A00067 - Tahsin Sahinkaya, Turkish Air Force General and Coup Leader

Tahsin Şahinkaya (b. 1925 – d. July 9, 2015) was a Turkish Air Force general. He was Commander of the Turkish Air Force from 1978 to 1983, and previously Secretary-General of the National Security Council (1977-1978). He was one of the five leaders of the 1980 military coup,  and after the coup he was a member of the Presidential Council. 

In 2012, a court case was launched against Şahinkaya and Kenan Evren (President of Turkey from 1980 to 1989) relating to the 1980 military coup. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment on June 18, 2014 by a court in Ankara, the capital of Turkey.

Şahinkaya died at age 90 in the military "Haydarpaşa GATA Hospital" in Istanbul on July 9, 2015. He was interred at Karacaahmet Cemetery on July 11 following a memorial ceremony held at the Turkish First Army headquarters in the Selimiye Barracks and subsequent religious funeral service at the nearby Buyuk Selimiye Mosque in Uskudar. He was survived by his wife Sema, son Serdar, daughter Sevgi Kartal and son-in-law Mustafa Kartal.

A00066 - Saud al-Faisal, Long-Time Saudi Foreign Minister

Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Arabic: سعود بن فيصل بن عبد العزيز آل سعود‎), also known as Saud Al Faisal (Arabic: سعود الفيصل‎‎) (b. January 2, 1940, Ta'if, Saudi Arabia – d. July 9, 2015, Los Angeles, California), was a Saudi diplomat and statesman who served as Saudi Arabia's foreign minister from 1975 to 2015. By the time of his retirement, he was the world's longest-serving foreign minister. He was a member of the Saudi royal family.

A00065 - Omar Sharif, Legendary Star of "Doctor Zhivago"

Sharif, Omar (Michael Demitri Shalhoub) (Michel Shalhoub) (Michel Chalhoub) (born April 10, 1932, Alexandria, Egypt - d. July 10, 2015, Cairo, Egypt).  Egyptian film actor with worldwide success.  His original name was Michel Shahoub, and he was educated at Victoria College in Cairo.  He was working in the lumber business when he was offered a lead role in an Egyptian film in 1954.  In this film, Fatin Hamama was a co-star.  She was to become his wife.  

Omar Sharif was an Egyptian actor of international acclaim, known for his dashing good looks and for his iconic roles in such films as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Shalhoub was born in Alexandria, the only son of a prosperous lumber merchant. When he was four years old, he moved with his family to Cairo, where he attended English schools. With early aspirations of being an actor, Shalhoub participated in theater productions in secondary school. At the urging of his father, he worked for the family’s lumber business after graduating. In 1953, his acting dreams were realized when he was cast opposite Egyptian star Faten Hamama in Siraa fil-wadi (1954; “Struggle in the Valley”). He began his acting career using a pseudonym, which went through several variations and eventually was rendered consistently in English as Omar Sharif. Sharif went on to star in several more films with Hamama, whom he married in 1955 (the couple divorced in 1974).

Sharif quickly rose to stardom in his native Egypt, appearing in more than 20 films before garnering international acclaim as Sherif Ali in David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. His portrayal of the loyal Arab chief earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Following this breakthrough role, Sharif was much in demand to play a variety of characters, including a Spanish priest in Behold a Pale Horse (1964) and the Mongolian conqueror in Genghis Khan (1965). Among Sharif’s most famous roles is the title character in Doctor Zhivago, Lean’s adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s novel of the same name. Starring opposite Julie Christie, Sharif portrayed a poet-doctor in the middle of a love triangle. He later was cast as a German military man in The Night of the Generals (1967), Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in Mayerling (1968), and revolutionary Che Guevara in Che! (1969). Sharif was also well known for his portrayal of Nick Arnstein, husband to Barbra Streisand’s Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1968). He reprised the role of Arnstein in the film’s sequel, Funny Lady (1975).

Sharif continued to appear both on-screen and on television into the 21st century, though he appeared in few notable roles after the mid-1970s. Instead, he devoted much of his time to the card game bridge, releasing books, videos, and video games on the subject. Beginning in the 1970s, Sharif published a syndicated column about bridge. He also wrote an autobiography, L’Éternel Masculin (1976; The Eternal Male), with Marie-Thérèse Guinchard.

