prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: Baraki Barak District is situated in the western part of a province whose capital is what?

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
Baraki Barak airstrike
The Baraki Barak airstrike was a coalition airstrike that occurred on August 26, 2011, in Eastern Afghanistan  Six Afghan civilians from the same family were killed in the air strike in the Baraki Barak district of Logar province, Afghanistan  Four insurgents and three Afghan army members were also killed Logar provincial police chief Ghulam Sakhi Rogh Lewani said the operation had targeted a Taliban commander, Qari Hijran, who had a bounty on his head  The top official in the district, Mohammad Rahim Amin, claimed that the incident occurred when a local teacher provided shelter for the commander in his home 
Passage 2:
Baraki Barak District
Baraki Barak District (Persian: ولسوالی برکی برک ; Pashto: برکي برک ولسوالۍ) is situated in the western part of Logar Province, Afghanistan  It borders Wardak Province to the west and northwest, Puli Alam District to the north and east and Kharwar and Charkh districts to the south  The district's population is around 101,000(2006) with a majority of over 90% Tajiks  The district center is the town of Baraki Barak - the former provincial capital, located in the northern part of the district in the valley of the Logar River  Baraki Rajan is another important town of this district which lies 4 km away from district center  The district is named after the historical Ormur tribe, also locally known as Baraki 

Politics and security
During the Soviet-Afghan War, the Soviet forces perpetrated the Baraki Barak massacre in September 1984 The Baraki Barak District Sub-Governor is Mohammad Rahim "Amin"   Mr  Rahim replaced Yasin Lodin in January 2010 Mr  Rahim called the first Shura for his newly elected District Community Council (DCC) in February 2010   The 45 member council consists of elected representatives from the five sub-districts of Baraki Barak, religious leaders and five female representatives   The DCC is sub-divided into three sectors: Security, Rule of Law and Development    The female representatives will serve in the Development Sector   According to the Afghanistan Social Outreach Program (ASOP), the community councils will also "strengthen security by fostering community solidarity, provide a forum for conflict resolution and provide quality assurance for sustainable development projects "
The 8 March marked the first time International Women's Day (IWD) was celebrated in Baraki Barak District   76 burqa clad women began arriving at the District Center as early as 08:30   General Khatol Mohammadzai was the keynote speaker at the ceremony and the only female General in the Afghan National Army (ANA)   General Mohammadzai is also the only woman to be airborne qualified with more than 500 free and competition parachute jumps   General Mohammadzai spoke about the equality of men and women and expressed her hope that other women might follow in her footsteps and also fight for Afghanistan's future by joining the ANA    The General is also an accomplished poet and has written poetry that proclaims the importance of women   General Mohammadzai's poems condemn discrimination and harsh treatment of women   Other speakers included Sub-Governor Rahim Amin and a female member of the Afghan Parliament – Dr  Shakila Hashimi   Upon completion of the ceremony General Khatol Mohammadzai assisted in distributing humanitarian assistance to every woman attending the ceremony 
On 27 October 2009 the Baraki Barak District Center officially opened  The district center houses offices for the district sub-governor, the local mayor and three judges who handle everything from land disputes to criminal issues On 22 November 2009 it was reported that several militants were detained in both the village of Kashimiri Bala and Ebrahim Kheyl in an attempt to locate a Taliban weapons facilitator actively operating in the area On 23 November 2009 it was reported that a government employee was abducted in the district According to some reports, as of 1 December 2009, insurgent activity has gone down as much as 80% since the summer of 2009 in the district capital although this could be attributed to the arrival of the winter months  The 2009 Afghan "surge" was stated to have created a security bubble for the district capital, covering about half of the district's population  However the increase in aid and US troops to the region has caused additional problems, as more civilians are targeted by the Taliban for co-operating with the government and foreign forces 
In 2008 the area experienced an influx of anti-government forces into the district  Around the beginning of 2009, no American troops were located in this district, a fact which has changed significantly as of the end of the same year as the new "Ink Spot" strategy was implemented in the area  As of 1 December 2009, at least 150 American troops from the 10th Mountain Division were located in the district, among others  Furthermore, attacks are down approximately 50% and thousands of refugees have begun to return to the area 

See also
Districts of Afghanistan
Passage 3:
Baraki Barak
Barakī Barak (Dari/Pashto/Ormuri: برکی برک) is a town and the center of Baraki Barak District, Logar Province, Afghanistan  It was also the former capital of Logar Province  The town is in a mountainous area in the valley of the Logar River  The main road Ghazni-Kabul passes about 20 km to the West of the town  The town is named after the historical Ormur tribe, also locally known as Baraki 

Ethnography
Baraki Barak has historically been home to the Ormur tribe, also known as "Burki" or "Baraki", and to other Pashtuns and Tajiks  The town is named after the Baraki people, some of whom still speak the Ormuri (Baraki) language; they live to the northwest and west of the town, and also inside the town 

See also
Kaniguram
Baraki Rajan
Passage 4:
Lunda Norte Province
Lunda Norte (English: North Lunda) is a province of Angola  It has an area of 103,760 km² and a population of 862,566  Angola's first President, Agostino Neto, made Lucapa the provincial capital after independence, but the capital was later moved to Dundo  The province borders the Democratic Republic of Congo in the northeast and Lunda Sul in the south  The province is rich in gold and diamonds, but remains vastly underdeveloped and impoverished  UNITA used the money generated from the sale of diamonds to fund war efforts  Cuango River valley, the richest diamond area of Angola is located in the province  Mining is done by notable companies like DeBeers and Endiama  The Lunda province whose capital was Saurimo was created by the Portuguese colonial empire on July 13, 1895  It was divided into Lunda-Sul and Lunda-Norte subdivisions through a constitution act in 1978 by the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government  Iron and manganese mining are also important economic activities  It is well known for its sculptures  The most notable one is The Thinker (O Pensador), a sculpture of a man holding his head  It is rich in terms of flora and fauna Lunda Norte is populated by Chokwe, Lunda, and other ethnical groups  Ernesto Muangala is the current governor of the province  Lino dos Santos, Deolinda Odia Paulo Satula Vilarinho and Ângêlica Nené Curita Ihungo are the deputy governors for Technical and Infrastructure Services, Economic Sector Area and Political and Social Sector Area respectively  An ethnographic museum located in the province is visited by many tourists  During the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002) many civilians were killed in the clashes between National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and Angolan Armed Forces (FAA)  Diamond mining operations were also affected  Many landmines laid during the civil war are still present in the province  Leprosy and Elephantiasis are major disease which affect the province 

Municipalities
The province of Lunda Norte contains ten municipalities (Portuguese: municípios):

Capenda-Camulemba (Capemba-Camulemba)
Cambulo (Caumbo)
Caungula
Chitato (Tchitato)
Cuango
Cuilo
Lóvua
Lubalo
Lucapa
Shah-Muteba

Communes
The province of Lunda Norte contains the following communes (Portuguese: comunas); sorted by their respective municipalities:

Capemba-Camulemba Municipality: – Capenda-Camulemba, Xinge
Cambulo Municipality: – Cachimo, Cambulo, Canzar, Luia
Caungula Municipality: – Camaxilo, Caungula
Chitato Municipality: – Dundo-Chitato, Luachimo
Cuango Municipality: – Cuango, Luremo
Cuilo Municipality: – Caluango, Cuilo
Lóvua Municipality: – Lóvua
Lubalo Municipality: – Luangue, Lubalo, Muvulege (Muvuluege)
Lucapa Municipality: – Camissombo, Capaia, Lucapa, Xa–Cassau (Shah-Cassau)
Xá-Muteba Municipality: –  Cassanje-Calucala, Iongo, Xá-Muteba (Shah-Muteba)

List of governors of Lunda Norte
Up to 1991, the official name was Provincial Commissioner 
Passage 5:
Mahsud
The Mahsud or Mehsood (Pashto: محسود), also spelled Maseed (Pashto: ماسيد), is a Karlani Pashtun tribe inhabiting mostly the South Waziristan Agency in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, now merged within Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan A minor number of Maseed  are settled in the Logar Province of Afghanistan, especially in Charkh District, Baraki barak and Muhammad Agha, but also in Wardak, Ghazni and Kunduz Provinces 
The Maseeds inhabit the center and north of South Waziristan valley, surrounded on three sides by the Darweshkhel Wazirs, and being shut off by the Bettanis Pashtun tribe on the east from the Derajat and Bannu districts 
Two Pashtun tribes, the Ahmadzai Wazirs and the Maseeds (Mahsuds), inhabit and dominate South Waziristan  Within the heart of Maseed territory in South Waziristan lies the influential Ormur (Burki) tribe's stronghold of Kaniguram The Ormurs are considered by other tribes of South Waziristan to be close brethren of the Maseeds due to marital and other ties and the fact that the Ormurs have lived in and controlled Kaniguram for over a thousand years  There are also some Maseeds living in the UAE, Germany and the United Kingdom 
The Maseeds  usually pronounce their name Māsīd  They are divided into three great clans or subtribes, namely Alizai, Bahlolzai, and Shamankhel   Maseeds usually call these Drei Māsīd, meaning the "Three Maseeds"  Each tribe has his own Khan In the words of Sir Olaf Caroe, who acted as the former governor of the British Indian Frontier, "The Maseed tribe are a people who can never even think of submitting to a foreign power "  From 1860 to 1937, the English forces repeatedly attacked Maseed positions, but never got a foothold in the area 

History
The Maseeds  originally lived in the centre of Waziristan  area of FATA  In the later 14th century, they migrated eastwards, and fell into dispute with the Bannuchi and Khattak tribes settled in the Shawal area  The Maseeds and the Wazirs succeeded in defeating the Khattaks and pushed them northeastwards towards Bannu and Kohat  Eventually, the Mahsuds settled at the center of Waziristan, in the Makeen, Kaniguram and Lada area During the British colonial period, the Maseeds were invaded several times by the British Empire, in 1860, 1881, 1894–95, 1900–01, 1919–20 and in 1925's Pink's War 

Primary locations
The Maseed tribe inhabits a large portion of the center of Waziristan, which is drained by the Tank Zam and Shahur Rivers  The Maseed territory is a rough triangle between Jandola, the hills north of Razmak, and from Shuidar to Janimela, north of Wana  No portion of their territory touches the "settled" districts, and the tribe is surrounded on the north and west by the Wazirs, on the east by the Bhittanis, and on the south by the Wazirs and Shranis 
With the exception of a few Shabi Khel in the Bannu District, some land near Gumal in the Tank Tehsil, and the colonies at Chark and elsewhere in the Logar Valley in Afghanistan, none of the Maseed own land outside of South Waziristan Agency  To escape the severe cold in the higher hills during the winter, a large number move down to the lower valleys but always keep within the Maseed territorial limits  Many of these people live in caves or tents 
"South Waziristan is mountainous with several high peaks; Pirghal, for example, being 11,600 feet  The Gomal is the main river, in addition to which there are many hill torrents, which…remain dry for most of the year "
The mountains and valleys geographically isolate the Maseed from large scale movements of invaders and provide excellent opportunities to conduct effective ambushes on enemies 
The cave villages along the Shahur River near Barwand and along the Split Toi provide excellent hiding places and defensive positions 

Culture
It is a tribal society having its own subculture  Nearly all Mehsud  follow Islamic traditions, celebrate the same holidays, dress the same, consume the same food, listen to the same music and are multi-lingual to a certain extent  In the southern and eastern region,  Mehsuds live in accordance with the Pashtun culture and are usually bilingual in maseedwola  also known as maseedo 

Migratory patterns
Many Maseed inhabit in the lower valleys during the winter  They return to family compounds at higher elevations during the summer 

Key terrain features
Valleys: Makeen, Wacha Khwara, Ladha, Baddar, Darra Algad, Khaisara, Mastang, Shaktu, Sheranna, Split Toi, Tak Zam
Plains: Razmak Malik Allah Neer:velleys Kotkai
Mountains: Kundeygaar, Pre Ghal, Spin Ghar, Spinkamar
Rivers: Tak Zam, Gomal, Shahur, Shinkai Toi, Baddar Toi, Split Toi, Lower Khaisara Toi, Tauda China, Kundygar, Osspass, Karrama, Torwam, Thangi Parkhai

Climate
The climate in the region is hot in summer, with high temperatures around 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and cool in winter, with low temperatures around 35 degrees Fahrenheit  There is modest rainfall in July and August and in January and February 

Recent history
On many occasions the Afghan throne was saved with the help of the Maseed (like general Ramzan Khan Maseed Shamankhel, Shabaram Khan Machikhel, Bakhan Maseed, Mosa Khan Maseed, Miajee Maseed, Jagar Maseed etc ), Burki/Baraki, and Wazirs from Waziristan, Pakistan  Of those who fought during this time, most came back to their homeland, but those who stayed were given high ranks of office, such as Faiz Muhammad Maseed, who was appointed as an interior minister during the Reign of Daud Khan in the 1970s 
Today the majority of Maseeds are still in Logar Province, with the title of Waziri, but by caste, they are Maseeds  The majority of these are with a sub-caste of Malik Denai, Dramankel, Faridi, Shamirai شمیرائی, Shabi khel, etc  When the Soviet–Afghan War started, some of these families came back to Waziristan but could not stay there, so they moved to cities like Peshawar and Karachi  Some of them stayed in Waziristan and D I  Khan  The Maseed helped in  defeating the British invading troops and saved Afghanistan, they contributed a lot because Afghanistan was nearly in the hands of British 

John Ayde described the Maseeds:
They are poor but brave… and although turbulent and difficult to deal with, still have a great love of their country and cherish their independence, possessing qualities that we admire ourselves, and which deserve consideration and respect 
Maseed are very good marksmen and have the reputation of trustworthiness  Maseed is the most independent of all the tribes  Even their own maliks have a very limited control over them  However, Maseed have been increasingly integrated within Pakistani society since independence 

Sir Olaf Caroe in his book published just after partition of the British India about Mahsuds

They hold aloof, and are continually engaged in aggressive warfare against their Wazir cousins, at whose expense they have encroached to acquire new lands  And to those who know both tribes, they present a different appearance  Pass along a road which is being used by babirs, or caravans, of these tribes- men, and it is not so hard to distinguish one from the other, not by his dress, for that is much the same, but by something indefinable in his air and carriage  The nearest I can get to it is to liken the Mahsud to a wolf, the Wazir to a panther  Both are splendid creatures; the panther is slier, sleeker and has more grace, the wolf-pack is more purposeful, more united and more dangerous 

The Saintly Poet of the East (Dr  Allama Iqbal) has  also prayed for the dominant tribes of Waziristan

Sher Shah Suri has so well said:
The distinction of tribes is the cause of all ruin 
Waziris and Mahsuds are names dearest to heart;
Alas! They feel no pride in being Afghans 
The Muslims of the mountains are divided into thousand tribes,
And every tribe has its own idol 
The same sanctuary is filled with Lat and Manat;
May God grant you power to break them all 
                                                         Zarb-e-Kaleem (Iqbal)

In 1850, Lewat's tribesmen the Great Baromi's (Shabi Khel) defeated 3,000 British troops with only 300 fighters, using guerrilla tactics by attacking the British in the Valley of Bobar (Waziristan) from all sides with outdated rifles and swords  This attack demoralized the British and made them fearful of the Maseeds  Survivors of this attack reported that the sight of the Maseed tribesmen charging at them (with loud roars and wearing long hair and beards like Lions) affected them mentally In 1860, three thousand Maseed tribesmen attacked the British regiment base in Tank (present South Waziristan)  The British struggled to defeat them In 1897, Mujahed tribesmen again stood up against the British all the way from Quetta kakar, and the British experienced difficulty when engaging them  It was during this time that the name of Mulla Powinda [Jagar Draman Khil][Miajee] [Laly Malik Denai] [Mulla ShaSaleem kaka] emerged  Powindah comes from the Pashto language, meaning "nomad" 
Day after day, Mulla Powinda grew more popular and famous  His right hand mulla Shasaleem Kaka Machikhel was popular among Wazirs and Maseed tribe  He emerged as a legendary figure among the people of the region and beyond  There was even a time the British considered him to be the sole leader of the Waziristan country  His followers would sporadically kill individual British officers   However, the British were not able to capture the attackers, who would return to their mountain hideouts  All attempts to stop these attacks were unsuccessful In 1907, the Wazir and Maseed tribesmen were blocked from entry into any government-controlled territory  Economic sanctions were imposed, blocking even basic amenities, such as food and medicine  The British commander of that time blockaded the areas of Makeen and Kaniguram  Various areas were searched to arrest Mulla Powinda without success  The British thought that the tribesmen were receiving weapons by sea, from the coast of Balochistan and responded by creating check posts, but no weapons were confiscated 
Mulla Powindah died in 1913  It could be said that he was the crownless emperor of one of the most fearsome of the Pashtun Tribes, the Maseeds  Upon his death, his son Shah Fazal Din was given leadership and his son-in-law, Mulla Abdul Hakeem Kakar, was appointed his adviser  They have good relations with Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, the Amir of Afghanistan When World War I started in 1915, the British were concerned that they would be engaged in battle on more than one front  This was a threat to their safety and economy, so they decided to close those fronts of lesser significance  They abandoned their ‘Forward Policy’ for the time being and sent a message of friendship and peace to the tribes  The tribes did not trust the British and rejected these peace proposals  Instead, the Maseed assembled a militia to attack the British 
By this time, the British had established an air force in the subcontinent, which was used to harass the tribesmen, and as a result the tribe's hatred of the British increased  As a result of their suffering, they were bent upon taking revenge, and hence their morale increased  A series of attacks were made by the Maseeds, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy  The attack on the Marhatta Regiment resulted in the deaths of hundreds of sepoys and five British Officers  In the attack on the Punjab Regiment, the Maseed warriors slaughtered everyone  The aerial bombardments had inflicted significant losses on the tribesmen, but they were content that they were also doing well and had killed around 250 of the enemy forces 
After the end of World War I, the British returned to Waziristan  This time, they built roads and forts throughout the land  The sophistication and constant patrols of the British Air Force helped create a secure atmosphere for their ground troops  With this sense of security, the British Army constructed a road from Jandola to Ladha  At Razmak, they constructed a cantonment for their army officers and soldiers 
By 1922–23, all the British forces had moved from Wana to Razmak  They had constructed an airport there and instead of flying all the way from India, their aircraft would fly from Razmak Airport and bomb the countryside  Because of this, the countryside of Makeen was totally devastated  The Maseed deemed it appropriate at this time to agree to a ceasefire because this new British tactic was inflicting widespread losses on their side  The ceasefire, they imagined, would also enable them to devise a strategy for countering the latest British advances 
In 1925, the Royal Air Force successfully put down a Maseed rebellion by strafing the tribes' mountain strongholds   The action, which came to be known as Pink's War led to the tribal leaders seeking peace terms In 1927 Ghazi Ramadan Khan Mahsud attacked Wana camp with a huge lashkar (tribal militia)   The result was a big loss for the British army  In 1928 Ghazi Ramadan Khan Mahsud  re-assembled his lashkar again for his next attack, on Sararogha Fort  This time he attacked with a powerful force, killed all of the defending soldiers (numbering 300) and took hold of the Fort 

