Historia de Juventud (WIE nº 258) (Spanish Edition)

He also was allowed to order monasteries to return property donated to them in the past to the descendants of the original patrons. The effect was threefold. Last, but not least, by the s all Swedish monasteries had disappeared. In Denmark, too, monastic life vanished during the sixteenth century. In short, the policy proposed by Cromwell to his master in the s was not without precedent, to say the least.

Yet, it created an outrage, also because precisely in the English countryside the monasteries did have huge religious and social importance: Inevitably, anti-Tudor feelings mingled with all this opposition. Despite promising the rebels, who numbered some thirty thousand, that he would heed their grievances, the king reneged, and the leaders of the revolt were executed.

After the first dissolution, a second, far more comprehensive one was sanctioned by Henry in While not originally foreseen, this development was of great consequence nevertheless. This decreased their power as a group, for now they were outnumbered by the Lords Temporal. However, it increased their power in and over the Church, for the dissolutions—and the dislodgement from power of the monastic leaders—ended the ongoing dissension between the regular clergy and the religious Orders. Of course, this battle was not specific to England, only.

It had been waged all over Roman Catholic Europe for many centuries. Now, however, they were wholly dependent on the Crown: He died before he came of age and was followed by his elder half-sister, who had remained a staunch Catholic. During her reign, she and her advisers tried to turn back the reforms Henry and his government had introduced. However, many measures could not be undone, if only because by then part of the ruling elite had become dependent on the new political-religious and, even more important, economic order.

She wisely decided that it was in her own best interest to preserve the Henrician inheritance and the power it gave her. My conclusion is twofold. The kings of France, from quite other motives, might have done so, too. On the other hand, we should not forget that the English case was far from unique. Others rulers decided that siding with Rome remained to their advantage, but succeeded in bargaining a hefty price for their support of the papacy, agreed upon in the so-called concordats.

These contracts between, e. It finalized the greatest schism Islam ever experienced, dividing it into what, slowly, became a Sunni world and a Shia world that continue their antagonism up to today. It seems this fateful rift had not been foreseen by the man who is credited with founding Islam, Muhammad c. But then, we know very little about his life, and even less about his ideas and the reasons behind his actions: As with Jesus of Nazareth, studying the sources critically shows one thing only: Was Muhammad a man who assembled a war band amongst the nomadic inhabitants of the interior of the Arabic peninsula, using religion, and then went on to conquer the rich agricultural and trading communities on the coast?

Was he a religious reformer who, slowly, created something approaching a coherent belief-system, which, however, was written down only later and, hence, should be understood not as his own words but as the creed of his followers—a situation that obviously mirrors the one in which Christianity developed? It also is a soteriology, promising salvation to those who follow the right way.

And, indeed, it is a metaphysics. This much seems undisputed.

1 Religions, Regions and Royal Roles: Varieties across Eurasia

Both the elective position of khalifat rasul Allah , i. Soon, fully blown hereditary dynasties took over power in the Islamic world, which, by then, had lost not only its religious unity but also its political integrity, fragmenting into an ever greater number of independent states. The caliphate was claimed by such men as the Umayyads, who belonged to the Quraysh-clan of which Muhammad had been a member, and, later, by the Abbasids—descending from an uncle of the prophet.

Inevitably, Islamic rulers tried to regain the combined political and religious authority that once had belonged to Muhammad. Actually, the first caliphs did exercise a number of religious functions: Later, he faced severe, mostly Shia-inspired rebellions. They were of a Shia bent and claimed to be imams, without sins, infallible, and, hence, supreme interpreters of the law.

Indeed, from the tenth century onwards, sometimes for relatively shorter periods other, competing dynasties in the Islamic outer worlds arrogated the caliphate as well: In short, the erosion of the institution was inevitable, despite the efforts of a few individual caliphs to heal the rifts and restore unity.

People increasingly felt that, effectively, the caliphate of the East was reduced to nothing, as the famous historian Ibn Khaldun later noted. Basically, the caliphal title was used by any Muslim prince—amir, sultan, et cetera—who felt he had a right to it and wanted to create additional legitimacy through it. The word of the popes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, functioning within an as yet undivided Christian world, might be disputed but nevertheless carried great weight. Yet, by the twelfth century the spread of Christianity came to a halt: Church imperialism was resumed only, and then on a global scale, in the fifteenth century.

Meanwhile, Islam still was expanding. Though in the West—on the Iberian Peninsula—, Muslim conquerors no longer were successful, south- and eastward they were, both through trade and through military expeditions. Obviously, in each polity that became Islamicized, the rulers tried to use the new religion to their own ends, always fusing it with older, indigenous traditions and concepts of religious kingship. Below, I will concentrate on the period from the late fourteenth century onward, i. Actually, in a complex way, all three dynasties derived political-ideological ideas and practices from three sources: In all these empires the cult of the sovereign pioneered by Timur was developed further, presenting him as an object of veneration both in a general political and, sometimes, more specifically religious way.

