document_title: Timur

question_text: who was the sultan off delhi when timur invaded the city

question_tokens: who was the sultan off delhi when timur invaded the city

text: Timur

text: Ancestry

text:
Through his father, Timur claimed to be a descendant of Tumanay Khan, a male-line ancestor he shared in common with Genghis Khan.[17] Tuminai's great-great grandson Karachar Noyan (1165–1242/54) was a minister for the Emperor and was eventually transferred to assist his second son Chagatai in the governorship of Transoxiana.[18][19]
Though there are not many mentions of Karachar in 13th and 14th century records, later Timurid sources greatly emphasised his role in the early history of the Mongol Empire.[20] These histories also state that Genghis Khan later "established the bond of fatherhood and sonship" by marrying Chagatai's daughter to Karachar.[21] Through his descent from this marriage, Timur claimed kinship with the Chagatai Khans.

text: The origins of Timur's mother, Tekina Khatun are less clear. The Zafarnama merely states her name without giving any information regarding her background. Writing in 1403 Jean, Archbishop of Sultaniyya claimed that she was of lowly origins.[22] The Mu'izz al-Ansab, written decades later say that she was related to the Yasa'uri tribe, whose lands bordered that of the Barlas.[23] Ibn Khaldun recounted that Timur himself described to him his mother's descent from the legendary Persian hero Manuchehr.[24] Ibn Arabshah suggested that she was a descendant of Genghis Khan.[25] The 18th century Books of Timur identify her as the daughter of 'Sadr al-Sharia', believed to be referring to the Hanafi scholar Ubayd Allah al-Mahbubi of Bukhara.[26]

text: Early life

text: Timur was born in Transoxiana near the city of Kesh (modern Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan) some 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of Samarkand, part of what was then the Chagatai Khanate.[27] His father, Taraghai, was a minor noble of the Barlas,[27] a Mongolian tribe[28][29] that had been turkified in many aspects.[30][31][32] Historian Beatrice Forbes Manz believes that Timur may have later understated the social position of his father so as to make his own successes appear more remarkable. She states that though he is not believed to be especially powerful, Taraghai was reasonalbly wealthy and influential.[33] This is shown by Timur returning to his birthplace following the death of Taraghai in 1360, suggesting concern over his estate.[34] He is described by Arabshah as a magnate in the court of Amir Husayn Qara'unas.[25] In addition to this the father of the great Amir Hamid Kereyid of Moghulistan is stated as a friend of Taraghai's.[35]

text: According to Gérard Chaliand, Timur was a Muslim,[36] and he saw himself as Genghis Khan's heir.[36] Though not a Borjigid or a descendent of Genghis Khan,[37] he clearly sought to invoke the legacy of Genghis Khan's conquests during his lifetime.[38]

text: His name Temur means "Iron" in the Chaghatay language, Timur's mother-tongue (cf. Uzbek Temir, Turkish Demir).

text: Later Timurid dynastic histories claim that he was born on 8 April 1336, but most sources from his lifetime give ages that are consistent with a birthdate in the late 1320s. Historian Beatrice Forbes Manz suspects the 1336 date was designed to tie Timur to the legacy of Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan, the last ruler of the Ilkhanate descended from Hulagu Khan, who died in that year.[39]

text: At the age of eight or nine, Timur and his mother and brothers were carried as prisoners to Samarkand by an invading Mongol army. In his childhood, Timur and a small band of followers raided travelers for goods, especially animals such as sheep, horses, and cattle.[39]:116 Around 1363, it is believed that Timur tried to steal a sheep from a shepherd but was shot by two arrows, one in his right leg and another in his right hand, where he lost two fingers. Both injuries crippled him for life. Some believe that Timur suffered his crippling injuries while serving as a mercenary to the khan of Sistan in Khorasan in what is today the Dashti Margo in southwest Afghanistan. Timur's injuries have given him the names of Timur the Lame and Tamerlane by Europeans.[11]:31

text: Timur was a Muslim, possibly belonging to the Naqshbandi school of Sufism, which was influential in Transoxiana.[40] However, his chief official religious counsellor and adviser was the Hanafi scholar 'Abdu 'l-Jabbar Khwarazmi. In Tirmidh, he had come under the influence of his spiritual mentor Sayyid Baraka, a leader from Balkh who is buried alongside Timur in Gur-e-Amir.[41][42][43] Timur was known to hold Ali and the Ahl al-Bayt in high regard and has been noted by various scholars for his "pro-Alid" stance. Despite this, Timur was noted for attacking the Shia with Sunni apologism, while at other times he attacked Sunnis on religious ground as well.[44] In contrast, Timur held the Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar in high regard for attacking the Ismailis at Alamut, while Timur's own attack on Ismailis at Anjudan was equally brutal.[44]

text: Personality

text: Timur is regarded as a military genius and as a brilliant tactician with an uncanny ability to work within a highly fluid political structure to win and maintain a loyal following of nomads during his rule in Central Asia. He was also considered extraordinarily intelligent – not only intuitively but also intellectually.[9]:16 In Samarkand and his many travels, Timur, under the guidance of distinguished scholars, was able to learn the Persian, Mongolian, and Turkish languages[11]:9 (according to Ahmad ibn Arabshah, Timur could not speak Arabic).[45] More importantly, Timur was characterized as an opportunist. Taking advantage of his Turco-Mongolian heritage, Timur frequently used either the Islamic religion or the law and traditions of the Mongol Empire to achieve his military goals or domestic political aims.[11] Timur was a learned king, and enjoyed the company of scholars; he was tolerant and generous to them. He was a contemporary of the Persian poet Hafez, and a story of their meeting explains that Timur summoned Hafiz, who had written a ghazal with the following verse:

text:
For the black mole on thy cheek
I would give the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.

text: Timur upbraided him for this verse and said, "By the blows of my well tempered sword I have conquered the greater part of the world to enlarge Samarkand and Bukhara, my capitals and residences; and you, pitiful creature, would exchange these two cities for a mole." Hafez, undaunted, replied, "It is by similar generosity that I have been reduced, as you see, to my present state of poverty." It is reported that the King was pleased by the witty answer and the poet departed with magnificent gifts.[46][47]

text: Timur used Persian expressions in his conversations often, and his motto was the Persian phrase rāstī rustī (راستی رستی, meaning "truth is safety" or "veritas salus").[45]

text: Military leader

text: This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: About 1360, Timur gained prominence as a military leader whose troops were mostly Turkic tribesmen of the region.[36] He took part in campaigns in Transoxiana with the Khan of the Chagatai Khanate. Allying himself both in cause and by family connection with Qazaghan, the dethroner and destroyer of Volga Bulgaria, he invaded Khorasan[48] at the head of a thousand horsemen. This was the second military expedition that he led, and its success led to further operations, among them the subjugation of Khwarezm and Urgench.

text: Following Qazaghan's murder, disputes arose among the many claimants to sovereign power. Tughlugh Timur of Kashgar, the Khan of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, another descendant of Genghis Khan, invaded, interrupting this infighting. Timur was sent to negotiate with the invader but joined with him instead and was rewarded with Transoxania. At about this time, his father died and Timur also became chief of the Berlas. Tughlugh then attempted to set his son Ilyas Khoja over Transoxania, but Timur repelled this invasion with a smaller force.[48]

text: Rise to power

text: It was in this period that Timur reduced the Chagatai khans to the position of figureheads while he ruled in their name. Also during this period, Timur and his brother-in-law Amir Husayn, who were at first fellow fugitives and wanderers in joint adventures, became rivals and antagonists. The relationship between them began to become strained after Husayn abandoned efforts to carry out Timur's orders to finish off Ilya Khoja (former governor of Mawarannah) close to Tishnet.[11]:40

text: Timur began to gain a following of people in Balkh, consisting of merchants, fellow tribesmen, Muslim clergy, aristocracy and agricultural workers, because of his kindness in sharing his belongings with them. This contrasted Timur's behavior with that of Husayn, who alienated these people, took many possessions from them via his heavy tax laws and selfishly spent the tax money building elaborate structures.[11]:41–2 Around 1370, Husayn surrendered to Timur and was later assassinated, which allowed Timur to be formally proclaimed sovereign at Balkh. He married Husayn's wife Saray Mulk Khanum, a descendant of Genghis Khan, allowing him to become imperial ruler of the Chaghatay tribe.[11]

text: One day Aksak Temür spoke thusly:

text: "Khan Züdei (in China) rules over the city. We now number fifty to sixty men, so let us elect a leader." So they drove a stake into the ground and said: "We shall run thither and he among us who is the first to reach the stake, may he become our leader". So they ran and Aksak Timur, as he was lame, lagged behind, but before the others reached the stake he threw his cap onto it. Those who arrived first said: "We are the leaders." ["But,"] Aksak Timur said: "My head came in first, I am the leader." Meanwhile, an old man arrived and said: "The leadership should belong to Aksak Timur; your feet have arrived but, before then, his head reached the goal." So they made Aksak Timur their prince.[49][50]

text: Legitimization of Timur's rule

text: Timur's Turco-Mongolian heritage provided opportunities and challenges as he sought to rule the Mongol Empire and the Muslim world. According to the Mongol traditions, Timur could not claim the title of khan or rule the Mongol Empire because he was not a descendant of Genghis Khan. Therefore, Timur set up a puppet Chaghatay Khan, Suyurghatmish, as the nominal ruler of Balkh as he pretended to act as a "protector of the member of a Chinggisid line, that of Genghis Khan's eldest son, Jochi".[51]

text: As a result, Timur never used the title of khan because the name khan could only be used by those who come from the same lineage as Genghis Khan himself. Timur instead used the title of amir meaning general, and acting in the name of the Chagatai ruler of Transoxania.[39]:106

text: To reinforce his position in the Mongol Empire, Timur managed to acquire the royal title of son-in-law when he married a princess of Chinggisid descent.[9]:14

text: Likewise, Timur could not claim the supreme title of the Islamic world, caliph, because the "office was limited to the Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad". Therefore, Timur reacted to the challenge by creating a myth and image of himself as a "supernatural personal power" ordained by God.[51] Since Timur had a successful career as a conqueror, it was easy to justify his rule as ordained and favored by God since no ordinary man could be a possessor of such good fortune that resistance would be seen as opposing the will of God. Moreover, the Islamic notion that military and political success was the result of Allah's favor had long been successfully exploited by earlier rulers. Therefore, Timur's assertions would not have seemed unbelievable to fellow Islamic people.

