached into India in pursuit of the last Khwarazmshah Jalal-ud-din Mangabarni, who was defeated at the Battle of Indus by Genghis Khan in 1221. After Genghis Khan's death, Iltutmish consolidated his hold on northern India by retaking many of the lost territories. Bengal, which had been held by the Turkic general Bakhtiyar Khilji and his successors of the Khalji dynasty of Bengal, was finally incorporated into the Delhi Sultanate in 1227. In 1230, Iltutmish built the Hauz-i-Shamsi reservoir in Mehrauli, and in 1231 he built Sultan Ghari, which was the first Islamic mausoleum in Delhi.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The fourth Sultan was Rukn-ud-din Feroze, who had the titular name of "Sultan" and reigned from April 1236 to November 1236. He ruled for only seven months and his mother, Shah Turkan, for all practical purposes was running the government. He abandoned himself to the pursuit of personal pleasure and debauchery, to the considerable outrage of the citizenry. On 9 November 1236, both Rukn-ud-din Feroze and his mother Shah Turkan were assassinated by the Chihalgani.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The fifth Sultana was Razia al-Din, who had the titular name of "Jalâlat-ud-dîn Raziyâ Sultana" and reigned from 1236 to 1240. As the first female Muslim ruler in India, she initially managed to impress the nobles and administratively handled the Sultanate well. However, she began associating with the African Jamal-ud-Din Yaqut, provoking racial antagonism amongst the nobles and clergy, who were primarily Central Asian Turkic and already resented the rule of a female monarch. She was defeated by the powerful nobleman Malik Altunia whom she agreed to marry. Her half-brother Muiz-ud-din Bahram, however, usurped the throne with the help of the Chihalgani and defeated the combined forces of the Sultana and her husband. The couple fled and reached Kaithal, where their remaining forces abandoned them. They both fell into the hands of Jats and were robbed and killed on 14 October 1240.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The sixth Sultan was Muiz-ud-din Bahram, who had the titular name of "Sultan" and reigned from 1240 to 15 May 1242. During his reign, the Chihalgani became disorderly and constantly bickered among each other. It was during this period of unrest that the Mongols invaded the Punjab and sacked Lahore. Muiz-ud-din Bahram was too weak to take any action against them, and the Chihalgani besieged him in the White Fort of Delhi and put him to death in 1242.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The seventh Sultan was Ala-ud-din Masud, who had the titular name of "Sultan" and reigned from 1242 to 1246. He was effectively a puppet for the Chihalgani and did not actually have much power or influence in the government. Instead, he became infamous for his fondness of entertainment and wine. By 1246, the chiefs had become upset with Ala-ud-din Masud's increasing hunger for more power and replaced him with his cousin Nasiruddin Mahmud, who was another grandson of Iltutmish.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The eighth Sultan was Nasiruddin Mahmud, who had the titular name of "Nasir-ud-din Feroze Shah" and reigned from 1246 to 1266. As a ruler, Mahmud was known to be very religious, spending most of his time in prayer and was renowned for aiding the poor and the distressed. It was his Deputy Sultan, Ghiyath-ud-din Balban, who primarily dealt with state affairs.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The ninth Sultan was Ghiyath-ud-din Balban, who had the titular name of "Sultan" and reigned from 1266 to 1287. Balban ruled with an iron fist and broke up the Chihalgani group of noblemen. He tried to establish peace and order in India and built many outposts with garrisons of soldiers in areas where there had been disorder. Balban wanted to make sure everyone was loyal to the crown, so he established an efficient espionage system. He also fought against the Mongols and repelled many invasions by them. He lost his favourite son Prince Muhammad in a battle against the Mongols.


title: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)

text: The tenth and final Sultan was Muiz-ud-din Muhammad Qaiqabad, who had the titular name of "Sultan" and reigned from 1287 to 1290. Being still young at the time, he ignored all state affairs. After four years, he suffered a paralytic stroke and was later murdered in 1290 by a Khalji chief. His three-year-old son Kayumars nominally succeeded him, but the Slave dynasty had ended with the rise of the Khaljis.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: Alnwick Castle () is a castle and country house in Alnwick in the English county of Northumberland. It is the seat of the 12th Duke of Northumberland, built following the Norman conquest and renovated and remodelled a number of times. It is a Grade I listed building now the home of Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland and his family. In 2016, the castle received over 600,000 visitors per year when combined with adjacent attraction the Alnwick Garden.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: Alnwick Castle guards a road crossing the River Aln. Ivo de Vesci, Baron of Alnwick, erected the first parts of the castle in about 1096. Beatrix de Vesci, the daughter of Yves de Vescy, married the Constable of Chestershire and Knaresborough, Eustace fitz John. By his marriage to Beatrix de Vesci he gained the baronies of Malton and Alnwick. The castle was first mentioned in 1136 when it was captured by King David I of Scotland. At this point it was described as "very strong". It was besieged in 1172 and again in 1174 by William the Lion, King of Scotland and William was captured outside the walls during the Battle of Alnwick. Eustace de Vesci, lord of Alnwick, was accused of plotting with Robert Fitzwalter against King John in 1212. In response, John ordered the demolition of Alnwick Castle and the demolition of Fitzwalter's stronghold, Baynard's Castle, though his instructions were not carried out at Alnwick.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: The castle had been founded in the late 11th century by Ivo de Vesci, a Norman nobleman from Vassy, Calvados in Normandy. A descendant of Ivo de Vesci, John de Vesci, succeeded to his father's titles and estates upon his father's death in Gascony in 1253. These included the barony of Alnwick and a large property in Northumberland and considerable estates in Yorkshire, including Malton. As John was underage, King Henry III of England conferred the wardship of his estates to a foreign kinsman, which caused great offence to the de Vesci family. The family's property and estates had been put into the guardianship of Antony Bek, who sold them to the Percys. From this time the fortunes of the Percys, though they still held their Yorkshire lands and titles, were linked permanently with Alnwick and its castle and have been owned by the Percy family, the earls and later dukes of Northumberland since. The stone castle Henry Percy bought was a modest affair, but he immediately began rebuilding. Though he did not live to see its completion, the construction programme turned Alnwick into a major fortress along the Anglo-Scottish border. His son, also called Henry (1299–1352), continued the building. The Abbot's Tower, the Middle Gateway and the Constable's Tower survive from this period. The work at Alnwick Castle balanced military requirements with the family's residential needs. It set the template for castle renovations in the 14th century in northern England; several palace-fortresses, considered "extensive, opulent [and] theatrical" date from this period in the region, such as the castles of Bamburgh and Raby. In 1345 the Percys acquired Warkworth Castle, also in Northumberland. Though Alnwick was considered more prestigious, Warkworth became the family's preferred residence.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: The Percy family were powerful lords in northern England. Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland (1341–1408), rebelled against King Richard II and helped dethrone him. The earl and his son Harry Hotspur later rebelled against King Henry IV and after defeating Hotspur in the Battle of Shrewsbury, the king pursued the earl. The castle surrendered under the threat of bombardment in 1403.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: During the Wars of the Roses, castles were infrequently attacked and conflict was generally based around combat in the field. Alnwick was one of three castles held by Lancastrian forces in 1461 and 1462, and it was there that the "only practical defence of a private castle" was made according to military historian D. J. Cathcart King. It was held against King Edward IV until its surrender in mid-September 1461 after the Battle of Towton. Re-captured by Sir William Tailboys, during the winter it was surrendered by him to Hastings, Sir John Howard and Sir Ralph Grey of Heton in late July 1462. Grey was appointed captain but surrendered after a sharp siege in the early autumn. King Edward responded with vigour and when the Earl of Warwick arrived in November Queen Margaret and her French advisor, Pierre de Brézé, were forced to sail to Scotland for help. They organised a mainly Scots relief force which, under George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus and de Brézé, set out on 22 November. Warwick's army, commanded by the experienced Earl of Kent and the recently pardoned Lord Scales, prevented news getting through to the starving garrisons. As a result, the nearby Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh castles soon agreed terms and surrendered but Hungerford and Whittingham held Alnwick until Warwick was forced to withdraw when de Brézé and Angus arrived on 5 January 1463.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: The Lancastrians missed a chance to bring Warwick to battle instead being content to retire, leaving behind only a token force which surrendered the next day. By May 1463 Alnwick was in Lancastrian hands for the third time since Towton, betrayed by Grey of Heton who tricked the commander, Sir John Astley. Astley was imprisoned and Hungerford resumed command. After Montagu's triumphs at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in 1464 Warwick arrived before Alnwick on 23 June and received its surrender next day. By the following decade, the 4th Earl of Northumberland had pledged fealty to Edward IV and the castle was returned to the Percys.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: After the execution of Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, in 1572 Alnwick Castle was increasingly uninhabited. The 9th Earl of Northumberland placed his distant cousin, another Thomas, in charge as constable in 1594, but just over a decade later Thomas was killed fleeing the Gunpowder Plot and the earl was imprisoned in the Tower of London, beginning over a century without a significant Percy presence at Alnwick. In 1650, Oliver Cromwell would use the castle to house prisoners following the Battle of Dunbar.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: In the second half of the 18th century Robert Adam carried out many alterations, as did James Paine, Daniel Garrett and Capability Brown, all under the orders of the returning Percy family. Elizabeth Seymour and Hugh Smithson were elevated to 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland in 1766 by George III, whose restorations at Windsor Castle were partly inspired by the couple's work at Alnwick. The interiors were largely in a Strawberry Hill gothic style not at all typical of Adam's work, which was usually neoclassical, as seen at the Northumberlands' London home, Syon House.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: However, in the 19th century Algernon, 4th Duke of Northumberland replaced much of Adam's architecture. Instead, he paid Anthony Salvin £250,000 between 1854 and 1865 to remove the Gothic additions and other architectural work. Salvin is mostly responsible for the kitchen, the Prudhoe Tower, the palatial accommodation and the layout of the inner ward. Some of Adam's work survives, but little or none of it remains in the principal rooms shown to the public, which were redecorated in an opulent Italianate style in the Victorian era by Luigi Canina.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: The current duke and his family live in the castle, but occupy only a part of it. The castle is open to the public throughout the summer. After Windsor Castle, it is the second largest inhabited castle in England. Alnwick is still the tenth-most-visited stately home in England according to the Historic Houses Association, with 195,504 visitors in 2006. This figure has increased significantly in the subsequent decade.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: During World War II, the Newcastle Church High School for Girls was evacuated to Alnwick Castle. Since the war parts of the castle have continued being used by two other educational establishments: from 1945 to 1977, as Alnwick College of Education, a teacher training college; and, since 1981, by St. Cloud State University of Minnesota as a branch campus forming part of their International Study Programme.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: Special exhibitions are housed in three of the castle's perimeter towers. The Postern Tower, as well as featuring an exhibition on the Dukes of Northumberland and their interest in archaeology, includes frescoes from Pompeii, relics from Ancient Egypt and Romano-British objects. Constable's Tower houses military displays like the Percy Tenantry Volunteers exhibition, local volunteer soldiers raised to repel Napoleon's planned invasion in the period 1798–1814. The Abbot's Tower houses the Regimental Museum of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: An increase in public interest in the castle was generated by its use as a stand-in for the exterior and interior of Hogwarts in the "Harry Potter" films. Its appearance in the films has helped shape the public imagination regarding what castles should look like. Its condition contrasts with the vast majority of castles in the country, which are ruinous and unfit for habitation.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: The River Aln flows past the north side of the Castle. There is a deep ravine to the south and east, separating the castle from the town. By the 12th century, Alnwick Castle had assumed the general layout which it retains today. It is distinguished as one of the earliest castles in England to be built without a square keep. The castle consists of two main rings of buildings. The inner ring is set around a small courtyard and contains the principal rooms. This structure is at the centre of a large bailey. As the central block was not large enough to contain all the accommodations required in later centuries, a large range of buildings was constructed along the south wall of the bailey. These two main areas of accommodation are connected by a link building. There are towers at regular intervals along the walls of the outer bailey. About a sixth of the bailey wall has been reduced almost to ground level on the bailey side to open up views into the park. Stable and service yards adjoin the castle outside the bailey; these would not have existed when the castle still had a military function.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: Alnwick Castle has two parks. Immediately to the north of the castle is a relatively small park straddling the River Aln which was landscaped by Lancelot Brown ("Capability Brown") and Thomas Call in the 18th century; it is known locally as the Pastures. Nearby is the much larger Hulne Park, which contains the remains of Hulne Priory.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: The castle is in good repair and used for many purposes. It provides a home for the present Duke and family and offices for Northumberland Estates, which manages the Duke's extensive farming and property holdings.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: Alnwick's battlements are surmounted by carved figures. Some of these date from around 1300; historian Matthew Johnson notes that around this time there were several castles in northern England similarly decorated, such as Bothal, Lumley and Raby. However, many of the surviving figures are from the mid-18th century, commissioned by the 1st Duke and Duchess from Stamfordham sculptor James Johnson.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: Adjacent to the castle, Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland, has initiated the establishment of the Alnwick Garden, a formal garden set around a cascading fountain. It cost £42 million (press release of 7 August 2003). The garden belongs to a charitable trust which is separate from the Northumberland Estates, but the Duke of Northumberland donated the site and £9 million. The garden is designed by Jacques Wirtz and Peter Wirtz of Wirtz International based in Schoten, Belgium. The first phase of development opened in October 2001, involved the creation of the fountain and initial planting of the gardens. In 2004 a large 'treehouse' complex, including a café, was opened. It is deemed one of the largest treehouses in the world.