Lashkar invasion of Kashmir
Immediately after Pakistan came into existence, Maseeds raised a tribal militia under Gaideen Khan Abdullai which entered Kashmir to help the newly created state Pakistan to capture Kashmir  They quickly reached Baramulla town, instead of pressing on to the capital, Srinagar, to seize Kashmir completely A large number of tribals from Pakistan attacked Kashmir under the code name "Operation Gulmarg" to seize Kashmir  The invading tribals started moving along Rawalpindi-Murree-Muzaffarabad-Baramulla Road on 22 October 1947 with Muzaffarabad fell on 24 October 1947  They reached and captured Baramulla on 25 October 1947 

Culture
Pir Roshan is the first person who founded the Pashto alphabet  He was born in Kanygram of Waziristan  The Roshani Ghorzang was one of the great revolutions in the land of Pshtonkhwa  Mula Shasleem kaka, Mula Pawenda Maseed and Haji Mirza Ali Khan Fight several years for the unity of both side Pashtons 

Jarga
Maseed have a Maseed Jarga for large problems  The Jarga is a tribal assembly of elders which takes decisions by consensus, particularly among the Pashtun people 

Music and Attan
Attan, is the famous dance of Maseed tribe  Dhol is also widely used in Waziristan 

Mehsud Sub-tribes
Like other Pashtun tribes, the Mehsud tribe also has its own individual subtribes and clans:

Shaman Khel
Alizai
BahlolzaiThese subtribes are then divided into more clans amongst themselves 

Notable Mahsuds
Abdullah Mehsud
Alamzaib Mahsud
Baitullah Mehsud
Hakimullah Mehsud
Jamal Malyar Maseed
Kamal Mahsud
Manzoor Pashteen
Mulla Powinda
Naqeebullah Mehsud
Noor Wali Mehsud
Said Alam Mahsud
Salahuddin Khan Mehsud
Zaman Mehsud

See also
Pashtun culture#Mahsud Attan (dance)
Pashtun Tahafuz Movement
Passage 6:
Kathiawar Agency
The Kathiawar Agency, on the Kathiawar peninsula in the western part of the Indian subcontinent, was a political unit of some 200 small princely states under the suzerainty of the Bombay Presidency of British India The agency's headquarters were at Rajkot, the town where the Political Agent used to reside  He reported to the Political Department office at Bombay, Bombay Presidency 

History
The agency was formed in 1822, after the princely states in the area became British protectorates 
The region was severely affected by the famine of 1899–1900  Between 1891 and 1901, the population of the states covered by the Agency decreased by 15 per cent, largely due to the results of the famine On 10 October 1924, the agency was abolished and merged into the Western India States Agency, which had three subdivisions:
Eastern Kathiawar Agency (from 1926 onwards)
Western Kathiawar Agency (from 1926 onwards)
Sabar Kantha Agency (merged with Eastern Kathiawar Agency on 1 September 1943) including Banas Kantha Agency (former Palanpur Agency)

Princely states
There were altogether 193 states of varying size and importance, of which fourteen exercised independent jurisdiction, while the rest were to varying degrees under British administration  The eight states of the first class were Bhavnagar State, Dhrangadhra State, Gondal State, Jafarabad State, Junagadh State, Morvi State, Nawanagar State, and Porbandar State  The agency covered an area of 20,882 square miles (54,080 km2), and in 1901 the population was 2,329,196  The headquarters of the political agent (who oversaw the affairs of the princely states on behalf of the Governor-General) was at Rajkot, in the centre of the peninsula; this was also the site of the Rajkumar College, Rajkot, where many of the sons of the rulers were educated  There was a similar school for girasias, or chiefs of lower rank, at Gondal 
The estimated gross revenue of the several states was 1,278,000 rupees in 1911; total tribute (payable to the British, the Gaekwar of Baroda and the nawab of Junagadh), was 70,000 rupees   An excellent system of metre-gauge railways was built at the cost of the leading states  Maritime trade was also very active, the chief ports being Porbandar, Mangrol and Veraval  In 1903–1904 the total seaborne exports were valued at 1,300,000 rupees, and the imports at 1,120,000 

See also
Western India States Agency
Passage 7:
Baraki Rajan
Baraki Rajan (Dari/Pashtun: برکی راجان) is a town within the Baraki Barak District of Logar Province, Afghanistan  Baraki Rajan lies approximately 3 km south of the town of Baraki Barak, the capital of the Baraki Barak District  Baraki Rajan is the location of the largest bazaar in the Baraki Barak District, with over 1,200 shops and businesses, with a 50+ bed hospital near the town center, making Baraki Rajan an important center for commerce within the District 
The population of mainly Tajiks  and Pashtuns is estimated at 15,000 people  The town is named after the historical Ormur tribe, also locally known as Baraki 

History
Baraki Rajan experienced some of the heaviest clashes between the Soviet forces and Afghan Mujaheddin fighters throughout the Soviet–Afghan War  Baraki Rajan based Mujaheddin would launch attacks on Soviet convoys traveling on the nearby Kabul-Gardez and Kabul-Kandahar highways, which would result in harsh reprisals from the Soviet military  Throughout the Soviet–Afghan War, the area remained an active battle ground between the Mujaheddin and the Soviet military and the Soviet-backed military of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan 
According to a report by a Swedish committee in July 1982, in a massive operation by Soviet forces in Baraki Rajan, numerous war crimes were committed  In a three-day-long operation, villages were bombed, shops burnt and hundreds of people, including 208 resistance fighters and 25 children, were killed  Following this operation, Soviet-backed government control was never restored, not only in Baraki Rajan but the entire Baraki Barak District Various Mujahideen groups were active in the area with Jamiat-e Islami being the most prominent and influential in the District 

Economy
The economy of Baraki Rajan, much like the rest of Baraki Barak district is heavily dependent on agriculture  Farmers grow wheat, grains, fruits and vegetables, utilizing deep-well and canal-flood irrigation techniques  Animal husbandry is another prominent source of income for individuals in the district, who raise sheep, cattle and goats  The town center has many businesses which support the local populace, including a large textile bazaar, bakeries, groceries, mechanic shops, electronic stores, hardware stores and medical and dental facilities 

Current security situation
Baraki Rajan sits on a faultline between ethnic Tajiks and Pashtuns  There are also political factions active in the area, notably Jamiat-e-Islami and Hizb-e-Islami, with histories of mutual antagonism dating back to the Afghan civil war of the early 1990s 
Local criminal gangs have also used the instability to align themselves with the Taliban  As government power in Baraki Rejan failed late 2008, Taliban-allied men from the Pashtun village of Shahmazar to the South of Baraki Rajan began preying on the area  "They walked around with weapons robbing the people," said one, who blamed Shahmazar gunmen for the attack
As a major center of commerce and culture within the Baraki Barak district, ISAF and Afghan forces stationed in nearby Baraki Barak since late 2008 have made Baraki Rajan a major focus of their counter-insurgency efforts, and Baraki Rajan has seen an increased security element stationed in Afghan National Army and Afghan National P
Passage 8:
Logar Province
Logar (Dari: لوگر, lit  'greater mountain'; Pashto: لوې غر) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan located in the eastern section of the country  It is divided into 7 districts and contains hundreds of villages  Ahmadzai Pashtuns are influential in this region  Puli Alam is the capital of the province  As of 2021, Logar has a population of approximately 442,037  It is a multi-ethnic tribal society consisting of Pashtuns and Tajiks, with a 60% Pashtun majority The Logar River enters the province through the west and leaves to the north 

History
Pre Islamic era
A 2,600-year-old Zoroastrian fire temple was found at Mes Aynak (about 25 miles or 40  kilometers southeast of Kabul)  Several Buddhist stupas and more than 1,000 statues were also found  Smelting workshops, miners’ quarters (even then the site's copper was well known), a mint, two small forts, a citadel, and a stockpile of Kushan, Sassanian and Indo-Parthian coins were also found at the site 

Recent history
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Logar was known among some Afghans as the Bab al-Jihad (Gates of Jihad) because it became a fierce theatre of war between US-backed/trained mujahideen groups and the Soviet-backed Afghan government troops  Ahmadzai Pashtuns is dominant in this region  Haji Shuja, Haji Zareen and Haji Bahadur were the prominent traders and chieftains in the region before the soviet invasion of Afghanistan  It was one of the main supply routes of mujahideen rebels coming from Pakistan  Like other parts of the country, Logar has also seen heavy fighting since the Soviets started a crackdown against the elders of the Ahmadzai tribe during the 1980s   Swedish journalist Borge Almqvist, who visited the province in 1982, wrote that: "Everywhere in the Logar province the most common sight except for ruins are graves"  Soviet operations included using bombing, the use of flammable liquids to burn alive people in hiding, poisoning of drinking water, and destruction of crops and farmland  One writer who witnessed the events argues that the Soviet actions in Logar amounted to genocide By 1995, the province had fallen to the Taliban government  After the removal of the Taliban and the formation of the Karzai administration in late 2001, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) gradually took over security of the area  The Provincial Reconstruction Team Logar (PRT Logar) was established in March 2008  It provided several benefits to the locals, including security, development, and jobs 
In the meantime, Taliban insurgents are often causing major disturbances in the area  This includes major attacks on key projects, suicide bombings in civilian areas, and assassinations of Afghan government employees  On 19 August 2014, a major Taliban offensive took place with 700 militants aiming to take control of the province, while the NATO-led foreign force mistakenly killed three civilians in an airstrike in December 2014 On 20 January 2019, the Taliban claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on the province's governor and his convoy, which killed eight security forces and wounded at least 10 on the highway to Kabul  The governor and the provincial head of the National Directorate of Security were uninjured On 14 August 2021, the Taliban offensive reached Puli Alam (the province capital), and the province of Logar fell to the Taliban, setting their sights to Kabul the following day 

Geography
Logar can be generally described as a relatively flat river valley in the north and central regions, surrounded by rugged mountains to the east, south, and southwest  The district of Azra, in the east, consists almost entirely of mountains, while travel to the Paktia Province to the south is limited to the Tera Pass, a 2896 m high road that was recently completed as part of the international reconstruction effort in Afghanistan  The Kabul-Khost Highway runs north–south through Logar Province, from the Mohammed Agha District 
The government of Afghanistan officially recognizes all the districts of the Logar province as part of the province 

Capital city
Puli Alam is the capital city of Logar province, located in the district of Puli Alam  It's on the main road running south and southeast from Kabul to Khost 
Rebuilding of the city is going on  There is a lot of room for infrastructure and investment 
Puli Alam has seen reconstruction since the fall of the Taliban  The main road to Kabul was completed in 2006, significantly reducing travel time to the national capital  Additional projects include numerous schools, radio stations, government facilities, and a major Afghan National Police base situated south of the city 
The city is open for investment 
Like many Afghan cities, there is municipal planning and services 
During the tenure of President Ashraf Ghani the city gained electricity, clean drinking and water facilities 

Economics
Logar is an agricultural province with a wealth of minerals such as copper and chromite  In terms of industry, the province has one textile and one copper factory  Agriculture, commerce and services, and livestock products account for the majority of commercial operations  Agriculture is a significant source of income for 31% of households  However, commerce and services provide income to 30% of rural households, while non-farm-related labor provides income to 46% of rural households  Tobacco and sugar extract are the two most important industrial crops  The main industry is honey production, which is a small industry  Jewelry, ceramics, and carpets are made in a small number of settlements  Eighty-four percent of the province's households have access to irrigated land  Wheat, maize, potatoes, alfalfa, clover, and other feed are among the most significant field crops  Sheep, cattle, camels, and poultry are the most frequent livestock 

Healthcare
The percentage of households without clean drinking water fell from 45% in 2005 to 14% in 2011   
The percentage of births attended to by a skilled birth attendant increased from 9% in 2005 to 73% in 2011 In 2008, the province of Logar has 32 health clinics and a 137-bed hospital  According to data from 2008, the Ministry of Health employs 48 doctors and 218 other health professionals in the province  There are 156 pharmacies in the province  The majority of villages do not have a permanent health worker  To access their nearest health center, the majority of the populace must travel 5 to 10 kilometers 

Education
The overall literacy rate (6+ years of age) increased from 21% in 2005 to 30% in 2011   
The overall net enrolment rate (6–13 years of age) increased from 22% in 2005 to 45% in 2011 The overall literacy rate in Logar province was 21% in 2005 however, while nearly one-third (31%) of men are literate this is true for just under one-tenth (9%) of women  There are around 168 primary and secondary schools in the province catering for 81,538 students  There are nearly 2,082 teachers working in schools in the Logar province  There are several girls schools in the province, mostly located in Koshi and Pul-e-alam  Due to the large Taliban presence in Chark and Baraki Barak, the freedom of women in Logar does not always allow for an education  As of 2007, the province had a literacy rate of 17% There are 19 religious centers including a Dar-ul-Ulum, three Darul Hifaz and the rest are Madrasas Three technical and vocational high schools and two private high schools function in Logar Province 

Demographics
As of 2021, the total population of Logar province is about 442,037  Logar is dominantly Sunni, multi-ethnic and a tribal society  Pashtuns and Tajiks  make up the majority population of Logar province, while minority 7 2 percent of the population lived below the national poverty line, the lowest of all of Afghanistan's provinces In 2008, the population of Logar was estimated to be at 349,000 people  The province has 44,209 households, with an average of eight individuals per home  Rural districts are home to 72 percent of the population  Farsi/Dari is spoken by two-thirds of villages and 60% of the population, whereas Pashto is spoken by one-third of villages and 40% of the people  Kochi people(nomads) live in the province of Logar, and their numbers fluctuate with the seasons  In the winter, 96,280 people, or 4% of the Kochi people population, stay in Logar and live in 29 settlements  During the summer, the Kochi people population swells to 208,339, making Logar the province with the second-highest number of Kochi people after Kabul province 

Districts
Until 2005 the district was administratively subdivided into five districts  In that year the province gained Azra District from neighboring Paktia Province; also part of Charkh District was split off into the new district of Kharwar 

Sport
Cricket is the most popular sport in the province  Logar has been a major supplier of players for the Afghanistan national cricket team  Former players include Dawlat Ahmadzai, Ahmad Shah Pakteen and former national team captain Raees Ahmadzai  Among the active national players hailing from Logar are: Mohammad Nabi (captain of the national team), Shahpoor Zadran, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Nasir Jamal Ahmadzai and Gulbadin Naib Ahmadzai 
Football is the second most popular sport in the province  De Abasin Sape (meaning "Waves of Abasin") plays in the Afghanistan Premier League  Abasin means "father of the rivers" in Pashto and refers to the Indus River  The team represents the provinces of Khost, Paktia, Logar, and Paktika 
Other popular sports are volleyball, boxing, taekwondo, Washoe, kick boxing and wrestling 

See also
Provinces of Afghanistan
Mes Aynak – the world's second largest copper deposit
Passage 9:
Forward Operating Base Shank
Forward Operating Base Shank (IATA: OAA, ICAO: OASH, also known as Rocket City) is a former Forward operating base of the U S  military, located in Logar Province of eastern Afghanistan, about 12 km south-east of the city of Baraki Barak   During Operation Enduring freedom, FOB Shank was one of the most heavily rocketed forward operating bases in Afghanistan   In 2014, the base was turned over to Afghan National Army, who established Camp Maiwand at the northern end of the FOB   American forces later returned and reoccupied the southern portion of the FOB, under the name Camp Dahlke 

History
In 2008 FOB Shank was built by Alpha Company of the 508th Special Troops Batalion of the 82nd Airborne Division with assistance from the 555th Engineer Battalion  The FOB was dedicated after SSG Michael A  Shank, an who was killed in the Logar Province in 2006  International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) used the base to train the Afghan National Police (ANP)   The Police Academy, led by a U S  Police Mentoring Training team, cooperated daily with the Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team Logar, composed of 200 Czech Soldiers and about 10 civilians 
These efforts were focused on training the Afghanistan National Auxiliary Police to become members of the ANP 
As of 8 July 2008, Czech and Afghan instructors were teaching the fourth group of cadets at the Academy  Each group attended a three-week cycle which included first-aid treatment, tactics, patrolling, weapons training, vehicle-check-point procedures and many other police-related subjects  The practical part of the training also included scenarios where cadets were ambushed by simulated oppositional forces During 2014 the base was downsized partly by 252 Engineer Company, 133rd Engineer Battalion and was turned over to the ANA   The ANA utilized the northern portion of the base only, which they renamed Camp Maiwand The last few convoys containing equipment from FOB Shank back to Bagram Airbase were completed during October 2014 by the 730th Transportation Company, 419th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 4th Resolute Support Sustainment Brigade Following the shutdown of FOB Shank, a new American base was established at the southern end of the perimeter, called FOB Dahlke or Camp Dahlke   Camp Dahlke was expanded in 2018 to support the deployment of the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade  Camp Dahlke had facilities to house 800 soldiers 

Deployed units
Aviation

October 2008-October 2009
101st Airborne
October 2009–October 2010
3rd Infantry Division 4-3 AVN Battalion "BRAWLER" under Lt  Col Ault
December 2008-December 2009
710BSB 3RD IBCT 10th MTN2010–2010 10th Mountain