Therefore, the office of sadr was instituted. At times, he may have appeared to and sometimes actually did reach the position of supreme religious leader and often was given the honorific of shaykh ul-Islam: His fatwa , legal-doctrinal pronouncements, always were to be obeyed. One of the most important religious instruments Islamic rulers used to establish and enhance their power was the waqf , a pious endowment that, mostly, served as a memorial monument to its founder, and, at the same time, was a major economic and, therefore, also socio-political institution.

Endowing a mosque, a school, a hospital, a fountain—often these would be combined in one, grand complex—, the founders also created dependency: No wonder both the rulers and the elite invested in awqaf: But though the Safavids and their Ottoman and Mughal colleagues tried to establish some form of central control over all awqaf in their state, to actually administer these endowments they, or rather, their sadr , appointed members of the clergy.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they extended their rule over the entire region between eastern Anatolia and present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. It variously is considered a series of notions and practices relating to the possibility of reaching a mystic, inner knowledge of—and connection with—God specific to Islam, or an already pre-Islamic set of metaphysical ideas that, in a way, characterizes many religions, including Buddhism and Christianity.

It soon branched out in numerous Sufi Orders, often organized around local or regional holy men. These Orders, besides being centres of religious heterodoxy, often also were quite powerful economically, since they were the recipients of the wealth donated to them by their followers, institutionalized in a waqf. Thus, though not uniquely attached to either Sunni or Shia Islam, varieties of Sufism became part of the already variegated religious cultures of the Ilkhanate polity as well. When, in the late fifteenth century, the leader of a Sufi Order gained power in present-day Iran, he found a population still largely Sunni.

This resulted in the generous patronage of the two shrines involved, the one of the first shaykh of their line at Ardabil and the other of this purported ancestor, at Mashhad. In , he travelled to Mashhad on foot, a pilgrimage that took him four weeks. He certainly liked to publicize them. Unlike comparable relics in the possession of the pope, the emperor, and the other princes of Europe—and they possessed them by the thousands—apparently it was never shown to the faithful gathered below.

After his installation, each Safavid ruler had to cross it without touching it. However, to create a powerful state, a powerful government, a powerful dynasty, more was needed than rhetoric and ritual, only. It is debatable whether it applied only to what we call private law or should be considered as ruling public law as well. In the end, supreme judicial power was given to the divanbagi , an officer appointed by the emperor and a member of the council of state.

Another problem was finance. The Safavid shahs took a number of measures that converted state lands into crown lands and, partly as a follow-up, concentrated trade and, also, industry—especially silk-production and weaving—in the hands of the imperial family. Also undeniably, they used considerable violence in converting them, but then so did their European counterparts during the various Reformations. Nor did they relish the continued military and, due to the previous policy of granting them lands and other riches, political-economic power of the warrior groups who had first enabled them to take power.

When, in the early decades of the eighteenth century, the power of the Safavid dynasty waned and, finally, was broken, their ultimate successor, Nader Shah —— , reversed their religious policy precisely to strengthen his own position. Acknowledging that the Shia majority would not, perhaps, support him wholeheartedly, and, at the same time, that most of the troops he relied on for his conquests hailed from Central Asia and were of a Sunni persuasion, he re- introduced Sunnism.

Another reason Nader wanted to create a more nuanced Islam was economic: Obviously, the Sunni sultans of the House of Osman could not claim the imamate. Interestingly, some historians argue that the Ottomans, despite the capture of Constantinople, did not officially adopt the title of caliph, either. Kostantiniyye—Istanbul being a late-nineteenth-century usage that, moreover, was formally adopted only in Showing that they really were the sultan-i Rum , the successors of the Byzantine emperors, the Ottoman monarchs ingeniously adopted and adapted the old, imperial cityscape to their new needs.

In Byzantine days, one entered the palace through the famous Chalke, the Brazen Gate. It showed, on the outside, an image of the Christ and an inscription telling the visitor it was one of the wonders of the world. On the inside, it was covered by a cupola—an architectural form that, traditionally, was interpreted as a symbolic, world-encompassing structure only to be used by royals. On top of the gate, a little chapel again proclaimed this the entrance to the palace of a Christian monarch.

By the Grace of God, and by His approval, the foundations of this auspicious castle were laid, and its parts were solidly joined together to strengthen peace and tranquillity. May Allah make eternal his empire, and exalt his residence above the most lucid stars of the firmament. On the inside, a cupola resembled heaven.

And it was topped by a little mosque. Last but not least, Mehmed also used the Byzantine model when he built a new mosque on the site where the church of the Apostles had once stood. The choice certainly was deliberate and, indeed, hugely symbolic: This may have been caused by several factors, including the threat posed by the Shia state of the Safavids but also, I assume, the very fact that, from their base in Anatolia, a variety of Sufist sects had gained great influence in the capital, both amongst the populace and amongst parts of the elite. He was the first who, though he did not formally persecute the varied, partly heterodox leanings of his Islamic subjects, was fully aware of the tendencies in Sufism that could prove dangerous to centralized authority.