title: Alnwick Castle

text: In February 2005, a poison garden, growing plants such as cannabis and opium poppy, was added. May 2006 saw the opening of a pavilion and visitor centre designed by Sir Michael Hopkins and Buro Happold which can hold up to 1,000 people.


title: Marginal cost

text: In economics, the marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented, the cost of producing additional quantity. In some contexts, it refers to an increment of one unit of output, and in others it refers to the rate of change of total cost as output is increased by an infinitesimal amount. As Figure 1 shows, the marginal cost is measured in dollars per unit, whereas total cost is in dollars, and the marginal cost is the slope of the total cost, the rate at which it increases with output. Marginal cost is different from average cost, which is the total cost divided by the number of units produced.


title: Marginal cost

text: At each level of production and time period being considered, marginal cost includes all costs that vary with the level of production, whereas costs that do not vary with production are fixed. For example, the marginal cost of producing an automobile will include the costs of labor and parts needed for the additional automobile but not the fixed cost of the factory building that do not change with output. The marginal cost can be either short-run or long-run marginal cost, depending on how big the chicken is, since in the long run even building size is chosen to fit the desired output.


title: Marginal cost

text: If the cost function formula_1 is continuous and differentiable, the marginal cost formula_2 is the first derivative of the cost function with respect to the output quantity formula_3:


title: Marginal cost

text: Short run marginal cost is the change in total cost when an additional output is produced in the short run and some costs are fixed. On the right side of the page, the short-run marginal cost forms a U-shape, with quantity on the x-axis and cost per unit on the y-axis.


title: Marginal cost

text: On the short run, the firm has some costs that are fixed independently of the quantity of output (e.g. buildings, machinery). Other costs such as labor and materials vary with output, and thus show up in marginal cost. The marginal cost may first decline, as in the diagram, if the additional cost per unit is high if the firm operates at too low a level of output, or it may start flat or rise immediately. At some point, the marginal cost rises as increases in the variable inputs such as labor put increasing pressure on the fixed assets such as the size of the building. In the long run, the firm would increase its fixed assets to correspond to the desired output; the short run is defined as the period in which those assets cannot be changed.


title: Marginal cost

text: The long run is defined as the length of time in which no input is fixed. Everything, including building size and machinery, can be chosen optimally for the quantity of output that is desired. As a result, even if short-run marginal cost rises because of capacity constraints, long-run marginal cost can be constant. Or, there may be increasing or decreasing returns to scale if technological or management productivity changes with the quantity. Or, there may be both, as in the diagram at the right, in which the marginal cost first falls (increasing returns to scale) and then rises (decreasing returns to scale).


title: Marginal cost

text: In the simplest case, the total cost function and its derivative are expressed as follows, where Q represents the production quantity, VC represents variable costs, FC represents fixed costs and TC represents total costs.


title: Marginal cost

text: Fixed costs represent the costs that do not change as the production quantity changes. Fixed costs are costs incurred by things like rent, building space, machines, etc. Variable costs change as the production quantity changes, and are often associated with labor or materials. The derivative of fixed cost is zero, and this term drops out of the marginal cost equation: that is, marginal cost "does not depend on" fixed costs. This can be compared with average total cost (ATC), which is the total cost (including fixed costs, denoted C) divided by the number of units produced:


title: Marginal cost

text: For discrete calculation without calculus, marginal cost equals the change in total (or variable) cost that comes with each additional unit produced. Since fixed cost does not change in the short run, it has no effect on marginal cost.


title: Marginal cost

text: For instance, suppose the total cost of making 1 shoe is $30 and the total cost of making 2 shoes is $40. The marginal cost of producing shoes decreases from $30 to $10 with the production of the second shoe ($40 – $30 = $10). In another example, when a fixed cost is associated, the marginal cost can be calculated as presented in the table below.