Sharif was born Michael Shalhoub in Alexandria, into a wealthy Egyptian Catholic family. Sharif's family has widely been reported to be Egyptian-Lebanese, though Sharif has said that he is Egyptian and the reports to the contrary are incorrect. Sharif graduated from Alexandria’s Victoria College, then from Cairo University with degrees in both mathematics and physics. In 1955, Omar El-Sharif converted to Islam and then married Egyptian actress Faten Hamama. The couple had one son, Tarek El-Sharif, who appeared in Doctor Zhivago as Yuri at the age of eight. They separated in 1966 and the marriage ended in 1974. Sharif never remarried; he stated that since his divorce, he never fell in love with another woman, and that, although he lived abroad for years, it was not possible for him to fall in love with a woman who was not Egyptian. In a 2007 interview, Sharif denied rumors that he had become atheist.

Sharif's filmography includes:

    * Shaytan al-Sahra (1954)
    * Sira` Fi al-Wadi (The Blazing Sun or Struggle in the Valley or Fight in the Valley) (1954)
    * Ayyamna al-Holwa (Our Best Days) (1955)
    * Siraa Fil-Mina (1956)
    * Ard al-Salam (1957)
    * The Lebanese Mission (Châtelaine du Liban, La) (1957)
    * La anam (I Do Not Sleep) (1958)
    * Goha (1958)
    * Fadiha fil-zamalek (Scandal in Zamalek) (1959)
    * Sayedat el kasr (Lady of the Castle) (1959)
    * Seraa fil Nil (Struggle on the Nile) (1959)
    * Bidaya wa nihaya (1960)
    * Hobi al-wahid (My Only Love) (1960)
    * Esha'a hob (Rumor of Love) (1960)
    * Nahr al-Hob (The River of love) (1960)
    * A Man in our House (A Man in our House) (1961)
    * Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
    * Behold a Pale Horse (1964)
    * The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
    * Doctor Zhivago (1965)
    * The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
    * Genghis Khan (1965)
    * The Night of the Generals (1967)
    * More Than A Miracle (1967)
    * Funny Girl (1968)
    * Mayerling (1968)
    * Che! (1969)
    * The Appointment (1969)
    * Mackenna's Gold (1969)
    * The Last Valley (1970)
    * The Horsemen (1971)
    * The Burglars (1971)
    * The Mysterious Island (L'Ile Mysterieuse) (TV miniseries) (1973)
    * Juggernaut (1974)
    * The Tamarind Seed (1974)
    * Crime and Passion (1975)
    * Funny Lady (1975)
    * The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), uncredited cameo
    * Ashanti: Land of No Mercy (1979)
    * Bloodline (1979)
    * S-H-E (1979)
    * Oh Heavenly Dog (1980)
    * The Baltimore Bullet (1980)
    * Pleasure Palace (1980)
    * Green Ice (1981)
    * Top Secret! (1984)
    * Peter the Great (1986)
    * Harem (1986), as Sultan Hassan
    * The Possessed (1988)
    * The Jewel of the Nile (1988)
    * Al-aragoz (the puppeteer) (1989)
    * The Opium Connection (1990)
    * Memories of Midnight (1991)
    * Mowaten masri (An Egyptian Citizen) (1991)
    * Beyond Justice (1992)
    * Grand Larceny (1992)
    * Mayrig (1992)
    * Dehk we le'b we gad we hob (Laughter, Games, Seriousness and Love) (1993)
    * Lie Down With Lions (1994)
    * Catherine the Great (1995)
    * Gulliver's Travels (1996)
    * Heaven Before I Die (1997)
    * Mysteries of Egypt (1998)
    * The 13th Warrior (1999)
    * The Parole Officer (2001)
    * Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (2003)
    * Hidalgo (2004)
    * Imperium: St Peter (2005)
    * Fuoco su di me (2005)
    * Shaka Zulu: The Last Great Warrior (2005)
    * One Night with the King (2006)
    * The Crown Prince (2006)
    * Hanan W Haneen (TV Series - Egypt) (2007)
    * The Ten Commandments (TV series) (2007)...as Jethro
    * The Last Templar (TV Series) (2008)
    * Hassan & Marcus (2008)
    * 10,000 BC (2008)
    * The Traveler (2009)

Sharif's books include:

    * The Eternal Male (1977)
    * Omar Sharif's Life in Bridge (1983)
    * Omar Sharif Talks Bridge (2004)
    * Bridge Deluxe II play with Omar Sharif (Instruction manual)

A00064 - Tariq Aziz, Top Aide to Saddam Hussein

Tariq Aziz, also spelled Ṭāriq ʿAzīz, original name Mikhail Yuhanna   (b. April 28, 1936, Qaḍā Talkīf, Iraq — d. June 5, 2015, Al-Nāṣiriyyah, Iraq), was an Iraqi public official who served as foreign minister (1983–91) and deputy prime minister (1979–2003) in the Ba'thist government of Saddam Hussein.