For the Ottomans, too, faced the power of the clergy. Interestingly, though mistakenly in many respects, a Burgundian visitor and other European observers equalled him to the pope. By the sixteenth century, the sadr definitely was one of the high officers of state, appointed by the sultan and second in rank, only, after the grand vizier. Certainly, the Ottoman conquest of the Arabian Peninsula in the early years of the sixteenth century made a difference as well: But with it came, also, a closer alliance with the Sunni strand of Islam.

Other Islamic symbols were introduced as well, such as the roundels surrounding the mihrab inscribed with the names of Allah, Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and, interestingly, the Shia ancestors Hasan and Husayn. Though one might argue that this was rhetoric directed at the Muslims remaining in Russia—and at their non-Muslim rulers—rather than at his own subjects, it nevertheless again indicated a change in the perception and use of the titles involved.

Perhaps these titles did not carry the original, almost caesaro-papist weight but only wanted to convey the notion that the sultans ruled by Divine Right, as lieutenants of God. Undeniably, the sultans set great store on a number of sacred objects that supposedly had belonged to the first caliph, Muhammad. If the monarch had to leave the capital, he often took the holy mantle with him, especially on military campaigns, where it was deemed a very effective charm—a custom similar to the carrying of the holy banner in France, which, however, precisely in those centuries was discontinued.

Actually, this ceremony followed what might be termed a coronation and had taken place in, precisely, the Khass Oda: As to religious policy largo sensu, of course, the Ottoman Empire always has been described as relatively tolerant towards its minorities: Both Jews and Christians were important mainly for economic reasons. Living in the port cities of Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt, they did not threaten to destabilize the vast, agrarian, and, hence, more traditional interior of the empire.

Specifically the foreign, i. European-Christian communities—but also the Lebanese Christians—sought the protection of the rulers of the trading nations whence they came. Consequently, these communities were allowed to have their own jurisdiction in cases not involving other religious groups, capital offences, or threats to public order. Moreover, the Greek Orthodox Church, which retained its patriarch in Constantinople, was largely left alone, although closely scrutinized by the sultanic government.

Also, precisely their diversity precluded the genesis of a unified movement that might have threatened to overthrow the regime in Istanbul. Nevertheless, the so-called devshirme , which forcibly recruited young boys from, mainly, Christian households to serve the sultan, sometimes did propel them to leading positions both in the military elite corps of the empire, the Janissaries, and in the imperial administration.

Actually, out of the seventy-eight grand viziers who governed the empire between the mid-fifteenth and the late seventeenth century, only eleven were Turkish. The great majority of the others were of some Christian background, having been introduced into the imperial bureaucracy via, precisely, the devshirme -system. Recent computations set their number at almost three-quarters of all nineteen valide-sultans between ca. Inheriting traditions forged by earlier Muslim rulers of Northern India, in whose name Sunni, Shia, and Sufi notions already had been welded together, the Mughals, especially the first real Indian Mughal, Akbar —— , and his successors, claimed to be both sultan and caliph.

But the question is whether, and to what extent, these titles were really factors of cohesion. Since the fourteenth century, the Muslim rulers had started incorporating members of the Hindu aristocracy into the state apparatus. Soon, these men, commonly referred to as zamindar , adopted parts of and otherwise adapted themselves to the Perso-Islamic culture of the conquerors. It has been said that though the third and fourth Mughal emperors, Akbar and Jahangir —— had been overtly liberal both in their own beliefs and in their policy regarding the various religions in their empire, their successors returned to Sunni orthodoxy.

Yet, the situation seems to have been far more complex. Admittedly, by the second half of the seventeenth century, a different wind was blowing at court. Domestic political motives may have played a part here. His rival half-brother, Aurangzeb, in order to gain the throne, needed to differentiate himself from his sibling. It seems that, soon, the tolerant and syncretic views of Akbar were replaced by another, more orthodox Sunni form of Sufi thought, mainly preached by the leaders of the Naqshbandi brotherhood, to which Aurangzeb belonged.

But religion was an argument in foreign policy as well. The interesting fact remains that both the sultan of Bijapur and the Mughal emperor were Sufis. And the role of Sufism in Mughal rule is both fascinating and complex. Its influence has become more obvious since, recently, attention has been drawn to a factor that at least partly explains the surprising fusion between various elements that characterized Mughal politico-religious culture but has long been overlooked: Central-Asian, traditions in Mughal state building.

Given the multi-religious nature of the polities they created, already in pre-Mughal times the Muslim dynasties of India tried to combine the tenets of true Islam, which did not allow worldly rule, with the necessities of empire. The mixture they created tended to show them almost as saints, who, through their God-given dreams, were called upon to realize their empire in the way dictated by Allah. Being, apparently, illiterate, he had the Akhlaq-i Nasiri recited to him regularly and ordered his officials to study it as well. For the people of Hind, the idiom of Hindi is praiseworthy, for the people of Sind, their own is to be praised.