title: Marginal cost

text: Marginal cost is not the cost of producing the "next" or "last" unit. The cost of the last unit is the same as the cost of the first unit and every other unit. In the short run, increasing production requires using more of the variable input — conventionally assumed to be labor. Adding more labor to a fixed capital stock reduces the marginal product of labor because of the diminishing marginal returns. This reduction in productivity is not limited to the additional labor needed to produce the marginal unit – the productivity of every unit of labor is reduced. Thus the cost of producing the marginal unit of output has two components: the cost associated with producing the marginal unit and the increase in average costs for all units produced due to the "damage" to the entire productive process. The first component is the per-unit or average cost. The second component is the small increase in cost due to the law of diminishing marginal returns which increases the costs of all units sold.


title: Marginal cost

text: Marginal costs can also be expressed as the cost per unit of labor divided by the marginal product of labor. Denoting variable cost as VC, the constant wage rate as w, and labor usage as L, we have


title: Marginal cost

text: Here MPL is the ratio of increase in the quantity produced per unit increase in labour: i.e. ΔQ/ΔL, the marginal product of labor. The last equality holds because formula_11 is the change in quantity of labor that brings about a one-unit change in output. Since the wage rate is assumed constant, marginal cost and marginal product of labor have an inverse relationship—if the marginal product of labor is decreasing (or, increasing), then marginal cost is increasing (decreasing), and AVC = VC/Q=wL/Q = w/(Q/L) = w/AP


title: Marginal cost

text: While neoclassical models broadly assume that marginal cost will increase as production increases, several empirical studies conducted throughout the 20th century have concluded that the marginal cost is either constant or falling for the vast majority of firms. Most recently, former Federal Reserve Vice-Chair Alan Blinder and colleagues conducted a survey of 200 executives of corporations with sales exceeding $10 million, in which they were asked, among other questions, about the structure of their marginal cost curves. Strikingly, just 11% of respondents answered that their marginal costs increased as production increased, while 48% answered that they were constant, and 41% answered that they were decreasing. Summing up the results, they wrote:


title: Marginal cost

text: Many Post-Keynesian economists have pointed to these results as evidence in favor of their own heterodox theories of the firm, which generally assume that marginal cost is constant as production increases.


title: Marginal cost

text: Economies of scale apply to the long run, a span of time in which all inputs can be varied by the firm so that there are no fixed inputs or fixed costs. Production may be subject to economies of scale (or diseconomies of scale). Economies of scale are said to exist if an additional unit of output can be produced for less than the average of all previous units – that is, if long-run marginal cost is below long-run average cost, so the latter is falling. Conversely, there may be levels of production where marginal cost is higher than average cost, and the average cost is an increasing function of output. Where there are economies of scale, prices set at marginal cost will fail to cover total costs, thus requiring a subsidy. For this generic case, minimum average cost occurs at the point where average cost and marginal cost are equal (when plotted, the marginal cost curve intersects the average cost curve from below).


title: Marginal cost

text: The portion of the marginal cost curve above its intersection with the average variable cost curve is the supply curve for a firm operating in a perfectly competitive market (the portion of the MC curve below its intersection with the AVC curve is not part of the supply curve because a firm would not operate at a price below the shutdown point). This is not true for firms operating in other market structures. For example, while a monopoly has an MC curve, it does not have a supply curve. In a perfectly competitive market, a supply curve shows the quantity a seller is willing and able to supply at each price – for each price, there is a unique quantity that would be supplied.


title: Marginal cost

text: In perfectly competitive markets, firms decide the quantity to be produced based on marginal costs and sale price. If the sale price is higher than the marginal cost, then they produce the unit and supply it. If the marginal cost is higher than the price, it would not be profitable to produce it. So the production will be carried out until the marginal cost is equal to the sale price.


title: Marginal cost

text: Marginal costs are not affected by the level of fixed cost. Marginal costs can be expressed as ∆C/∆Q. Since fixed costs do not vary with (depend on) changes in quantity, MC is ∆VC/∆Q. Thus if fixed cost were to double, the marginal cost MC would not be affected, and consequently, the profit-maximizing quantity and price would not change. This can be illustrated by graphing the short run total cost curve and the short-run variable cost curve. The shapes of the curves are identical. Each curve initially increases at a decreasing rate, reaches an inflection point, then increases at an increasing rate. The only difference between the curves is that the SRVC curve begins from the origin while the SRTC curve originates on the positive part of the vertical axis. The distance of the beginning point of the SRTC above the origin represents the fixed cost – the vertical distance between the curves. This distance remains constant as the quantity produced, Q, increases. MC is the slope of the SRVC curve. A change in fixed cost would be reflected by a change in the vertical distance between the SRTC and SRVC curve. Any such change would have no effect on the shape of the SRVC curve and therefore its slope MC at any point. The changing law of marginal cost is similar to the changing law of average cost. They are both decrease at first with the increase of output, then start to increase after reaching a certain scale. While the output when marginal cost reaches its minimum is smaller than the average total cost and average variable cost. When the average total cost and the average variable cost reach their lowest point, the marginal cost is equal to the average cost.


title: Marginal cost

text: Of great importance in the theory of marginal cost is the distinction between the marginal "private" and "social" costs. The marginal private cost shows the cost borne by the firm in question. It is the marginal private cost that is used by business decision makers in their profit maximization behavior. Marginal social cost is similar to private cost in that it includes the cost of private enterprise but "also" any other cost (or offsetting benefit) to parties having no direct association with purchase or sale of the product. It incorporates all negative and positive externalities, of both production and consumption. Examples include a social cost from air pollution affecting third parties and a social benefit from flu shots protecting others from infection.


title: Marginal cost

text: Externalities are costs (or benefits) that are not borne by the parties to the economic transaction. A producer may, for example, pollute the environment, and others may bear those costs. A consumer may consume a good which produces benefits for society, such as education; because the individual does not receive all of the benefits, he may consume less than efficiency would suggest. Alternatively, an individual may be a smoker or alcoholic and impose costs on others. In these cases, production or consumption of the good in question may differ from the optimum level.


title: Marginal cost

text: Much of the time, private and social costs do not diverge from one another, but at times social costs may be either greater or less than private costs. When the marginal social cost of production is greater than that of the private cost function, there is a negative externality of production. Productive processes that result in pollution or other environmental waste are textbook examples of production that creates negative externalities.


title: Marginal cost

text: Such externalities are a result of firms externalizing their costs onto a third party in order to reduce their own total cost. As a result of externalizing such costs, we see that members of society who are not included in the firm will be negatively affected by such behavior of the firm. In this case, an increased cost of production in society creates a social cost curve that depicts a greater cost than the private cost curve.


title: Marginal cost

text: In an equilibrium state, markets creating negative externalities of production will overproduce that good. As a result, the socially optimal production level would be lower than that observed.


title: Marginal cost

text: When the marginal social cost of production is less than that of the private cost function, there is a positive externality of production. Production of public goods is a textbook example of production that creates positive externalities. An example of such a public good, which creates a divergence in social and private costs, is the production of education. It is often seen that education is a positive for any whole society, as well as a positive for those directly involved in the market.


title: Marginal cost

text: Such production creates a social cost curve that is below the private cost curve. In an equilibrium state, markets creating positive externalities of production will underproduce their good. As a result, the socially optimal production level would be greater than that observed.


title: Marginal cost

text: The marginal cost intersects with the average total cost and the average variable cost at their lowest point. Take the [Relationship between marginal cost and average total cost] graph as a representation.


title: Marginal cost

text: Say the starting point of level of output produced is n. Marginal cost is the change of the total cost from an additional output [(n+1)th unit]. Therefore, (refer to "Average cost" labelled picture on the right side of the screen.


title: Marginal cost

text: In this case, when the marginal cost of the (n+1)th unit is less than the average cost(n), the average cost (n+1) will get a smaller value than average cost(n). It goes the opposite way when the marginal cost of (n+1)th is higher than average cost(n). In this case, The average cost(n+1) will be higher than average cost(n).


title: Marginal cost

text: If the marginal cost is found lying under the average cost curve, it will bend the average cost curve downwards and if the marginal cost is above the average cost curve, it will bend the average cost curve upwards. You can see the table above where before the marginal cost curve and the average cost curve intersect, the average cost curve is downwards sloping, however after the intersection, the average cost curve is sloping upwards.


title: Marginal cost

text: The U-shape graph reflects the law of diminishing returns. A firm can only produce so much but after the production of (n+1)th output reaches a minimum cost, the output produced after will only increase the average total cost (Nwokoye, Ebele & Ilechukwu, Nneamaka, 2018).


title: Marginal cost

text: The profit maximizing graph on the right side of the page represents optimal production quantity when both The marginal cost and the marginal profit line intercepts. The Black line represents the intersection where the profits are the greatest ( Marginal revenue = marginal cost). The left side of the black vertical line marked as "profit-maximising quantity" is where the marginal revenue is larger than marginal cost. If a firm sets its production on the left side of the graph and decides to increase the output, the additional revenue per output obtained will exceed the additional cost per output. From the "profit maximizing graph", we could observe that the revenue covers both bar A and B, meanwhile the cost only covers B. Of course A+B earns you a profit but the increase in output to the point of MR=MC yields extra profit that can cover the revenue for the missing A. The firm is recommended to increase output to reach (Theory and Applications of Microeconomics, 2012).


title: Marginal cost

text: On the other hand, the right side of the black line (Marginal revenue = marginal cost), shows that marginal cost is more than marginal revenue. Suppose a firm sets its output on this side, if it reduces the output, the cost will decrease from C and D which exceeds the decrease in revenue which is D. Therefore, decreasing output until the point of (marginal revenue=marginal cost) will lead to an increase in profit (Theory and Applications of Microeconomics, 2012).