text: Period of expansion

text: Timur spent the next 35 years in various wars and expeditions. He not only consolidated his rule at home by the subjugation of his foes, but sought extension of territory by encroachments upon the lands of foreign potentates. His conquests to the west and northwest led him to the lands near the Caspian Sea and to the banks of the Ural and the Volga. Conquests in the south and south-West encompassed almost every province in Persia, including Baghdad, Karbala and Northern Iraq.

text: One of the most formidable of Timur's opponents was another Mongol ruler, a descendant of Genghis Khan named Tokhtamysh. After having been a refugee in Timur's court, Tokhtamysh became ruler both of the eastern Kipchak and the Golden Horde. After his accession, he quarreled with Timur over the possession of Khwarizm and Azerbaijan. However, Timur still supported him against the Russians and in 1382 Tokhtamysh invaded the Muscovite dominion and burned Moscow.[52]

text: In 1395, Tamerlane reached the frontier of Principality of Ryazan, took Elets and advancing towards Moscow came near the banks of the Don River. Great Prince Vasily I of Moscow went with an army to Kolomna and halted at the banks of the Oka River. The clergy brought the famed Theotokos of Vladimir icon from Vladimir to Moscow. Along the way people prayed kneeling: “O Mother of God, save the land of Russia!” Suddenly, Tamerlane's armies retreated. In memory of this miraculous deliverance of the Russian land from Tamerlane on August 26, the all-Russian celebration in honor of the Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God was established.[53]

text: Conquest of Persia

text: After the death of Abu Sa'id, ruler of the Ilkhanate, in 1335, there was a power vacuum in Persia. In the end, Persia was split amongst the Muzaffarids, Kartids, Eretnids, Chobanids, Injuids, Jalayirids, and Sarbadars. In 1383, Timur started his lengthy military conquest of Persia, though he already ruled over much of Persian Khorasan by 1381, after Khwaja Mas'ud, of the Sarbadar dynasty surrendered. Timur began his Persian campaign with Herat, capital of the Kartid dynasty. When Herat did not surrender he reduced the city to rubble and massacred most of its citizens; it remained in ruins until Shahrukh Mirza ordered its reconstruction.[54] Timur then sent a General to capture rebellious Kandahar. With the capture of Herat the Kartid kingdom surrendered and became vassals of Timur; it would later be annexed outright less than a decade later in 1389 by Timur's son Miran Shah.

text: Timur then headed west to capture the Zagros Mountains, passing through Mazandaran. During his travel through the north of Persia, he captured the then town of Tehran, which surrendered and was thus treated mercifully. He laid siege to Soltaniyeh in 1384. Khorasan revolted one year later, so Timur destroyed Isfizar, and the prisoners were cemented into the walls alive. The next year the kingdom of Sistan, under the Mihrabanid dynasty, was ravaged, and its capital at Zaranj was destroyed. Timur then returned to his capital of Samarkand, where he began planning for his Georgian campaign and Golden Horde invasion. In 1386, Timur passed through Mazandaran as he had when trying to capture the Zagros. He went near the city of Soltaniyeh, which he had previously captured but instead turned north and captured Tabriz with little resistance, along with Maragha. He ordered heavy taxation of the people, which was collected by Adil Aqa, who was also given control over Soltaniyeh. Adil was later executed because Timur suspected him of corruption.

text: Timur then went north to begin his Georgian and Golden Horde campaigns, pausing his full-scale invasion of Persia. When he returned, he found his generals had done well in protecting the cities and lands he had conquered in Persia. Though many rebelled, and his son Miran Shah, who may have been regent, was forced to annex rebellious vassal dynasties, his holdings remained. So he proceeded to capture the rest of Persia, specifically the two major southern cities of Isfahan and Shiraz. When he arrived with his army at Isfahan in 1387, the city immediately surrendered; he treated it with relative mercy as he normally did with cities that surrendered (unlike Herat). However, after Isfahan revolted against Timur's taxes by killing the tax collectors and some of Timur's soldiers, he ordered the massacre of the city's citizens; the death toll is reckoned at between 100,000 and 200,000.[55] An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers constructed of about 1,500 heads each.[56] This has been described as a "systematic use of terror against towns...an integral element of Tamerlane's strategic element", which he viewed as preventing bloodshed by discouraging resistance. His massacres were selective and he spared the artistic and educated.[55] This would later influence the next great Persian conqueror: Nader Shah.

text: Timur then began a five-year campaign to the west in 1392, attacking Persian Kurdistan. In 1393, Shiraz was captured after surrendering, and the Muzaffarids became vassals of Timur, though prince Shah Mansur rebelled but was defeated, and the Muzafarids were annexed. Shortly after Georgia was devastated so that the Golden Horde could not use it to threaten northern Iran. In the same year, Timur caught Baghdad by surprise in August by marching there in only eight days from Shiraz. Sultan Ahmad Jalayir fled to Syria, where the Mamluk Sultan Barquq protected him and killed Timur’s envoys. Timur left the Sarbadar prince Khwaja Mas'ud to govern Baghdad, but he was driven out when Ahmad Jalayir returned. Ahmad was unpopular but got some dangerous help from Qara Yusuf of the Kara Koyunlu; he fled again in 1399, this time to the Ottomans.

text: Tokhtamysh–Timur war

text: In the meantime, Tokhtamysh, now khan of the Golden Horde, turned against his patron and in 1385 invaded Azerbaijan. The inevitable response by Timur resulted in the Tokhtamysh–Timur war. In the initial stage of the war, Timur won a victory at the Battle of the Kondurcha River. After the battle Tokhtamysh and some of his army were allowed to escape. After Tokhtamysh's initial defeat, Timur invaded Muscovy to the north of Tokhtamysh's holdings. Timur's army burned Ryazan and advanced on Moscow. He was pulled away before reaching the Oka River by Tokhtamysh's renewed campaign in the south.[57]

text: In the first phase of the conflict with Tokhtamysh, Timur led an army of over 100,000 men north for more than 700 miles into the steppe. He then rode west about 1,000 miles advancing in a front more than 10 miles wide. During this advance, Timur's army got far enough north to be in a region of very long summer days causing complaints by his Muslim soldiers about keeping a long schedule of prayers. It was then that Tokhtamysh's army was boxed in against the east bank of the Volga River in the Orenburg region and destroyed at the Battle of the Kondurcha River, in 1391.

text: In the second phase of the conflict, Timur took a different route against the enemy by invading the realm of Tokhtamysh via the Caucasus region. In 1395, Timur defeated Tokhtamysh in the Battle of the Terek River, concluding the struggle between the two monarchs. Tokhtamysh was unable to restore his power or prestige, and he was killed about a decade later in the area of present-day Tyumen. During the course of Timur's campaigns, his army destroyed Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, and Astrakhan, subsequently disrupting the Golden Horde's Silk Road. The Golden Horde no longer held power after their losses to Timur.

text: Ismailis

text: In May 1393, Timur's army invaded the Anjudan, crippling the Ismaili village only a year after his assault on the Ismailis in Mazandaran. The village was prepared for the attack, evidenced by its fortress and system of underground tunnels. Undeterred, Timur's soldiers flooded the tunnels by cutting into a channel overhead. Timur's reasons for attacking this village are not yet well understood. However, it has been suggested that his religious persuasions and view of himself as an executor of divine will may have contributed to his motivations.[58] The Persian historian Khwandamir explains that an Ismaili presence was growing more politically powerful in Persian Iraq. A group of locals in the region was dissatisfied with this and, Khwandamir writes, these locals assembled and brought up their complaint with Timur, possibly provoking his attack on the Ismailis there.[58]

text: Campaign against the Tughlaq Dynasty

text:
In 1398, Timur invaded northern India, attacking the Delhi Sultanate ruled by Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq of the Tughlaq Dynasty. He was opposed by Ahirs and faced some reversals from the Jats, but the Sultanate at Delhi did nothing to stop him.[59][60]
After crossing the Indus river on 30 September 1398, he sacked Tulamba and massacred its inhabitants.[61] Then he advanced and captured Multan by October.[62]

text: Timur crossed the Indus River at Attock (now in Pakistan) on 24 September 1398. His invasion did not go unopposed and he encountered resistance from the Governor of Meerut during the march to Delhi. Timur was still able to continue his approach to Delhi, arriving in 1398, to fight the armies of Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, which had already been weakened by a succession struggle within the royal family.