April 2011
10th Combat Aviation Brigade
Company F, 2nd Battalion (Aviation Support)
August 2011–August 2012
82nd Combat Aviation Brigade (TF Corsair)
Unknown Company, 3rd Battalion
All Companies, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Aviation Regiment (UH-60M)
Company B, 3rd Battalion, 82nd Aviation Regiment (CH-47F)
Company B, 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment (CH-47)
Company F, 1st Attack Battalion, 1st Air Combat Brigade, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Gray Eagle) (3/2012 - 03/2013) – first unit to operate Gray Eagle at Shank  This company was deployed as a standalone company and attached to the 82nd Airborne Division upon arrival to Shank  After TF Corsair left, F 227 was attached to the incoming unit until its tour of duty was completed 
Elements of 122nd Aviation Support Battalion
June – December 2013
10th Combat Aviation Brigade (TF Knighthawk)
Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Assault Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment
Company C, 2nd Assault Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment (UH-60M)
Company E, 2nd Assault Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment (Aviation Support)
Company A, 2nd Assault Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment (AH-64)
Company B, 3rd General Support Aviation Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment (CH-47F)
Company C, 3rd General Support Aviation Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment (HH-60M)
December 2013–August 2014Taskforce Wings
4-101 Aviation Regiment

Taskforce Lift
Company C (DUSTOFF), 7-101 General Support Aviation Battalion, 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, 101 Airborne Division
6-101 Aviation Battalion, 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, 101 Airborne Division
2014
82nd Combat Aviation Brigade (TF Pegasus)Company E, 1st Attack Reconnaissance Battalion, 82nd Aviation Regiment (UH-60)
Company F, 2nd Attack Helicopter Battalion, 82nd Aviation Regiment
Company B, 3rd General Support Helicopter Battalion, 82nd Aviation Regiment using the Boeing CH-47F Chinook
Company B, 122nd Aviation Support Battalion
October 2014
Company B, 1st General Support Aviation Battalion, 169th Aviation Regiment (CH-47)
May 2016 – Unknown
40th Combat Aviation BrigadeCompany C, 1st Battalion, 104th Aviation Regiment (DUSTOFF)
Company F, 2nd Battalion, 238th Aviation Regiment (UH-60)
Company B, 1st Battalion, 140th Aviation Regiment
1st Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment (AH-64)
2018
101st Combat Aviation Brigade (TF Eagle Assault)
5th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment (CH-47, UH-60, AH-64E)
Company B, 3rd General Support Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment (CH47F)
2019
1st Armored Division, Combat Aviation Brigade (TF Apocalypse)
3rd Battalion (UH-60)
16th Combat Aviation Brigade, B Company (CH-47) "Sugarbears"
1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1-1 Attack Battalion, Bravo Company (AH-64E) "Wolf Pack" "LUOFY"
2-10 Combat Aviation Brigade, 10th Mountain DivisionGround forces

A, B and C Companies, 710th Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division between December 2008 and 2009 and December 2009 
Alpha Battery, 4th Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team during July 2012 
M777 howitzer
M119 howitzer
A Co, 1st Battalion – 41st Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division during 2011–2012 
3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division from Fort Bliss, Tx, from 2011–2012 
628th Forward Surgical Team, from San Antonio, Tx, 2011–2012
Elements of 427th BSB (NY ARNG) attached to 401st AFSB during 2011–2012
1st Squadron (Airborne) 91st Cavalry, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, June 2012–March 2013 
102nd Sapper Company, 307th Engineer Battalion, June 2012- March 2013
6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, March 2013–November 2013 
Bravo Company “Mongoose Bravo” 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, August 2013–March 2014
710th Brigade Support Battalion and 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division between October 2013 and July 2014
388th Clearance Company, January 2014–October 2014 
B CO, 1st Battalion – 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division during January 2014–October 2014 
2nd Squadron 3rd Cavalry Regiment between June 2014 to October 2014 
1982nd Forward Surgical Team during 2015 
Alpha Battery 1st Battalion 265th ADA Regiment; 164th ADA Brigade Florida Army National Guard, June 2015–February 2016 ADA
207th Engineer Construction Company, Over The Horizon, 2017
136th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion during October 2017 
2-174 ADA C-RAM (Ohio National Guard) 2017–2018
659th Engineer Construction Company, Over The Horizon, 2017–2018
2nd Squadron 1st Cavalry Regiment, Fort Carson 2018–2019
Elements of 495th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion 2018–2019 
3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 1-38 Infantry Battalion, 1st SBCT, 4th ID  2018–2019
Elements of the 329th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, TF Viking 2019–2020
801st Engineering Company, Over The Horizon, 2019
829 Engineering Company, TF Over The Horizon, 2020
Bravo and Delta Co and Headquarters Elements of the 1st Battalion 178 Infantry Regiment (Illinois National Guard) TF Southeast, September 2019–January 2020 
Elements of Bravo Company and HHC 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3BCT, 82ND ABN DIV (TF FURY), October 2019–January 2020
10th Mountain 1-32 Infantry

See also
List of ISAF installations in Afghanistan
Passage 10:
Camptown (country subdivision)
A camptown, in the country of Lesotho, refers to a district capital for one of the ten districts of Lesotho  The largest camptown is the city of Maseru in Maseru District  Camptowns are usually commerce hubs for the district and are the location for the central government offices for the district  Camptowns usually take the same name as the district in which they are located  For example, as mentioned the camptown for Maseru is Maseru but also the camptown for Thaba-Tseka District is Thaba-Tseka  The exceptions to this rule are Berea District whose capital is called Teyateyaneng, Quthing District whose capital is called Moyeni and Leribe District whose capital is most often called Hlotse 
It presumably derives from the 19th century police camps, then (now archaic) in Sesotho likampo  Official colonial government terminology was government reserve, which prosaically became urban area post-independence 
Context 2: Passage 1:
Varugad
Varugad Fort  (Man T; 18� 00' N, 74� 00' E; RS Lonand 22 m  NW; p  880), in Man  lies, as the crow flies, about twelve miles north-west of Dahivadi, within the limits of Panvan village  The best way to it is to camp at Pingli Budrukh four miles south-west of Dahivadi and to travel thence by the Tasganv-Mograla road for about ten miles to Jadhavvadi, a hamlet of Bijvadi village lying almost a quarter of a mile east and within sight of the road; from here a well marked track due west goes to the village of Tondle, and from Tondle a path leads direct to the fort over rough ground broken but perfectly passable by a pony, and skirting the northern base of the long plateau of Panvan  The direction of the path is generally a little north of west and it crosses innumerable small ravines and water-courses which lead through rough hill tracts to the edge of the plateau of which the Man  taluka chiefly consists  These streams pour down the bare sides of the main hill range, here some 1,000 to 1,500 feet high, on to the plain of Girvi adjoining the Phaltan taluka  The country all the way from Pingli is terribly bare and rocky  Here the stony hills and ravines are interrupted by fairly level plateaus with tolerable soil and good sites for cultivation and grazing  A few small deer and chinkharawill probably be seen, while cattle are everywhere browsing in considerable numbers  Three hamlets, one of them known as Ghodavadi, are reached, and some well-to-do cultivators will probably meet the visitor and turn out to be Gadkaris or descendants of the ancient hereditary fort garrison  The hamlet is situated on a projection between the two ravines, and has been built on a hill of a truncated conical shape 
The hill rises about 250 feet above the level of the plateau, which itself constitutes the summit of the Mahadev range at this point  The cone with the walls on it is seen from a great distance and appears very small indeed  But on near approach it is seen to be but the inner citadel of a place of considerable size and strength for the times in which it was built  On the south-west the outer wall or enceinte is entered by a rude gateway of a single pointed arch about eight feet high and five feet broad  As usual there is a curtain of solid masonry inside  The gate lies about 150 yards east of the edge of the plateau, which there terminates in an almost unbroken vertical precipice of several hundred feet in height and receding in a north-easterly direction  No wall was built along about three hundred yards of this part which is absolutely unscalable, but for the rest of the way the walling is continued along the edge of the cliff in a north-east direction for about another three hundred yards  Here it turns still following the cliff to the south-east for another seven hundred yards, and then gradually rounds to the westward covering four hundred and fifty yards more till it meets the gateway  But for the break of the inaccessible precipice this outer wall would form a nearly equilateral triangle with the corners rounded off, the side being of some six hundred and fifty yards  Facing nearly north, about fifty yards from the north-east angle, is a gateway with a couple of curtains in solid masonry  This entrance is cut in the sides of the cliff about twenty feet below the top which is reached by some dozen steps  It consisted as usual of a pointed arch, the top fallen in, about ten feet high by five broad  It leads out to the path down to Girvi, a village in the plains below and it probably formed the communication with Phaltan  This road winds down the face of the range for some five hundred feet till it hits the shoulder of a spur which it then follows to the base  The walling on the south side, from the edge of the cliff to some hundred yards east of the southern gate, is not more than a couple of feet in thickness and consists of all-fitting stones unmortared  The rest is massive and well mortared and still fairly preserved  The average height is from seven to ten feet  In the south-east angle is a rude temple of Bhairavnath and a few houses with the remains of Man y more  On the right side of the southern gate is a well preserved stone pond about thirty yards square with steps leading down to it  Next to and on the north of Bhairavnath's temple is another pond  The way up to the fort proper or upper and lower citadels is from the north side  The path up the hill side, which is steep but with grass and soil left in Man y places, is almost destroyed  About 150 feet up is the outer citadel built on a sort of shoulder of the hill and facing almost due west  It contains two massive bastions of excellent masonry looking north-west and south-west so that guns planted on them could comMan d respectively the north and south gateways  This citadel was connected with the main wall by a cross wall running across the whole breadth of the fort from east to west  Its entrance lies close below that to the upper citadel  A masonry curtain projects so as to hide the arch itself, which is not more than seven feet high by three broad, and has to be entered from due east  On the south side the walls are carried right up to the scarp of the upper citadel and are some ten feet high, so that to take the lower citadel in rear or flank must have been difficult  The upper citadel is above a vertical scarp some thirty feet high  The entrance to it lies some thirty feet above that to the lower citadel, and is cut in the rock about eight feet wide  There is a gateway of a pointed arch with the top fallen in and twenty odd steps leading up to it and ten more cut out of the rock, and winding up past the inside curtain on to the top  The walls of this upper citadel are still in tolerable preservation  They were originally about ten feet high and built of fair masonry  There is a large turret on the south-west corner, evidently meant to comMan d the southern gate  About ten yards to the east of this turret is a new looking building which was the headquarters or sadar  Immediately east of this and below it is a great pit about thirty feet square and equally deep roughly cut in the rock and said by the people to be a dungeon  Next to it on the south is a small pond evenly cut and lined with mortar used for storing water  There are some remains of sepoys' houses, and, near the turret, a small stone wheel said to belong to a gun  The outer walls east of the gates have bastions at every turn of the cliffs, and the masonry here is particularly strong and well preserved  It would appear that attacks were dreaded chiefly from the plain below  The assailants could either come up the spur towards the north entrance or they might attempt the spurs on the other side of the eastern ravine and attack the southern gateway  Hence apparently the reason for strengthening the walls of the enceinte on this side  After passing the southern gateway the assailants would be comMan ded from the lower citadel  They Would then be encountered by the cross wall  If that obstacle was overcome the besieged would run round the east side and into the two citadels  The appearance from the fort of the plain in the north is most formidable  The Panvan plateau completely comMan ds and indeed almost overhangs it  The fort is believed to have been built by Shivaji to resist the Moghals whose attacks he must have dreaded from the plain below  The Karkhanis or Superintendent of the fort was a Prabhu  The fort garrison consisted of 200 Ramoshis, Mahars, and other hereditary Gadkaris besides sepoys  It was surrendered in 1818 to Vitthal Pant Phadnis of the Raja of Satara left in charge of the town  He detached 200 men to take possession, being part of a force then raised to protect the town from the enterprizes of Bajirav's garrisons then in the neighbourhood  [Elphinstone in Pendhari and Maratha War Papers, 245 ]
Passage 2:
Zhengyangmen
Qianmen (simplified Chinese: 前门; traditional Chinese: 前門; pinyin: Qiánmén; Wade–Giles: Ch'ien-men; lit  'Front Gate') is the colloquial name for Zhengyangmen (simplified Chinese: 正阳门; traditional Chinese: 正陽門; pinyin: Zhèngyángmén; Wade–Giles: Cheng-yang-men; Manchu:ᡨᠣᠪᡧᡠᠨ ᡳᡩᡠᡴᠠ; Möllendorff:tob šun-i duka, literally meaning "Gate of the Zenith Sun"), a gate in Beijing's historic city wall  The gate is situated to the south of Tiananmen Square and once guarded the southern entry into the Inner City  Although much of Beijing's city walls were demolished, Zhengyangmen remains an important geographical marker of the city  The city's central north–south axis passes through Zhengyangmen's main gate  It was formerly named Lizhengmen (simplified Chinese: 丽正门; traditional Chinese: 麗正門; pinyin: Lìzhèngmén), meaning "beautiful portal" 

History
Zhengyangmen was first built in 1419 during the Ming dynasty and once consisted of the gatehouse proper and an archery tower, which were connected by side walls and together with side gates, formed a large barbican  The gate guarded the direct entry into the imperial city  The city's first railway station, known as the Qianmen Station, was built just outside the gate  During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in the late Qing dynasty, the gate sustained considerable damage when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded the city  The Hui and Dongxiang Muslim Kansu Braves under Ma Fulu engaged in fierce fighting during the Battle of Beijing at Zhengyangmen against the Eight-Nation Alliance  Ma Fulu and 100 of his fellow Hui and Dongxiang soldiers from his home village died in that battle  Ma Fulu's cousins, Ma Fugui (馬福貴) and Ma Fuquan (馬福全), and his nephews, Ma Yaotu (馬耀圖) and Ma Zhaotu (馬兆圖), were killed in action during the battle  The Qing Empire later violated the Boxer Protocol by having a tower constructed at the gate The gate complex was extensively reconstructed in 1914  The barbican side gates were torn down in 1915 After the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Zhengyangmen gatehouse was occupied by the Beijing garrison of the People's Liberation Army  The military vacated the gatehouse in 1980, which has now become a tourist attraction  At 42 metres high, the Zhengyangmen gatehouse was, and remains, the tallest of all gates in Beijing's city wall  Zhengyangmen gatehouse survived the demolition of city walls in the late 1960s during the construction of the Beijing Subway, while other gates such as Deshengmen in the north and Dongbianmen in the southeast only have their archery towers standing  Xibianmen retains only part of its barbican while Yongdingmen's gatehouse was rebuilt in 2007 Today, Qianmen Avenue (Dajie) cuts between the Zhengyangmen gatehouse and the archery tower to the south  Line 2's Qianmen Station is also located between the two structures inside the space once surrounded by the barbican 
Qianmen remains one of the enduring symbols of old Beijing 

Geographical Significance
The Zhengyangmen is situated on the central north–south axis of Beijing  The main gateway of the gatehouse is aligned with Yongdingmen Gate to the south, the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong and the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square, the Tiananmen Gate itself, the Meridian Gate, and the imperial throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, the city's Drum and Bell Towers and the entrance to the Olympic Green in the far north 
The kilometre zero point for highways in China is located just outside the Zhengyangmen Gate  It is marked with a plaque in the ground, with the four cardinal points, four animals, and "Zero Point of Highways, China" in English and Chinese 

Surrounding area
The area near Qianmen includes several areas of historical significance  The avenue which proceeds south from the Qianmen is known as "Qianmen Street", and has been a commercial centre for several centuries, although it now mainly caters to tourists from other parts of China  Since a redevelopment in the 2000s by property developer SOHO China, shopfront tenants along Qianmen Street have been predominantly international brands which cater neither to local residents nor domestic visitors, with the result that Qianmen Avenue is now often largely deserted  Dashilanr is a well-known cross-street with a similar character  The Peking duck restaurant Quanjude is located on Qianmen Street  The Qianmen area is also home to Beijing's narrowest hutong, the Qianshi hutong 

Transportation
Beijing Subway Line 2 and Line 8 has a stop at Qianmen  Beijing bus routes 8, 17, 48, 66, 67, 69, 71, 82, 93, 126, 623, BRT1 (快速公交1), Tourist route 2 (观光2), Special 4 (特4), and Special 7 (特7) have a terminal at Qianmen 
Passage 3:
Striding Lion
Striding Lion, a wall relief made from polychrome glazed, fired bricks, is one of the most iconic objects on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto  It came from Babylon, Iraq, and dates to the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BCE), king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire  Striding Lion is one of many such reliefs that decorated the walls of the palace's ceremonial hall and very similar to the lions that line the processional way from the Ishtar Gate to the temple of Marduk 
A large group of such figures is part of the Processional Way leading to the Ishtar Gate, a centrepiece display of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin   Other panels were sold by Berlin, such as the Panel with striding lion in New York 

Description
The relief measures 122 cm (height) by 183 cm (width) by 8 cm (depth) Several of the bricks are stamped with the inscription: "Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the first born son of Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon" 

Origin
The ceremonial hall in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II had a tiled wall decorated with glazed columns, lotus buds and palmettes with lions striding around the base, of which the example in the Royal Ontario Museum is one From 1899 to 1917, Robert Koldewey led a German expedition that excavated Babylon  The fragments of tile found in the ceremonial hall of the palace, also referred to as the throne room of the Southern Citadel, were taken back to Berlin and painstakingly reassembled, as were the tiles from the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way  In 1937 the Royal Ontario Museum purchased the reconstructed striding lion relief from the State Museums of Berlin 

Production method
Robert Koldewey suggested that the lions, and other reliefs lining the Processional Way, were made using molds taken from a master clay panel, or from a temporary wall with a plaster facing that had been cut down into brick sized segments  Care had been taken to ensure the joints were not too visible and the relief work such as to facilitate removal from a mold  The bricks were then fired in a kiln, and then glazed with the appropriate colours  Marks were made on a tile's upper edge to enable it to be placed in proper sequence when assembled  The system of marks used for assembling the reliefs could be most clearly seen on the tiles from the ceremonial hall because of the way they had fallen after robbers had taken bricks from the wall 