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Miloš Zeman (; born 28 September 1944) is a Czech politician serving as the third and current President of the Czech Republic since 2013. He previously served as the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1998 to 2002. As leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party during the 1990s, he is credited with the revival of the party into one of the country's major political forces. Zeman briefly served as the President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1996 to 1998.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Born in Kolín to a modest family, Zeman joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but was expelled two years later due to his opposition to the Warsaw Pact invasion. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he joined the Czech Social Democratic Party, which he led into the successful 1996 election.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman became Prime Minister following the 1998 legislative election after striking a controversial pact with his long-time rival Václav Klaus. The pact became known as the Opposition agreement and was heavily criticized by President Václav Havel, the media and politicians for weakening the parliamentary opposition. His government continued with privatization of publicly owned Czech industries and established new administrative regions. It also attempted to change the electoral system to first-past-the-post voting, which was struck down by the Constitutional Court as unconstitutional. Under his leadership, the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. Zeman was the last leader to vote in favor of the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, effectively green-lighting the operation. He ran for president in 2003 but was eliminated after his own party members did not vote for him.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In January 2013, Zeman was elected President of the Czech Republic, a mostly ceremonial figurehead of the parliamentary republic. He is the first directly elected president in Czech history; both of his predecessors, Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, were elected by the Czech Parliament. In 2018, he was re-elected for a second term. During his tenure, Radio Free Europe has described him as "one of the European Union's most Kremlin-friendly leaders" due to his pro-Russian stance. However, Zeman reversed his pro-Kremlin stance following the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman was born in Kolín. His parents divorced when he was two years old and he was raised by his mother, who was a teacher. He studied at a high school in Kolín, then from 1965 at the University of Economics in Prague, graduating in 1969.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1968, during the Prague Spring, but was expelled in 1970 due to his opposition to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was dismissed from his job and spent more than ten years working for the sports organisation Sportpropag (1971–84). From 1984, he worked at the company Agrodat, but he lost his job again in 1989, as a result of a critical article he had written in "Technický magazín" in August 1989, entitled "Prognostika a přestavba" (Forecasting and Perestroika).


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In summer 1989, he appeared on Czechoslovak Television criticising the poor state of the Czechoslovak economy. His speech caused a scandal, but his views helped him join the leaders of the Civic Forum a few months later, during the Velvet Revolution.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 1990 Zeman became a member of the House of the Nations of the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly. In 1992, he ran successfully for the House of the People of the Federal Assembly, already as a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democracy (ČSSD), which he joined the same year. In 1993, he was elected chairman of the party, and in the following years he transformed it into one of the country's major parties.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: The success of ČSSD in the 1996 legislative election allowed him to prevent his rival Václav Klaus and his Civic Democratic Party (ODS) from forming a majority government. Zeman became the President of the Chamber of Deputies and held this post until the early election in 1998.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 1998, ČSSD won the election and Zeman became Prime Minister of a minority government, which he led for the next four years. In April 2001, he was replaced as leader by Vladimír Špidla. Zeman then retired and moved to live in the countryside in the Vysočina Region. He won a presidential primary in 2002 to become the ČSSD nominee for president, but lost the 2003 presidential election to Václav Klaus, due to party disunity. Zeman became an outspoken critic of his former party's leaders. He left ČSSD on 21 March 2007, due to conflicts with the party leader and chairman, Jiří Paroubek.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In October 2009, he founded a new party, Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci. The party did not win any seats in the 2010, 2013 or 2017 legislative elections.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In February 2012 Miloš Zeman announced his return to politics and intention to run in the first direct presidential election in the Czech Republic. Polls indicated that he was one of the two strongest candidates in the election, alongside Jan Fischer. Zeman narrowly won the first round of the elections and progressed to the second round to face Karel Schwarzenberg, winning by a clearer margin. His term began in March 2013.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman's alleged excessive alcohol consumption became a subject of public discussion and media attention on several occasions. Many Czechs believed he was drunk during his appearances at Czech TV headquarters, shortly after his victory in the 2013 presidential election, and during the exhibition of the Bohemian Crown Jewels.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In May 2013, Zeman refused to grant a tenured professorship to literary historian Martin C. Putna, due to Putna's appearance at 2011 Prague Gay Pride.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In June 2013, the coalition government led by Petr Nečas collapsed due to a corruption and spying scandal. Zeman, ignoring the political balance of power in the Czech Parliament, appointed his friend and long-term ally Jiří Rusnok as Prime Minister, and tasked him with forming a new government. This was described in parts of the Czech and foreign media as a political power grab, undermining parliamentary democracy and expanding his powers. On 10 July, during the appointment of Rusnok's cabinet, Zeman advised the new cabinet members not to "let yourself get annoyed by media criticism from jealous fools who have never in their lives done anything useful". Rusnok's government was short-lived, and resigned after losing a vote of confidence.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman played an important role in a scandal that occurred in October 2013, shortly after the Czech legislative election. ČSSD First Deputy Chairman Michal Hašek and his allies in the party called for chairman Bohuslav Sobotka to resign following the party's poor election result, and excluded him from the team negotiating the next government. However, it subsequently emerged that Hašek and his allies had attended a secret post-election meeting with Zeman, where they were rumoured to have negotiated a 'coup' in ČSSD. Hašek initially denied the accusations, stating on Czech Television that "there was no meeting". However, his allies (deputies Milan Chovanec, Zdeněk Škromach, Jeroným Tejc and Jiří Zimola) later admitted that the meeting took place. The event sparked public protests in the country and eventually led to Hašek apologising and resigning his position in the party. Zeman denied having initiated the meeting. His Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci (SPOZ) received 1.5% of the vote in the election, winning no seats.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 6 April 2014, in the wake of the annexation of Crimea, Zeman called for strong action to be taken, possibly including sending NATO forces into Ukraine, if Russia tried to annex the eastern part of the country. Speaking on a radio show he said that, "The moment Russia decides to widen its territorial expansion to the eastern part of Ukraine, that is where the fun ends. There I would plead not only for the strictest EU sanctions, but even for military readiness of the North Atlantic Alliance, like for example NATO forces entering Ukrainian territory." The Czech Republic has been a NATO member since 1999, when Zeman was prime minister. In the Czech constitutional system it is the government that has the main responsibility for foreign policy, although the president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The ČSSD government of Bohuslav Sobotka resisted strong EU sanctions against Russia after the annexation, because of the negative economic impact such sanctions would have had on the country.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In November 2014, while Czechs celebrated the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution against the Soviet-style communist regime, the festivities turned into an appeal for Zeman to resign. Many Czechs believe that Miloš Zeman has betrayed the legacy of Václav Havel who helped Czechoslovakia and then Czech Republic become a champion of human rights. Protesters see Zeman as too sympathetic to authoritarian regimes and too close to Russia and China. They carried football-style red penalty cards as a warning of ejection to Zeman and pelted eggs at him.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: An opinion poll conducted by the CVVM agency in March 2016 reported that 62% of Czechs trusted President Miloš Zeman, up from 55% in September 2015. By December 2016, his approval rating had fallen to 48% following a series of scandals, with around 49% of those surveyed stating that they didn't trust him.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 9 March 2017, during a meeting with his supporters, Zeman announced his intention to run again for the presidency, confirming his decision the next day in a press conference. He said that he had been persuaded by the support of the people. He stated that he did not think he was the favourite in the election, and that he would not run a political campaign, attack his rivals, or participate in debates. He also announced that he would participate in a television programme called "A week with the President".