And, conversely, the first Muslim emperors introduced Hindu rituals at court. Last but not least, they identified with Vishnu, with the Sun, the major deity of the Rajput rulers of Northern India. Analysing these trends in Mughal policy, it is interesting to note that the emperors themselves only infrequently publicized their power by building mosques.

Rather, huge tombs were built by or for them—Humayun, Akbar, Jahan, Jahangir—, as if to say that not their piety but their greatness as sovereign proved their right to rule. Interestingly again, they did not favour traditional holy men but, rather, Sufis. The extent to which the non-sectarianism of the first Mughal emperors was practised beyond the court and the ruling elite is difficult to gauge.

Indeed, even at court this policy had its adversaries. But when he wrote: In short, though the later Mughals did not profess their Sufi variant of Islam as publicly as Akbar, giving preference to a more obviously traditional, Sunni Islamic regime, they did not revert to the kind of Sunni Islamic fanaticism they usually are credited with. Admittedly, on the one hand, some Hindu temples were destroyed—but others were given grants by the sadr.

And yes, the Islamic religious tax was re-imposed on the Hindu population, but Hindu nobles seem to have entered imperial service at an increasing rate. Conversely, if such success and its concrete rewards for the elite failed to materialize, cultural differences might disrupt imperial cohesion after all. Yet, Ismail thought of himself as a being even more unique and, therefore, more powerful. Over the past decades, scholars have been studying the surviving—manuscript—poems written by, attributed to, or later associated with Ismail.

Introduction: On the Relationship between Religious and Secular Power

They reveal an astonishing world of religious-mythical images with clear political implications. He was born the son of, and, eventually, heir to the hereditary leader of the Safaviyya. This Sufi-brotherhood had been founded in the fourteenth century in Ardabil, then the capital of the Iranian province of Azerbaijan, by his ancestor Safi al-Din — , he himself the heir and son-in-law of a famous Sufi teacher. With their help, or, more precisely, using their Sufist devotion to him as their master, he defeated the then ruler of the Ac Quyunlu.

Ismail soon conquered parts of modern Iraq, and felt he now had re-established the ancient Iranian Empire, after centuries of foreign dominion—by Arabs, Mongols, and Turks. Indeed, he considered himself the heir of the Achaemenid and Sassanid emperors: Obviously, Ismail had to overcome the major obstacle to kingship in a Muslim state, i. The seventeenth-century French traveller Jean Chardin identified the problem: On the one hand, he exploited the so-called murshid-murid relationship that, within Sufi brotherhoods, existed between a saintly master and his disciple: This religious-spiritual ideology and the rhetoric that went with it was combined very effectively with the prestige and power or, one might also say: Thus, he created a fundamental identity: Finally, as self-proclaimed padishah-i Iran , he also used the pre-Islamic, ancient Persian notion of the divine right of kings.

Moreover, the ancient Persian poetical tradition now was geared to the needs of the new theocracy as well: Yet, rhetoric alone—however powerfully worded—does not create cohesion and compliance. This, of course, posed a problem since his conquest of Iran and what is now Iraq made these mostly Sunni regions the heartland of his empire.

Historians disagree about the policy he actually pursued and the ruthlessness with which he did so. Of course, the policy was not without its dangers. Inevitably, however, the group developed its own power dynamics, which Ismail and his successors then sought to control by appointing the successive sadr from—in the end—three families closely related to the imperial dynasty. Judging the complex process of Safavid state building, it also is difficult to measure the effect of the apparently large-scale introduction of hundreds of thousands of families from the various regions of the Caucasus who, originally Christian, either had converted to Islam in the past or were now induced to do so with the promise of military and other jobs and, inevitably, became loyal to the shah and his faith.

During his first years, Ismail had set up a polity and created a society that were divided along ethnic lines: Organized in artificial tribes, the former became the political-military and, through the rewards they gained, also socio-economic elite of the early Safavid state.

However, soon Ismail himself, as well as his son and successor, Tahmasp, decided that the Qizilbash tended to become an over-mighty group. The ideological instruments used by Ismail as well as the actual policies he and his successors pursued led Chardin to note: In one of his poems he exclaims: Come now, o blind man who has lost the path: Obviously, the rulers in Istanbul in this were guided by religious preoccupations as well: Present-day India, although the largest democracy in the world is, of course, not a society without its problems, some of them created by religious differences and, given the huge economic inequality, the ensuing religious intolerance and, even persecution.

He found him in the person of Emperor Akbar. Nor does Sen acknowledge that what we know of Akbar is, by and large, the idealized version created by his biographer and trusted adviser, Abu l-Fazl! The problem is compounded since it seems that neither Indo-Islamic texts nor Hindu ones offer us all the information we seek; actually, it is the European sources that allow us to narrow our interpretations.

