Bloody legacy of wild zealot
QUESTION
At the time of the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, was there a bigger group of people being held captive in Mecca?
THE only dramatic domestic challenge to the Saudi monarchy since World War II took place in November 1979 when the Masjid al-haram, or Grand Mosque, in Mecca — the holiest site in the world for Muslims — was seized by followers of the religious extremist Juhayman al-Otaybi.
Juhayman, 40, the founder of the Salafi group, had been educated by the Saudi religious establishment and was a former member of the National Guard.
He was protesting over what he considered to be the un-Islamic behaviour of the Saudi royal family.
In the early hours of November 20, 1979, 50,000 faithful from all over the world gathered for dawn prayers in the courtyard surrounding the sacred Kaaba, or cube, in the centre of the mosque.
Dozens of mourners were carrying coffins to receive the imam’s prayers. Concealed in some were weapons and ammunition.
Just after prayers, 200 militants, led by the wild, long-haired Al-Otaybi, seized control of the Grand Mosque and demanded the overthrow of Saudi Arabia’s monarchy.
Al-Otaybi declared the pro-Western Saudi rulers corrupt, called for the banning of ‘evils’ such as radio, TV and the employment of women, and declared the arrival of a new Mahdi, a messianic figure to rid the world of injustice.
The occupation lasted two weeks and was put down after heavy fighting. The Saudi military used tanks and artillery to subdue the rebels, damaging the mosque and its grounds. To flush out jihadists from the labyrinthine basement, French special forces piped in poison gas.
The Saudi government claimed a death toll of 255, but there were probably as many as 1,000 fatalities. Al-Otaybi was captured and publicly beheaded along with 62 of his fighters.
The repercussions of the rebellion are still felt across the Arab world. In the aftermath, the house of Saud reached accommodation with conservative religious leaders. In exchange for a commitment to stop undermining the royal family, the regime agreed to give the moral police greater power, roll back modernising reforms, such as allowing women to appear on TV, and to underwrite the export of Wahhabism, an extreme orthodox form of Islam.
The siege of Mecca was the first act of modern international jihad. It radicalised a young Osama bin Laden and was a preview of what became Al Qaeda.
Abigail Lang, Oxford.
QUESTION
Can a sound be trademarked?
SOUNDS can be trademarked, but this is difficult. Just 313 are registered by the european union International Property Office, as against many thousand words.
A sound mark is defined as a trademark consisting exclusively of a sound or combination of sounds.
Until 2015, this had to be submitted as an accurate representation in musical notation. Since then, a sound mark can be represented by an audio file.
The applicant must also demonstrate it has acquired distinctiveness and an association with the brand in the minds of consumers.
A good example is British Airways’s advertising campaign in 1989, which made its service synonymous with four bars of Delibes’s Flower Duet from the opera Lakme.
Other well-known examples of sound marks are comparethemarket.com’s ‘Simples’, the Tetris theme, The Mockingjay Whistle in The hunger Games film franchise, Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan yell, Darth Vader’s breathing and the lightsaber swoosh from the Star Wars franchise, the Direct Line jingle and the Intel bong.
Estelle Pierce, Guildford, Surrey.
QUESTION
Was author Mark Twain also a noted inventor?
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS, known by his pen-name Mark Twain, author of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and Adventures Of huckleberry Finn, loved technology and admired inventors.
‘An inventor is a poet — a true poet — and nothing in any degree less than a high order of poet,’ he wrote.
His own inventions weren’t always successful. his first attempt was 1871’s patent for Improvement In Adjustable And Detachable Straps For Garments.
Twain wanted to eliminate suspenders — the American term for braces — which he found uncomfortable. his invention could also be used for underpants and women’s corsets.
However, he was unable to sell the manufacturing rights.
He tried again in 1873 with a self-pasting scrapbook. All his life, Twain kept scrapbooks filled with souvenirs, pictures and articles. however, he grew tired of trying to find suitable glue.
Each page of his novel scrapbook had strips of adhesive attached, which had to be moistened with a sponge before an article could be glued in.
The firm Slote, Woodman & Co. manufactured and sold 25,000 of these self-pasting scrapbooks, making Twain a substantial amount of money.
In 1885, Twain received his final patent for Memory-builder, a game designed to teach children significant dates in history. It was designed to be played on a cribbage board and consisted of a pack of straight pins of different colours and a set of complicated instructions.
It did not catch on. One critic said it ‘looked like a cross between an income tax form and a table of logarithms’.
Twain made a lot of money from his writing, but this was frittered away on bad investments.
He ploughed much of his wealth into James W. Paige’s automatic typesetting machine, which was superseded by Linotype. he also lost money on an engraving process, magnetic telegraph, steam pulley, the Fredonia Watch Company and railroad stocks.
Robert Meyers, York.