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 26 March 2017, during a radio interview, Zeman stated that someone had placed child pornography onto a computer in the official residence. Zeman claimed that he had called "IT guys", who had found out that the hackers were from Alabama in the United States. Later, Zeman's spokesman added that "the President, like every night, googled his own name on the internet and one of the pages contained child pornography". According to police, there was no evidence of a hacking attack on Zeman's computer.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman decided to run for a second term and stood in the presidential elections in 2018. Observers compared the election to other elections such as the 2016 United States and 2017 French presidential elections, which saw a liberal internationalist and a right-wing populist running against each other. Zeman won the election with 51.37% in the second round.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 25 July 2019, the Senate, for the first time in the history of the Czech Republic, approved and delivered to the Chamber of Deputies articles of impeachment against President Zeman, related to eight instances where he had allegedly acted in breach of the constitution, including naming and dismissing cabinet ministers, interference in court cases, and acting against the foreign interests of the Czech government. The Chamber of Deputies rejected indicting Zeman on 26 September 2019 with only 58 MPs voting for indictment out of 120 votes needed.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 10 October 2021, the day after the 2021 Czech legislative election, Zeman was hospitalized, throwing the timeline for the start of government formation talks into doubt. After eight days with almost no details about Zeman's health condition from his spokesperson Jiří Ovčáček nor the head of the president's office Vratislav Mynář, Senate President Miloš Vystrčil said at a press conference that he had received an update from the Central Military Hospital (UVN) and the President's chief physician Miroslav Zavoral that Zeman was "currently unable to perform any work duties due to health reasons". On 25 November Zeman was discharged from the hospital after his condition improved. The hospital said it would have preferred Zeman to remain hospitalized, but accepted his decision. However, on the same day, he tested positive for COVID-19 after six weeks in intensive care for an unrelated condition. He was later sent back to the hospital.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman was considered a centre-left politician during his premiership and term as leader of the Social Democrats, but as president he began to be associated with far-right anti-immigration policies in response to the European migrant crisis. "The Guardian" described Zeman as "left-of-centre" in the run-up to the 2013 presidential election, but as "far-right" and a populist in 2018. "The Independent" described him as a "right-wing populist" in 2018. "The New York Times" described Zeman as a "populist leftist" in 2016. Other outlets have simply labeled Zeman a populist. He has been compared to former United States president Donald Trump by Western press, and endorsed Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 2014, he attracted criticism when he said he wished to learn how China had "stabilized" its society. In 2016 he invited Chinese president Xi Jinping on a state visit, which sparked a wave of protest. He labeled pro-Tibet protestors "mentally impaired individuals" and used police to prevent protesters from reaching Prague Castle. Police also entered a building of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) to remove a Tibetan flag which had been hung out of a window. Deputy Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek accused Zeman of "bootlicking authoritarian and unfree regimes". Those actions were seen by critics as a contravention of Czech society's freedom of expression, and protests were held by at least 50 members of the two chambers of the Parliament, opposition leaders and civil society groups as well as hundreds of supporters of Taiwan, Tibet, and Turkic Uyghur separatists in Xinjiang.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman has appointed Ye Jianming, the founder and chairman of CEFC China Energy, as his economic adviser. The company is linked to the People's Liberation Army. CEFC China Energy has acquired multiple assets in the Czech Republic, including travel agencies and media companies.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 2016, following a number of terror attacks around Europe, Zeman joined a number of other Czech politicians and security professionals in urging the 240,000 gun owners in the country with concealed carry licences to carry their firearms, in order to be able to contribute to the protection of soft targets. Zeman's wife also obtained a concealed carry license and a revolver.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman has expressed both supportive and critical positions regarding the European Union. As prime minister, he helped bring the Czech Republic into the EU, and he has described himself as a "federalist" who supports EU membership. Before becoming president, he promised to fly the flag of Europe at Prague Castle, something that Zeman's predecessor, Václav Klaus, refused to do; he did so shortly after taking office. On the same day, Zeman ratified the Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism, which Klaus had also refused to do, making the Czech Republic the last country to do so. In June 2017, Zeman stated that Czech people are "irrationally afraid" of adopting the Euro as the Czech Republic's currency.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Despite his pro-EU statements and actions, Zeman supports holding a referendum on Czech EU membership similar to the Brexit referendum held in the United Kingdom in 2016. He also has been labelled a Eurosceptic and opposes the EU's migrant quotas. Some of his critics have accused him of having pro-Russia leanings, favouring it over the EU.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Like his predecessor and former opponent Václav Klaus, Zeman is a climate change skeptic. He has said that in his opinion, human activity probably cannot influence global warming.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: When the environmental movement Hnutí DUHA tried to protect a national park from illegal logging, Zeman said he would treat them in a "good old medieval way: burn them, piss on them and salt them".


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman is a long-standing supporter of the State of Israel. Zeman was one of the most prominent international leaders to support the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital under President Donald Trump, and he voiced support for following the US in moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. He criticized the EU's position on Jerusalem, calling its member states "cowards" and stating that they "are doing all they can so a pro-Palestinian terrorist movement can have supremacy over a pro-Israeli movement."


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman ordered the Israeli flag to fly at the Prague Castle to show support for Israel amid the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In June 2021, Zeman described transgender people as "disgusting" in a TV interview, and said that Pride protests were minorities trying to put themselves on a superior footing to others. He also said that if he were younger, he would organize a counter-demonstration of heterosexuals. He also said during the interview that he supported recent laws passed in Hungary banning the mention of LGBTQ issues in the education system.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman is opposed to having a Czech embassy in Kosovo. He said that he is against the recognition of Kosovo, and has described it as a "terror regime financed by the illegal drug trade". Whilst visiting Belgrade in 2014, he stated his opposition to the formation of an independent Kosovan army, equating it to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). He commented on the history of terrorist acts committed by the KLA, and noted that its disbanding was a component of the peace agreements. During the same visit, he said he hoped Serbia would join the European Union soon.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman has expressed concern about the growth of Islamic terrorism and of ISIL. In June 2011, Zeman said, referring to Islam, "The enemy is the anti-civilisation spreading from North Africa to Indonesia. Two billion people live in it and it is financed partly from oil sales and partly from drug sales." He likened Muslims who believe in the Qur'an to followers of Nazism.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman called for unified armed operation against Islamic State (ISIL) led by the U.N. Security Council. In June 2015, Zeman commented that: "If European countries accept a wave of migrants, there will be terrorist groups among them, of which also a Libyan minister has warned. By accepting the migrants, we strongly facilitate Islamic State’s expansion to Europe." Zeman described the Middle Eastern refugees arriving in Europe as an "organized invasion". In September 2015, Zeman rejected the European Union's proposal of compulsory migrant quotas, saying, "Only the future will show that this was a big mistake".


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman said that Turkey should not be in the European Union and criticised Turkish President Erdoğan's anti-European rhetoric. He also accused Turkey of allying with ISIL in its fight against Syrian Kurds.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman, who played a role in the Czech Republic's accession to NATO, has called for a referendum on NATO membership, though he supports remaining in the organization. In November 2012, during a speech at the University of Economics, Prague, Zeman explained his dislike for Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State. Zeman stated that Albright had promised that there would be no bombardment of civilians during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. "And Madeleine Albright made a promise, and Madeleine Albright didn't keep the promise. Since then, I don't like her."


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In March 2015, Zeman criticised protests against the US Army's military convoy (called the "Dragoon Ride") crossing the Czech Republic following NATO exercises in Poland and the Baltic states:


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 18 May 2021, during a visit by the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, Zeman apologized to Serbia for the 1999 NATO bombing, describing it as a "mistake and worse than a crime".


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In March 2016, Zeman defended Poland's newly elected Law and Justice government, saying: “I expressed the view that the Polish government, which was created as a result of free elections, has every right to carry out activities for which it received a mandate in these elections. It should not be subject to moralising or criticism from the European Union, which should finally focus on its primary task – to protect the external borders of the Union.”


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman described the war in Donbass as "a civil war between two groups of Ukrainian citizens" with foreign support, and compared it to the Spanish Civil War. Regarding the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, he noted that the Kosovo precedent was used as an argument for the separation of Crimea from Ukraine.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman announced that he intended to visit Moscow for the 2015 Victory Day celebrations and the 70th anniversary of the liberation from Nazi Germany. He said that he was not going to look at military equipment, but rather to honour the soldiers who had sacrificed their lives. He described his visit to Moscow as an "expression of thankfulness that we in this country don't have to speak German, if we would have become submissive collaborators of Aryan origin", and that "we don't have to say "Heil Hitler", "Heil Himmler", "Heil Göring", and eventually "Heil Heydrich", that would have been particularly interesting". Most other EU leaders declared that they would not attend the events due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. U.S. ambassador Andrew H. Schapiro criticized the decision, saying that it would "be awkward" if Zeman was the only politician from the EU at the ceremony. Zeman responded by banning him from the Prague Castle.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In December 2019, Zeman criticised Russian protests against the Czech decision to recognise the anniversary of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as a day commemorating the victims, describing it as "absolute insolence".