text: Capture of Delhi (1398)

text: The battle took place on 17 December 1398. Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq and the army of Mallu Iqbal[63] had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks.[11]:267 As his Tatar forces were afraid of the elephants, Timur ordered his men to dig a trench in front of their positions. Timur then loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could carry. When the war elephants charged, Timur set the hay on fire and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the elephants howling in pain: Timur had understood that elephants were easily panicked. Faced with the strange spectacle of camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur capitalized on the subsequent disruption in the forces of Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, securing an easy victory. Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq fled with remnants of his forces. Delhi was sacked and left in ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed 100,000 captives.[16]

text: The capture of the Delhi Sultanate was one of Timur's greatest victories, arguably surpassing the likes of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan because of the harsh conditions of the journey and the achievement of taking down one of the richest cities at the time. After Delhi fell to Timur's army, uprisings by its citizens against the Turkic-Mongols began to occur, causing a retaliatory bloody massacre within the city walls. After three days of citizens uprising within Delhi, it was said that the city reeked of the decomposing bodies of its citizens with their heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds by Timur's soldiers. Timur's invasion and destruction of Delhi continued the chaos that was still consuming India, and the city would not be able to recover from the great loss it suffered for almost a century.[11]:269–274

text: Campaigns in the Levant

text: Before the end of 1399, Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt Nasir-ad-Din Faraj. Bayezid began annexing the territory of Turkmen and Muslim rulers in Anatolia. As Timur claimed sovereignty over the Turkmen rulers, they took refuge behind him.

text: In 1400, Timur invaded Christian Armenia and Georgia. Of the surviving population, more than 60,000 of the local people were captured as slaves, and many districts were depopulated.[64]

text: Then Timur turned his attention to Syria, sacking Aleppo[65][66] and Damascus.[67][68][69][70] The city's inhabitants were massacred, except for the artisans, who were deported to Samarkand. Timur cited the killing of Hasan ibn Ali by the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I and the killing of Husayn ibn Ali by Yazid I as the reason for his massacre of the inhabitants of Damascus.

text: Timur invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him. When they ran out of men to kill, many warriors killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and when they ran out of prisoners to kill, many resorted to beheading their own wives.[71]

text: In the meantime, years of insulting letters had passed between Timur and Bayezid. Finally, Timur invaded Anatolia and defeated Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on 20 July 1402. Bayezid was captured in battle and subsequently died in captivity, initiating the twelve-year Ottoman Interregnum period. Timur's stated motivation for attacking Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire was the restoration of Seljuq authority. Timur saw the Seljuks as the rightful rulers of Anatolia as they had been granted rule by Mongol conquerors, illustrating again Timur's interest with Genghizid legitimacy.

text: After the Ankara victory, Timur's army ravaged Western Anatolia, with Muslim writers complaining that the Timurid army acted more like a horde of savages than that of a civilized conqueror.[citation needed] But Timur did besiege and take the city of Smyrna, a stronghold of the Christian Knights Hospitalers, thus he referred to himself as ghazi or "Warrior of Islam". A mass beheading was carried out in Smyrna by Timur's soldiers.[72][73][74][75]

text: Timur was furious with the Genoese and Venetians, as their ships ferried the Ottoman army to safety in Thrace. As Lord Kinross reported in The Ottoman Centuries, the Italians preferred the enemy they could handle to the one they could not.

text: While Timur invaded Anatolia, Qara Yusuf assaulted Baghdad and captured it in 1402. Timur returned to Persia from Anatolia and sent his grandson Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah to reconquer Baghdad, which he proceeded to do. Timur then spent some time in Ardabil, where he gave Ali Safavi, leader of the Safaviyya, a number of captives. Subsequently, he marched to Khorasan and then to Samarkhand, where he spent nine months celebrating and preparing to invade Mongolia and China.[76]

text: He ruled over an empire that, in modern times, extends from southeastern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, through Central Asia encompassing part of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and even approached Kashgar in China. The conquests of Timur are claimed to have caused the deaths of up to 17 million people, an assertion impossible to verify.[77]

text: Of Timur's four sons, two (Jahangir and Umar Shaikh) predeceased him. His third son, Miran Shah, died soon after Timur, leaving the youngest son, Shah Rukh. Although his designated successor was his grandson Pir Muhammad b. Jahangir, Timur was ultimately succeeded in power by his son Shah Rukh. His most illustrious descendant Babur founded the Islamic Mughal Empire and ruled over most of Afghanistan and North India. Babur's descendants Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, expanded the Mughal Empire to most of the Indian subcontinent.

text: Markham, in his introduction to the narrative of Clavijo's embassy, states that, after Timur died, his body "was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried". His tomb, the Gur-e Amir, still stands in Samarkand, though it has been heavily restored in recent years.

text: Attempts to attack the Ming dynasty

text: By 1368, Han Chinese forces had driven the Mongols out of China. The first of the new Ming dynasty's emperors, the Hongwu Emperor, and his son, the Yongle Emperor, produced tributary states of many Central Asian countries. The suzerain-vassal relationship between Ming empire and Timurid existed for a long time. In 1394, Hongwu's ambassadors eventually presented Timur with a letter addressing him as a subject. He had the ambassadors Fu An, Guo Ji, and Liu Wei detained.[79] Neither Hongwu's next ambassador, Chen Dewen (1397), nor the delegation announcing the accession of the Yongle Emperor fared any better.[79]

text: Timur eventually planned to invade China. To this end Timur made an alliance with surviving Mongol tribes based in Mongolia and prepared all the way to Bukhara. Engke Khan sent his grandson Öljei Temür Khan, also known as "Buyanshir Khan" after he converted to Islam while at the court of Timur in Samarkand.[80]

text: Death

text: Timur preferred to fight his battles in the spring. However, he died en route during an uncharacteristic winter campaign. In December 1404, Timur began military campaigns against Ming China and detained a Ming envoy. He suffered illness while encamped on the farther side of the Syr Daria and died at Farab on February 17, 1405,[81] before ever reaching the Chinese border.[82] After his death the Ming envoys such as Fu An and the remaining entourage were released[79] by his grandson Khalil Sultan.

text: Timur was buried in Gur-i Amir, his mausoleum in Samarkand.

text: Succession

text: Just before his death, Timur designated his grandson Pir Muhammad ibn Jahangir as his successor. However, his other descendants did not abide by this wish, and spent the next fifteen years engaged in violent infighting. His son Shahrukh Mirza and grandson Khalil Sultan struggled for control until Shahrukh won.

text: Exchanges with Europe

text: Timur had numerous epistolary and diplomatic exchanges with various European states, especially Spain and France. Relations between the court of Henry III of Castile and that of Timur played an important part in medieval Castilian diplomacy. In 1402, the time of the Battle of Ankara, two Spanish ambassadors were already with Timur: Pelayo de Sotomayor and Fernando de Palazuelos. Later, Timur sent to the court of the Kingdom of León and Castile a Chagatai ambassador named Hajji Muhammad al-Qazi with letters and gifts.

text: In return, Henry III of Castile sent a famous embassy to Timur's court in Samarkand in 1403–06, led by Ruy González de Clavijo, with two other ambassadors, Alfonso Paez and Gomez de Salazar. On their return, Timur affirmed that he regarded the king of Castile "as his very own son".

text: According to Clavijo, Timur's good treatment of the Spanish delegation contrasted with the disdain shown by his host toward the envoys of the "lord of Cathay" (i.e., the Yongle Emperor), the Chinese ruler. Clavijo's visit to Samarkand allowed him to report to the European audience on the news from Cathay (China), which few Europeans had been able to visit directly in the century that had passed since the travels of Marco Polo.

text: The French archives preserve:

text:
A 30 July 1402 letter from Timur to Charles VI of France, suggesting that he send traders to Asia. It is written in Persian.[83]
A May 1403 letter. This is a Latin transcription of a letter from Timur to Charles VI, and another from Miran Shah, his son, to the Christian princes, announcing their victory over Bayezid I at Smyrna.[84]

text: A copy has been kept of the answer of Charles VI to Timur, dated 15 June 1403.[85]

text: Legacy

text: Timur's legacy is a mixed one. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. He was responsible for the effective destruction of the Nestorian Christian Church of the East in much of Asia. Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arabia, Iraq, Persia, and India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out. However, Ibn Khaldun praises Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other conquerors of the time could not.[86] The next great conqueror of the Middle East, Nader Shah, was greatly influenced by Timur and almost re-enacted Timur's conquests and battle strategies in his own campaigns. Like Timur, Nader Shah conquered most of Caucasia, Persia, and Central Asia along with also sacking Delhi.

text: Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiana, and in most of the territories that he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture (diwan), regardless of ethnicity.[87] In addition, during his reign, some contributions to Turkic literature were penned, with Turkic cultural influence expanding and flourishing as a result. A literary form of Chagatai Turkic came into use alongside Persian as both a cultural and an official language.[88]

text: Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle.[89]

text: Timur became a relatively popular figure in Europe for centuries after his death, mainly because of his victory over the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid. The Ottoman armies were at the time invading Eastern Europe and Timur was ironically seen as an ally.

text: Timur has now been officially recognized as a national hero in Uzbekistan. His monument in Tashkent now occupies the place where Karl Marx's statue once stood.

text: Muhammad Iqbal, a philosopher, poet and politician in British India who is widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement,[90][better source needed] composed a notable poem entitled Dream of Timur, the poem itself was inspired by a prayer of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II:[citation needed]

text: The Sharif of the Hijaz suffers due to the divisive sectarian schisms of his faith, And lo! that young Tatar (Timur) has boldly re-envisioned magnanimous victories of overwhelming conquest.

text: In 1794, Sake Dean Mahomed published his travel book, The Travels of Dean Mahomet. The book begins with the praise of Genghis Khan, Timur, and particularly the first Mughal emperor, Babur. He also gives important details on the then incumbent Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II.

