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Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (Arabic: أبو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم‎), frequently referred to as Ibn al-Haytham (Arabic: ابن الهيثم, Latinized as Alhazenor Alhacen; c. 965 – c. 1040), was an Arab Muslim polymath and philosopher who made significant contributions to the principles of optics, astronomy, mathematics, meteorology, visual perception and the scientific method.<br/><br/>

In medieval Europe, he was honored as Ptolemaeus Secundus ('Ptolemy the Second') or simply called 'The Physicist'. He is also sometimes called al-Basri (Arabic: البصري) after Basra, his birthplace. He spent most of his life close to the court of the Caliphate in Cairo and earned his life authoring various treatises and tutoring members of the nobilities.
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (Arabic: أبو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم‎), frequently referred to as Ibn al-Haytham (Arabic: ابن الهيثم, Latinized as Alhazenor Alhacen; c. 965 – c. 1040), was an Arab Muslim polymath and philosopher who made significant contributions to the principles of optics, astronomy, mathematics, meteorology, visual perception and the scientific method.<br/><br/>

In medieval Europe, he was honored as Ptolemaeus Secundus ('Ptolemy the Second') or simply called 'The Physicist'. He is also sometimes called al-Basri (Arabic: البصري) after Basra, his birthplace. He spent most of his life close to the court of the Caliphate in Cairo and earned his life authoring various treatises and tutoring members of the nobilities.
Representations of the Prophet Muhammad are controversial, and generally forbidden in Sunni Islam (especially Hanafiyya, Wahabi, Salafiyya).<br/><br/>

Shia Islam and some other branches of Sunni Islam (Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i) are generally more tolerant of such representational images, but even so the Prophet's features are generally veiled or concealed by flames as a mark of deep respect.
Vladimir Vasilyevich Lebedev (14  May 1891, Saint Petersburg – 21 November 1967) was a Soviet painter and graphic artist. He became famous for his exceptional illustrations of the poems of the prominent poet and translator Samuil Marshak, such as Circus, Ice Cream, Tale About a Foolish Mouse, Moustached and Striped, Book of Many Colours, Twelve Months and Luggage.<br/><br/>

As a young boy, Lebedev started to paint postcards that were sold in a shop in Saint Petersburg. At the age of nineteen, he held his first exhibit at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1913, he began work as a cartoonist for several satirical journals, including the famed 'Satirikon'). From 1920-1922, Lebedev worked for The Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) and The Department of Agitation (Agitprop) designing propaganda posters.
Hunayn ibn Ishaq ( Latin: Iohannitius) (809 – 873) was a famous and influential scholar, physician, and scientist of Nestorian Arab Christian descent. He and his students transmitted their Syriac and Arabic translations of many classical Greek texts throughout the Islamic world, during the apex of the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate.<br/><br/>

Hunayn ibn Ishaq was the most productive translator of Greek medical and scientific treatises in his day. He studied Greek and became known among the Arabs as the 'Sheikh of the translators'. He mastered four languages: Arabic, Syriac, Greek and Persian.
The Ottheinrich Bible was commissioned in c.1425 by the Royal Court of Bavaria. The unusually large manuscript was not completed until the following century when the German painter and engraver, Matthias Gerung, was offered 60 Rhenish guilders and winter clothes to illustrate the text.<br/><br/>

The Bible carries the name of the benefactor who supported its completion. Ottheinrich (1502-1559) was the Prince of Neuburg, Elector Palatine, soldier, pilgrim, reformer and art patron.
The Beatus of León is an 11th century illuminated manuscript of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana. The manuscript was made for King Ferdinand 1 (c.1015-1065) and Queen Sancha of León. It contains 98 miniatures painted by Facundus. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament.
Commentary on the Apocalypse (Commentaria In Apocalypsin) was originally an eighth century work by the Spanish monk and theologian Beatus of Liébana. Today, it refers to any of the extant manuscript copies of this work, especially any of the 26 illuminated copies that have survived. It is often referred to simply as the Beatus. The historical significance of the Commentary is made even more pronounced since it included a world map, which offers a rare insight into the geographical understanding of the post-Roman world. Well-known copies include the Morgan, the Saint-Sever, the Gerona, the Osma and the Madrid (Vitr 14-1) Beatus codices.<br/><br/>

