A martyr is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, refusing to renounce, or refusing to advocate a religious belief or cause as demanded by an external party. In the martyrdom narrative of the remembering community, this refusal to comply with the presented demands results in the punishment or execution of an actor by an alleged oppressor. Accordingly, the status of the'martyr' can be considered a posthumous title as a reward for those who are considered worthy of the concept of martyrdom by the living, regardless of any attempts by the deceased to control how they will be remembered in advance. Insofar, the martyr is a relational figure of a society's boundary work, produced by collective memory. Applied only to those who suffered for their religious beliefs, the term has come to be used in connection with people killed for a political cause. Most martyrs are considered holy or are respected by their followers, becoming symbols of exceptional leadership and heroism in the face of difficult circumstances.

Martyrs play significant roles in religions. Martyrs have had notable effects in secular life, including such figures as Socrates, among other political and cultural examples. In its original meaning, the word martyr, meaning witness, was used in the secular sphere as well as in the New Testament of the Bible; the process of bearing witness was not intended to lead to the death of the witness, although it is known from ancient writers and from the New Testament that witnesses died for their testimonies. During the early Christian centuries, the term acquired the extended meaning of believers who are called to witness for their religious belief, on account of this witness, endures suffering or death; the term, in this sense, entered the English language as a loanword. The death of a martyr or the value attributed; the early Christians who first began to use the term martyr in its new sense saw Jesus as the first and greatest martyr, on account of his crucifixion. The early Christians appear to have seen Jesus as the archetypal martyr.

The word martyr is used in English to describe a wide variety of people. However, the following table presents a general outline of common features present in stereotypical martyrdoms. In the Bahá'í Faith, martyrs are those who sacrifice their lives serving humanity in the name of God. However, Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, discouraged the literal meaning of sacrificing one's life. Instead, he explained. Martyrdom was extensively promoted by the Kuomintang party in modern China. Revolutionaries who died fighting against the Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution and throughout the Republic of China period, furthering the cause of the revolution, were recognized as martyrs. In Christianity, a martyr, in accordance with the meaning of the original Greek martys in the New Testament, is one who brings a testimony written or verbal. In particular, the testimony is that of the Christian Gospel, or more the Word of God. A Christian witness is a biblical witness. However, over time many Christian testimonies were rejected, the witnesses put to death, the word martyr developed its present sense.

Where death ensues, the witnesses follow the example of Jesus in offering up their lives for truth. The concept of Jesus as a martyr has received greater attention. Analyses of the Gospel passion narratives have led many scholars to conclude that they are martyrdom accounts in terms of genre and style. Several scholars have concluded that Paul the Apostle understood Jesus' death as a martyrdom. In light of such conclusions, some have argued that the Christians of the first few centuries would have interpreted the crucifixion of Jesus as a martyrdom. In the context of church history, from the time of the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire, it developed that a martyr was one, killed for maintaining a religious belief, knowing that this will certainly result in imminent death; this definition of martyr is not restricted to the Christian faith. Though Christianity recognizes certain Old Testament Jewish figures, like Abel and the Maccabees, as holy, the New Testament mentions the imprisonment and beheading of John the Baptist, Jesus's possible cousin and his prophet and forerunner, the first Christian witness, after the establishment of the Christian faith, to be killed for his testimony was Saint Stephen, those who suffer martyrdom are said to have been "crowned."

From the time of Constantine, Christianity was decriminalized, under Theodosius I, became the state religion, which diminished persecution. As some wondered how they could most follow Christ there was a development of desert spirituality, desert monks, self-mortification, following Christ by separation from the world; this was a kind of white martyrdom, dying to oneself every day, as opposed to a red martyrdom, the giving of one's life in a violent death. In Christianity, death in sectarian persecution can be viewed as martyrdom. For example, the Spanish Inquisition began in 1481. There were martyrs recognized on both sides of the schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England after 1534. Two hundred and eighty-eight Christians were martyred for their faith by public burning between 1553 and 1558 by the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I in England leading to the reversion to the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth

Derviş Ali was a 17th-century Ottoman calligrapher. His is known by the nicknames Büyük, Birinci or ayırt Mâruf. Little is known about his early life, his date of birth is unknown. He was raised as a slave in the household of a Janissary officer by the name of Kara Hasan-oglu Huseyn Aga; as a young man, he served as a subaltern with the Janissaries. He trained as a calligrapher with Halid Erzurumi, he worked in the Köprülü Library, where he trained many calligraphers, of whom the most famous were the Grand Vizier, Köprülüzade Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, Hâfiz Osman and Suyolcuzade Mustafa Eyyubi Another of his students was Ismail Efendi, who executed the tomb of Hâfiz Osman and produced 44 copies of the Q'ran. He died at an advanced age in 1673, was buried outside Top-Qapou. Culture of the Ottoman Empire Hafiz Osman Islamic calligraphy List of Ottoman calligraphers Ottoman art

Mark Pope, Ed. D. is Thomas Jefferson Professor and Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri – Saint Louis, where he was a colleague to the social theorist Robert Rocco Cottone. Dr. Pope served from as chair of the Department of Counseling and Family Therapy at that university, he was president of the American Counseling Association, National Career Development Association, Association for Lesbian, Gay and Transgender Issues in Counseling, Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay and Transgender Issues, founder and first chair of the Professional Counseling Fund. Dr. Pope is considered to be one of the founders of and leading authors in the field of cultural diversity issues in career counseling and career development gay and lesbian career development, his major publications have included writings in counseling with sexual minorities and international students, the history of and public policy issues in counseling, professional identity. He served as editor of The Career Development Quarterly, the preeminent journal in career counseling and development.

Pope was raised in Fisk, Missouri, a small town of less than 500 people in rural and agricultural southeast Missouri, in a family of teachers and preachers. He founded the student council at Fisk-Rombauer High School and was elected as its first president in 1968, he was valedictorian of his graduating class and elected state vice-president of the Beta Clubs of Missouri. Between his junior and senior years in high school, he was selected to attend the National Science Foundation-funded Summer Institute in Mathematics and Science at the University of Kansas. Dr. Pope attended the University of Missouri -- the University of San Francisco, he was elected student body vice-president at the University of Missouri – Columbia in 1971 and president of the graduate student council at the University of San Francisco in 1986. Founding his high school student council and his other early achievements portended other firsts both inside and outside the counseling profession including founding the Missouri Student Lobby, the third student lobby in the US.

Dr. Pope is author of numerous books, including Professional Counseling 101: Building a Strong Professional Identity, book chapters, professional journal articles, over 150 international, regional and local presentations, his many presentations include keynote addresses in China, Australia and the US as well as consultancies in Malaysia, Hong Kong, throughout the US with companies including Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Pacific Bell, the Internal Revenue Service. His other major contribution has been to the literature on the training of counselors and includes seven books on teaching career counseling classes. Dr. Pope is a fellow of several major professional societies including the American Counseling Association, American Psychological Association, National Career Development Association, Society of Counseling Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Culture and Race, Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, he has been the recipient of a number of major awards in the mental health professions including the human rights awards from the American Counseling Association and the state professional counseling associations of both California and Missouri, culminating with receiving the Eminent Career Award of the National Career Development Association in 2008, the highest award in career counseling and development in the US.

In 2018, the Association for Lesbian, Gay and Transgender Issues in Counseling named an award in Dr. Pope's honor, the ALGBTIC Mark Pope Social Justice and Advocacy Award, for his lifetime of contributions in service of social justice and advocacy for the LGBT community. In 2018, the University of Missouri System presented him with The Thomas J