text: Historical sources

text: The earliest known history of his reign was Nizam ad-Din Shami's Zafarnama, which was written during Timur's lifetime. Between 1424 and 1428, Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi wrote a second Zafarnama drawing heavily on Shami's earlier work. Ahmad ibn Arabshah wrote a much less favorable history in Arabic. Arabshah's history was translated into Latin by the Dutch Orientalist Jacobus Golius in 1636.

text: As Timurid-sponsored histories, the two Zafarnamas present a dramatically different picture from Arabshah's chronicle. William Jones remarked that the former presented Timur as a "liberal, benevolent and illustrious prince" while the latter painted him as "deformed and impious, of a low birth and detestable principles".[citation needed]

text: Malfuzat-i Timuri

text: The Malfuzat-i Timurī and the appended Tuzūk-i Tīmūrī, supposedly Timur's own autobiography, are almost certainly 17th-century fabrications.[16][91] The scholar Abu Taleb Hosayni presented the texts to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a distant descendant of Timur, in 1637–38, supposedly after discovering the Chagatai language originals in the library of a Yemeni ruler. Due to the distance between Yemen and Timur's base in Transoxiana and the lack of any other evidence of the originals, most historians consider the story highly implausible, and suspect Hosayni of inventing both the text and its origin story.[91]

text: European views

text: Timur arguably had a significant impact on the Renaissance culture and early modern Europe.[92] His achievements both fascinated and horrified Europeans from the fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century.

text: European views of Timur were mixed throughout the fifteenth century, with some European countries calling him an ally and others seeing him as a threat to Europe because of his rapid expansion and brutality.[93]:341

text: When Timur captured the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid at Ankara, he was often praised and seen as a trusted ally by European rulers, such as Charles VI of France and Henry IV of England, because they believed he was saving Christianity from the Turkish Empire in the Middle East. Those two kings also praised him because his victory at Ankara allowed Christian merchants to remain in the Middle East and allowed for their safe return home to both France and England. Timur was also praised because it was believed that he helped restore the right of passage for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.[93]:341–44

text: Other Europeans viewed Timur as a barbaric enemy who presented a threat to both European culture and the religion of Christianity. His rise to power moved many leaders, such as Henry III of Castile, to send embassies to Samarkand to scout out Timur, learn about his people, make alliances with him, and try to convince him to convert to Christianity in order to avoid war.[93]:348–49

text: In the introduction to a 1723 translation of Yazdi's Zafarnama, the translator wrote:[94]

text: [M. Petis de la Croix] tells us, that there are calumnies and impostures, which have been published by authors of romances, and Turkish writers who were his enemies, and envious at his glory: among whom is Ahmed Bin Arabschah...As Timur-Bec had conquered the Turks and Arabians of Syria, and had even taken the Sultan Bajazet prisoner, it is no wonder that he has been misrepresented by the historians of those nations, who, in despite of truth, and against the dignity of history, have fallen into great excesses on this subject.

text: Exhumation and alleged curse

text: Timur's body was exhumed from his tomb on 19 June 1941 and his remains examined by the Soviet anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov, Lev V. Oshanin and V. Ia. Zezenkova. It was determined that Timur was a tall and broad-chested man with strong cheek bones. At 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 meters), Timur was tall for his era. The examinations confirmed that Timur was lame and had a withered right arm due to his injuries. His right thighbone had knitted together with his kneecap, and the configuration of the knee joint suggests that he had kept his leg bent at all times and therefore would have had a pronounced limp.[95][96] Gerasimov reconstructed the likeness of Timur from his skull and found that Timur's facial characteristics displayed Mongoloid features with some Caucasoid admixture. Oshanin also concluded that Timur's cranium showed predominately the characteristics of a South Siberian Mongoloid type.[96]

text: It is alleged that Timur's tomb was inscribed with the words, "When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble." It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found, which read, "Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I."[97] In any case, three days after Gerasimov began the exhumation, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest military invasion of all time, upon the Soviet Union.[98] Timur was re-buried with full Islamic ritual in November 1942 just before the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad.[99]

text: In the arts

text:
Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II (English, 1563–1594): play by Christopher Marlowe
Tamerlane (1701): play by Nicholas Rowe (English)
Tamerlano (1724): opera by George Frideric Handel, in Italian, based on the 1675 play Tamerlan ou la mort de Bajazet by Jacques Pradon.
Bajazet (1735): opera by Antonio Vivaldi, portrays the capture of Bayezid I by Timur
Il gran Tamerlano (1772): opera by Josef Mysliveček that also portrays the capture of Bayezid I by Timur
Tamerlane: first published poem of Edgar Allan Poe (American, 1809–1849).
Timur is the deposed, blind former King of Tartary and father of the protagonist Calaf in the opera Turandot (1924) by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.
Tamerlane (1928): historical novel by Harold Lamb.
Timour appears in the story Lord of Samarkand by Robert E. Howard.
Tamerlan: novel by Colombian writer Enrique Serrano in Spanish[100]
Tamburlaine: Shadow of God: a BBC Radio 3 play by John Fletcher, broadcast 2008, is a fictitious account of an encounter between Tamburlaine, Ibn Khaldun, and Hafez.

text: Gallery

text:
Geometric courtyard surrounding the tomb showing the Iwan, and dome.

View of the Registan.

Timurid Mosque in Herat.

Goharshad Mosque, Timurid architecture

Green Mosque (Balkh) is a Timurid mosque that inspired Shah Jahan.

Bibi-Khanym Mosque

Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a prime example of Timurid architecture.

text: Consorts

text: Timur had forty-three consorts:

text:
Turmish Agha, mother of Jahangir Mirza, Jahanshah Mirza and Aka Begi;
Oljay Turkhan Agha (m. 1357/58), daughter of Amir Mashlah and granddaughter of Amir Qazaghan;
Saray Mulk Khanum (m. 1367), widow of Amir Husain, and daughter of Qazan Khan;
Islam Agha (m. 1367), widow of Amir Husain, and daughter of Amir Bayan Salduz;
Ulus Agha (m. 1367), widow of Amir Husain, and daughter of Amir Khizr Yasuri;
Dilshad Agha (m. 1374), daughter of Shams ed-Din and his wife Bujan Agha;
Touman Agha (m. 1377), daughter of Amir Musa and his wife Arzu Mulk Agha, daughter of Amir Bayezid Jalayir;
Chulpan Mulk Agha, daughter of Haji Beg of Jetah;
Tukal Khanum (m. 1395), daughter of Mongol Khan Khizr Khawaja Oglan;
Tolun Agha, concubine, and mother of Umar Shaikh Mirza I;
Mengli Agha, concubine, and mother of Miran Shah ibn Timur;
Toghay Turkhan Agha, lady from the Kara Khitai, widow of Amir Husain, and mother of Shahrukh Mirza ibn Timur;
Tughdi Bey Agha, daughter of Aq Sufi Qongirat;
Sultan Aray Agha, a Nukuz lady;
Malikanshah Agha, a Filuni lady;
Khand Malik Agha, mother of Ibrahim Mirza;
Sultan Agha, mother of a son who died in infancy;

text:
His other wives and concubines included:
Dawlat Tarkan Agha, Burhan Agha, Jani Beg Agha, Tini Beg Agha, Durr Sultan Agha, Munduz Agha, Bakht Sultan Agha, Nowruz Agha, Jahan Bakht Agha, Nigar Agha, Ruhparwar Agha, Dil Beg Agha, Dilshad Agha, Murad Beg Agha, Piruzbakht Agha, Khoshkeldi Agha, Dilkhosh Agha, Barat Bey Agha, Sevinch Malik Agha, Arzu Bey Agha, Yadgar Sultan Agha, Khudadad Agha, Bakht Nigar Agha, Qutlu Bey Agha, and another Nigar Agha.

text: Descendants of Timur

text: Sons of Timur

text:
Jahangir Mirza ibn Timur – with Turmish Agha;
Umar Shaikh Mirza I – with Tolun Agha;
Miran Shah ibn Timur – with Mengli Agha;
Shahrukh Mirza ibn Timur – with Toghay Turkhan Agha.

text: Daughters of Timur

text:
Aka Begi, married to Mohammad Bey, son of Amir Musa – with Turmish Agha;
unknown, married to Solyman Mirza – mother unknown;
unknown, married to Cumaleza Mirza – mother unknown;
Sultan Bakht Begum, married firstly Mohammed Mireke, married secondly, 1389/90, Soliman Shah – with Oljay Turkhan Agha.

text: Sons of Jahangir

text:
Muhammad Sultan bin Jahangir Mirza
Pir Muhammad bin Jahangir Mirza

text: Sons of Umar Shaikh Mirza I

text:
Pir Muhammad ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Iskandar ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Rustam ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Bayqarah ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Mansur ibn Bayqarah
Husayn ibn Mansur bin Bayqarah
Badi' al-Zaman
Muhammed Mu'min
Muzaffar Hussein
Ibrahim Hussein

text: Sons of Miran Shah

text:
Khalil Sultan ibn Miran Shah
Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah
Muhammad ibn Miran Shah
Abu Sa'id Mirza
Umar Shaikh Mirza II
Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur
the Mughals
Jahangir Mirza II

text: Sons of Shahrukh Mirza

text:
Mirza Muhammad Taraghay – better known as Ulugh Beg
Abdul-Latif
Ghiyath-al-Din Baysonqor
Ala-ud-Daulah Mirza ibn Baysonqor
Ibrahim Mirza
Sultan Muhammad ibn Baysonqor
Yadigar Muhammad
Mirza Abul-Qasim Babur ibn Baysonqor
Sultan Ibrahim Mirza
Abdullah Mirza
Mirza Soyurghatmïsh Khan
Mirza Mohammed Juki


document_title: Gandhi–Irwin Pact

question_text: who announced a vague after a dominian status for india in 1929

root

text: Gandhi–Irwin Pact

text: This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

tag: table

text: The Gandhi Irwin Pact was a political agreement signed by Mahatma Gandhi and the then Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin on 5 March 1931 before the second Round Table Conference in London.[1] Before this, the viceroy Lord Irwin announced in October 1929, a vague offer of 'dominion status' for India in an unspecified future and a Round Table Conference to discuss a future constitution.[2]The second round table conference which was held in 1931.