Significance of lion symbolism
Lions were symbolic of royalty because of their strength, and fighting a lion gave a king great prestige  The lion was also the symbol of Ishtar, the goddess of love and war  In her role of the goddess of war she is depicted, bow in hand, on a chariot drawn by seven lions 
Passage 4:
Chongwenmen
Chongwenmen (Chinese: 崇文門; pinyin: Chóngwénmén; Manchu: ᡧᡠᠪᡝᠸᡝᠰᡳᡥᡠᠯᡝᡵᡝᡩᡠᡴᠠ; Möllendorff: šu be wesihulere duka) was a gate that was part of Beijing's city wall in what is now Dongcheng District  The gate stood in the southeastern part of Beijing's inner city, immediately south of the old Beijing Legation Quarter  In the 1960s, the gate and much of the wall was torn down to make room for Beijing's second ring road  Today, Chongwenmen is marked by the intersection of Chongwenmen Nei (Inner) and Chongwenmen Wai (Outer) Street, which run north-south through the former gate, Chongwenmen East and Chongwenmen West Street, which run east-west where the wall stood, and Beijing Station West Street, a diagonal street, going northwest to the Beijing railway station  Chongwenmen is a transport node in Beijing   Chongwenmen Station is an interchange station on Lines 2 and 5 of the Beijing Subway   Chongwen District, an administrative division of the city from 1952 to 2010 and now folded into Dongcheng District, was named after Chongwenmen 

History
During the Yuan dynasty, the gate was called Wenmingmen (文明門)  Because the residence of the Mongol prince Hada was located close by, the gate was also popularly known as Hadamen (traditional 哈達門, simplified 哈大門) or Hademen (traditional 哈德門, simplified 哈德门)  The name Hademen survived well into the twentieth century, and was even the name of a popular cigarette brand  The Hademen Hotel now overlooks where the gate once stood   To the east of Chongwenmen, the Ming City Wall Relics Park has the best preserved remaining section of Beijing's Ming city wall 

Transport
Chongwenmen is served by Chongwenmen Station on Line 2 and Line 5 of the Beijing Subway  It is also served by numerous Beijing Bus routes 
Passage 5:
New Town, Tasmania
New Town is a suburb of the city of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, about 4 kilometres (2 mi) north of the central business district of Hobart   It is generally considered Hobart's oldest suburb, settled just a week after Sullivans Cove  It was historically the home of many of Hobart's wealthiest citizens, and New Town features a large number of grand residences, churches, and public buildings  The large farms were broken up following the world wars and it is now an inner city residential suburb  Many of its streets are lined with Federation style cottages  It is surrounded by the suburbs of North Hobart, Mount Stuart, Lenah Valley and Moonah, with the Queen's Domain just to the south-east  Most of the locality is within the Hobart local government area, with 2 5% within Glenorchy 

History
At the time of Hobart's re-settlement on the western shore of the Derwent River in 1804, the first free settlers were landed at New Town Bay a day after the military and convict landing on Hunter Island on 20/21 February  Some early buildings remain including Pitt Farm which is the second oldest farmhouse in Australia 
St John's Anglican Church in New Town has an unbroken record of use as a parish church, from the first service on 20 December 1835 up to the present   The building was designed by the Tasmanian government civil engineer and architect, John Lee Archer 
New Town Post Office opened on 1 January 1842 Video City opened the largest video rental shop in Australia on New Town Road in 2002  The store remained a vibrant cultural institution long after the arrival of online streaming services in the 2010s  After selling its catalogue of over 30,000 video titles, the store ceased trading in 2019 

Today
New Town has the only two single-sex public schools in Tasmania - Ogilvie High School for girls, and New Town High School for boys   There is also a third main school in New Town, the Catholic Sacred Heart College, New Town Campus, with over 1000 students  New Town Primary School is over a hundred years old  The major shopping centre is Centro New Town Plaza, which houses a Kmart, a Coles Supermarket and several smaller specialty shops 
New Town is well known for its leafy streets flanked by Colonial, Georgian, Federation, Italianate and Art Deco residences, with many large homes and mansions scattered throughout the suburb  Architects who have worked on New Town homes include Thomas Reibey Atkinson, grandson of Mary Reibey, and Henry Hunter, one of Hobart's most prominent early colonial architects 
The InterCity Cycleway passes directly through the suburb, on its course from Claremont to the city 
The main road in New Town is known as "New Town Road" and follows on from Elizabeth Street in Hobart  The road connects Hobart with the neighbouring city of Glenorchy  Other main roads in New Town are Augusta Road, which leads into Lenah Valley, and Giblin Street which becomes Forster Street and then becomes Risdon Road as it continues down towards the Brooker Highway 
Passage 6:
Ishtar Gate
The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon (in the area of present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq)  It was constructed circa 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city  It was part of a grand walled processional way leading into the city 
The original structure was a double gate with a smaller frontal gate and a larger and more grandiose secondary posterior section  The walls were finished in glazed bricks mostly in blue, with animals and deities (also made up of colored bricks) in low relief at intervals  The gate was 50 feet (15 meters) high, and the original foundations extended another 45 feet (14 meters) underground German archaeologist Robert Koldewey led the excavation of the site from 1904 to 1914  After the end of the First World War in 1918, the smaller frontal gate was reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin Other panels from the facade of the gate are located in many other museums around the world, including various European countries and the United States The façade of the Iraqi embassy in Beijing, China includes a replica of the Ishtar Gate 

History
King Nebuchadnezzar II reigned 604–562 BCE, the peak of the Neo-Babylonian Empire  He is known as the biblical conqueror who captured Jerusalem  He ordered the construction of the gate and dedicated it to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar  The gate was constructed using glazed brick with alternating rows of bas-relief mušḫuššu (dragons), aurochs (bulls), and lions, symbolizing the gods Marduk, Adad, and Ishtar respectively The roof and doors of the gate were made of cedar, according to the dedication plaque  The bricks in the gate were covered in a blue glaze meant to represent lapis lazuli, a deep-blue semi-precious stone that was revered in antiquity due to its vibrancy  The blue-glazed bricks would have given the façade a jewel-like shine  Through the gate ran the Processional Way, which was lined with walls showing about 120 lions, bulls, dragons, and flowers on yellow and black glazed bricks, symbolizing the goddess Ishtar  The gate itself depicted only gods and goddesses  These included Ishtar, Adad, and Marduk  During celebrations of the New Year, statues of the deities were paraded through the gate and down the Processional Way 

Design
The front of the gate has a low-relief design with a repeated pattern of images of two of the major gods of the Babylonian pantheon  Marduk, the national deity and chief god, with his servant dragon Mušḫuššu  is depicted as a dragon with a snake-like head and tail, a scaled body of a lion, and powerful talons for back feet  Marduk was seen as the divine champion of good against evil, and the incantations of the Babylonians often sought his protection 

The second god shown in the pattern of reliefs on the Ishtar Gate is Adad (also known as Ishkur), whose sacred animal was the aurochs, a now-extinct ancestor of cattle  Adad had power over destructive storms and beneficial rain  The design of the Ishtar Gate also includes linear borders and patterns of rosettes, often seen as symbols of fertility The bricks of the Ishtar gate were made from finely textured clay pressed into wooden forms  Each of the animal reliefs was also made from bricks formed by pressing clay into reusable molds  Seams between the bricks were carefully planned not to occur on the eyes of the animals or any other aesthetically unacceptable places  The bricks were sun-dried and then fired once before glazing  The clay was brownish red in this bisque-fired state The background glazes are mainly a vivid blue, which imitates the color of the highly prized lapis lazuli  Gold and brown glazes are used for animal images  The borders and rosettes are glazed in black, white, and gold  It is believed that the glaze recipe used plant ash, sandstone conglomerates, and pebbles for silicates  This combination was repeatedly melted, cooled, and then pulverized  This mixture of silica and fluxes is called a frit  Color-producing minerals, such as cobalt, were added in the final glaze formulations  This was then painted onto the bisque-fired bricks and fired to a higher temperature in a glaze firing The creation of the gate out of wood and clay glazed to look like lapis lazuli could possibly be a reference to the goddess Inanna, who became syncretized with the goddess Ishtar during the reign of Sargon of Akkad  In the myth of Inanna's descent to the underworld, Inanna is described as donning seven accoutrements of lapis lazuli symbolizing her divine power  Once captured by the queen of the underworld, Inanna is described as being lapis lazuli, silver, and wood, two of these materials being key components in the construction of the Ishtar Gate  The creation of the gate out of wood and "lapis lazuli" linking the gate to being part of the Goddess herself 
After the glaze firing, the bricks were assembled, leaving narrow horizontal seams from one to six millimeters  The seams were then sealed with a naturally occurring black viscous substance called bitumen, like modern asphalt  The Ishtar Gate is only one small part of the design of ancient Babylon that also included the palace, temples, an inner fortress, walls, gardens, other gates, and the Processional Way  The lavish city was decorated with over 15 million baked bricks, according to estimates The main gate led to the Southern Citadel, the gate itself seeming to be a part of Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel, two of the most prominent defensive walls of Babylon  There were three primary entrances to the Ishtar Gate: the central entrance which contained the double gate structure (two sets of double doors, for a fourfold door structure), and doors flanking the main entrance to the left and right, both containing the signature double door structure 

Ishtar Gate and Processional Way
Once per year, the Ishtar Gate and connecting Processional Way were used for a New Year's procession, which was part of a religious festival celebrating the beginning of the agricultural year  In Babylon, the rituals surrounding this holiday lasted twelve days  The New Year's celebrations started immediately after the barley harvest, at the time of the vernal equinox  This was the first day of the ancient month of Nisan, equivalent to today's date of March 20 or 21 The Processional Way, which has been traced to a length of over 800 meters, extended north from the Ishtar Gate and was designed with brick relief images of lions, the symbol of the goddess Ishtar (also known as Inanna) the war goddess, the dragon of Marduk, the lord of the gods, and the bull of Adad, the storm god  Worshipped as the Mistress of Heaven, Ishtar represented the power of sexual attraction and was thought to be savage and determined  Symbolized by the star and her sacred animal, the lion, she was also the goddess of war and the protector of ruling dynasties and their armies  The idea of protection of the city is further incorporated into this gateway design by the use of crenelated buttresses along both sides to this entrance into the city Friezes with sixty ferocious lions representing Ishtar decorated each side of the Processional Way, designed with variations in the color of the fur and the manes  On the east side, they had a left foot forward, and on the west side, they had the right foot forward  Each lion was made of forty-six molded bricks in eleven rows  The lion is pictured upon a blue enameled tile background and an orange coloured border that runs along the very bottom portion of the wall  Having a white body and yellow mane, the lion of Ishtar was an embodiment of vivid naturalism that further enhanced the glory of Babylon's Procession Street The purpose of the New Year's holiday was to affirm the supremacy of Marduk and his representative on Earth, the king, and to offer thanks for the fertility of the land The Processional Way was paved with large stone pieces set in a bed of bitumen and was up to 66 feet (20 meters) wide at some points  This street ran from the Euphrates through the temple district and palaces and onto the Ishtar Gate 

Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II
The inscription of the Ishtar Gate is written in Akkadian cuneiform in white and blue glazed bricks and was a dedication by Nebuchadnezzar to explain the gate's purpose  On the wall of the Ishtar Gate, the inscription is 15 meters tall by 10 meters wide and includes 60 lines of writing  The inscription was created around the same time as the gate's construction, around 605–562 BCE Inscription:

Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, the pious prince appointed by the will of Marduk, the highest priestly prince, beloved of Nabu, of prudent deliberation, who has learnt to embrace wisdom, who fathomed Their (Marduk and Nabu) godly being and pays reverence to their Majesty, the untiring Governor, who always has at heart the care of the cult of Esagila and Ezida and is constantly concerned with the well being of Babylon and Borsippa, the wise, the humble, the caretaker of Esagila and Ezida, the first born son of Nabopolassar, the King of Babylon, am I 
Both gate entrances of the (city walls) Imgur-Ellil and Nemetti-Ellil following the filling of the street from Babylon had become increasingly lower  (Therefore,) I pulled down these gates and laid their foundations at the water table with asphalt and bricks and had them made of bricks with blue stone on which wonderful bulls and dragons were depicted  I covered their roofs by laying majestic cedars lengthwise over them  I fixed doors of cedar wood adorned with bronze at all the gate openings  I placed wild bulls and ferocious dragons in the gateways and thus adorned them with luxurious splendor so that Mankind might gaze on them in wonder 

I let the temple of Esiskursiskur, the highest festival house of Marduk, the lord of the gods, a place of joy and jubilation for the major and minor deities, be built firm like a mountain in the precinct of Babylon of asphalt and fired bricks 

Excavation and display
A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way was built at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin out of material excavated by Robert Koldewey  It includes the inscription plaque  It stands 14 m (46 ft) high and 30 m (100 ft) wide  The excavation ran from 1902 to 1914, and, during that time, 14 m (45 ft) of the foundation of the gate was uncovered 

Claudius Rich, British resident of Baghdad and a self-taught historian, did personal research on Babylon because it intrigued him  Acting as a scholar and collecting field data, he was determined to discover the wonders to the ancient world  C  J  Rich's topographical records of the ruins in Babylon were the first ever published, in 1815  It was reprinted in England no fewer than three times  C  J  Rich and most other 19th-century visitors thought a mound in Babylon was a royal palace, and that was eventually confirmed by Robert Koldewey's excavations, who found two palaces of King Nebuchadnezzar and the Ishtar Gate  Robert Koldewey, a successful German excavator, had done previous work for the Royal Museum of Berlin, with his excavations at Surghul (Ancient Nina) and Al-hiba (ancient Lagash) in 1887  Koldewey's part in Babylon's excavation began in 1899 The method that the British were comfortable with was excavating tunnels and deep trenches, which was damaging the mud brick architecture of the foundation  Instead, it was suggested that the excavation team focus on tablets and other artefacts rather than pick at the crumbling buildings  Despite the destructive nature of the archaeology used, the recording of data was immensely more thorough than in previous Mesopotamian excavations  Walter Andrea, one of Koldewey's many assistants, was an architect and a draftsman, the first at Babylon  His contribution was documentation and reconstruction of Babylon, and then later, the smuggling of the remains out of Iraq and into Germany  A small museum was built at the site, and Andrea was the museum's first director 
As the German Oriental Society had provided such large funding for the project, the German archeologists involved felt that they needed to justify the cost by smuggling much of the material back to Germany  For example, of the 120 lion friezes along the Procession Street, the Germans took 118  Walter Andrea played a key role in this endeavor using the strong links (or wasta) that he had cultivated with German intelligence officers and with local Iraqi tribal sheikhs  The Gate's ceramic pieces were disassembled according to a complex numbering system and were then packed in straw in coal barrels in order to disguise them  These barrels were then transported down the Euphrates River to Shatt al-Arab, where they were loaded onto German ships and taken to Berlin The rebuilding of Babylon's Ishtar Gate and Processional Way in Berlin was one of the most complex architectural reconstructions in the history of archaeology  Hundreds of crates of glazed brick fragments were carefully desalinated and then pieced together  Fragments were combined with new bricks fired in a specially designed kiln to re-create the correct color and finish  It was a double gate; the part that is shown in the Pergamon Museum today is the smaller, frontal part  The larger, back part was considered too large to fit into the constraints of the structure of the museum; it is in storage 

Parts of the gate and lions from the Processional Way are in various other museums around the world  Only four museums acquired dragons, while lions went to several museums  The Istanbul Archaeology Museum has lions, dragons, and bulls  Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark, has one lion, one dragon and one bull  The Detroit Institute of Arts houses a dragon  The Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, has one dragon and one lion; the Louvre, the State Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, each have lions  One of the processional lions was recently loaned by Berlin's Vorderasiatisches Museum to the British Museum A smaller reproduction of the gate was built in Iraq under Saddam Hussein as the entrance to a museum that has not been completed  Along with the restored palace, the gate was completed in 1987
Context 3: Passage 1:
Simon Woods
Simon Woods (born 7 January 1980) is an English actor and playwright best known for his role as Octavian in Season 2 of the British-American television series Rome and the 2005 Pride & Prejudice as Charles Bingley 

Personal life
Woods attended Eton College, then read English at Magdalen College, Oxford  While at Oxford, he became friends with Chelsea Clinton  After graduating from Oxford, Woods worked briefly at The Guardian before becoming an actor While at Oxford in 2000, he was in a relationship with Rosamund Pike that lasted two years  The two later played lovers Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley in Pride & Prejudice 
Since 2009, Woods has been in a relationship with Christopher Bailey, the former chief executive of the British fashion house, Burberry  They married in 2012  They have two daughters, Iris and Nell 

Filmography
Playwright
Woods's stage play Hansard was presented at the Lyttelton Theatre, London, in September 2019  The work, named after the official record of proceedings in the British parliament, was directed by Simon Godwin 
Passage 2:
Claire Fraser (character)
Claire Beauchamp (who adopts the surnames Randall, Fraser, and Grey at various times) is a fictional character in the Outlander series of multi-genre novels by American author Diana Gabaldon, and its television adaptation  In the series, Claire is a married World War II nurse visiting Scotland who finds herself transported from 1945 back to 1743  There she finds adventure, war and romance with the dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser  Smart, stubborn and willful, Claire uses her wits, practical medical skills and knowledge of the future to survive in the 18th century 
Claire is portrayed by Irish actress Caitríona Balfe in the Starz television series Outlander  Balfe won a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television in 2015 and 2016, and a People's Choice Award for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actress in 2016  She also received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 

Character
When visiting Scotland, married World War II nurse Claire Randall is transported through time from 1945 back to 1743  There she finds adventure, war and romance with the dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser  In the following novels, after the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Culloden, Claire travels back to her time where she spends 20 years with her former husband Frank Randall, becoming a medical doctor and a surgeon, and raising her and Jamie's daughter Brianna  Finally, having discovered that Jamie survived the Battle of Culloden, she returns to 18th century Scotland and reunites with Jamie  The couple settles in North Carolina, and is soon joined by their daughter Brianna as well as many Scottish settlers 
Gabaldon originally intended Outlander to be straight historical fiction, but after a few days of writing Claire she realized that the character did not behave like an 18th century woman  Gabaldon eventually leaned into the modern approach to Claire, which prompted the introduction of time travel  Claire is often described as stubborn and impatient, and she refuses to conform to the 18th century societal expectations of women  Practicing medicine and putting to use her 20th century medical knowledge leads to numerous accusations of witchcraft, including a witch trial 