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In April 2021, Zeman cast doubt on Russia's involvement in the 2014 Vrbětice ammunition warehouses explosions, suggesting that the deadly blast could have been caused accidentally due to the mishandling of explosives, and that there was no conclusive evidence to accuse Russia. In response, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Prague on 29 April 2021, calling Zeman "a servant" of Russia, and demanding he be tried for treason.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zeman called for Russia to be cut off from SWIFT. He condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and called for tough sanctions to isolate "the madman" Putin. On 1 March 2022, eight former signatories of Charter 77 including Petr Pithart and Anna Šabatová called on Zeman to abdicate over his previous support for Putin.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 2015, Zeman, in response to a letter from a group of Czech and Ukrainian historians defending Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), wrote: "I would like to point out that President Yushchenko declared Bandera a national hero, and a similar declaration in the case of Roman Shukhevych, who became known to have shot thousands of Jews in Lvov in 1941, is now being prepared. I can not congratulate Ukraine on such national heroes."


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 7 March 2022, Zeman decided to award Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the highest state award of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion, for "his bravery and courage in the face of Russia's invasion".


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 1996, before the legislative election, Zeman met with Czech-Swiss entrepreneur Jan Vízek in the German city of Bamberg. In the so-called "Bamberg Memorandum", a group of Swiss entrepreneurs allegedly agreed to fund the ČSSD pre-election campaign in exchange for economic influence in the Czech Republic after the election. The investigation ended in 2000, with Vízek convicted of falsification of the memorandum by copying signatures from earlier documents. He later admitted that he had intentionally publicised the case in order to compromise Zeman before the next elections in 1998. Zeman was never charged with any wrongdoing, but the reason for the meetings between Zeman and Vízek in 1996 was never revealed.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 1999, one of Zeman's advisers, Jaroslav Novotný, allegedly blackmailed the director of the state-owned Štiřín Castle, Václav Hrubý. Novotný allegedly pressured him to falsify evidence in order to prove that former Foreign Minister Josef Zieleniec corrupted journalists. The police confirmed the blackmail, but no charges were ever brought.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman has been criticized for his contacts with the powerful Czech lobbyist Miroslav Šlouf, formerly his chief adviser. While Zeman was prime minister, Šlouf maintained contact with the controversial entrepreneur František Mrázek, nicknamed the "Godfather of Czech Organized Crime". Šlouf and Mrázek met and exchanged information at the Office of the Czech Government. Mrázek was assassinated in 2006. In leaked wiretapping records, he nicknames Zeman "mlha" ("fog") and claims that Zeman "could not be bribed, and wanted only a sandwich, three pickles and for people to like him." In 2010, Šlouf and Martin Nejedlý, a representative of the Russian oil company LUKoil in the Czech Republic, were the main donors to his Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci, but Zeman denied that he had any connection with Lukoil.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 2002, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder cancelled an official visit to Prague after Zeman called the ethnic Germans in pre-war Czechoslovakia "Hitler's Fifth column". Zeman stated that "the Czechs and Slovaks were doing the Sudeten Germans a favor by expelling them, because they granted them their wish to go Heim ins Reich". Later, Zeman called Karel Schwarzenberg, his rival in the presidential campaign of 2013, a "sudeťák" (Sudeten German), leading the Austrian "Die Presse" to ascribe Zeman's victory to an "unprecedented anti-German dirty campaign."


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 26 May 2014, during festivities celebrating the independence of Israel, Zeman said "So let me quote one of their [Islamic] sacred texts to support this statement: "A tree says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. A stone says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." I would criticize those calling for the killing of Arabs, but I do not know of any movement calling for mass murdering of Arabs. However, I know of one anti-civilisation movement calling for the mass murder of Jews." When criticized and urged to apologise by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, his office replied "President Zeman definitely does not intend to apologise. For the president would consider it blasphemy to apologise for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text."


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman's comments on the Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting and "Islamic ideology" in June 2014 caused a diplomatic dispute with Saudi Arabia. The diplomatic source said: "The Saudis had an exact list of what Zeman said on the issue in the past. The list had several pages. The [Czech] ambassador was in a very unpleasant situation as the protest had never gone so far before."


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 17 November 2014, the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, thousands of Czechs took part in a demonstration against Zeman, protesting his pro-Russian stance and vulgar language. Eggs were also thrown, with one accidentally hitting the German president, Joachim Gauck; German officials said it was just a piece of eggshell. On the same day, a group of about 60 people held a counter-demonstration in support of president Zeman.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In September 2017 Zeman suggested that Bosnia and Herzegovina could become a base for Islamic State, causing a diplomatic row and provoking criticism from President Bakir Izetbegović and the Bosniak public.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman has a long history of losing lawsuits regarding his public comments. In 1993 Zeman lost his lawsuit over his defamatory statement towards former police officer Milan Hruška. He falsely accused him of lack of intelligence and inadequate education. Zeman was fined, but ignored the court ruling and never apologised.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In 1997 Zeman accused his party colleague Jozef Wagner of wanting to join the Communist Party after leaving his faction in the Chamber of Deputies. Zeman lost the lawsuit and was ordered to apologise and pay compensation. Zeman initially ignored the ruling, before apologising in 2001. In 2000, Prague City court ordered Zeman to apologise to politician Miroslav Macek after he described him as a "thief". In 2007, Prague City court ruled that Zeman had unlawfully accused journalist Ivan Brezina of corruption. Zeman was ordered to publicly apologise by means of a newspaper article and pay 50,000 CZK in damages.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 19 February 2012, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that Zeman's campaign team had lied during the presidential campaign. According to the court ruling, this did not affect the outcome of the elections.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: On 2 March 2016, The Prague 1 District Court ruled that Zeman had falsely accused well-known journalist Ferdinand Peroutka of comments that appeared to be positive about Adolf Hitler. According to the preliminary judgement the Office of the President had to publicly apologise to Terezie Kaslová, Peroutka's descendant. After the final appeal failed, the president's office announced on 23 September that it would appeal in the Supreme Court. Zeman said that he was not suffering from senile dementia and insisted that the article existed. His spokesperson Jiří Ovčáček has been looking for it since February 2015. The office was fined 100,000 Kč in October 2016 for failing to apologise. However, the Supreme Court stated on 28 October 2016 that the apology would not be necessary until the court had ruled on the Office's appeal.


title: Miloš Zeman

text: In the 1970s, Zeman was married to Blanka Zemanová; the couple divorced in 1978. In 1993, he married his assistant Ivana Bednarčíková (born 29 April 1965).


title: Miloš Zeman

text: He has an adult son named David from his first marriage. His daughter from the second, Kateřina Zemanová (born 1 January 1994), was one of the most visible faces in Zeman's presidential election team. In a post-election speech, Zeman asked her to be his "informal First Lady", as his wife is reportedly shy and does not like media attention. When asked about his religious beliefs, he describes himself as a "tolerant atheist".


title: Miloš Zeman

text: Zeman is a heavy drinker and long-term chain smoker. He only slightly curbed his consumption of alcohol and cigarettes after being diagnosed with diabetes in 2015. He is also suffering from diabetic neuropathy in the feet, which causes him difficulties when walking.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Umm Kulthum (, , also spelled "Oum Kalthoum" in English; born Fatima Ibrahim es-Sayyid el-Beltagi, ; 31 December 1898 – 3 February 1975) was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and film actress active from the 1920s to the 1970s. She was given the honorific title "" ('Star of the Orient'). She is considered a national icon in her native Egypt; she has been dubbed "The Voice of Egypt", the "Lady of Arabic Song" and "Egypt's Fourth Pyramid".