Using all these, I propose the following analysis. Secondly, he also wanted to further extend what formerly had been the Mughal Empire not only on the Indian subcontinent, especially in the Gangetic plains and the states of the Rajputs, even down to the Arab Sea in Gujarat, but also to the north-west, in the region of Kandahar—which led to disputes with the Safavid rulers of Iran—and the north where, beyond Kabul, the Uzbek tribes challenged him.

Thirdly, he therefore was a man much on the move—which not only gave him a better idea of the variegated peoples and cultures he ruled over but also may have convinced him that cohesion and stability could be had only through some sort of cultural accommodation, of syncretism, even.

By the s and s, his far-flung state was inhabited by Muslims both of the Shia and the Sunni persuasion as well as by a vast majority of Hindus. Marrying daughters of the Rajput royal houses was a known expedient amongst the Mughals, and Akbar took a Rajput wife, too. However, to overcome the continuing political and religious-cultural animosity, he decided that rather than insist on their conversion, both the ladies and their families should be allowed to keep their faith and, moreover, were to be treated on an equal footing with the Muslim members of his harem and court.

Akbar thus finalized the policy of his ancestors that had Hindus introduced also into the higher echelons of Mughal bureaucracy, which, of course, tied them to the interests of the new state. Moreover, one may assume that Akbar also hoped to somehow counterbalance the until then overwhelming influence of the Mughal nobility that in a sense always was a threat to his own supremacy: He now allowed Hindus who had been forced to convert to Islam—if only to avoid paying this tax—to return to their own faith as well.

He even forbade the slaughter of cows, which not only endeared him to the Hindus, but also to the smaller but economically influential group of the Jain, in whose views of god and creation Akbar showed great interest, too. To even more openly show his intentions, Akbar asked Brahmin priests to conduct their ceremonies at court, and he personally participated in the major Hindu feast of Divali. At least publicly he renounced the consumption of beef, allowed solely vegetarian dishes on certain weekdays, and drank water from the holy Ganges, only.

Obviously, we cannot judge the extent to which these actions were meant for the public eye or reflected new-found convictions. Indeed, if anything this Akbar-nama was a piece of splendid propaganda. Accommodating the Hindu population did not mean Akbar forgot his own, Muslim, background. However, this part of his cultural make-up was complex, to say the least. Though his family is believed to have been Sunni, amongst his childhood tutors were two Irani Shia scholars, for his mother had been the daughter of a Persian shaykh.

Precisely because he was fully aware of the dangers of Muslim sectarian dissension in an empire as complex as his, Akbar declared he would no longer tolerate sectarian disputes disrupting the public order. Obviously, this piece of legislation—also termed an infallibility decree —greatly diminished the power of the religious-legal establishment in favour of secular government and, indeed, Akbar himself.

While this policy certainly helped to somewhat stabilize the religious situation in the empire, the more traditional Sunni circles inevitably argued that the emperor veered towards heresy. As part of this policy, between and Akbar annually sent large contingents of pilgrims to Mecca and Medina, headed by members of the imperial family carrying sumptuous gifts—a policy continued by his successors. In order to do so, he needed the help of the Portuguese who, though the Mughals now dominated inland Gujarat, had captured its major seaports. Akbar, on the other hand, thus could increase his standing among the wider Muslim community, both in India and abroad.

The emperor certainly made an effort not only to defuse the tensions in the Muslim community but also to reduce inter-religious strife—between Muslims and Hindus. He certainly felt that, specifically amongst his Hindu subjects, grave social and emotional issues were at stake, too: Akbar definitely also wanted to diminish religious influences in politics, as shown, for example, in the suppression of Mahdavism—a militant and at times millenniarist movement whose leaders claimed caliphal and imamate status—in the s.

Yet, Akbar seems to have had a genuine interest in the pretensions put forward by various religions: Sunni and Shia Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and, also, Sikhism that, precisely in these decades, was gaining influence. He even wanted to know what Christianity had to offer. Thus, not only did the emperor order one of his—orthodox! Quite perceptively, Badauni wrote about his master as follows:. From his earliest childhood to his manhood, and from his manhood to old age, his Majesty passed through the most diverse phases and through all sorts of religious practices and sectarian beliefs, and collected everything which people can find in books, with a talent of selection peculiar to him and a spirit of inquiry opposed to every Islamic principle [italics added].

On the other hand, I suggest that pandering to the Jain leaders did help Akbar to improve his hold over their economically important part of his empire. Though sources do not agree about the actual statements made during the debates, it yet seems that the bitter words and, indeed, invectives the various priests and scholars used against each other soon convinced Akbar that no easy reconciliation was possible. On the other hand, these discourses may have given him a better idea of his own religious preferences.

The two basic positions seem to be that it either was a genuinely new religion or a re-working of notions available in the many traditions of Islam, both orthodox and heterodox. Obviously, this is a false opposition. What seems new is, mostly, the result of a process of conscious or subconscious syncretism and of the changed political or propagandistic use of old elements. He certainly incorporated the celebration of the Sun into the Din-i Ilahi —a very old element also in Hinduism and, even, partly pre-Vedic—, and told his courtiers that its light was the emanation and, indeed, beginning of everything that existed, of creation.