Outlander novels
Outlander (1991)
Dragonfly in Amber (1992)
Voyager (1994)
Drums of Autumn (1997)
The Fiery Cross (2001)
A Breath of Snow and Ashes (2005)
An Echo in the Bone (2009)
Written in My Own Heart's Blood (2014)
Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (2021)

Television series
Claire is portrayed by Irish actress Caitríona Balfe in the Starz television series Outlander 

Awards and nominations
Balfe won a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television in 2015 and 2016, and a People's Choice Award for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actress in 2016  She also received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 
Passage 3:
The Flashman Papers
The Flashman Papers is a series of novels and short stories written by George MacDonald Fraser, the first of which was published in 1969  The books centre on the exploits of the fictional protagonist Harry Flashman  He is a cowardly British soldier, rake and cad who is placed in a series of real historical incidents between 1839 and 1894  While the incidents and much of the detail in the novels have a factual background, Flashman's actions in the stories are either fictional, or Fraser uses the actions of unidentified individuals and assigns them to Flashman  Flashman is a character in the 1857 novel by Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days; Hughes' version of the character is a bully at Rugby School who is expelled for drunkenness  The character was then developed by Fraser, and appeared in the 1969 novel Flashman  Fraser went on to write a total of eleven novels and one collection of short stories featuring the character 
During the course of Fraser's novels, Flashman goes from his expulsion from school into the army  Although he is a coward who tries to run away from any danger, he is involved in many famous military episodes from the 19th century, often taking actions that cause or affect subsequent events, such as his flatulence affecting the Charge of the Light Brigade, or being the person who probably shot George Armstrong Custer  When circumstances run against him and he is forced to fight, he often does so relatively capably  Despite his cowardice and his attempts to flee, he becomes a decorated war hero and rises to the rank of brigadier-general  He also meets people who either were notable at the time—such as Benjamin Disraeli and the Duke of Wellington—or who became well known after Flashman met them—such as Abraham Lincoln  Flashman either has, or tries to have, sex with most of the female characters: by the end of the ninth book he estimates that he has had sex with 480 women 
The publication sequence of the books differs from the fictional chronology, with the time frame of some books overlapping  One of the novels, Flashman and the Redskins, is in two parts: part one takes place in 1849–50, while the second covers 1875–76  Although the main series of stories finishes in 1894, Flashman lives on until 1915 and appears in his late 80s in another Fraser novel, Mr American 

Context
The series consists of twelve historical fiction books written by the journalist, author and screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser, that were published between 1969 and 2005  The series consists of eleven novels and one collection of short stories, spanning from 1839 to 1894; they are the memoirs of the fictional character General Sir Harry Paget Flashman, VC, KCB, KCIE  Although Flashman is fictional, the settings and history of the events, and the people with whom he interacts are all largely based around historical events and individuals, although three contain elements of other novels  Flashman first appeared in the 1857 semi-autobiographical novel Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes as a bully at Rugby School, who persecutes Tom Brown, and who is expelled for drunkenness: Fraser's series of novels starts with Flashman's expulsion from school  Based on a literary conceit, an explanatory note—itself also fictional—at the start of Flashman sets the context and explains that the memoirs had been found in an auction house in Ashby, Leicestershire, and had subsequently come into the possession of Fraser, who has acted in the role of editor  Fraser also included pages of notes and appendices at the end of each volume, providing the factual background for Flashman's endeavours Fraser was working as a journalist on The Glasgow Herald when he wrote the first novel, Flashman; writing in the evenings, after work, he took 90 hours in total to write the story  After the book was published, he left journalism and took up writing novels  When a break from writing was forced upon him by a broken arm, he abandoned the book until his wife read the manuscript and urged him to finish  He did not find a publisher for the novel for two years, until Barrie & Jenkins published it in 1969  When the novel was published in the US the same year, of the 34 reviews read by Alden Whitman of The New York Times, ten of them considered the book to be a genuine autobiography  Fraser researched each novel at Trinity College Dublin  From their first publication, the books were a commercial success, and new editions appeared on the best-sellers' lists 

Flashman
Flashman is from a semi-aristocratic background; he recounted that his great-grandfather "made a fortune in America out of slaves and rum, and piracy, too, I shouldn't wonder"  His father was "a dissolute former MP, living beyond the bounds of respectable society, and     his mother [was] born of the self-promoting Paget family"  Despite joining the army after expulsion from school, Flashman is a self-confessed coward with a false reputation for bravery, earned at the expense of others, and despite him trying to avoid danger at all costs  He is also "a scoundrel, a drunk, a liar, a cheat [and] a braggart", who was described by Fraser as "an unrepentant old cad" whose only positive features are "humour and shameless honesty as a memorialist" Flashman is 6 feet 2 inches (1 88 m) tall, weighs 13 stone (180 lb; 83 kg) (12½ stone in the first book, fourteen stone in the last), has broad shoulders and is attractive to women  He was forced into marriage in the first book, after he "caddishly deflowered" Elspeth Morrison, the daughter of a wealthy Scottish textile manufacturer with whom he had been billeted  Despite being married—and the fact he deeply loves his wife—Flashman is "a compulsive womaniser" who has bedded 480 women by the tenth book in the series, which was set in 1859  Elspeth is also probably unfaithful to him on several occasions  Flashman notes that he has three "prime talents, for horses, languages, and fornication"; he was also described by the master-at-arms of the 11th Hussars as a strong swordsman and was skilled with a lance, particularly at tent pegging  When it is necessary for him to control his fear, he will perform bravely, although is more adept at saving his own skin at the expense of others In the course of the series, Flashman is promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and decorated numerous times by different countries  While the books cover some of the awards—such as being given the Victoria Cross for his actions during the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow—some stories are not known, such as how and why he served on both sides of the American Civil War and how he won the Medal of Honor During his travels Flashman meets people who took part in 19th-century events, including Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Otto von Bismarck, Oscar Wilde and Florence Nightingale, and he is involved as a participant in some of the century's most notable events, including the Indian Rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion, the charge of the Light Brigade, the Siege of Khartoum, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and the Battle of the Little Bighorn Flashman died in 1915, although the details are unknown 

Publication sequence
Fictional chronology
Other references
Flashman also appears in another book by Fraser, Mr American, age 88, while his father was one of the financial backers of the bare-knuckle boxer Tom Molineaux in Black Ajax 

Notes and references
Notes
Passage 4:
Claire Bennet
Claire Bennet is a fictional character in the NBC psychological thriller superhero drama series Heroes  She is portrayed by Hayden Panettiere and first appeared on television in the pilot episode of the series, "Genesis", on September 25, 2006  She is a high school cheerleader with the power of rapid cellular regeneration  Claire appears in more episodes than any other character (72, plus a 73rd through stock footage)  In Heroes Reborn, she dies while giving birth to Malina and Tommy 
Thanks to her power, she has an incredibly high pain tolerance; Claire states in "The Butterfly Effect" that, when injured, she feels pain just as severe as anyone else who was injured in such a way, but her power quickly deadens pain  When asked about this, series writers Joe Pokaski and Aron Coleite would only comment that she "feels pain, but not the way most of us do " Claire, describing her response to pain to West, says "I feel pain; I just get over it quickly "
Between her tolerance for pain and seemingly unlimited healing potential, Hayden Panettiere compares her character to the X-Men character Wolverine, although she is "less hairy and without claws " Since having her brain examined by Sylar, Claire has stated that she no longer feels physical pain of any kind 

Casting
Marc Hirschfeld, executive vice president of casting for NBC Universal Television stated, "When they were trying to decide who the cheerleader should be, I literally picked up the phone and said to the producers, 'You've got to meet Hayden Panettiere  '"In an interview with Vanity Fair, Emma Stone revealed that she had auditioned for the role of Claire Bennet  She said it was her rock bottom Hollywood moment; She overheard "You are our pick     On a scale of 1 to 10 you’re an 11" and then she realised the role had gone to Hayden Panettiere 

Reception and analysis
Panettiere received positive reviews for her work on the show throughout the series run, constantly being referred to as a "breakout star"  Claire is also arguably one of the most popular characters on the show  UGO Networks listed Claire as one of their best heroes of all time Professor of audiovisual arts Olvido Andújar Molina saw the character of Claire Bennet as a metaphor for the United States of America, as her role as a cheerleader functioned as one of the basic American cultural archetypes  Claire Bennet's special ability was regeneration from any kind of accident, which in this reading symbolizes the idea of the United States being invincible in the long term  Andújar Molina expands the idea to the character of Nathan Petrelli: As he is discovered as Claire's biological father, he represents the father figure and protector of the country as a whole  Andújar Molina thought that this identification of the characters, together with their presentation as heroes trying to save the world, contributed to their positive reception and identification with the audience Sarah Godfrey and Hannah Hamad saw in the character a resurgence of the trope of the helpless girl in postfeminist, post-9/11 television: "Notwithstanding Claire Bennet's physical indestructibility, she remains contained by a narrative position that necessitates protection from a range of male characters "
Passage 5:
On a Claire Day
On a Claire Day was an American internationally syndicated gag-a-day comic strip by Creators Syndicate, created by Henry Beckett and Carla Ventresca and launched in 2006  The strip ended its run in print and online on June 14, 2014, to continue on the mobile device service Comikka  According to its creators, there was discussion on it being developed into a television show The strip follows the life of fictional character Claire Bennett, an insecure and naive young woman, who has left her parents' home to live on her own   She is visited frequently by Sammi, her elegant, financially savvy, and impatient best friend; Jeff, her guy's guy neighbor, who's happy working construction and doesn't understand Claire's ambition or life issues; her "out there" Oprah-fanatic mom and her "work hard or you're worth nothing" dad; and the perfect neighbors, Pasha and James, who seem to do everything with an ease and flair Claire can't achieve or imagine possessing herself  But she managed to settle down in with a life with medical researcher Paul along with their dog Bradley and cat Lulu and at the end of the series were engaged 
Passage 6:
Temptation of Wife (2012 TV series)
Temptation of Wife is a Philippine television drama revenge series broadcast by GMA Network  The series is based on a 2008 South Korean drama series of the same title  Directed by Dominic Zapata and Gina Alajar, it stars Marian Rivera in the title role, Dennis Trillo, Glaiza de Castro and Rafael Rosell  It premiered on October 29, 2012, on the network's Telebabad line up replacing Luna Blanca  The series concluded on April 5, 2013, with a total of 113 episodes  It was replaced by Love & Lies in its timeslot 

Cast and characters
Lead castMarian Rivera as Angeline Santos-Salcedo / Chantal Gonzales / Angeline Santos-Armada 
Dennis Trillo as Marcelito "Marcel" Salcedo
Glaiza de Castro as Heidi Fernandez-Montreal
Rafael Rosell as Nigel ArmadaSupporting castRez Cortez as Abner Santos
Rio Locsin as Minda Santos
Antonio Aquitania as Leo Santos
Raymond Bagatsing as Romeo Salcedo
Cherie Gil as Stella Salcedo
Bettina Carlos as Madel Salcedo
Ayen Munji-Laurel as Yolanda Gonzales-Armada
Michelle Madrigal as Chantal Gonzales ArmadaRecurring castJC Tiuseco as Bernard
Bubbles Paraiso as Leslie
Mel Martinez as PatGuest castSheena Halili as young Yolanda
Jay Aquitania as young Romeo
Mel Kimura as Josefina Fernandez
Patricia Ysmael as Scarlet
John Nite as an event host
Robert Seña as Robert Montreal

Background
Temptation of Wife is a 2008 South Korean television drama series broadcast by Seoul Broadcasting System from November 3, 2008, to May 1, 2009  It was written by Soon-ok Kim and directed by Se-kang Oh  The series starred Seo Hee Jang, Jae Hwang Lee, Woo Min Byun and Seo Hyung Kim in the lead roles The series also had a huge success in the Philippines during its run  GMA Network aired the series (dubbed in Tagalog) in an early primetime slot from October 4, 2010,  and concluded on May 27, 2011 

Production and development
In 2011, GMA Network's senior vice president for entertainment, Wilma Galvante stated that they would be adapting the Korean series, Temptation of Wife  Pre-production started in earlier 2012  The head writer, Dode Cruz stated that he would develop "a bit serious, sexier and edgier version" than the original  The producer assigned Dominic Zapata to direct the series 
Originally planned for a December 2012 premiere, it was later moved to an earlier date  following the cancellation of the drama series, Haram 

Casting
The cast was announced on September 11, 2012, during the series' story conference, with the main cast being, Marian Rivera, Dennis Trillo, Alessandra De Rossi and Rafael Rosell  As for Rivera's preparation, she stated that "Whenever I have a new soap, I make sure to ask some tips about the role  Then I talk to my director how he wants me to approach my role  I'd like to have an idea of the character that I am going to portray and how I would give life to it onscreen"  She added that she wants every role she does to be different from the previous one in terms of how she going to approach it  Trillo described his character as a "not-so-typical-leading-man" role De Rossi was hired to play Heidi Fernandez  However, the role was eventually given to Glaiza de Castro due to de Rossi's issues with the role The series served as Rosell's first major project for GMA Network  Zapata, required the cast to watch the original series before filming began to familiarize their characters 

Filming
The series' plug, teasers and opening title sequence were filmed on September 11, 2012, in a studio at GMA Network Center in Quezon City  Filming for the series began on October 9, 2012  Many of the series’ scenes were shot on location in Quezon City 

Reception
Ratings
According to AGB Nielsen Philippines' Mega Manila household television ratings, the pilot episode of Temptation of Wife earned a 23 5% rating  While the final episode scored a 27 9% rating  The series had its highest rating with a 41 3% rating 

Critical response
Vincent Anthon Garcia of gulfnews com said that "Marian Rivera has proved why she is truly the Queen of Primetime TV  Her current series, Temptation of Wife, has zoomed to the top of the ratings"  Mario Bautista of Journal praised the show's main villain, Glaiza de Castro, said that "One reason why Temptation of Wife clicks with viewers is the fact that de Castro is so effective as the villainous Heidi  We know she didn't want to play kontrabida (villainess) again after she did lead roles in Grazilda and Biritera  But Glaiza made the right decision in accepting the Heidi role as it's really so "mark" and she can show her versatility as an actress who can do both lead and villain roles "

Accolades
Passage 7:
Jamie Fraser (character)
James "Jamie" Fraser is a fictional character in the Outlander series of multi-genre novels by American author Diana Gabaldon, and its television adaptation  In the series, married World War II nurse Claire Randall is visiting Scotland when she is transported through time from 1945 back to 1743  There she finds adventure, war and romance with the dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser, a member of Gabaldon's fictionalized Clan Fraser of Lovat  Jamie also appears in two novels in the Lord John series of historical mysteries, and in the 2013 novella Virgins 
Jamie is portrayed by Sam Heughan in the Starz television series Outlander 

Concept and creation
Gabaldon took the name "Jamie" from the Doctor Who character Jamie McCrimmon, portrayed in the television series by Frazer Hines  Gabaldon had seen the Doctor Who serial The War Games, which inspired her to set her novel in Scotland  Gabaldon developed Jamie from an account in the Eric Linklater book Prince in the Heather, in which a single Jacobite named Fraser survives the mass execution of his fellows  Jamie's looks and character are based on Gabaldon's husband, Doug Watkins, as the author has herself confirmed on her Twitter account Hines guest starred in the May 2015 episode "Wentworth Prison" of Outlander, the television series adaptation of Gabaldon's novels 

Character
When married World War II nurse Claire Randall is transported through time from 1945 back to 1743, she meets dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "The stories the show told during the second half of the first season deepened [Claire and Jamie's] bond and their need for each other  Jamie in particular was made to confront his personal and cultural attitudes about gender roles, understand how they impact Claire, and recognize the value to him of having a wife that was his equal in every way "Gabaldon describes Jamie as handsome and unusually tall, with distinctive red hair, deep blue eyes, and fair skin  The character uses many aliases throughout the series, including Jamie MacTavish, The Dunbonnet, Red Jamie/Seumas Ruadh, Mac Dubh, Alex MacKenzie, and Alexander Malcolm 

Appearances
Jamie is a main character of Gabaldon's Outlander series  He also appears in two novels in the Lord John series of historical mysteries, and in the 2013 novella Virgins 

Outlander novels
Outlander (1991)
Dragonfly in Amber (1992)
Voyager (1994)
Drums of Autumn (1997)
The Fiery Cross (2001)
A Breath of Snow and Ashes (2005)
An Echo in the Bone (2009)
Written in My Own Heart's Blood (2014)
Virgins, prequel novella in the anthology Dangerous Women (2013)
Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (2021)

Lord John novels
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (2007)
The Scottish Prisoner (2011)

Television series
Jamie is portrayed by Sam Heughan in the Starz television series Outlander 

Awards and nominations
Heughan was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor on Television in 2015, and Best Actor on Television in 2016  Heughan was also nominated for a People's Choice Award for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actor in 2016 and 2017, a 2016 BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Actor in Television, and a 2016 Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series 
Passage 8:
Caitriona Balfe
Caitríona Mary Balfe (; born 4 October 1979) is an Irish actress  She is best known for her starring role as Claire Fraser in the Starz historical drama series Outlander (2014–present), for which she received nominations for four Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama 
At age eighteen, while studying drama at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Balfe began working as a fashion model in Paris  Ten years later, she refocused on acting  She had leading roles in the series The Beauty Inside (2012) and H+: The Digital Series (2012–2013), and appeared in the films Super 8 (2011), Now You See Me (2013), Escape Plan (2013), Money Monster (2016), and Ford v Ferrari (2019)  Her performance in Belfast (2021) earned her nominations for the Golden Globe and British Academy Film Awards 

Early life
Balfe was born in Dublin and grew up outside the village of Tydavnet, near Monaghan Town, in a family of seven  She is the fourth of five children  Her father was a retired Garda Sergeant  She went to Dublin Institute of Technology to study drama, before being spotted by a model scout 

Career
Modelling
Balfe started modelling after she was scouted by an agent while she was collecting money for charity at a local shopping centre



ground_truth: Puli Alam

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: The Panel with striding lion  was one of many that lined the way north of the gate to the inner city of what location?