Tariq Aziz was born Mikhail Yuhanna to a Chaldean Catholic family in northern Iraq. He studied English at Baghdad University and worked as a journalist after earning his degree. Beginning in 1958, he wrote for a series of Iraqi newspapers, and he became involved with the Baʿth Party. He changed his name to Tariq Aziz (Arabic for “glorious past”) to appeal to the party’s predominantly Muslim membership, and he became acquainted with Saddam Hussein. Aziz worked for the Baʿthist press in Syria in the mid-1960s, a period that saw the party’s fortunes rise and fall frequently, and he was named chief editor of Al-Thawra, the party’s official newspaper, in 1969.

As the Baʿth Party secured its hold on power in the early 1970s, Aziz held a number of government positions. In 1972 he was made a member of the Revolutionary Command Council’s General Affairs Bureau, and two years later he was named Minister of Information. He held that post until 1977. In that year he was also elected as a Baʿth Party regional leader. On July 16, 1979, Saddam, who had functioned as Iraq’s de facto leader during the final years of President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr's rule, became President of Iraq, and Aziz was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. Aziz would remain in that position for almost a quarter century, notable as the only Christian in Saddam’s inner circle of advisers. In April 1980 he survived an assassination attempt, reportedly orchestrated by Iran, that was later presented by Saddam as a casus belli for the Iran-Iraq War. 

In January 1983 Aziz was made Minister of Foreign Affairs, and it was in this role that the bespectacled cigar-smoking diplomat served as Iraq’s face to the Western world. He won United States support for the war against Iran, and, after meeting with United States President Ronald Reagan in 1984, he secured the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iraq and the United States. Skillfully appealing to both sides in the Cold War, he also strengthened military and economic ties with the Soviet Union. With Iraq weakened by eight years of war, Saddam eyed the oil revenues of nearby Kuwait. Throughout 1989–90, as military conflict loomed, Aziz was dispatched to seek assurances of nonintervention from the United States and Arab countries. They were slow to materialize, and support for Iraq—even among its traditional allies—evaporated shortly after its August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait. During the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, Aziz appealed the Iraqi case to the United Nations, and his fluency in English made him a regular guest on Western news programs.

After the Persian Gulf War, which saw the Iraqi military routed and driven from Kuwait, Iraq found itself isolated diplomatically and economically, and Aziz was relieved of his foreign affairs portfolio. He remained Deputy Prime Minister, however, and in this role he spent much of the next decade portraying Iraq as the victim of American designs on the Middle East. He played a much smaller role in the diplomatic maneuvering that preceded the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, and he surrendered to United States forces shortly after the fall of Baghdad. He remained in United States custody from April 2003 to July 2010, when he was transferred to Iraqi custody. Like other senior Baʿthists, Aziz was tried on numerous charges, and in October 2010 he was sentenced to death for crimes against Islamic political parties during Saddam’s reign. His death sentence was never carried out, however, and he died in prison in 2015.

A00063 - Rohingya, a Muslim Minority of Burma

The Rohingya people are Indo-Aryan people from the Rakhine State, Burma, who speak the Rohingya language.  According to the Rohingyas, and some scholars, the Rohingya are indigenous to the Rakhine State, while other historians claim that they migrated to Burma from Bengal primarily during the period of British rule in Burma, and to a lesser extent, after the Burmese independence in 1948 and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. 

Muslims have settled in the Rakhine State (also known as Arakan) since the 16th century, although the number of Muslim settlers before British rule is unclear.  After the first Anglo-Burmese War in 1826, the British annexed Arakan and encouraged migrants from Bengal to work as farm laborers. The Muslim population may have constituted 5% of Arakan's population by 1869, although estimates for earlier years give higher numbers. Successive British censuses of 1872 and 1911 recorded an increase in Muslim population from 58,255 to 178,647 in the Akyab District. During World War II, the Rakhine State massacre in 1942 involved communal violence between the British-armed V Force Rohingya recruits and Buddhist Rakhine people and the region became increasingly ethnically polarized.

In 1982, General Ne Win's government enacted the Burmese nationality law, which denied the Rohingya citizenship. Since the 1990s, the term "Rohingya" has increased in usage among Rohingya communities.