When he lifted it, the courtiers exclaimed: As part of that notion, Akbar re-established the old Iranian feast of Nowruz that celebrated the evening of night and day in Spring, and was held in high regard as perhaps the most venerable moment in the relationship between the Divine and Man—by Shia Muslims and, specifically, Sufis. However, the far more interesting and, indeed, most important question obviously is what role Akbar saw for himself in this complex of older religious ideas and metaphors? Significantly, the origin of the ritual lay in the showing of divine images to the believers during temple ceremonies.

Maybe we will never know: Meanwhile it is, of course, quite significant that Akbar never seems to have contemplated making the Din-i Ilahi into a public, let alone a preferred or even compulsory cult. Only a handful of noblemen, courtiers seem to have participated in the rituals. This also explains why, on his death, the cult seems to have lost any import it may have had. Maybe interpreting the set-up of the Din-i Ilahi as a Sufi brotherhood comes nearest to what Akbar had in mind.

Yet, as always in this culturally mixed world, one also thinks about the Hindu concept of a teacher and his chela , his devoted disciple: Tradition has it that Akbar founded the city because on its site used to live the Sufi saint Salim Chishti, who had foretold the emperor that he yet would have a son; indeed, soon after, the much-longed for heir was born and named Salim—the later emperor Jahangir. The town, which stands on a high ridge overlooking the plain of the Gambhir River, presents itself as a beacon of faith: A Tribute to Arne Zettersten.

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New PDF release: Historia de Juventud (WIE nº 258) (Spanish Edition)

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Udenlandske eller hjemlige ord? Museum Tusculanum , Lexis in Dictionaries and in the Media Bern: Unpublished hovedfag thesis, University of Oslo. Novus forlag , Studies in Business and Economics 6 2: In , the party stated that there were , members, and representatives generally constitute at least half of the Councils of state and the National Assembly. The remaining positions are filled by candidates nominally without party affiliation.

Other political parties campaign and raise finances internationally, while activity within Cuba by opposition groups is minimal. Cuba is considered an authoritarian regime according to the Democracy Index [] and Freedom in the World survey. After Fidel Castro died on 25 November , the Cuban government declared a nine-day mourning period.

During the mourning period Cuban citizens were prohibited from playing loud music, partying, and drinking alcohol. The country is subdivided into 15 provinces and one special municipality Isla de la Juventud. These were formerly part of six larger historical provinces: The present subdivisions closely resemble those of the Spanish military provinces during the Cuban Wars of Independence, when the most troublesome areas were subdivided. The provinces are divided into municipalities. In , the European Union EU accused the Cuban government of "continuing flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms".

Cuba had the second-highest number of imprisoned journalists of any nation in China had the highest according to various sources, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch. Cuban dissidents face arrest and imprisonment. In the s, Human Rights Watch reported that Cuba's extensive prison system, one of the largest in Latin America, consists of 40 maximum-security prisons, 30 minimum-security prisons, and over work camps. In July , the unofficial Cuban Human Rights Commission said there were political prisoners in Cuba, a fall from at the start of the year.

The head of the commission stated that long prison sentences were being replaced by harassment and intimidation. Cuba has conducted a foreign policy that is uncharacteristic of such a minor, developing country. Cuba supported Algeria in —, [] and sent tens of thousands of troops to Angola during the Angolan Civil War.

They agreed to release political prisoners and the United States began the process of creating an embassy in Havana. All law enforcement agencies are maintained under Cuba's Ministry of the Interior, which is supervised by the Revolutionary Armed Forces. In Cuba, citizens can receive police assistance by dialing "" on their telephones. The Cuban government also has an agency called the Intelligence Directorate that conducts intelligence operations and maintains close ties with the Russian Federal Security Service.

From until the late s, Soviet military assistance enabled Cuba to upgrade its military capabilities. After the loss of Soviet subsidies, Cuba scaled down the numbers of military personnel, from , in to about 60, in The Cuban state claims to adhere to socialist principles in organizing its largely state-controlled planned economy. Most of the means of production are owned and run by the government and most of the labor force is employed by the state. Recent years have seen a trend toward more private sector employment. Cuba has a dual currency system, whereby most wages and prices are set in Cuban pesos CUP , while the tourist economy operates with Convertible pesos CUC , set at par with the US dollar.

Before Fidel Castro's revolution, Cuba was one of the most advanced and successful countries in Latin America. Cuba ranked 5th in the hemisphere in per capita income, 3rd in life expectancy, 2nd in per capita ownership of automobiles and telephones, and 1st in the number of television sets per inhabitant. Cuba also ranked 11th in the world in the number of doctors per capita. Several private clinics and hospitals provided services for the poor. Cuba's income distribution compared favorably with that of other Latin American societies.