tag: p

text: "The Two Mahatmas"—as Sarojini Naidu described Gandhi and Irwin—had eight meetings that totaled 24 hours. Gandhi was impressed by Irwin’s sincerity. The terms of the "Gandhi-Irwin Pact" fell manifestly short of those Gandhi prescribed as the minimum for a truce.[3]

text: Below are the proposed conditions:-

text:
Discontinuation of the Civil disobedience movement by the Indian National Congress
Participation by the Indian National Congress in the Second Round Table Conference
Withdrawal of all ordinances issued by the British Government imposing curbs on the activities of the Indian National Congress
Withdrawal of all prosecutions relating to several types of offenses except those involving violence
Release of prisoners arrested for participating in the Civil disobedience movement.
Removal of the tax on salt, which allowed the Indians to produce, trade, and sell salt legally and for their own private use

tag: ul

text: Many British officials in India, and in England, were outraged by the idea of a pact with a party whose avowed purpose was the destruction of the British Raj. Winston Churchill publicly expressed his disgust "...at the nauseating and humiliating spectacle of this one-time Inner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceroy’s palace, there to negotiate and parley on equal terms with the representative of the King Emperor."

text: In reply, the British Government agreed to:-

text:
Withdraw all ordinances and end prosecutions
Release all political prisoners, except those guilty of violence
Permit peaceful picketing of liquor and foreign cloth shops
Restore confiscated properties of the satyagrahis
Permit free collection or manufacture of salt by persons near the sea-coast
Lift the ban over the congress.

tag: ol

text: The Viceroy, Lord Irwin, was at this time directing the sternest repression Indian nationalism had known, but did not relish the role. The British civil service and the commercial community favoured even harsher measures. But Premier Ramsay MacDonald and Secretary of State for India William Benn were eager for peace, if they could secure it without weakening the position of the Labour Government. They wanted to make a success of the Round Table Conference and knew that this body, without the presence of Gandhi and the Congress, could not carry much weight. In January 1931, at the closing session of the Round Table Conference, Ramsay MacDonald went so far as to express the hope that the Congress would be represented at the next session. The Viceroy took the hint and promptly ordered the unconditional release of Gandhi and all members of the Congress Working Committee. To this gesture Gandhi responded by agreeing to meet the Viceroy.

text: Gandhi’s motives in concluding a pact with the Viceroy can be best understood in terms of his technique. The Satyagraha movements were commonly described as "struggles", "rebellions" and "wars without violence". Owing, however, to the common connotation of these words, they seemed to lay a disproportionate emphasis on the negative aspect of the movements, namely, opposition and conflict. The object of Satyagraha was, however, not to achieve the physical elimination or moral breakdown of an adversary—but, through suffering at his hands, to initiate a psychological processes that could make it possible for minds and hearts to meet. In such a struggle, a compromise with an opponent was neither heresy nor treason, but a natural and necessary step. If it turned out that the compromise was premature and the adversary was unrepentant, nothing prevented the Satyagrahi from returning to non-violent battle.

text: This was the second high-level meeting between Gandhi and Viceroy in 13 years and should be read in the context of Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms that were the basis of the Government of India Act, 1919.


document_title: Along Came a Spider (film)

question_text: who is the killer in along came a spider

text: Along Came a Spider (film)

text: Plot summary[edit]

text: After Washington, D.C. detective, forensic psychologist and author Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) loses control of a sting operation, resulting in the death of his partner, he opts to retire from the force. He finds himself drawn back to police work when Megan Rose (Mika Boorem), the daughter of a United States senator, is kidnapped from her exclusive private school by computer science teacher Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott). US Secret Service Special Agent Jezzie Flannigan (Monica Potter), held responsible for the breach in security, joins forces with Cross to find the missing girl.

text: Soneji contacts Cross by phone and alerts him to the fact one of Megan's sneakers is in the detective's mailbox, proving Soneji is the kidnapper. Cross deduces the man is obsessed with the 1932 Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. kidnapping and hopes to become as infamous as Bruno Hauptmann by committing a new "Crime of the Century" which might be discussed by Cross in one of his true crime books. Megan's kidnapping proves to be only part of Soneji's real plan: to kidnap Dimitri Starodubov (Anton Yelchin), the son of the Russian president, guaranteeing himself greater infamy.

text: After Cross and Flannigan foil his second kidnapping plot, a supposed call from the kidnapper demands Cross deliver a ransom of $10 million in diamonds by following an intricate maze of calls made to public phone booths scattered throughout the city. Cross ultimately tosses the gems out the window of a rapidly moving Metro train to a figure standing by the tracks. Soneji later arrives at Flannigan's home and confronts Cross after disabling Flannigan with a taser, the detective realizes the kidnapper is unaware of the ransom demand and delivery. Soneji tries to leave with Flannigan, but Cross kills him.

text: Cross becomes suspicious and realizes someone discovered Soneji long before his plot came to fruition. After searching Flannigan's personal computer, he finds enough evidence to prove Flannigan and her fellow Secret Service agent Ben Devine (Billy Burke) used Soneji as a pawn in their own plot. He tracks them down to a secluded farmhouse where Flannigan has murdered Devine and is now intent on eliminating Megan Rose. Cross saves Megan and shoots Flannigan in the heart, killing her. Afterwards, Cross takes Megan back to her parents.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross
Monica Potter as Jezzie Flannigan
Michael Wincott as Gary Soneji/The Spider
Dylan Baker as Ollie McArthur
Mika Boorem as Megan Rose
Billy Burke as Ben Devine
Anton Yelchin as Dimitri Starodubov
Jay O. Sanders as Kyle Craig
Michael Moriarty as Senator Hank Rose
Penelope Ann Miller as Elizabeth Rose
Anna Maria Horsford as Vickie

text: Production[edit]

text: Writing[edit]

text: One of the primary elements of the book screenwriter Marc Moss eliminated from his script was the fact that Soneji is actually a mild-mannered suburban husband and father suffering from dissociative identity disorder resulting from having been abused as a child. After a lengthy trial for kidnapping and several murders not included in the film, he is found guilty but remanded to a mental institution to serve his sentence. Also missing from the film is a romantic relationship shared by Cross and Jezzie, her trial and eventual execution by lethal injection, and the discovery of Megan (Maggie as she is known in the book), hidden away with a native Bolivian family near the Andes Mountains, two years after her kidnapping.

text: A few other minor differences from the original book include: Dimitri (Michael "Shrimpie" Goldberg as referred to in the book) being kidnapped at the same time as Megan (Maggie); Megan's (Maggie's) mother was the more famous of her parents, being a popular actress; when the children are kidnapped they are sprayed with chloroform spray.

text: Reception[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: Box office receipts totaled US$105,178,561, of which $74,078,174 was from the United States having earned US$16,712,407 in its opening weekend at 2,530 theaters.[3]

text: Critical reception[edit]

text: The film received mixed to negative reviews and has a "rotten" rating of 32% on Rotten Tomatoes.[4]

text: Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called the film an "overplotted, hollow thriller, which crams in so much exposition that characters speak in fetid hunks for what seems like minutes at a time ... But Spider couldn't be better served than it is by Mr. Freeman, whose prickly smarts and silken impatience bring believability to a classless, underdeveloped thriller ... Still, he is wasted in this impersonal, almost inept thriller."[5]

text: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a mixed 2 stars out of a possible 4. He wrote: "A few loopholes I can forgive. But when a plot is riddled with them, crippled by them, made implausible by them, as in Along Came a Spider, I get distracted. I'm wondering, since Dr. Alex Cross is so brilliant, how come he doesn't notice yawning logical holes in the very fabric of the story he's occupying? ... The film contains two kinds of loopholes: (1) Those that emerge when you think back on the plot, and (2) Those that seem like loopholes at the time, and then are explained by later developments that may contain loopholes of their own ... There are places in this movie you just can't get to from other places in this movie."[6] Nonetheless, Ebert thought that Freeman's performance made Cross an intriguing character, even when the plot was verging on the nonsensical.

text: Robert Koehler of Variety felt "the very characteristics that have made Cross so appealing, particularly his mind-tickling abilities to assess and outmaneuver his criminal opponents, are reduced here to the most fundamental and predictable level ... As reliable as any actor in Hollywood, Freeman delivers the requisite gravitas, but the bland script curtails any personal touches he might have inserted were his sleuth character unraveling a truly vexing mystery."[7]

text: However, critic Harvey O'Brian weighed in with the sentiment that "Unlike, for example, the overblown kidnap movie Ransom, Along Came a Spider plays down its sensational elements. It favours the procedural aspects of Cross' investigation which, though infected with the usual 'Eureka' factor of brilliant discoveries by the leading man at regular intervals just when it looked like he was stumped, are largely delivered with sincerity. Freeman has such a strong grip on this kind of determined, middle aged, everyman character by now that he can easily take the audience along for the ride. The film itself is otherwise sincere in general, with no real attempt at smarmy black humour or winks to the audience. It draws you in to a (relatively) realistic depiction of a tense situation in which people behave less like action heroes and more like human beings."[8]

text: Compuserve's Harvey Karten argued, "Some critics will tell you that despite Lee Tamahori's overplotting of Marc Moss's adaptation of James Patterson's novel, Along Came a Spider is one of those thrillers that allow you to check your brains at the door. Not true. Did the journalists all go for popcorn when Detective Alex Cross and Special Agent Jezzie Flannigan (nice spelling) engaged first in a discussion of psychology and then of philosophy? This may have been Phil 101, but imagine the interest that must have been aroused in the audience with a product placement for university education. Says Cross in discussing what makes us choose our careers: 'You do what you are.' 'Not so,' replies Jezzie, every hair in place, not one gram of makeup disturbed, despite the excitement of the discussion... 'You are what you do.'"[9]

text: Awards and nominations[edit]

text: Jerry Goldsmith won the BMI Film & TV Award for his original score, and Morgan Freeman was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture but lost to Denzel Washington for Training Day.