Considered together, the Beatus codices are among the most important Spanish medieval manuscripts and have been the subject of extensive scholarly and antiquarian enquiry.
For centuries Venice was Europe’s prime trading partner with the Middle East and the Byzantine Empire in particular. Venetian naval and commercial power was unrivalled in Europe until it lost a series of wars to the Ottoman armies in the 15th century. The city lost some 50,000 people to the Black Death in 1575-77, but remained a major manufacturing center and port well into the 18th century.
The sovereignty of the Paracels has been the subject of dispute between the People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan), and Vietnam since at least the early 20th century.<br/><br/>

France annexed the islands as part of French Indochina despite protests from China in the 1930s, but they were taken over by Japanese troops during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Japan renounced the claims to the islands after the war and the Republic of China occupied some of the Paracel islands in late 1946. A small Chinese platoon was stationed on Woody Island.<br/><br/>

After the success of communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the People's Republic of China occupied Woody Island, the main island of the Amphitrite group and the only island that was occupied at the time. Pattle Island, the largest of the Crescent group, on the other hand, was reoccupied by French Indochina and later controlled by South Vietnam following independence in 1956.<br/><br/>

Tensions over these features continued to rise and climaxed at the Battle of the Paracel Islands between the Republic of Vietnam and the People's Republic of China. After the bloody engagement, the latter seized the entire archipelago and has taken control of the islands since 1974. Vietnam does not recognise this fait accompli and continues to dispute ownership.
Siyah Kalem or 'Black Pen' is the name given to the 15th century school of painting attributed to Mehmed Siyah Kalem. Nothing is known of his life, but his work indicates that he was of Central Asian Turkic origin, and thoroughly familiar with camp and military life. The paintings appear in the 'Conqueror’s Albums', so named because two portraits of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror are present in one of them.<br/><br/>

The albums are made up of miniatures taken from manuscripts of the 14th, 15th, and early 16th centuries, and one series of paintings is inscribed 'work of Master Muḥammad Siyah Kalem'. Something of the style and techniques of Chinese paintings is apparent in these, and an acquaintance with Buddhist art, particularly in the depictions of grotesque demonic figures.
Sapajou was the artistic nom de plume of Georgii Avksentievich Sapojnikoff, one-time Lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Army. He was a graduate of the Aleksandrovskoe Military School in Moscow, and saw action in World War I, in which he was gravely wounded. As a result of his wounds, which left him with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life, he was invalided out of the army, and it was at this time that he began to take an interest in the visual arts, enrolling in evening classes at the Academy of Arts. The year 1920 found him, like so many of his compatriots, a refugee in Shanghai.<br/><br/>

From 1925 onwards, Sapajou was on the staff of the North-China Daily News, probably the most important and prestigious English language newspaper in the Far East, and one that was considered the mouthpiece of the largely British establishment of the International Settlement in Shanghai. Through his daily cartoons published over an almost unbroken period of some fifteen years, Sapajou became well known not only in Shanghai but also internationally. The publishing house of Kelly & Walsh produced several albums of his sketches of Shanghai life, and his illustrations appeared in a number of contemporary books on Chinese subjects.
Kamal al-Din Hasan ibn Ali ibn Hasan al-Farisi or Abu Hasan Muhammad ibn Hasan (1267– 12 January 1319 (Persian: كمال‌الدين فارسی‎) was a prominent Persian born in Tabriz, Iran. He made two major contributions to science, one on optics, the other on number theory. Farisi was a pupil of the great astronomer and mathematician Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, who in turn was a pupil of Nasir al-Din Tusi.<br/><br/>

His work on optics was prompted by a question put to him concerning the refraction of light. Shirazi advised him to consult 'The Book of Optics' of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), and Farisi made such a deep study of this treatise that Shirazi suggested that he write what is essentially a revision of that major work, which came to be called the Tanqih.