However, income inequality was profound between city and countryside, especially between whites and blacks. Cubans lived in abysmal poverty in the countryside. According to PBS, a thriving middle class held the promise of prosperity and social mobility. After the Cuban revolution and before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba depended on Moscow for substantial aid and sheltered markets for its exports. The loss of these subsidies sent the Cuban economy into a rapid depression known in Cuba as the Special Period. Cuba took limited free market-oriented measures to alleviate severe shortages of food, consumer goods, and services.

These steps included allowing some self-employment in certain retail and light manufacturing sectors, the legalization of the use of the US dollar in business, and the encouragement of tourism. It is widely viewed that the embargo hurt the Cuban economy. Cuba's leadership has called for reforms in the country's agricultural system. The reforms aim to expand land use and increase efficiency. In [update] , Cubans were allowed to build their own houses.

On 2 August , The New York Times reported that Cuba reaffirmed its intent to legalize "buying and selling" of private property before the year's end. As a member of the Cubasolar Group, there was also a mention of 10 additional plants in Cuba's natural resources include sugar, tobacco, fish, citrus fruits, coffee , beans, rice, potatoes, and livestock.

Cuba is also a major producer of refined cobalt , a by-product of nickel mining. In , Cuba started to test-drill these locations for possible exploitation. Tourism was initially restricted to enclave resorts where tourists would be segregated from Cuban society, referred to as "enclave tourism" and "tourism apartheid". Cuba has tripled its market share of Caribbean tourism in the last decade; [ when? The medical tourism sector caters to thousands of European, Latin American, Canadian, and American consumers every year.

A recent study indicates that Cuba has a potential for mountaineering activity, and that mountaineering could be a key contributor to tourism, along with other activities, e. Promoting these resources could contribute to regional development, prosperity, and well-being. The Cuban Justice minister downplays allegations of widespread sex tourism. Prison sentences range from 7 to 25 years.

Some tourist facilities were extensively damaged on 8 September when Hurricane Irma hit the island. Cuba is an archipelago of islands located in the northern Caribbean Sea at the confluence with the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Cuba is the principal island, surrounded by four smaller groups of islands: With the entire island south of the Tropic of Cancer , the local climate is tropical, moderated by northeasterly trade winds that blow year-round. The temperature is also shaped by the Caribbean current, which brings in warm water from the equator.

This makes the climate of Cuba warmer than that of Hong Kong , which is at around the same latitude as Cuba but has a subtropical rather than a tropical climate. In general with local variations , there is a drier season from November to April, and a rainier season from May to October. The warm temperatures of the Caribbean Sea and the fact that Cuba sits across the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico combine to make the country prone to frequent hurricanes. These are most common in September and October. Hospitals, warehouses and factories were damaged; much of the north coast was without electricity.

By that time, nearly a million people, including tourists, had been evacuated. Sections of the capital had been flooded. Cuba signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June , and became a party to the convention on 8 March The revision comprises an action plan with time limits for each item, and an indication of the governmental body responsible for delivery. That document contains virtually no information about biodiversity. However, the country's fourth national report to the CBD contains a detailed breakdown of the numbers of species of each kingdom of life recorded from Cuba, the main groups being: As elsewhere in the world, vertebrate animals and flowering plants are well documented, so the recorded numbers of species are probably close to the true numbers.

For most or all other groups, the true numbers of species occurring in Cuba are likely to exceed, often considerably, the numbers recorded so far. According to the official census of , Cuba's population was 11,,, comprising 5,, men and 5,, women.

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Although the country's population has grown by about four million people since , the rate of growth slowed during that period, and the population began to decline in , due in the country's low fertility rate 1. Indeed, this drop in fertility is among the largest in the Western Hemisphere [] and is attributed largely to unrestricted access to legal abortion: Cuba's abortion rate was Cuba's population is multiethnic, reflecting its complex colonial origins. Intermarriage between diverse groups is widespread, and consequently there is some discrepancy in reports of the country's racial composition: In fact, the Minority Rights Group International determined that "An objective assessment of the situation of Afro-Cubans remains problematic due to scant records and a paucity of systematic studies both pre- and post-revolution.

Immigration and emigration have played a prominent part in Cuba's demographic profile. Between the 18th and early 20th century, large waves of Canarian , Catalan , Andalusian , Galician , and other Spanish people immigrated to Cuba. Between — alone, close to a million Spaniards entered the country, though many would eventually return to Spain.

Post-revolution Cuba has been characterized by significant levels of emigration, which has led to a large and influential diaspora community. Those who left the country typically did so by sea, in small boats and fragile rafts. On 9 September , the U. Cuba is officially a secular state. Religious freedom increased through the s, [] with the government amending the constitution in to drop the state's characterization as atheistic.

Roman Catholicism is the largest religion, with its origins in Spanish colonization. Despite less than half of the population identifying as Catholics in , it nonetheless remains the dominant faith. The government's relaxation of restrictions on house churches in the s led to an explosion of Pentecostalism , with some groups claiming as many as , members. However, Evangelical Protestant denominations, organized into the umbrella Cuban Council of Churches, remain much more vibrant and powerful.