The following are given passages.
Context 2:  The construction was meant to emulate the techniques that were used for the original gate  The replica appears similar to the restored original but is notably smaller  The purpose of the replica's construction was an attempt to reconnect to Iraq's history  Damage to this reproduction has occurred since the Iraq War (see Impact of the U S  military) 

Controversy and attempted repatriation
The acquisition of the Ishtar Gate by the Pergamon Museum is surrounded in controversy as the gate was excavated as part of the excavation of Babylon, and immediately shipped off to Berlin where it remains to this day  The government of Iraq has petitioned the German government to return the gate many times, notably in 2002 as well as in 2009  The Ishtar Gate is frequently used as a prime example in the debate regarding repatriating artifacts of cultural significance to countries affected by war and whether these pieces of material culture are better off in a safer environment where they could be preserved  The example in the case of the Ishtar Gate is concerning its safety in the aftermath of the Iraq War, and whether or not the gate would be safer remaining at the Pergamon Museum 

Gallery
Passage 7:
Remuera
Remuera  is an affluent suburb in East Auckland, New Zealand  It is located four kilometres southeast of the city centre  Remuera is characterised by many large houses, often Edwardian or mid 20th century  A prime example of a "leafy" suburb, Remuera is noted for its quiet tree lined streets  The suburb has numerous green spaces, most obvious of which is Ōhinerau / Mount Hobson – a volcanic cone with views from the top overlooking Waitematā Harbour and Rangitoto 
The suburb extends from Hobson Bay and the Ōrākei Basin on the Waitematā Harbour to the north and east, to the main thoroughfare of State Highway 1 in the southwest  It is surrounded by the suburbs of Ōrākei, Meadowbank, Saint Johns, Mount Wellington, Ellerslie, Greenlane, Epsom, Newmarket and Parnell  Remuera is home to many well-known New Zealanders, including the late Sir Edmund Hillary and the race car driver Bruce McLaren 

History
Remuera has had a long history of human occupation, starting back in the early 13th century when Māori came to the area  The area was very attractive to Maori as much of the Auckland isthmus was devoid of trees and covered only in native flax, bracken and scrub  Remuera was different, having patches of woodland which were the habitat of many birds suitable for trapping while the adjacent harbour and basins were good fishing areas  Remuera Road began as a walking track, connecting the eastern and northern sections of the Auckland isthmus John Logan Campbell describes early 19th century Remuera in his book Poenamo:

Beautiful was Remuera's shore, sloping gently to Waitemata's sunlit waters in the days of which I write  The palm fern-tree was there with its crown of graceful bending fronds and black feathery-looking young shoots; and the karaka, with its brilliantly-polished green leaves and golden-yellow fruit, contrasting with the darker crimped and varnished leaf of the puriri, with its bright cherrylike berry  Evergreen shrubs grew on all sides, of every shade from palest to deepest green; lovely flowering creepers mounted high overhead, leaping from tree to tree and hanging in rich festoons; of beautiful ferns there was a profusion underfoot  The tui, with his grand rich note made the wood musical; the great fat stupid pigeon cooed down upon you almost within reach, nor took the trouble to fly away 
The suburb is named after a pā (fortification) named Remuwera, on Ōhinerau / Mount Hobson  Remu-wera literally translates to "burnt edge of kilt", commemorating the occasion where a chieftainess of Hauraki was allegedly captured and consumed  Although the most common definition in reference literature, the accuracy of this definition has been described as "highly doubtful" Around 1741, Te Wai-o-Hua iwi was driven away by the Ngāti Whātua and Te Taoū iwi  Later, these iwi merged with Te Roroa and Te Uri-o-Hau into Ngāti Whātua-o-Ōrākei, which is the main iwi on the Tāmaki isthmus  In May 1844 one of the largest Māori feasts ever held in New Zealand took place in Remuera  It was organised by the Waikato iwi and about 4000 Māori and many Pākehā (Europeans) were present  The festivities lasted for a week and large amounts of food and drinks were served: 11,000 baskets of potatoes, 9,000 sharks, 100 pigs, and large amounts of tea, tobacco and sugar  Governor Robert FitzRoy visited the festivities on 11 May 1844 when a haka was performed by 1,600 Māori, armed with guns and tomahawks When the European settlers wanted to buy the land on the Tāmaki isthmus from the Māori, they first declined  But in 1851, Henry Tacy Kemp, an interpreter to the Land Claims Commissioners, bought 700 acres for £5000  Subsequently, more plots of land were sold and put up for public auction  The land was suitable for pasture land and as the town of Auckland was some distance away people did not really start to build houses (as opposed to farmhouses) until the 1860s  One of the early farmer-settlers who bought land at Remuera was Archibald Clark, who became Auckland's first mayor in 1851  Many of the large villas stood on quite big properties, as their owners needed pasturing for carriage and riding horses and enjoyed creating landscape gardens  Some even had secondary houses for gardeners or estate managers  Many of these early houses still stand, surrounded now by later suburban developments or converted into institutions such as schools 

Smaller suburban houses began appearing in the area nearest Newmarket and began to spread along Remuera Road  The first shops opened in 1890 at the intersection with Victoria Avenue  Railway stations at Newmarket and Market Road encouraged residents to commute to town  Likewise one of the most important routes for the electric tram system created in 1902 was to the Remuera shops, with an extension to the bottom of Victoria Avenue  One of the first businesses was L J  Keys' grocery store on the Clonbern Road corner, which currently houses a café  Nowadays, Remuera's main business and shopping area stretches along Remuera Road from Armadale Road to St Vincent's Avenue  Smaller shopping areas are situated at Upland Road and Benson Road 
Remuera Road initially began as an unsealed cart track leading from Newmarket to Tāmaki  By the 1860s, the Remuera Road Board was formed to help administer the area surrounding the road, by organising roads, drainage, water and power, and the Remuera District School was established in 1873  In the early 1900s the Auckland electric tramway service began servicing Remuera Road, which led to the district doubling in population between 1901 and 1911 to over 5,000 residents  By the 1910s, ratepayers in the area opposed the Remuera area being administered separately to Auckland  The Remuera Ratepayers Association organised a petition in 1912, which included 791 ratepayers (over 50%) signing to join with the adjacent Auckland City, against the Remuera Road Board's wishes  A commission of inquiry was appointed, which recommended amalgamation  Again the Road Board declined and it was only after the Department of Internal Affairs intervened that the Road Board gave in  The union was ratified in February 1915 and the 2,520 acres of Remuera became part of Auckland  J  Dempsey said that Auckland had received "the brightest jewel in her crown today", although a subsequent report by the city engineer pointed out that Remuera had not been surveyed, it had 60 miles of primitive roading, and lacked proper stormwater drainage, sewerage and other services 
The 1920s and 1930s saw increased development of Remuera, with commercial precincts such as the Avenue Buildings, Coles Building, Hellaby Building and the Skeltons Building allowing the area to act as a commercial hub  The first mile of Remuera Road was concreted in 1921, and the existing tram line was doubled in 1924, followed by an extension of the service to Meadowbank  Auckland City Council embarked on a series of improvements for the new area  One of its first acts was to provide a free public library for the area in 1915, later replaced by the current building in 1926  In 1919 however local residents were incensed by the council's building of public toilets at the Remuera shops that they demanded be torn down 
In 1927 the Remuera rugby league club reformed after initially forming in 1914 when former All Black and Kiwi, George A  Gillett coached the club  A year later in 1928, the Tudor Theatre cinema and dance hall opened, becoming a central part of Remuera social life for decades  The theatre closed in 1973, and after demolition the location became the Tudor Mall in 1980  In 1930, the electric tramway was extended from Remuera to Meadowbank In more recent history, the infamous Bassett Road machine gun murders took place in Remuera on 7 December 1963  Two men were shot with a  45 calibre Reising submachine gun at 115 Bassett Road and word quickly spread about a "Chicago-style" gang murder  Two suspects were sentenced to life imprisonment 

Demographics
Remuera covers 8 25 km2 (3 19 sq mi) and had an estimated population of 23,400 as of June 2022, with a population density of 2,836 people per km2 

Remuera had a population of 23,586 at the 2018 New Zealand census, an increase of 333 people (1 4%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 918 people (4 0%) since the 2006 census  There were 8,028 households, comprising 11,298 males and 12,291 females, giving a sex ratio of 0 92 males per female, with 4,179 people (17 7%) aged under 15 years, 5,100 (21 6%) aged 15 to 29, 10,746 (45 6%) aged 30 to 64, and 3,564 (15 1%) aged 65 or older 
Ethnicities were 70 6% European/Pākehā, 4 0% Māori, 1 9% Pacific peoples, 27 4% Asian, and 2 9% other ethnicities  People may identify with more than one ethnicity 
The percentage of people born overseas was 37 4, compared with 27 1% nationally 
Although some people chose not to answer the census's question about religious affiliation, 46 4% had no religion, 40 9% were Christian, 2 4% were Hindu, 0 9% were Muslim, 2 6% were Buddhist and 2 2% had other religions 
Of those at least 15 years old, 9,519 (49 0%) people had a bachelor's or higher degree, and 1,125 (5 8%) people had no formal qualifications  6,993 people (36 0%) earned over $70,000 compared to 17 2% nationally  The employment status of those at least 15 was that 9,915 (51 1%) people were employed full-time, 2,877 (14 8%) were part-time, and 498 (2 6%) were unemployed 

Landmarks and features
Notable buildings and sites
Remuera has several places of historic interest, some of which have been incorporated into the Remuera Heritage Walk 
St Mark's Anglican Church  This is a Selwyn church (wooden Gothic church) built in the 1860s by Philip Herepath replacing an earlier structure from 1848 by Frederick Thatcher  Consecrated by Bishop Selwyn  John Kinder was minister here at a time when this was a rural parish  Scoriarock foundations 
St Mark's Graveyard  The first burial was in 1849, and the last in 1963  The names of many well-known early Aucklanders appear here, including James Dilworth 
Former Remuera Freemasons Hall, Remuera Road   Probably designed by the architect Henry G  Wade, the Hall was consecrated on 9 November 1880, at a ceremony presided over by the Deputy Grand Master of the Auckland Grand Lodge District (E C ), William Lodder  The Remuera Masonic Hall survives as the oldest purpose-built lodge premises in the former Auckland Grand Lodge District (E C )  Sold by the Freemasons in 1993 
Saint Michael's Catholic Church, 6 Beatrice Road  A large Italian Romanesque style church designed by the noted architects Tole and Massey  Opened on 1 October 1933 
St Luke's Presbyterian Church, Remuera Road  Masonry Gothic church from 1932 replacing an 1874 wooden building  Designed by Francis Drummond Stewart who also designed the Chateau Tongariro (1928)  The present church was modeled on the parish kirk in the Scottish mining village of Twechar, built in 1902  Reinforced concrete and  brick construction, with an external cladding of Putāruru stone  The foundation stone was laid in 1931 by Miss Sarah Dingwall 
King's School, 258 Remuera Road  King's College started in 1896 occupying the house called "The Tower", built for David Graham, brother of the founder of Ellerslie, Robert Graham 
4 Garden Road  Garden Road was originally the driveway to Number 4, a house designed by prominent architect C  Reginald Ford (of the firm Gummer and Ford)as his own residence  Built in an eclectic architectural mix with French and Italian influences, number 4 later became the "Remuera Ladies College" whose students included Jean Batten 
Skeltons Building 1928, 339–345 Remuera Road  Built for Robert Skelton, a carrier and one of Remuera's first businessmen  This set of shops retain their original tiled shopfronts 
Hellaby Building 1926, 357–365 Remuera Road was built for Frederick Hellaby whose family ran a chain of Butcher's shops 
Remuera Pharmacy, 375–377 Remuera Road  1909 building for a business operated by Fred Blott 
Cole's Building, 382–394 Remuera Road  1923 building; the first tenant was Wylies Pharmacy 
L J  Keys’ grocery store  Corner of Clonbern Road – this was the first shop in the area (1907) 
Former Remuera Post Office, cnr Victoria Ave and Remuera Road  Built in 1914 to the designs of the Government Architect John Campbell 
Brick shops 1929  411–413 Remuera Road  These two-storey shops replaced the wooden building constructed in 1902 as the Remuera Road Board office, which later became the first Remuera Public Library after the demise of the Board in 1915 
The Remuera Public Library  Designed by the Auckland architects Gummer and Ford, the library was built in 1928 in a neo-Georgian style reminiscent of American colonial architecture  Faced with red brick, this building has very fine details, especially around the windows  In 1928, the architects were awarded Gold Medals from the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) for the design of the building  The building has also won the conservation award in 2004 for the renovations that were done 
Cotter House, 4 St Vincent Avenue  Built around 1848 for prominent teetotaller Joseph Newman, who died childless at 77 following injuries sustained when a billboard on Queen Street advertising whisky fell on his head  The house was sold to Thomas Cotter, a prominent Auckland solicitor and King's Counsel, whose family owned it until 1926, when the land was further subdivided 
St Paul's Methodist Church, 12 St Vincent Avenue  Red brick church from 1922 
Saint Aidan's Anglican Church, 1904 wooden gothic / Arts & Crafts style church noted for its lychgate 
Elmstone, 468 Remuera Rd  Large Neo-Classical House with Arts&Crafts features built in 1904 for V J Larner 
Hellaby House, 542 Remuera Rd  Designed in 1921 by Roy Keith Binney for Amy Mary Hellaby Other special buildings in Remuera are the Remuera Railway Station and Signal Box  These were built in 1907–1908 and the station is the best preserved in Auckland  Whilst the other stations were regularly modernised, Remuera's has been kept almost in its original state and is still used for suburban passenger trains 

Nature areas
Remuera includes some interesting nature areas and parks  Unlike the rest of the isthmus of Auckland, which was largely void of large trees and covered with native grass, flax and manuka, Remuera retained patches of native bush and woodland 
The Ōrākei Basin, a tidal lagoon popular for water sport activities, is the submerged crater of a volcano  There is a 3 km public walkway around the basin whereby the flora and fauna of the area can be observed at close hand Mount Hobson Domain includes the volcanic cone, previously used as a pā (a defended settlement) by the Māori and in later times as a quarry and pasture land  Ōhinerau / Mount Hobson (143m high) is one of Auckland's better preserved and least modified volcanic cones  Formed some 25,000 years ago, the volcanic hill has a horse-shoe shaped crater opening to the southwest  Terraces and pits are still evident from the Maori occupation  Like the other volcanic hills of the Auckland isthmus, in the 20th century, water reservoirs were built on the summit and the lower southwest side  a water reservoir was incorporated into Ōhinerau / Mount Hobson to supply water to the surrounding area  Still evident on the south-east side of the mountain is the concrete base remnant of a WWII medical store for the US Navy Mobile Hospital in nearby Market Rd – a site now occupied by the Dilworth Junior School  As you walk up the path from the entrance, you will soon come to a stone seat – a memorial to Remuera boys who died in WWII  This overlooks a field of jonquils and daffodils which bloom in winter or early spring Waiatarua Reserve  To the south of Remuera Road lies Waiatarua Reserve  This is a natural basin, prone to seasonal flooding  On several 19th century maps this was shown as a lake and referred to as 'Lake Remuera', 'Lake St John' or 'Lake Waiatarua' although in reality it was largely an area of swampy ground in which a sheet of shallow water would appear sporadically in the wet season  In 1918, 133 acres (54 hectares) of this land was given to the City Council to create Waiatarua Reserve  As the surrounding farm land was transformed into suburban housing this area became problematic – although in theory the "lake" afforded a picturesque view for the new houses, it was also a breeding ground for mosquitos  Moreover, the basin was composed of a peat-like substance subject to smouldering fires which were difficult to put out  In 1929 a drain was bored through the hill to the south west enabling the water to be drained into the adjacent natural stream which feeds into the nearby Ōrākei Basin; this drainage system is still in place  In 1934, 50 acres (20 hectares) of the park were leased to the Remuera Golf Club and a course was laid out  The clubhouse was completed in 1935  In 1938 a new course was built around the original layout in response to members’ complaints about the course conditions  In 1968 the Course was redesigned by golf course specialist Harold Babbage and a new Club House built 

Economy
Retail
The Remuera Town Centre includes Airlie Court, Remuera Mall, Tudor Mall, Victoria Mews Arcade and Remuera Village Green  It has 130 shops including a 
New World supermarket and has about 400 carparks 

Education
Remuera Intermediate is a coeducational intermediate school (years 7-8) with a roll of 850 Remuera School, Meadowbank School and Victoria Avenue School are coeducational contributing primary schools  (years 1-6) with rolls of 555, 728 and 430 respectively Baradene College of the Sacred Heart is a state integrated Catholic girls' secondary school  (years 7-13) with a roll of 1417  St Michael's Catholic School is a coeducational state-integrated contributing primary school (years 1-6) with a roll of 227 Mount Hobson Middle School is a private coeducational composite school (years 7-10) with a roll of 97 King's School, St Kentigern Primary School and Saint Kentigern Girls' School are private single-sex full primary schools (years 1-8) with rolls of 719, 647 and 343 respectively Rolls are as of April 2023 

Politics
Remuera is a part of the Epsom electorate for the Parliamentary representation  Local government of Remuera is the responsibility of the Ōrākei Local Board, which also includes the suburbs of Ōrākei, Mission Bay, Kohimarama, St Heliers, Glendowie, St Johns, Meadowbank, and Ellerslie 