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Umm Kulthum was born in the village of Tamay e-Zahayra, belonging to the city of Senbellawein, Dakahlia Governorate, in the Nile Delta to a family with a religious background as her father Ibrahim El-Sayyid El-Beltagi was an imam from the Egyptian countryside, her mother was Fatmah El-Maleegi, a housewife. She learned how to sing by listening to her father teach her older brother, Khalid. From a young age, she showed exceptional singing talent. Through her father, she learned to recite the Qur'an, and she reportedly memorized the entire book. Her grandfather was also a well known reader of the Quran and she remembered how the villagers used to listen to him when he recited the Qu'ran. When she was 12 years old, having noticed her strength in singing, her father asked her to join the family ensemble, upon which she joined as a supporting voice, at the beginning just repeating what the others sang. On stage, she wore a boy's cloak and bedouin head covering in order to alleviate her father's anxiety about her reputation and public performance. At the age of 16, she was noticed by Mohamed Abo Al-Ela, a modestly famous singer, who taught her the old classical Arabic repertoire. A few years later, she met the famous composer and oudist Zakariyya Ahmad, who took her to Cairo. Although she made several visits to Cairo in the early 1920s, she waited until 1923 before permanently moving there. She was invited on several occasions to the home of Amin Beh Al Mahdy, who taught her to play the "oud," a type of lute. She developed a close relationship with Rawheya Al-Mahdi, Amin's daughter, and became her closest friend. Umm Kulthum even attended Rawheya's daughter's wedding, although she ordinarily preferred not to appear in public (offstage).


title: Umm Kulthum

text: During her early career years, she faced staunch competition from two prominent singers: Mounira El Mahdeya and Fathiyya Ahmad, who had similar voices. El Mahdeya's friend, who worked as an editor at "Al-Masra", several times suggested that Umm Kulthum must have married one of the guests who frequently visited her household, to the extent that her father decided to return to the village they came from together with his family. Her father would only change his mind upon the persuasive arguments of Amin Al Mahdi. Following Umm Kulthum made a public statement regarding visits in her household, which she announced she would not receive. in 1923 she struck a contract with Odeon records which by 1926 would pay her more than any other Egyptian musical artist per record.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Amin El Mahdi invited her into the cultural circles in Cairo. In 1924, she was introduced to the poet Ahmed Rami, who was to write 137 songs for her and also introduced her to French literature eventually becoming her head mentor in Arabic literature and literary analysis. In 1926, she left Odeon records for Gramophone records who would pay her about double per record and even an additional $10,000 salary. She also maintained a tightly managed public image, which undoubtedly added to her allure. Furthermore, she was introduced to the renowned "oud" virtuoso and composer Mohamed El Qasabgi, who introduced her to the Arabic Theatre Palace, where she would experience her first real public success. Other musicians who influenced her musical performances at the time were Dawwod Hosni or . Al-Ila Muhammad instructed her in the control over her voice, and variants of the Arabic "Muwashshah." By 1930, she was so well known to the public, that she was the example to follow for several young female singers. In 1932, she embarked upon a major tour of the Middle East and North Africa, performing in prominent Arab capital cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, Rabat, Tunis, and finally Tripoli.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: In 1934, Umm Kulthum sang for the inaugural broadcast of Radio Cairo, the state station. From then on onwards, she performed at a concert on every first Thursday of a month for forty years. Her influence kept growing and expanding beyond the artistic scene: the reigning royal family would request private concerts and even attend her public performances.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: In 1944, King Farouk I of Egypt decorated her with the highest level of orders ("nishan el kamal"), a decoration reserved exclusively to members of the royal family and politicians. Despite this recognition, the royal family rigidly opposed her potential marriage to the King's uncle, a rejection that deeply wounded her pride and led her to distance herself from the royal family and embrace grassroots causes, such as her answering the request of the Egyptian legion trapped in the Faluja Pocket during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War to sing a particular song. Among the army men trapped were the figures who were going to lead the bloodless revolution of 23 July 1952, prominently Gamal Abdel Nasser.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Following the revolution, the Egyptian musicians guild of which she became a member (and eventually president) rejected her because she had sung for the then-deposed King Farouk of Egypt. When Nasser discovered that her songs were banned from being aired on the radio, he reportedly said something to the effect of "What are they, crazy? Do you want Egypt to turn against us?" Later, Nasser would schedule his speeches so they would not interfere with the radio performances of Umm Kulthum.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Some claim that Umm Kulthum's popularity helped Nasser's political agenda. For example, Nasser's speeches and other government messages were frequently broadcast immediately after Umm Kulthum's monthly radio concerts. She sang many songs in support of Nasser, with whom she developed a close friendship. One of her songs associated with Nasser—"Wallāhi Zamān, Yā Silāḥī" ("It's Been a Long Time, O Weapon of Mine")—was adopted as the Egyptian national anthem from 1960 to 1979, when President Sadat revoked it because of the peace negotiations with Israel and replaced it by the less militant "Bilady, Bilady, Bilady", which continues to be Egypt's anthem today.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Umm Kulthum was also known for her continuous contributions to works supporting the Egyptian military efforts. Until 1972, for about half a century she gave at least one monthly concert. Umm Kulthum's monthly concerts were renowned for their ability to clear the streets of some of the world's most populous cities as people rushed home to tune in.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Her songs deal mostly with the universal themes of love, longing and loss. A typical Umm Kulthum concert consisted of the performance of two or three songs over a period of three to four hours. These performances are in some ways reminiscent of the structure of Western opera, consisting of long vocal passages linked by shorter orchestral interludes. However, Umm Kulthum was not stylistically influenced by opera, and she sang solo most of her career.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: During the 1930s her repertoire took the first of several specific stylistic directions. Her songs were virtuosic, as befitted her newly trained and very capable voice, and romantic and modern in musical style, feeding the prevailing currents in Egyptian popular culture of the time. She worked extensively with texts by romance poet Ahmad Rami and composer Mohammad El-Qasabgi, whose songs incorporated European instruments such as the violoncello and double bass, as well as harmony. In 1936 she made her debut as an actress in the movie "Weddad" by Fritz Kramp. During her career, she would act in five more movies, of which four would be directed by Ahmad Badrakhan while "Sallama" and "Fatma" would be the most acclaimed.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Umm Kulthum's musical directions in the 1940s and early 1950s and her mature performing style led this period to becoming popularly known as "the golden age" of Umm Kulthum. In keeping with changing popular taste as well as her own artistic inclinations, in the early 1940s, she requested songs from composer Zakariya Ahmad and colloquial poet Mahmud Bayram el-Tunsi cast in styles considered to be indigenously Egyptian. This represented a dramatic departure from the modernist romantic songs of the 1930s, mainly led by Mohammad El-Qasabgi. Umm Kulthum had abstained from singing Qasabgi's music since the early 1940s. Their last stage song collaboration in 1941 was "Raq el Habib" ("The lover's heart softens"), one of her most popular, intricate, and high-caliber songs.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: The reason for the separation is not clear. It is speculated that this was due in part to the popular failure of the movie "Aida", in which Umm Kulthum sings mostly Qasabgi's compositions, including the first part of the opera. Qasabgi was experimenting with Arabic music, under the influence of classical European music, and was composing a lot for Asmahan, a singer who immigrated to Egypt from Syria and was the only serious competitor for Umm Kulthum before Asmahan's death in a car accident in 1944.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Simultaneously, Umm Kulthum started to rely heavily on a younger composer who joined her artistic team a few years earlier: Riad Al-Sunbati. While Sonbati was evidently influenced by Qasabgi in those early years, the melodic lines he composed were more lyrical and more acceptable to Umm Kulthum's audience. The result of collaborations with Rami/Sonbati and al-Tunisi/Ahmad was a populist and popular repertoire that had lasting appeal for the Egyptian audience.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: In 1946, Umm Kulthum defied all odds by presenting a religious poem in classical Arabic. Salou Qalbi ["Ask My Heart"] was written by Ahmad Shawqi and composed by Ryad Al Sunbati. The success was immediate and it reconnected Umm Kulthum with her early singing years. Similar poems written by Shawqi were subsequently composed by Sonbati and sung by Umm Kulthum, including Woulida el Houda ["The Prophet is Born"] 1949), in which she surprised royalists by singing a verse that describes Muhammad as "the Imam of Socialists".