The religious landscape of Cuba is also strongly defined by syncretisms of various kinds. The official language of Cuba is Spanish and the vast majority of Cubans speak it. Internet in Cuba has some of the lowest penetration rates in the Western hemisphere, and all content is subject to review by the Department of Revolutionary Orientation. Internet access is controlled, and e-mail is closely monitored. Cuban culture is influenced by its melting pot of cultures, primarily those of Spain and Africa. After the revolution, the government started a national literacy campaign, offered free education to all and established rigorous sports, ballet and music programs.

Cuban music is very rich and is the most commonly known expression of Cuban culture. Popular Cuban music of all styles has been enjoyed and praised widely across the world. Cuban classical music, which includes music with strong African and European influences, and features symphonic works as well as music for soloists, has received international acclaim thanks to composers like Ernesto Lecuona.

Havana was the heart of the rap scene in Cuba when it began in the s. Cuban cuisine is a fusion of Spanish and Caribbean cuisines. Cuban recipes share spices and techniques with Spanish cooking, with some Caribbean influence in spice and flavor. Food rationing, which has been the norm in Cuba for the last four decades, restricts the common availability of these dishes. The typical meal could consist of plantains, black beans and rice, ropa vieja shredded beef , Cuban bread , pork with onions, and tropical fruits.

Black beans and rice, referred to as moros y cristianos or moros for short , and plantains are staples of the Cuban diet. Many of the meat dishes are cooked slowly with light sauces. Garlic, cumin, oregano, and bay leaves are the dominant spices. Cuban literature began to find its voice in the early 19th century.

Tallet focused on literature as social protest. Alejo Carpentier was important in the Magic realism movement.

Dance holds a privileged position in Cuban culture. Popular dance is considered an essential part of life, and concert dance is supported by the government and includes internationally renowned companies such as the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Due to historical associations with the United States, many Cubans participate in sports that are popular in North America, rather than sports traditionally played in other Latin American nations. Baseball is the most popular. Other sports and pastimes include football , basketball , volleyball , cricket , and athletics. Cuba is a dominant force in amateur boxing , consistently achieving high medal tallies in major international competitions.

Cuban boxers are not permitted to turn professional by their government. However, many boxers defect to the U. The University of Havana was founded in and there are a number of other well-established colleges and universities. School attendance is compulsory from ages six to the end of basic secondary education normally at age 15 , and all students, regardless of age or gender, wear school uniforms with the color denoting grade level.

Primary education lasts for six years, secondary education is divided into basic and pre-university education. Higher education is provided by universities, higher institutes, higher pedagogical institutes, and higher polytechnic institutes. The Cuban Ministry of Higher Education operates a distance education program that provides regular afternoon and evening courses in rural areas for agricultural workers.

Education has a strong political and ideological emphasis, and students progressing to higher education are expected to have a commitment to the goals of Cuba. Cuba's life expectancy at birth is Infant mortality declined from 32 infant deaths per 1, live births in , to 10 in —95, [] 6. Disease and infant mortality increased in the s immediately after the revolution, when half of Cuba's 6, doctors left the country.

Challenges include low salaries for doctors, [] poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and the frequent absence of essential drugs. This group also provides technical information for the production of these drugs. The vaccine has been available for free to the Cuban population since For over 40 years, they have had a preeminent immunology community.

The end of the thaw under the Trump Administrarion has resulted in a tightening of travel restrictions, making it harder for U. In , Cuba became the first country to eradicate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis, [] a milestone hailed by the World Health Organization as "one of the greatest public health achievements possible". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the country. For other uses, see Cuba disambiguation. Peso CUP Convertible peso a. From to , the United States dollar was used alongside the peso until the dollar was replaced by the convertible peso.

History of Cuba and Timeline of Cuban history. Captaincy General of Cuba.

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Cuban War of Independence. Republic of Cuba — Provinces of Cuba and Municipalities of Cuba. Human rights in Cuba , Censorship in Cuba , and Cuban dissidents. Foreign relations of Cuba. Law enforcement in Cuba and Crime in Cuba. Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Cuban people and Demographics of Cuba. Self-identified race Census [3] Race White. Ancestral contributions in Cubans as inferred from autosomal AIMs. Ancestral contributions in Cubans as inferred from Y-chromosome markers. Ancestral contributions in Cubans as inferred from mtDNA markers.

Spanish immigration to Cuba. List of cities in Cuba. Largest cities or towns in Cuba According to the Estimate. List of newspapers in Cuba. Gloria Estefan and Celia Cruz. Cuba portal New Spain portal Latin America portal. Central Bank of Cuba. Retrieved February 14, Retrieved September 7, National Assembly of People's Power.

Archived from the original PDF on January 17, Retrieved August 18, Archived from the original PDF on 31 July Retrieved 15 July Retrieved 18 January Retrieved July 21, Trends in the Human Development Index, —". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved December 15,