text: Series reboot[edit]

text: There were no further sequels, but the character of Alex Cross was rebooted with a 2012 film adaptation of the novel Cross under the title Alex Cross starring Tyler Perry in the titular role.


document_title: Hunter-gatherer

question_text: in what ways did hunting and gathering shape the dynamics of early human communities

text: Hunter-gatherer

text: Archaeological evidence[edit]

text:
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text: In the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that early humans were obtaining food via scavenging, not hunting.[4] Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands, which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view, they used carcasses of such animals that had either been killed by predators or that had died of natural causes.[5] Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover.[6]

text: According to the endurance running hypothesis, long-distance running as in persistence hunting, a method still practiced by some hunter-gatherer groups in modern times, was likely the driving evolutionary force leading to the evolution of certain human characteristics. This hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis: both subsistence strategies could have been in use – sequentially, alternating or even simultaneously.

text: Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus, and from its appearance some 0.2 million years ago by Homo sapiens. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution.

text: Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers bands began to specialize, concentrating on hunting a smaller selection of (often larger) game and gathering a smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools such as; fishing nets, hooks, and bone harpoons.[7] The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated and spread in several different areas including the Middle East, Asia, Mesoamerica, and the Andes beginning as early as 12,000 years ago.

text: Forest gardening was also being used as a food production system in various parts of the world over this period. Forest gardens originated in prehistoric times along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon regions.[citation needed] In the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected and improved, whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually superior introduced species were selected and incorporated into the gardens.[8]

text: Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in the developing world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were formerly available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America, for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by the end of the Pleistocene—according to Diamond, because of overexploitation by humans,[9] one of several explanations offered for the Quaternary extinction event there.

text: As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to the development of the first forms of government in agricultural centers, such as the Fertile Crescent, Ancient India, Ancient China, Olmec, Sub-Saharan Africa and Norte Chico.

text: As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas unsuitable for agricultural use.

text: Archaeologists can use evidence such as stone tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities, including mobility.[10]

text: Common characteristics[edit]

text: Habitat and population[edit]

text: Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available.

text: Some hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, lived in particularly rich environments that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary.

text: Social and economic structure[edit]

text: Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting the Northwest Coast of North America) are an exception to this rule. Nearly all African hunter-gatherers are egalitarian, with women roughly as influential and powerful as men.[11] Karl Marx defined this socio-economic system as primitive communism.[12]

text: The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers is never total, but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male. So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by palaeoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the evolutionary emergence of human consciousness, language, kinship and social organization.[13][14][15]

text: Anthropologists maintain that hunter/gatherers don't have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed.[16][17][18] In addition to social and economic equality in hunter-gatherer societies, there is often, though not always, sexual parity as well.[16] Hunter-gatherers are often grouped together based on kinship and band (or tribe) membership.[19] Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers tends to be matrilocal, at least initially.[20] Young mothers can enjoy childcare support from their own mothers, who continue living nearby in the same camp.[21] The systems of kinship and descent among human hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible, although there is evidence that early human kinship in general tended to be matrilineal.[22]

text: One common arrangement is the sexual division of labour, with women doing most of the gathering, while men concentrate on big game hunting. In all hunter-gatherer societies, women appreciate the meat brought back to camp by men. An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women Like Meat'.[23] Recent archaeological research suggests that the sexual division of labor was the fundamental organisational innovation that gave Homo sapiens the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread across the globe.[24]

text: To this day, most hunter-gatherers have a symbolically structured sexual division of labour.[25] However, it is true that in a small minority of cases, women hunt the same kind of quarry as men, sometimes doing so alongside men. The best-known example are the Aeta people of the Philippines. According to one study, "About 85% of Philippine Aeta women hunt, and they hunt the same quarry as men. Aeta women hunt in groups and with dogs, and have a 31% success rate as opposed to 17% for men. Their rates are even better when they combine forces with men: mixed hunting groups have a full 41% success rate among the Aeta."[17][failed verification] Among the Ju'/hoansi people of Namibia, women help men track down quarry.[26] Women in the Australian Martu also primarily hunt small animals like lizards to feed their children and maintain relations with other women.[27]

text: At the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference, anthropologists Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore suggested that egalitarianism was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population. Therefore, no surplus of resources can be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were flux in territorial boundaries as well as in demographic composition.

text: At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented a paper entitled, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers lives as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense.[28] Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin's view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day, where as people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day.[29]

text: Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around 57% of hunter-gatherers reach the age of 15. Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37 years.[30] They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases.

text: Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (i.e., meat gained from hunting) are important in the economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies.[19] Therefore, these societies can be described as based on a "gift economy."

text: Variability[edit]

text: Hunter-gatherer societies manifest significant variability, depending on climate zone/life zone, available technology, and societal structure. Archaeologists examine hunter-gatherer tool kits to measure variability across different groups. Collard et al. (2005) found temperature to be the only statistically significant factor to impact hunter-gatherer tool kits.[31] Using temperature as a proxy for risk, Collard et al.'s results suggest that environments with extreme temperatures pose a threat to hunter-gatherer systems significant enough to warrant increased variability of tools. These results support Torrence's (1989) theory that risk of failure is indeed the most important factor in determining the structure of hunter-gatherer toolkits.[32]

text: One way to divide hunter-gatherer groups is by their return systems. James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarian and "delayed return" for nonegalitarian. Immediate return foragers consume their food within a day or two after they procure it. Delayed return foragers store the surplus food (Kelly,[33] 31).

text: Hunting-gathering was the common human mode of subsistence throughout the Paleolithic, but the observation of current-day hunters and gatherers does not necessarily reflect Paleolithic societies; the hunter-gatherer cultures examined today have had much contact with modern civilization and do not represent "pristine" conditions found in uncontacted peoples.[34]

text: The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is not necessarily a one way process. It has been argued that hunting and gathering represents an adaptive strategy, which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists.[35] In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in the last 10,000 years.[36] This anthropological view has remained unchanged since the 1960s.[clarification needed][citation needed]

text: Nowadays, some scholars speak about the existence within cultural evolution of the so-called mixed-economies or dual economies which imply a combination of food procurement (gathering and hunting) and food production or when foragers have trade relations with farmers.[37]

text: Modern and revisionist perspectives[edit]

text: In the early 1980s, a small but vocal segment of anthropologists and archaeologists attempted to demonstrate that contemporary groups usually identified as hunter-gatherers do not, in most cases, have a continuous history of hunting and gathering, and that in many cases their ancestors were agriculturalists or pastoralists[citation needed] who were pushed into marginal areas as a result of migrations, economic exploitation, or violent conflict (see, for example, the Kalahari Debate). The result of their effort has been the general acknowledgement that there has been complex interaction between hunter-gatherers and non-hunter-gatherers for millennia.[citation needed]

text: Some of the theorists who advocate this "revisionist" critique imply that, because the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not long after colonial (or even agricultural) contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of modern ones (Kelly,[38] 24-29; see Wilmsen[39])

text: Lee and Guenther have rejected most of the arguments put forward by Wilmsen.[40][41][42] Doron Shultziner and others have argued that we can learn a lot about the life-styles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers—especially their impressive levels of egalitarianism.[43]

text: Many hunter-gatherers consciously manipulate the landscape through cutting or burning undesirable plants while encouraging desirable ones, some even going to the extent of slash-and-burn to create habitat for game animals. These activities are on an entirely different scale to those associated with agriculture, but they are nevertheless domestication on some level. Today, almost all hunter-gatherers depend to some extent upon domesticated food sources either produced part-time or traded for products acquired in the wild.

text: Some agriculturalists also regularly hunt and gather (e.g., farming during the frost-free season and hunting during the winter). Still others in developed countries go hunting, primarily for leisure. In the Brazilian rainforest, those groups that recently did, or even continue to, rely on hunting and gathering techniques seem to have adopted this lifestyle, abandoning most agriculture, as a way to escape colonial control and as a result of the introduction of European diseases reducing their populations to levels where agriculture became difficult.[citation needed][dubious – discuss]

text: There are nevertheless a number of contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact with other societies, continue their ways of life with very little external influence or with modifications that perpetuate the viability of hunting and gathering in the 21st century.[2] One such group is the Pila Nguru (Spinifex people) of Western Australia, whose habitat in the Great Victoria Desert has proved unsuitable for European agriculture (and even pastoralism).[citation needed] Another are the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, who live on North Sentinel Island and to date have maintained their independent existence, repelling attempts to engage with and contact them.[citation needed] The Savanna Pumé of Venezuela also live in an area that is inhospitable to large scale economic exploitation and maintain their subsistence based on hunting and gathering, as well as incorporating a small amount of manioc horticulture that supplements, but is not replacing, reliance on foraged foods.[45]

text: Americas[edit]

text: Evidence suggests big-game hunter gatherers crossed the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into North America over a land bridge (Beringia), that existed between 47,000–14,000 years ago.[46] Around 18,500–15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets.[47] Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America.[48][49]

text: Hunter-gatherers would eventually flourish all over the Americas, primarily based in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, with offshoots as far east as the Gaspé Peninsula on the Atlantic coast, and as far south as Chile, Monte Verde.[citation needed] American hunter-gatherers were spread over a wide geographical area, thus there were regional variations in lifestyles. However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production, making knapping styles and progress identifiable. This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction tool adaptations have been found across the Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 25 to 50 members of an extended family.[50]

text: The Archaic period in the Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna.[51] The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers; but now individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally, thus with the passage of time there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization like, the Southwest, Arctic, Poverty, Dalton and Plano traditions. These regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish, seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant foods.[52][53]


document_title: Webb (surname)

question_text: where does the last name webb come from

question_tokens: where does the last name webb come from

text: Webb (surname)

text:
Webb

Origin

Region of origin
England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland

Meaning
Weaver

Other names

Variant(s)
Weaver, Webbe, Webster, Webber

text: Webb is an English and Scottish surname meaning weaver of cloth. Notable people with the surname include:

text:
Alan Webb (disambiguation), several people
Alexander Russell Webb (1846–1916), American writer and publisher, converted to Islam
Alexander S. Webb (1835–1911), United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War
Alison Webb (born 1961), Canadian judoka
Aston Webb (1849–1930), British architect
Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), British reformer; wife of Sidney Webb
Ben Webb (born 1981), English professional wrestler better known as Trent Seven
Benjamin Joseph Webb (1814–1897), Catholic editor, state senator for Kentucky, and historian
Billy Webb, alias of Greg Johnston, member of Goldie Lookin Chain
Bradie Webb, drummer in Short Stack
Brandon Webb (born 1979), baseball player
Carl Webb (born 1981), Australian rugby league player
Catherine Webb (born 1986), English author
Catherine Webb (co-operative activist) (1859–1947)
Charles Webb (disambiguation), several people
Charley Webb (born 1988), English actress
Chick Webb (1909–1939), US jazz musician
Chloe Webb (born 1960), US actor
Clifton Webb (1889–1966), US actor
Daniel Webb (disambiguation), several people
David Webb (disambiguation), several people
Del Webb (1899–1974), American real estate developer
Derek Webb (born 1974), American singer-songwriter
Donald Webb (disambiguation), several people
Donald Eugene Webb (born 1931), fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list
Douglas Webb (1922–1996), Dambuster and British photographer
Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888–1960), U.S. art collector, founded the Shelburne Museum
Francis Webb (disambiguation), several people
Gary Webb (disambiguation), several people
George Webb (disambiguation), several people
George James Webb (1803–1887), British-American composer
Graham Webb (1944–2017), English racing cyclist
H. Walter Webb (1856–1900) U.S. railway executive
Haley Webb (born 1985), American actress and filmmaker
Harry Rodger Webb, name changed to Cliff Richard
Henry Webb (disambiguation), several people
Howard Webb (born 1971), English football referee
Ian Webb, current Editor-in-Chief of the Real Geeks
J. Griswold Webb (1890–1934), New York politician
Jack Webb (1920–1982), US actor, most famous for his role as a detective in the television series Dragnet
James Webb (disambiguation), several people named James, Jim and Jimmy
Jim Webb, American politician
Jimmy Webb, American songwriter, composer, and singer
John Webb (disambiguation)
Julian Webb (1911-2002), American politician and judge in the state of Georgia
Karrie Webb (born 1974), Australian golfer
Kate Webb (1943–2007), Australian journalist
Katharine Webb (disambiguation), several people named Catherine, Kathy, Cathy, Katie, Kate, Kathryn etc.
Katherine Webb (born 1989), American model, Miss Alabama 2012
Kathy Webb, Arkansas politician
Keith Houghton-Webb (born 1959), Australian TV co-host; brother of Mike Webb (pastor)
Lara Honos-Webb, American psychologist and author
Leland Justin Webb (1846-1893), American politician and lawyer
Leonard Webb (born 1921), World War II veteran
Lizzie Webb, British exercise television show host
Lorna Webb (born 1983), English professional cyclist
Lucy Webb Hayes (1831–1889), First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband Rutherford B. Hayes
Marilynn Webb (born 1937), New Zealand artist
Mark Webb (disambiguation), multiple people
Marti Webb (born 1944), English musical actress
Mary Webb (1881–1927), English romantic novelist
Matthew Webb (1848–1883), first person to swim the English Channel without the use of artificial aids
Max Webb (born 1917), Polish-born American Holocaust survivor, real estate developer in Southern California
Maynard Webb (born 1955), CEO of LiveOps, former COO of eBay
Michael Webb (disambiguation), several people named Michael or Mike
Morgan Webb (born 1978), US television host
Neil Webb (born 1963), British footballer, Nottingham Forest and England international
Nick Webb (disambiguation), several people
Paddy Webb (1884–1950), New Zealand unionist and politician
Paul Webb, MD, developer of the Space activity suit
Philip Barker Webb (1793–1854), English botanist
Philip Carteret Webb (1702–1770), English barrister, involved with the 18th-century antiquarian movement
Philip Webb (1831–1915), British "Father of Arts and Crafts Architecture"
Phyllis Webb (born 1927), Canadian poet
Ralph Webb (1887–1945), mayor of Winnipeg
Rhys 'Spider' Webb (born 1983), musician with the Horrors
Richard Webb (disambiguation), several people
Rita Webb (1904–1981), English actress
Robert Webb (disambiguation), several people
Robin Webb, runs the Animal Liberation Press Office in the UK
Russell Webb (musician) (born 1958), Scottish
Russell Webb (water polo) (born 1945), American water polo player
Sam Webb, Chair of the Communist Party USA
Sarah Webb (born 1977), British Olympic sailor
Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield (1859–1947), British reformer; husband of Beatrice Webb
Simon Webb (disambiguation), several people
Skeeter Webb (James Laverne Webb, 1909–1986), Major League Baseball player
Suhaib Webb, American imam
Spud Webb (Anthony Jerome Webb, born 1963), National Basketball Association basketball player
Stephen H. Webb (1961–2016), American theologian and philosopher
Steve Webb (born 1965), United Kingdom politician
Tamilee Webb (born 1960), US personal fitness personality
Timothy James Webb (born 1967), Australian artist
Thomas William Webb (1807–1885), British astronomer
Travis Webb ("Spider" Webb, 1910–1990), US Formula One driver
Vanessa Webb (born 1976), Canadian tennis player
Watt W. Webb
Wellington Webb (born 1941), US politician
William Webb (disambiguation), several people
W. Roger Webb, (born 1941), American university president

text: Distribution[edit]

text: As a surname Webb is the 141st most common surname in Great Britain with 54,036 bearers. It is most common in Essex, where it is the 73rd most common surname with 4,877 bearers. Other concentrations include South Ayrshire, (15th,1,751), Gwynedd, (17th,1,737), Wiltshire, (22nd,3,371), Belfast, (34th,3,299), City of Bradford, (43rd,1,703), Hampshire, (82nd,3,387), East Riding of Yorkshire, (90th,1,783), Tyne & Wear, (218th,1,811), Cheshire, (280th,1,717), Kent, (428th,1,695), Greater London (697th,1,811).

text: This page lists people with the surname Webb. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.

text: Surnames

text: All set index articles


document_title: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

question_text: who played the boy in chitty chitty bang bang

text: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

text: Plot[edit]

text: Set in the 1910s, the story opens with a montage of European Grand Prix races in which one particular car appears to win every race. In the final race, the car crashes and catches fire, ending its racing career. The car ends up in an old garage in rural England, where two children, Jeremy (Adrian Hall) and Jemima Potts (Heather Ripley), have grown fond of it. However, a man in the junkyard intends to buy the car from the garage owner, Mr. Coggins (Desmond Llewelyn), for scrap. The children, who live with their widowed father Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke), an eccentric inventor, and the family's equally peculiar grandfather, implore their father to buy the car, but Caractacus can't afford it. While playing hooky from school, they meet Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes), a beautiful upper-class woman with her own motorcar, who brings them home to report their truancy to their father. After she leaves, Caractacus promises the children that he will save the car, but is taken aback at the cost he has committed himself to. He looks for ways to raise money to avoid letting them down.

text: The next morning, Caractacus discovers that the sweets produced by a machine he has invented can be played like a flute. He tries to sell the "Toot Sweets" to Truly's father, Lord Scrumptious (James Robertson Justice), a major confectionery manufacturer. He is almost successful until the whistle attracts a pack of dogs who overrun the factory, resulting in Caractacus's proposition being rejected.

text: Caractacus next takes his automatic hair-cutting machine to a carnival to raise money, but his invention accidentally ruins the hair of a customer. Caractacus eludes the man by joining a song-and-dance act. He becomes the centre of the show and earns enough in tips to buy the car and rebuild it. They name the car "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" for the unusual noise of its engine. In the first trip in the car, Caractacus, the children, and Truly picnic on the beach. Caractacus tells them a tale about nasty Baron Bomburst (Gert Fröbe), the tyrant of fictional Vulgaria, who wants to steal Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

text: As Caractacus tells his story, the quartet and the car are stranded by high tide and are attacked by pirates working for the Baron. All of a sudden, Chitty deploys huge flotation devices and transforms into a power boat, and they escape Bomburst's yacht and return to shore. The Baron sends two spies to capture the car, but they capture Lord Scrumptious, then Grandpa Potts (Lionel Jeffries), mistaking each for the car's creator. Caractacus, Truly, and the children see Grandpa being taken away by airship, and they give chase. When they accidentally drive off a cliff, Chitty sprouts wings and propellers and begins to fly. They follow the airship to Vulgaria and find a land without children; the Baroness Bomburst (Anna Quayle) abhors them and imprisons any she finds. Grandpa has been ordered by the Baron to make another floating car, and he bluffs his abilities to avoid being executed. The Potts' party is hidden by the local Toymaker (Benny Hill), who now works only for the childish Baron. Chitty is discovered and taken to the castle. While Caractacus and the toymaker search for Grandpa and Truly searches for food, the children are caught by the Baron's Child Catcher (Robert Helpmann).