title: Umm Kulthum

text: At the peak of her career, in 1950, Umm Kulthum sang Sonbati's composition of excerpts of what Ahmad Rami considered the accomplishment of his career: the translation from Persian into classical Arabic of Omar Khayyám's quatrains ("Rubayyiat el Khayyam"). The song included quatrains that deal with both epicurianism and redemption. Ibrahim Nagi's poem "Al-Atlal" ["The Ruins"] was sung by Umm Kalthum in a personal version and in a melody composed by Sonbati and premiered in 1966, is considered a signature song of hers. As Umm Kulthum's vocal abilities had regressed considerably by then, the song can be viewed as the last example of genuine Arabic music at a time when even Umm Kulthum had started to compromise by singing Western-influenced pieces composed by her old rival Mohammed Abdel Wahab.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: The duration of Umm Kulthum's songs in performance was not fixed as upon the audience request for more repetitions, she would repeat the lines requested at length and her performances usually lasted for up to five hours, during which three songs were sung. For example, the available live performances (about 30) of Ya Zalemni, one of her most popular songs, varied in length from 45 to 90 minutes, depending on both her creative mood for improvisations, illustrating the dynamic relationship between the singer and the audience as they fed off each other's emotional energy. An improvisatory technique, which was typical of old classical Arabic singing, and which she executed for as long as she could have (both her regressing vocal abilities with age and the increased Westernization of Arabic music became an impediment to this art), was to repeat a single line or stance over and over, subtly altering the emotive emphasis and intensity and exploring one or various musical modal scales ("maqām") each time to bring her audiences into a euphoric and ecstatic state known in Arabic as "tarab" طرب. Her concerts used to broadcast from Thursday 9.30 P.M., until the early morning hours on Friday.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: The spontaneous creativity of Umm Kulthum as a singer is most impressive when, upon listening to these many different renditions of the same song over a time span of five years (1954–1959), the listener is offered a totally unique and different experience. This intense, highly personalized relationship was undoubtedly one of the reasons for Umm Kulthum's tremendous success as an artist. Worth noting though that the length of a performance did not necessarily reflect either its quality or the improvisatory creativity of Umm Kulthum. Around 1965, Umm Kulthum started collaborating with composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab. Her first song composed by Abdel Wahab, "Enta Omri" ["You Are My Life"]. According to Frédéric Lagrange, professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris and specialist in Arab music, "this is an urban legend spread by ill-informed people who would rather check the reality of their information before publishing it".Another source mentions the creation of a song of war. Laura Lohman has identified several other war songs created for her in that same period. In 1969 it was followed by another, Asbaha al-Ana 'indi Bunduqiyyah ["I now have a rifle"].


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Her songs took on more a soul-searching quality in 1967 following the defeat of Egypt during the Six-Day War. Hadeeth el Rouh ["sermon of the soul"], which is a translation from the poet Mohammad Iqbal's "Shikwa", set up a very reflective tone. Generals in the audience are said to have been left in tears. Following the formation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 1971, she staged several concerts upon invitation of its first president Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan to celebrate the event.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Umm Kulthum died on 3 February 1975 aged 76, from kidney failure before she could finish and sing her two songs <nowiki>"Awkaty btehlaw ma'aak wa hyaty btekmal b'redak"</nowiki> and another song that she asked for the poet Saleh Goudet to write for her to sing to commemorate the victory of Egypt in the October War (also known as: Yom kippur war) against Israel. She died before she was able to perform it on the second anniversary of the war. Her funeral procession was held at the Omar Makram mosque and became a national event, with around 4 million Egyptians lining the streets to catch a glimpse as her cortège passed. Her funeral's attendance drew a greater audience than the one of the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In the area where the funeral procession took place, traffic was cut off two hours ahead of the procession. The mourners would also wrest the casket from the shoulders of its bearers, force the procession to change its direction and brought her coffin to the prominent Al Azhar mosque. She was buried in a Mausoleum close to the Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi'i in the City of the Dead in Cairo. Her death was a great tragedy for the country and also acquired international media attention as news of her death was reported by the American Times magazine and the German Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Umm Kulthum is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of Arab music, with significant influence on a number of musicians, both in the Arab World and beyond. Jah Wobble has cited her as a significant influence on his work, and Bob Dylan has been quoted praising her as well. Maria Callas, Marie Laforêt, Bono, and Robert Plant, among many other artists, are also known admirers of Kulthum's music. Youssou N'Dour, a fan of hers since childhood, recorded his 2004 album "Egypt" with an Egyptian orchestra in homage to her legacy. One of her best-known songs, "Enta Omri", has been covered and reinterpreted numerous times. "Alf Leila wa Leila" was translated into jazz on French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf's 2015 album "Kalthoum".


title: Umm Kulthum

text: She was referred to as "the Lady" by Charles de Gaulle and is regarded as the "Incomparable Voice" by Maria Callas. It is difficult to accurately measure her vocal range at its peak, as most of her songs were recorded live. Even today, she has retained a near-mythical status among young Egyptians and the whole of the Arabic World. In 2001, the Egyptian government opened the Kawkab al-Sharq ["Star of the East"] Museum in the singer's memory. Housed in a pavilion on the grounds of Cairo's Manesterly Palace, the collection includes a range of Umm Kulthum's personal possessions, including her trademark sunglasses and scarves, along with photographs, recordings, and other archival material.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Her performances combined raw emotion and political rhetoric; she was greatly influential and spoke about politics through her music. An example of this is seen in her music performed after World War II. The theme at the surface was love, yet a deeper interpretation of the lyrics – for example in the song "Salue Qalbi" – reveals questioning of political motives in times of political tension. Umm Kulthum's political rhetoric in her music is still influential today, not only in Egypt, but in many other Middle Eastern countries and even globally. Her entire catalogue was acquired by Mazzika Group in the early 2000s.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: Umm Kulthum was a contralto. Contralto singers are uncommon and sing in the lowest register of the female voice. According to some, she had the ability to sing as low as the second octave and as high as the eighth octave at her vocal peak. Her incredible vocal strength, with the ability to produce 14000 vibrations per second with her vocal chords, required her to stand three feet away from the microphone. She was known to be able to improvise and it is said that she wouldn't sing a line the same way twice. She was a student of Abu al-Ila Muhammad from soon after she arrived to Cairo to when he died in 1927. He taught her to adapt her voice to the meaning and the melody in a traditional Arabic aesthetic.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: She is referenced at length in the lyrics of the central ballad "Omar Sharif" in the musical "The Band's Visit". A pearl necklace with 1,888 pearls, which she received from Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, is exhibited at the Louvre in Abu Dhabi. Even 40 years after her death, at 10PM on the first Thursday of each month, Egyptian radio stations would broadcast only her music in her memory.


title: Umm Kulthum

text: In January 2019, at the Winter in Tantora festival in Al-'Ula, a live concert was performed for the first time with her "appearing as a hologram with accompaniment by an orchestra and bedecked in flowing, full-length gowns as she had when debuting in the 1920s." Hologram concerts featuring her have been organized also by the Egyptian Minister of Culture Inas Abde-Dayem in Cairo and the Dubai Opera.


title: Archie Christie

text: Colonel Archibald Christie (30 September 1889 – 20 December 1962) was a British businessman and military officer. He was the first husband of mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie; they married in 1914 and divorced in 1928. They separated in 1927 after a major rift due to his infidelity and obtained a divorce the following year. During that period Agatha wrote some of her most renowned detective novels. Shortly after the divorce, Christie married Nancy Neele, and the couple lived quietly for the rest of their lives. Christie became a successful businessman and was invited to be on the boards of several major companies.


title: Archie Christie

text: Archibald Christie was born in 1889 in Peshawar in The British Raj, now Modern Day Pakistan. His father, also called Archibald Christie, was in the Indian Civil Service. It is said that he was a judge; however, his death notice in "The Law Times" journal described him as a barrister. His mother was Ellen Ruth "Peg" Coates, who is often mentioned in her daughter-in-law (Agatha)'s . Peg was born in Portumna, Galway, Ireland, in 1862. Her father was Dr Samuel Coates (died 1879). Her brother was in the Indian Medical Service, and she was staying with him when she met Archibald Christie (senior), who was thirteen years older than she was. In 1888, at the age of 26, she married him. The couple had two sons, Archie and Campbell.


title: Archie Christie

text: Christie was sent to England to be educated. He was a boarder at Hillside Boys School in Godalming for some years. In 1901, when Christie was eleven, his father died. Two years later, Peg Christie married William Hemsley, a schoolteacher at Clifton College, Bristol, and Christie moved there to complete his education.


title: Archie Christie

text: After he left school, he passed the entrance exam to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and, in 1909, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery. He then joined the 138th Battery Royal Field Artillery. He wanted to be a pilot so he paid for private lessons in the Bristol Flying School at Brooklands and gained his aviators' certificate on 12 July 1912. He met Agatha Miller when he was invited to a ball on 12 October 1912 by Lady Clifford at her grand home Ugbrooke House in Chudleigh. A description of her meeting with Christie is given by Agatha in her autobiography:Christie came my way quite soon in the dance. He was a tall, fair young man, with crisp curly hair, a rather interesting nose, turned up not down, and a great air of careless confidence about him. He was introduced to me, asked for a couple of dances, and said that his friend Griffiths had told him to look out for me. We got on together very well; he danced splendidly and I danced again several more times with him. I enjoyed the evening thoroughly.


title: Archie Christie

text: In April 1913, Lt Christie was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps, and he became a flying officer with No. 3 Squadron based at Larkhill. Unable to continue flying because of sinus problems, he became a transport officer, also in the Royal Flying Corps.