As of 2013, about 735,000 Rohingyas lived in Burma. They resided mainly in the northern Rakhine townships, where they formed 80–98% of the population. International media and human rights organizations have described Rohingyas as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

A00062 - Kayahan Acar, Turkish Singer and Songwriter

Kayahan Açar, stage name Kayahan, (March 29, 1949 – April 3, 2015) was a Turkish pop music singer and songwriter. He was an accomplished composer, consistently ranking among the best-selling Turkish musicians of all time. Kayahan composed all of his own material and released more than eight best-selling albums during a career spanning three decades.

Kayahan was born in Izmir, Turkey, on March 29, 1949. He spent his childhood and young adulthood years in Ankara before moving to Istanbul. 

Kayahan, whose full name was Kayahan Acar, released his first album in 1975 and went on to release nearly two dozen more. Best known for his love songs, he built his musical legacy on his use of idiomatic Turkish to describe emotions. Many of his songs are considered pop classics.

He first won global recognition at the 1986 International Mediterranean Music Contest in Antalya, a Turkish Mediterranean town, and in 1990 he represented Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest with his composition "Gozlerinin Hapsindeyim" (“I Am Entrapped by Your Eyes”). The song did not win, but it became a hit in Turkey.

Açar was married three times. He made his first marriage to Nur in 1973. From this marriage, which lasted 24 years long, he became father of a daughter Beste (Turkish for music composition), born in 1975. Beste was runner-up for Miss Turkey in 1995. Kayahan remarried to Lale Yılmaz in 1990. The couple divorced in 1996. In 1999, at age fifty, he remarried to his third wife,1976-born İpek Tüter. In August 2000, İpek gave birth to their daughter Aslı Gönül.

A00061 - Ibn Badis, Author of Staff of the Scribes

Ibn Badis
Ibn Badis (Al- Muʻizz ibn Bādīs) (Arabic:  المعز بن باديس‎); 1008–1062) was the fourth ruler of the Zirids in Ifriqiya, reigning from 1016 to 1062.

Al-Muizz ascended the throne as a minor following the death of his father Badis ibn Mansur,  with his aunt acting as regent. In 1016 there was a bloody revolt in Ifriqiya in which the Fatimid residence Al-Mansuriya was completely destroyed and 20,000 Shiites were massacred. The unrest forced a ceasefire in the conflict with the Hammadids of Algeria, and their independence was finally recognized in 1018.

Al-Muizz took over the government in 1022 following the overthrow of his aunt. The relationship with the Fatimids was strained, when in 1027 they supported a revolt of the Zanatas in Tripolitania which resulted in permanent loss of control of the region. His son Abdallah shortly ruled Sicily in 1038-1040, after intervening with a Zirid army in the civil war that broke out in the island.

The political turmoil notwithstanding, the general economic well-being initially made possible an extensive building program. However, the kingdom found itself in economic crisis in the 1040s, reflected in currency devaluation, epidemic and famine. This may have been related to the high level of tribute which the Zirids were compelled to pay annually to the Fatimids (one million gold dinars a year).

When al-Muizz (under the influence of Sunni jurists in Kairouan, growing Sunni public pressure in his realm and a violent backlash against the Shi'ite minority) recognized the Abbasids in Baghdad as rightful Caliphs in 1045 and adopted Sunni orthodoxy, the break with the Fatimids was complete. He even denounced the Fatimids and their followers as heretics in newly minted coinage.

The Fatimids then deported the Bedouin tribes of the Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaym fromEgypt to Ifriqiya. The invasion of the Bedouin (1051–1052) led to great hardship after the defeat at Jabal Haydaran, severely impacting agriculture in Ifriqiya. The conquest of Kairouan in 1057 resulted in further anarchy. The Zirids lost control over the hinterland and were only able to retain the coastal areas, the capital being moved to Mahdia. With the growth of Bedouin Emirates and the continuing insecurity inland, the economy of Ifriqiya looked increasingly towards the Mediterranean, with the result the coastal cities grew in importance through maritime trade and piracy.

Al-Muizz was succeeded by his son Tamim ibn Muizz. 

Al-Muizz ibn Badis is usually thought to be the author of the famous Kitab `umdat al-kuttab wa `uddat dhawi al-albab (Staff of the Scribes). It is divided in twelve chapters.  Al-Muizz wrote on (amongst others) on the excellence of the pen, on the preparation of types of inks, the preparation of colored inks, metallic inks (including ones prepared from silver filings and alcohol), the coloring of dyes and mixtures, secret writing, the making of paper and the Arabic gum and glue.