text: The Toymaker takes Truly and Caractacus to a grotto beneath the castle where the townspeople have been hiding their children. They concoct a scheme to free the children and the village from the Baron. The Toymaker sneaks them into the castle disguised as life-size dolls for the Baron's birthday. Caractacus snares the Baron, and the children swarm into the banquet hall, overcoming the Baron's palace guards and guests. In the ensuing chaos, the Baron, Baroness, and the evil Child Catcher are captured. The Pottses and Truly fly back to England. When they arrive home, Lord Scrumptious surprises Caractacus with an offer to buy the Toot Sweet as a canine confection. Caratacus, realising that he will be rich, rushes to tell Truly the news. They kiss, and Truly agrees to marry him. As they drive home, he acknowledges the importance of pragmatism, as the car takes off into the air again.

text: Cast[edit]

text: The cast includes:[5]

text:
Dick Van Dyke as Caractacus Potts
Sally Ann Howes as Truly Scrumptious
Adrian Hall as Jeremy Potts
Heather Ripley as Jemima Potts
Lionel Jeffries as Grandpa Bungie Potts
Gert Fröbe as Baron Bomburst
Anna Quayle as Baroness Bomburst
Benny Hill as the Toymaker
James Robertson Justice as Lord Scrumptious
Robert Helpmann as the Evil Child Catcher
Barbara Windsor as Blonde
Davy Kaye as Admiral
Stanley Unwin as the Chancellor
Peter Arne as the Captain of Bomburst's Army
Desmond Llewelyn as Mr. Coggins
Victor Maddern as Junkman
Arthur Mullard as Big Man
Max Wall as Inventor
Gerald Campion as Minister
Max Bacon as Orchestra Leader
Alexander Doré as First Spy
Bernard Spear as Second Spy
Richard Wattis as Sweet Factory Secretary (uncredited)
Phil Collins as Vulgarian Child (scene cut)

text: The part of Truly Scrumptious had originally been offered to Julie Andrews, to reunite her with Van Dyke after their success in Mary Poppins. Andrews rejected the role specifically because she considered that the part was too close to the Poppins mould.[6] Instead, Sally Ann Howes was given the role. Dick Van Dyke was cast after he turned down the role of Fagin from another 1968 musical Oliver! (which ended up going to Ron Moody).

text: Production[edit]

text: The Caractacus Potts inventions in the film were created by Rowland Emett; by 1976, Time magazine, describing Emett's work, said no term other than "Fantasticator...could remotely convey the diverse genius of the perky, pink-cheeked Englishman whose pixilations, in cartoon, watercolor and clanking 3-D reality, range from the celebrated Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway to the demented thingamabobs that made the 1968 movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang a minuscule classic."[7]

text: Six Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang cars were created for the film, only one of which was fully functional. At a 1973 auction in Florida, one of them sold for $37,000, equal to $199,617 today.[8] The original "hero" car, in a condition described as fully functional and road-going, was offered at auction on 15 May 2011 by a California-based auction house.[9] The car sold for $805,000, less than the $1–2 million it was expected to reach.[10] It was purchased by New Zealand film director Sir Peter Jackson.[11]

text: Locations[edit]

text:
Scrumptious Sweet Co. factory (exterior) – Kempton Waterworks, Snakey Lane, Hanworth, Middlesex, England.[12] This location now includes a steam museum open to the public.
Scrumptious Mansion – Heatherden Hall at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England.[12]
Windmill/Cottage – Cobstone Windmill in Ibstone, near Turville, Buckinghamshire, England.[12]
Duck Pond – Russell's Water, Oxfordshire, England.[12]
Train scene – The Longmoor Military Railway.
Beach – Cap Taillat in St. Tropez, France.
Bridge (river) where spies attempt to blow up Chitty – Iver Bridge, Iver, Buckinghamshire, England.
Bridge (railway) where spies kidnap Lord Scrumptious – Ilmer Bridge, Ilmer, Buckinghamshire, England.
White rock spires in the ocean and lighthouse – The Needles stacks, Isle of Wight, England.
White cliffs – Beachy Head, East Sussex, England.
Baron Bomburst's castle – Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria, Germany.
Vulgarian village – Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany.

text: Reception[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: The film was the tenth most popular at the US box office in 1969.[13]

text: Critical[edit]

text: Time began its review saying the film is a "picture for the ages—the ages between five and twelve" and ends noting that "At a time when violence and sex are the dual sellers at the box office, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang looks better than it is simply because it's not not all all bad bad"; the film's "eleven songs have all the rich melodic variety of an automobile horn. Persistent syncopation and some breathless choreography partly redeem it, but most of the film's sporadic success is due to Director Ken Hughes's fantasy scenes, which make up in imagination what they lack in technical facility."[14]

text: The New York Times critic Renata Adler wrote, "in spite of the dreadful title, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ... is a fast, dense, friendly children's musical, with something of the joys of singing together on a team bus on the way to a game"; Adler called the screenplay "remarkably good" and the film's "preoccupation with sweets and machinery seems ideal for children"; she ends her review on the same note as Time: "There is nothing coy, or stodgy or too frightening about the film; and this year, when it has seemed highly doubtful that children ought to go to the movies at all, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sees to it that none of the audience's terrific eagerness to have a good time is betrayed or lost."[15]

text: Film critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film (Chicago Sun Times, 24 December 1968). He wrote: "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang contains about the best two-hour children's movie you could hope for, with a marvelous magical auto and lots of adventure and a nutty old grandpa and a mean Baron and some funny dances and a couple of [scary] moments."

text: Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin considered the picture "one big Edsel, with totally forgettable score and some of the shoddiest special effects ever."[16] In 2008, Entertainment Weekly called Helpmann's depiction of the Child Catcher one of the "50 Most Vile Movie Villains."[17]

text: As of March 2014, the film has a 65% "Fresh" rating (17 of 26 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes.[18]

text: Accolades[edit]

text: The film was nominated for the American Film Institute's 2006 AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals list.[19]

text: Soundtrack[edit]

text: The original soundtrack album, as was typical of soundtrack albums, presented mostly songs with very few instrumental tracks. The songs were also edited, with specially recorded intros and outros and most instrumental portions removed, both because of time limitations of the vinyl LP and the belief that listeners would not be interested in listening to long instrumental dance portions during the songs.

text: The soundtrack has been released on CD four times, the first two releases using the original LP masters rather than going back to the original music masters to compile a more complete soundtrack album with underscoring and complete versions of songs. The 1997 Rykodisc release included several quick bits of dialogue from the film between some of the tracks and has gone out of circulation. On 24 February 2004, a few short months after MGM released the movie on a 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, Varèse Sarabande reissued a newly remastered soundtrack album without the dialogue tracks, restoring it to its original 1968 LP format.

text: In 2011, Kritzerland released the definitive soundtrack album[20], a 2-CD set featuring the Original Soundtrack Album plus bonus tracks, music from the Song and Picture Book Album on disc 1, and the Richard Sherman Demos, as well as six Playback Tracks (including a long version of international covers of the theme song). Inexplicably, this release was limited to only 1,000 units.

text: In April 2013, Perseverance Records re-released the Kritzerland double CD set with expansive new liner notes by John Trujillo and a completely new designed booklet by Perseverance regular James Wingrove.

text: Home video releases[edit]

text: This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was released numerous times in the VHS format. In 1998 the film saw its first DVD release. The year 2003 brought a two-disc "Special Edition" release. On 2 November 2010, 20th Century Fox released a two-disc Blu-ray and DVD combination set featuring the extras from the 2003 release as well as new features. The 1993 LaserDisc release by MGM/UA Home Video was the first home video release with the proper 2.20:1 Super Panavision 70 aspect ratio.

text: Adaptations[edit]

text: Novelisation of film[edit]

text: The film did not follow Fleming's novel closely. A separate novelisation of the film was published at the time of the film's release. It basically followed the film's story but with some differences of tone and emphasis, e.g. it mentioned that Caractacus Potts had had difficulty coping after the death of his wife, and it made it clearer that the sequences including Baron Bomburst were extended fantasy sequences. It was written by John Burke.[21]

text: Comic book adaption[edit]

text: Gold Key: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Gold Key Comics. February 1969. [22]


document_title: Rockin' Chair (Gwen McCrae song)

question_text: who sings let me be your rocking chair

question_tokens: who sings let me be your rocking chair

text: Rockin' Chair (Gwen McCrae song)

text:
"Rockin' Chair"

Song by Gwen McCrae

Language
English

Released
1975

Genre
Soul

Label
TK

Composer(s)
Willie Clarke/Clarence Reid

text: Rockin' Chair is a 1975 crossover single by Gwen McCrae. The single is not to be confused with Fats Domino's 1951 R&B hit, of the same name or that of Hoagy Carmichael, Rockin' Chair (song). "Rockin' Chair" was McCrae's sole entry into the top 10 on both the soul and pop charts. The single hit number nine on the pop charts, and number one on the soul chart for one week.[1]