Remuera Golf Club
The Remuera Golf Club started to develop in 1934 and the club house was finished in 1935  It was not an ideal location for a golf club, as it was established in a natural basin prone to seasonal flooding  In fact on several 19th century maps this was actually shown as a lake and referred to as 'Lake Remuera' or 'Lake St John' although in reality it was largely an area of swampy ground in which a sheet of shallow water would appear sporadically in the wet season  133 acres (54 hectares) of land in the gully was given to the City Council in 1918 as Waiatarua Reserve  As the surrounding farm land was transformed into suburban housing this area became problematic – although the "lake" afforded a picturesque view for the new houses it was also a breeding ground for mosquitos  Moreover, the basin was composed of a peat-like substance subject to smouldering fires which were difficult to put out  In 1929 a drain was bored through the hill to the south west enabling the water to be drained into the adjacent natural stream which feeds into the nearby Oraki Basin; this drainage system is still in place 
Fifty acres of the park were leased to the Golf Club in 1934 and a course was laid out  In 1938 a new course was built around the original layout in response to members’ complaints about the course conditions  In 1968 the Course was redesigned by golf course specialist Harold Babbage and a new Club House has been built 

Connections
Remuera's reputation as a desirable residential area around the turn of the 20th century was reflected in the use of its name for a luxury liner  SS Remuera was a steamship launched in 1911  She was the last delivered of three 11000 tonners built by the William Denny Organization between 1909 and 1911 for the New Zealand Shipping Company (sister ships Ruahine and Rotorua)  Her inaugural voyage in 1911 was from London to Wellington  In September 1914 she was the first British ship to pass through the newly complete Panama Canal 
During the First War she was commandeered by the British Government  After the war she returned to the UK to New Zealand route, as a sign of the changing times she was now refitted to accommodate two classes of passengers as opposed to her initial layout of First, Second and Steerage  Again commandeered at the outbreak of war in 1939 she was torpedoed in the North Sea in September 1940 

Notable residents
Jean Batten was a student at a Girls School at 4 Garden Road 
Archibald Clark – MP (1805–1875) Auckland's first Mayor in 1851 
James Clark – Mayor of Auckland 1880–1883  Lived at 258 Remuera Road (now King's School) 
Thomas Cotter – Auckland solicitor and King's Counsel – Lived at 4 Vincent Avenue 
William Crowther (1834–1900) – Mayor of Auckland  Horse Tram Company Operator 
James Dilworth –  Served on the Auckland Provincial Council for eight years  He and his wife Isabella left money to create the well known Dilworth School which takes in and educates boys living in straitened circumstances 
Sir Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) – Mountaineer, explorer and Bee-Keeper  Hillary built a home in Remuera in 1956 where he lived until his death in 2008  His home was removed from its original location in 2010 and stored until moved in 2011 to Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Otara where it now houses a training programme for young leaders 
Sir Paul Holmes (1950–2013)
Alfred George Horton (1842–1903) – Founder of The New Zealand Herald newspaper 
Dame Rosie Horton (philanthropist) and Michael Horton – 44 Victoria Avenue 
Rev John Kinder MA DD MD – Minister of St Mark's Remuera 
Bruce McLaren (1937–1970) – Race car driver  He was born in the suburb and his family lived above their garage and service station on 586–592 Remuera Road until they moved around the corner to 8 Upland Road when he was 9 
Sir Edwin Mitchelson (1845–1934) Mitchelson was an MP, Chairman of the Remuera Road Board and Auckland's Mayor at the same time  He was Mayor from 1903 to 1905 and was knighted in 1920 
Joseph Newman – Lived at 4 St Vincent Avenue in a house he built in 1848, now called Cotter House  Newman was a Stockbroker  A well-known teetotaller, Newman died at the age of 77 from injuries sustained when a billboard on Queen Street advertising whisky fell on his head (10 September 1890) 
James Pascoe – Jeweller
Sir John Reed, Supreme Court Judge – 239 Remuera Rd 
Hon  Joseph Tole, Minister of Justice from 1884 to 1887 – 251 Remuera Rd 
William Chisholm Wilson – founder of The New Zealand Herald newspaper 
Desley Simpson – local council politician 
Christopher Luxon – Leader of the National Party, Leader of the Opposition 
Passage 8:
Panel with striding lion
The Panel with striding lion (MA 31 13 1) is a panel of Neo-Babylonian glazed ceramic bricks or tiles dated to 604–562 B C , now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York  It was one of many that lined the Processional Way north of the Ishtar Gate  It was excavated by R  Koldewey in 1902, and at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin from 1926, before coming into the possession of the Met in 1931 A large group of such figures is part of the Processional Way leading to the Ishtar Gate, a centrepiece display of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin 
Lions were symbolic of royalty because of their strength, and fighting a lion gave a king great prestige  The lion was also the symbol of Ishtar, the goddess of love and war  In her role of the goddess of war she is depicted on a chariot drawn by seven lions with bow in hand

See also
Striding Lion, a similar panel in Toronto

Notes


== Sources ==
Context 3:  At 18, after working as a model in Dublin for a few months, she caught the attention of a visiting Ford Models scout, who offered her the chance to work for them in Paris Balfe's modelling career highlights include opening and closing fashion shows for Chanel, Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana, Moschino, Alberta Ferretti and Louis Vuitton  In a three-year period, she walked in more than 250 runway shows  At the height of her career, Balfe was considered to be among the twenty most in-demand models in the world 

Acting
While living in New York, Balfe played the minor role of an employee of the magazine Runway in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada  In 2009, after a decade-long modelling career, Balfe returned to her initial career choice and moved from New York to Los Angeles, spending her first year and a half in the city exclusively taking acting classes, first at the Warner Loughlin Studios and then at the Sanford Meisner Center and the Judith Weston Studios  Balfe has appeared in the films Super 8, as the protagonist's mother, Now You See Me, as Michael Caine's character's wife, and Escape Plan, as the CIA lawyer that hires Sylvester Stallone's character In 2012 she portrayed Alex #34 in The Beauty Inside, a social film divided into six episodes telling the story of a man named Alex (Topher Grace) who wakes up in a different body every day  In 2013 she starred in the music videos for "First Fires" by British musician Bonobo and for "Chloroform" by French band Phoenix, the latter directed by Sofia Coppola Balfe was part of the main cast of the Warner Bros  web series H+: The Digital Series during 2012 and 2013, in which she played Breanna Sheehan, one of the executives of a biotechnology company that develops an implanted computer which allows people to be connected to the Internet 24 hours a day In September 2013, Balfe was cast as the lead character, Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser, on the Starz television drama series Outlander, based on the novels written by Diana Gabaldon; the series premiered in August 2014  She plays a mid-20th-century nurse (later surgeon) who is transported back in time to the war-torn mid-18th-century Scottish Highlands  Both the series and her performance have received critical acclaim, with Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair saying "it helps immensely that Balfe is such an appealing actress, [she] makes Claire a spirited, principled, genuinely heroic heroine"  Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Balfe is "reason enough to watch; she's a confident actress who brings various shades to her character " James Poniewozik of Time labelled Balfe's portrayal as "wry, [and] infectiously engaging " Angelica Jade Bastién of The New York Times called Balfe "one of the most stunning actresses on television" In December 2014, Entertainment Weekly named Balfe one of its 12 Breakout Stars of 2014; that month she was also voted "Woman Of The Year" at BBC America's Anglophenia Fan Favorites tournament 
In April 2015, Balfe received Best Actress in a Lead Role Drama and Rising Star Award nominations for the 12th Irish Film & Television Awards, and was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World"  She won Saturn Awards for Best Actress on Television in 2015 and 2016  In November 2016, Balfe won the Scottish BAFTA award for Best Actress on Television and in February 2018 she won the Irish IFTA for Best Actress in a Lead Role Drama  Balfe also received four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for her role in Outlander Balfe co-starred in the film Money Monster (2016), directed by Jodie Foster and starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts  She played the head of PR of a company whose stock bottoms out, causing a man to lose all of his savings and subsequently take hostages on a live TV show  Eric Hills of The Movie Waffler wrote "But it's relative newcomer Balfe who leaves the greatest impression; she's magnetic, stealing scenes even when her character is only glimpsed reacting to the situation on a background monitor  Expect to see a lot more of this Irish actress in the coming years "In 2019, Balfe had a recurring voice role as Tavra in the Netflix fantasy series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance  The series, which was a prequel to the 1982 fantasy film The Dark Crystal and produced by the Jim Henson Company, was released to critical acclaim  Also in 2019, she had a starring role opposite Matt Damon and Christian Bale in the sports drama film Ford v Ferrari  Balfe portrayed Mollie Miles, the wife of professional race car driver Ken Miles, a role which earned her an IFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role  The film received universal acclaim upon release and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture In 2021, Balfe had a co-starring role in Kenneth Branagh's semi-autobiographical film Belfast, for which she received critical acclaim  Critic Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair lauded Balfe for her "modest, affable performance"  Her performance earned her nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award, Golden Globe Award, Critics' Choice Movie Award, and British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress  The film was nominated for Best Picture at the 94th Academy Awards  She has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the Actors Branch since June 2022 Balfe will next star in the 20th Century Studios film Amateur 

Personal life
Balfe lives in London and, while filming Outlander, in Glasgow  She previously lived in Los Angeles, where she started acting professionally, and in New York City, Paris, London, Milan, Hamburg, and Tokyo while working as a model  In addition to her native English, she is a speaker of the Irish language and is conversant in French On 10 August 2019, Balfe married her longtime boyfriend, Scottish band manager Anthony "Tony" McGill  She announced on 18 August 2021 that she had given birth to their son In an interview, Balfe was asked if she considered herself spiritual  Balfe responded "I would say I'm spiritual, though have long turned my back on institutionalised religion  I definitely believe in the inherent goodness of the universe "

Philanthropy and other ventures
She is a patron of the organisation World Child Cancer  In April 2018, she ran the London Marathon, raising over US$41,000 in support of the organisation She is also a supporter of charitable causes involving refugee relief with ChooseLove, raising thousands of dollars in funds to help aid refugees in crisis globally, as well as a vocal supporter of charities that aid the environment  In October 2020, an annual birthday fundraising initiative called Project CaiTREEna was started by fans to raise money for the environmental charity One Tree Planted  To date over US$150,000 has been raised in her honour, resulting in over 150,000 trees being planted around the world In August 2020, Balfe launched Forget Me Not, a Scottish-based small batch gin with 25% of the proceeds funding arts programmes 

Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Passage 9:
Outlander (TV series)
Outlander is a historical drama television series based on the Outlander novel series by Diana Gabaldon  Developed by Ronald D  Moore, the show premiered on August 9, 2014, on Starz  It stars Caitríona Balfe as Claire Randall, a former Second World War military nurse in Scotland who, in 1945, finds herself transported back in time to 1743  There she encounters, falls in love with and marries a dashing Highland warrior named Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), a tacksman of Gabaldon's fictionalized version of Clan Fraser of Lovat  Here, Claire becomes embroiled in the Jacobite rising 
The 16-episode first season of the television series (released as two half-seasons) is based on the first novel in the series, Outlander  The second season of 13 episodes, based on Dragonfly in Amber, aired from April to July 2016  The 13-episode third season, based on Voyager, aired from September to December 2017  The 13-episode fourth season, based on Drums of Autumn, aired from November 2018 to January 2019  The fifth season of 12 episodes, based on The Fiery Cross, aired from February to May 2020  The sixth season of 8 episodes, based on A Breath of Snow and Ashes, aired from March to May 2022  The seventh season which consists of 16 episodes, is based on An Echo in the Bone and premiered on June 16, 2023 
By February 2022, development had begun on a prequel series titled Outlander: Blood of My Blood, which will focus on Jamie Fraser's parents Brian and Ellen Fraser  In January 2023, Outlander: Blood of My Blood was officially confirmed for a ten-episode first season, and Outlander was renewed for a ten-episode eighth and final season 

Plot
Season 1 (2014–2015)
In 1945, Claire Randall, who had formerly served as a nurse in the British Army during the Second World War, and her husband Frank are visiting Inverness, Scotland, when she is carried back in time to 1743 by the standing stones at Craigh na Dun (in what is now Tay Forest Park)  She falls in with a group of rebel Highlanders from Clan MacKenzie (a fictionalization of the real Clan MacKenzie), who are being pursued by government troops led by Captain Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall  Randall turns out to be Frank's ancestor 
Clan MacKenzie suspect her of being a spy, but retain her as a healer, which prevents her from attempting to return to her own time  Knowing that the Jacobite cause is doomed to fail, she tries to warn them against rebellion  Out of necessity, Claire marries a Highlander, Jamie Fraser, but they quickly fall in love  Her husband Jamie is captured, tortured, and raped by the sadistic Randall, but Claire and his clansmen rescue him  Claire tells Jamie that she is pregnant and they set sail for the Kingdom of France 

Season 2 (2016)
In 18th century Paris, Claire and Jamie try to thwart the Jacobites by subverting the funds that King Louis XV of France is likely to provide  Jamie becomes the confidant of Charles Stuart, but the Frasers fail to prevent the risings  Randall reappears in Paris, but Claire makes Jamie swear to keep him alive until Frank's descent is assured  She achieves this by convincing Randall to marry Mary Hawkins  Claire and Jamie's daughter Faith is stillborn, and she and her 18th century husband return to Scotland  The Jacobites win the Battle of Prestonpans  Jamie and Claire also adopt a young French boy named Claudel, who Jamie renames Fergus 
Before the Battle of Culloden, Jamie convinces Claire, pregnant again, to return to the 20th century  Jamie decides to die fighting at Culloden with his clan  Back in her own century, Claire tells Frank about her time travel  He asks her to forget Jamie and let him raise her child as his own  Twenty years later, Frank has died in a car accident  Claire takes her 20-year-old daughter Brianna to Scotland  Claire discovers that Jamie did not die at Culloden and vows to return to him 

Season 3 (2017)
Jamie kills Randall at Culloden and is gravely injured, but spared execution  At Ardsmuir prison, he befriends the governor, Lord John Grey, who later paroles him to work at an English estate  There, Jamie is manipulated into a sexual liaison and fathers an illegitimate son, William  Jamie returns to Scotland and becomes a printer 
In 1968, Claire enrolls in medical school in Boston, Massachusetts  Frank is killed in a car accident while Brianna is in college  With the help of Roger Wakefield, Claire finds clues to Jamie's fate after Culloden  She returns to the 18th century and discovers Jamie has married a widowed Laoghaire  Claire's return nullifies their union as illegal  They try to retrieve some hidden treasure so that he can placate Laoghaire with a settlement, but Jamie's nephew Ian is captured by pirates and taken to the Caribbean  Jamie and Claire follow and manage to rescue him from Geillis, who had escaped burning at the stake in season one  Claire and Jamie sail for Scotland, but are shipwrecked on the coast of Georgia 

Season 4 (2018–2019)
In the Province of North Carolina, Claire and Jamie seek to return to Scotland with Fergus, Marsali and Ian  They visit a plantation owned by Jamie's aunt Jocasta Cameron, where they encounter Black slaves  Claire and Jamie decide to leave and claim land that they name Fraser's Ridge, which is already inhabited by Cherokee  Jamie reunites with Murtagh, now a blacksmith and leader of the Regulator Movement  Lord John visits with Jamie's son, Willy 
In the 1970s, Brianna rejects Roger's marriage proposal  After learning her parents will die in a fire, Brianna travels through the stones  When Roger discovers Brianna has left, he follows her  They meet in Wilmington, North Carolina and enter into handfast marriage  Shortly after, they get into an argument and Roger leaves  In his absence, Stephen Bonnet rapes Brianna  She reunites with her mother and finally meets her biological father, Jamie  Brianna discovers she is pregnant  Roger goes to Fraser's Ridge, where Brianna's maid Lizzie wrongly assumes that he is the rapist  Lizzie informs Jamie, who beats Roger  Young Ian sells Roger to the Mohawk  Discovering their mistake, they set off to rescue Roger and Ian trades his freedom for Roger's  Roger and Brianna are reunited at Jocasta's plantation and Jamie receives instructions to kill Murtagh, who is a fugitive 

Season 5 (2020)
Jamie and Claire fight to retain their home at Fraser's Ridge as the American Revolutionary War looms on the horizon  Brianna and Roger marry and Governor Tryon further pushes Jamie to hunt down Murtagh, forcing Jamie to gather up a militia and counteract the Regulators  He struggles to balance keeping his godfather safe and fulfilling his duties to the British, especially under the eye of Lieutenant Knox, who is determined to find and kill Murtagh  Despite Murtagh's pleas for Jocasta to return his love for her, she moves forward with her fourth marriage, choosing the safety and security of her plantation's future over his idealism  Jamie's loyalties are pushed to the breaking point at the Battle of Alamance, when Roger's attempt to warn Murtagh fails and Murtagh is shot dead  Roger is captured and mistakenly hanged by the British; he survives, but is left traumatized by the experience  Jamie is left devastated in the months following the battle 
Meanwhile, Roger and Bree's relationship is put to the test as there are signs of Stephen Bonnet's reappearance, forcing Brianna to take matters into her own hands when she is captured by him  Eventually, Bree and Roger decide to go back through the stones when they realize Jemmy can too, as the future will be much safer for their son  Their attempt fails and the two, taking this as a sign of fate, decide to stay at Fraser's Ridge, along with their large family  Young Ian returns from his time with the Mohawk and learns the truth about Claire, Brianna and Roger's origins when he confronts them with information passed to him by the Mohawk  Claire continues to subvert conventional medical practices by producing penicillin and covertly providing medical advice under a pseudonym, but her subversive advice backfires on her  Claire is abducted and gang raped by Lionel Brown and his men, but is subsequently rescued by Jamie, Fergus, Roger, and the other men of the Ridge  Though Jamie returns Lionel's body to Richard, Lionel's brother and mayor of Brownsville, Richard subtly threatens Fraser's Ridge and Jamie's family 

Season 6 (2022)
The political unrest in the colonies begins to boil over and the Frasers (Jamie and Claire) and the MacKenzie (Roger and Brianna), try to peacefully live on their isolated homestead in the foothills of North Carolina  Jamie is suddenly faced with walking between the fires of loyalty to the oath he swore to the British Crown and following his hope for freedom in the new world  Trouble continues with the Browns as they form 'a committee of safety' that threatens the peace on the ridge dividing a wedge between the Native Americans, the British and the Frasers  In the meantime, the Christie family arrive on the Ridge, a throwback to Jamie's time in Ardsmuir Prison, and begin to influence the harmony on the Ridge  Malva Christie, the daughter of Tom Christie, takes a liking to Claire only to betray her in announcing her pregnancy with Jamie as the father  The season ends with a huge amount of unrest involving the Browns and the Christies as Jamie and Claire's grip on Fraser's Ridge becomes ever more fragile 

Cast and characters
Production
Development
In July 2012, it was reported that Sony Pictures Television had secured the rights to Gabaldon's Outlander series, with Moore attached to develop the project and Jim Kohlberg (Story Mining and Supply Co) producing  Sony completed the deal with Starz in November 2012, and Moore hired a writing team in April 2013  That June, Starz picked up the Outlander project for a sixteen-episode order, and in August it was announced that John Dahl would be directing the first two episodes  Starz CEO Chris Albrecht later said that he had green-lit several genre projects, including Outlander, to shift the network's series development toward "audiences that were being underserved" to "drive a real fervent fan base that then becomes the kind of advocacy group for the shows themselves" Calling it "a different kind of show than has ever been on, in my memory", Albrecht believed that Outlander's combination of fantasy, action, a strong central romance and a feminist focus would set it apart  Another distinguishing feature of the show is its use of Scottish Gaelic  Àdhamh Ó Broin is the language consultant and Griogair Labhruidh sang in Gaelic on the second season's soundtrack On August 15, 2014, after only the pilot episode had aired, the network renewed the series for a second season of at least thirteen episodes, based on the second book in Gabaldon's series, Dragonfly in Amber  On June 1, 2016, Starz renewed the series for a third and fourth season, which adapt the third and fourth Outlander novels, Voyager and Drums of Autumn On May 9, 2018, Starz renewed the series for a fifth and sixth season, which adapt The Fiery Cross and A Breath of Snow and Ashes, respectively and each season to consist of twelve episodes On March 14, 2021, the series was renewed for a seventh season, originally to consist of 12 episodes and adapt the seventh novel, An Echo in the Bone  On June 1, 2021, Starz announced the sixth season would premiere in early 2022 with a shortened eight-episode season, while the seventh season would consist of 16 episodes  On November 22, 2021, Gabaldon announced that the sixth season would premiere on March 6, 2022  In January 2023, the series was renewed for an eighth and final season to consist of 10 episodes 

Writing
Moore said of the pilot: "There's a lot of things we did in the first thirty to forty minutes that aren't in the book or are compilations of things that happened in the book"  He emphasised that he did not want to present the time-travel dimension in a traditional special effects-laden science fiction manner  Describing the adaptation of the first season as "straightforward", he explained: "it was always kind of clear what the basic structure was: Claire's trying to get home, then she meets this guy, now she's falling in love, now she has a conflict, will she go home  You lay it out in a very linear fashion"  Regarding the darker tone of the season's second half, he said: "the show becomes more complicated and the emotional journey more wrenching" Regarding the second season and the source novel Dragonfly in Amber, Moore said:

The book is a more complicated structure in terms of how Diana [Gabaldon] wrote it     So it was not as easy an adaptation as the first season was     Book 2 is just a more complex book  It's laid out very differently, as a result it took more wrangling to try to figure out how to translate this particular story into our season  There were more complications, there were more characters     It was a bigger task  The thing that gives me the most comfort is that Diana likes it a lot  She had said, 'Oh, I really liked the way you did it  it was a difficult plot, I know, but I think you really found the essence of it  You really found the through line that really defines what this part of the journey is '     It's not going to be a literal adaptation because I don't think that's possible with the second book     But I think it's very much the same story, the major characters are all represented, the major scenes are all represented, and it still gets you to all the same places you want to go 
Gabaldon was employed as consultant to the TV production



ground_truth: Babylon

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What is the character of fictional character Claire Fraser in a British-American television drama series developed by Ronald D. Moore ?

The following are given passages.
Context 3:  When asked in June 2015 about the adaptation of the first season, she said: "I think they did condense it very effectively     I ended up getting most of the things that I felt strongly about in there  There were only a few instances where the most important stuff in my opinion didn't get in"  In March 2015, she said of the scripts for season two: "The Parisian stuff is very good and in fact I'm deeply impressed by the outlines I've seen     I think they've done a wonderful job of pulling out the most important plot elements and arranging them in a convincing way"  Gabaldon wrote the screenplay for the episode "Vengeance is Mine" According to Moore, the writing and pre-production for season four began while season three was still in active production  Gabaldon wrote an episode for the fifth season 

Casting
On July 9, 2013, it was announced that Sam Heughan had been cast as Jamie Fraser, the male lead  Tobias Menzies was the second actor cast, on August 8, in dual roles of Frank and Jonathan Randall  Stephen Walters and Annette Badland were announced in the recurring roles of Angus Mhor and Mrs  Fitzgibbons on August 29, 2013, with Graham McTavish and Gary Lewis announced as the MacKenzie brothers on the September 4  Series female lead Claire Beauchamp Randall was to be portrayed by Caitríona Balfe as announced on September 11, 2013  The series later added Lotte Verbeek as Geillis Duncan and Laura Donnelly as Jamie's sister Jenny in October 2013 In December 2013, Simon Callow was cast in the supporting role of Duke of Sandringham, and Entertainment Weekly reported in April 2014 that Steven Cree would portray Ian Murray  Bill Paterson was cast as lawyer Ned Gowan in June 2014  Author Gabaldon has a cameo as Iona MacTavish in the August 2014 episode "The Gathering"  In August 2014 it was announced that Frazer Hines had been cast in the role of a prison warden in an episode to air in 2015  From 1966 to 1969, Hines had portrayed the Doctor Who character Jamie McCrimmon, who Gabaldon said had inspired the setting of the Outlander series and the character of Jamie Fraser  Hines plays Sir Fletcher Gordon, an English prison warden, in the May 2015 episode "Wentworth Prison" In June 2015, the series cast Andrew Gower as the Jacobite pretender Prince Charles Edward Stuart; Robert Cavanah as Jamie's Scottish cousin Jared, a wine merchant and Jacobite living in Paris; Margaux Châtelier as Annalise de Marillac, Jamie's French ex-lover; and Laurence Dobiesz as Alex Randall, Black Jack's younger–and gentler–brother  Other cast added for season 2 include Romann Berrux as the French pickpocket Fergus, Rosie Day as the baronet's daughter Mary Hawkins, Stanley Weber as Le Comte St  Germain, Dominique Pinon as healer Master Raymond, Marc Duret as French Minister of Finance Joseph Duverney, Frances de la Tour as Mother Hildegarde, and Audrey Brisson as Sister Angelique  In July 2015, Lionel Lingelser was cast as King Louis XV of France  Moore revealed in June 2015 that Verbeek would be returning in the role of Geillis  Richard Rankin was cast as Roger Wakefield in December 2015, while Sophie Skelton was chosen to portray Brianna Randall, Claire and Jamie's daughter, in January 2016 In August 2016, Starz announced that David Berry had been cast as Lord John William Grey for season three  In September, Wil Johnson was cast as Joe Abernathy and John Bell as "Young Ian" Fraser Murray  In October, César Domboy was cast as an adult Fergus and Lauren Lyle as Laoghaire's daughter Marsali MacKimmie  Hannah James and Tanya Reynolds were cast as sisters Geneva and Isobel Dunsany in November 2016 In October 2017, two season four roles were announced  Maria Doyle Kennedy was cast as Jamie's aunt, Jocasta and Ed Speleers as Stephen Bonnet, an Irish pirate and smuggler  The casting of Colin McFarlane as Jocasta's slave butler Ulysses was announced in January 2018  The Cherokee and Mohawk people in seasons four and five were portrayed by members of First Nations from Canada who traveled to Scotland for the filming In May 2020, Berry announced that he would not be returning to Outlander for the sixth season  Nevertheless, he made a guest appearance in one episode in season six In May 2022, it was announced that Canadian actor Charles Vandervaart had been cast to play William Ransom, Jamie's son who was raised by Lord John Grey since season three  In October 2022, it was confirmed that Graham McTavish, Nell Hudson, Steven Cree and Lotte Verbeek would reprise their roles in the seventh season 

Filming
In July 2013, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne confirmed that the production would benefit from the Creative Sector Tax Relief programme implemented in the UK in 2012, which extends film tax reliefs to high-end television productions  The Scottish government also agreed to help pay for the conversion of a warehouse complex on the outskirts of Cumbernauld in North Lanarkshire into a film studio  Principal photography began on location in Scotland in September 2013  The Cumbernauld studios were used for on set filming, with location shoots taking place at Doune Castle, Stirling; mills in East Linton, East Lothian; Newtonmore in the Scottish Highlands; Rothiemurchus Forest, Aviemore; quarries near Bathgate, West Lothian and Aberfoyle, Stirling, as well as Linlithgow Palace, Loch Rannoch in the Highlands and Falkland and Culross in Fife  Such settings have attracted substantial numbers of international tourists Filming for season two began in April 2015, to air in spring 2016  The primary setting for the season is Paris, which Moore explained is being recreated using other locations  Some interiors were filmed on the show's Scotland soundstages, while Prague was used for the exterior street scenes and the Palace of Versailles  In addition some palaces in the south of England which have French rooms and architecture were used as Parisian interiors and part of Versailles  Moore noted that season two of Outlander "will look completely different than season one" with a "richer, more dynamic kind of visual palette"  With the change of setting from Scotland to France, he said that "visually you’ve moved from the heavy woods and stone of season 1 into the finery of the Parisian apartments"  He explained:

Everything about Paris is so completely different, especially the costumes     It's the most stylish city in the world during this time  A lot more money  A lot of finery  Scotland is featuring a lot of heavy wools and more organic colors  In Paris everyone wants to be a peacock  You’ve got a much wider palette of textiles and colors and styles than you did in Scotland  It's a completely different world  And that kind of goes across the board for all the departments     There were really no sets or pieces of sets that we could use for Paris that we'd used for Scotland     There are carriages, there are servants with livery, there are props and furniture  It's completely different  It's a whole new show 
Production on season three began in September 2016 in Scotland and filming took place in Cape Town from March to June 2017  Filming completed on June 16, 2017 In August 2017, Moore said that for season four, locations in Scotland would double as 18th century America and some of the mountains and rivers of North Carolina would be recreated using locations in Eastern Europe  Production for season four was completed in Scotland by July 5, 2018 Production on season five, set primarily in North Carolina, began in Scotland in April 2019  Locations included Kinloch Rannoch (for Craigh na Dun), the Thomas Coats Memorial Baptist Church in Paisley, 
The Hermitage, Dunkeld in Perthshire and Milne Woods in Bridge of Allan  Much of the filming was completed at Wardpark Studios in Glasgow Production on season six was scheduled to begin in May 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic  Production eventually began in February 2021 Production for season seven began in April 2022, while filming began in May 2022 in Scotland 

Music
The music is composed by Bear McCreary  The title song is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's poem Sing Me a Song of a Lad That Is Gone, set to the tune of the Scottish folk song "The Skye Boat Song"  For the first half of season two, the second verse of the opening theme is sung in French to reflect the season's French setting  For the second half of season three, the second verse of the opening theme has Caribbean music to reflect the season's Jamaican setting  The fourth season opening theme has a colonial American sound 

Release
Outlander premiered in the United States on August 9, 2014  Its first eight episodes aired through September and the remaining eight episodes resumed in April 2015  The first-season finale aired on May 30, 2015  The second season of 13 episodes premiered on April 9, 2016, and the 13-episode third season on September 10, 2017  The fourth season premiered on November 4, 2018, and the fifth on February 16, 2020  The sixth season premiered on March 6, 2022  The first part of the seventh season premiered on June 16, 2023, and the second part is set to debut in 2024 Outlander debuted in Australia on SoHo on August 14, 2014, and began airing in Canada on Showcase on August 24, 2014  The series also premiered on October 21, 2014, in Ireland  In the United Kingdom, it was acquired by Amazon Prime Video, where it premiered on March 26, 2015 In April 2015, The Herald reported that emails leaked in the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack suggested that the broadcast delay in the UK may have been due to sensitivity about the September 2014 Scottish independence referendum  In New Zealand, Outlander was previously distributed by the video streaming service Lightbox  Following Sky's acquisition of Lightbox, Sky's  streaming service Neon acquired the distribution rights to Outlander in New Zealand 

Reception
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the average rating of the overall series is 89%, while on Metacritic it has an average rating of 76 out of 100 

Season 1
The first season received mostly positive reviews  On Metacritic, it has a rating of 73 out of 100, based on 34 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews"   On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has a 91% rating with an average rating of 7 95/10 based on 261 reviews  The website's critical consensus reads: "Outlander is a unique, satisfying adaptation of its source material, brought to life by lush scenery and potent chemistry between its leads" The Huffington Post called the first episode "    A masterpiece of impressive depth     It is amazing!" Entertainment Weekly gave the premiere an "A−" rating, writing that it was "sexy and smart and stirring"  Matt Zoller Seitz of New York magazine also praised the series, calling it "defiantly its own thing: part romance-novel fantasy, part-time-travel story and part wartime drama (set across two time periods)"  Sonia Saraiya of The A V  Club gave the first six episodes an A, writing that it "does for 1743 Scotland what Downton Abbey does for 1912 England" and adding that "Outlander succeeds admirably     it refuses to sit comfortably in any genre "British reception was more mixed  In the first UK review, Siobhan Synnot of The Scotsman said "There has not been such a proud display of tartanalia since the opening of the 2014 Commonwealth Games"  Alastair McKay of The Evening Standard quoted Saraiya's comparison with Downton Abbey, adding "[The comparison] is entirely correct  It is magical-mystical heuchter-teuchter cobblers " Euan Ferguson of The Observer called it "gorgeous drivel" and Thomas Batten of The Guardian stated "If you love the scenery, shifting allegiances and palace intrigue of [Game of Thrones], but find yourself wishing the pace were a little slower and that the sex scenes were filmed in a more pretentious manner with lots of slow pans and softer lighting, here's your show " Graeme Virtue noted "the rather languid pace of the opening episodes", but praised the show's "rare acknowledgment of the female gaze" in its treatment of sex scenes  The Daily Telegraph also made the Game of Thrones comparison, while The Independent stated "   yes, it's a time-travelling, wish-fulfilment fantasy, but it's done with such flair and attention to detail that it's impossible not to hop on board for the ride "

Season 2
The second season received universal acclaim  On Metacritic, it has a score of 85 out of 100 based on 11 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim"  On Rotten Tomatoes, it reports a 92% rating with an average rating of 8 05/10 based on 234 reviews  The website consensus reads: "Outlander returns for a second addictive season of mystery and sweeping romance as Claire and Jamie take on Paris " Based on five episodes for review, Marah Eakin of The A V  Club gave it a perfect "A" grade and wrote, "It's not just well-written and lovely to look at  It's downright immersive      Outlander feels important–even moreso in its second season "

Season 3
The third season also received universal acclaim  It has a Metacritic score of 87 out of 100 based on 6 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim"  Rotten Tomatoes reports a 90% rating with an average rating of 7 95/10 based on 195 reviews  The website consensus reads: "Outlander's epic love story returns with the same strong storytelling and an added layer of maturity " Based on six episodes for review, Liz Shannon Miller of IndieWire gave it an "A"-grade review and wrote, "This is a show that's grown and matured since its initial premiere in ways that defied our initial expectations "

Season 4
The fourth season received mostly positive reviews  It has a Metacritic score of 71 out of 100 based on 6 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews"  Rotten Tomatoes reports an 88% rating with an average rating of 7 15/10 based on 170 reviews  The website consensus reads: "Outlander's epic romance settles into a violent fourth season, planting its flag on the American frontier while treading on darker themes "

Season 5
The fifth season also received mostly positive reviews  It has a Metacritic score of 73 out of 100 based on 4 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews"  Rotten Tomatoes reports an 86% rating with an average rating of 7/10 based on 142 reviews  The website consensus reads: "Outlander's romantic ardor doesn't burn as bright in this fifth season, but the Frasers remain an enthralling pair as they try to forge a home together "

Season 6
The sixth season has an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 7 8/10 based on 9 reviews 

Season 7
The seventh season has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 7 7/10 based on 6 reviews  On Metacritic, it has received a score of 75 out of 100 based on 4 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews" 

Ratings
The first eight episodes averaged more than 5 1 million multiplatform viewers  In July 2015, noting Outlander's strong ratings, its "vocal online fandom and a slew of think pieces tied to its feminist twists on the action genre", Josef Adalian of Vulture credited Outlander as one of the series responsible for Starz's increased success against competitors like Showtime  On February 11, 2020, cable provider Comcast moved Starz from its base cable packages to an a la carte option  This occurred five days before the premiere of season five 

Accolades
Prequel series
In February 2022, it was reported that a prequel series was in works, with Matthew B  Roberts writing and executive producing  In May 2022, executive producer Maril Davis confirmed that the series would focus on the parents of Jamie Fraser  In August 2022, it was confirmed that the series will be titled Blood of My Blood  In January 2023, Starz ordered a 10-episode first season 

Notes
Passage 10:
List of Outlander episodes
Outlander is a television drama series based on the Outlander series of historical time travel novels by Diana Gabaldon  Developed by Ronald D  Moore and produced by Sony Pictures Television and Left Bank Pictures for Starz, the show premiered on August 9, 2014  It stars Caitríona Balfe as Claire Randall, a married former World War II nurse, later surgeon, who in 1946 finds herself transported back to the Scotland of 1743 where she meets and falls in love with the dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) and becomes embroiled in the Jacobite risings The seventh season consists of 16 episodes split into two eight-episode parts with the first half debuting on June 16, 2023, and the second later in 2024  In January 2023, the series was renewed for a 10-episode eighth and final season  As of July 7, 2023, 79 episodes of Outlander have aired 

Series overview
Episodes
Season 1 (2014–15)
Season 2 (2016)
Season 3 (2017)
Season 4 (2018–19)
Season 5 (2020)
Season 6 (2022)
Season 7 (2023)
The ninth through sixteenth episodes were written by Barbara Stepansky, Luke Schelhaas, Sarah H  Haught, Toni Graphia, Madeline Brestal & Evan McGahey, Diana Gabaldon, Danielle Berrow, and Matthew B  Roberts & Toni Graphia, respectively 

Viewership
Notes



ground_truth: Claire is a married World War II nurse