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A-Z H E-H O --bAbiism

and St Michael, has a population of 124,000, and manufactures pottery, cottons, spirits, straw hats, and tea. The capital, and also capital of the islands, is Ponta Delgada, in St Michael (population, 16,767). The district of Angra de Heroismo, embracing the islands Terceira, St George, and Graciosa, has a population of about 72,000, and manufactures linen, woollens, cheese, butter, soap, bricks, and tiles. Its capital, Angra (population, 11,012), in Terceira, is an episcopal see. The district of Horta, embracing the islands A-zhe-hO, or Ashekhe (Manch. Alchuhu), a town Fayal, Pico, Flores, and Corvo, with a population of about of China, Manchuria, 125 miles N.E. of Kirin, and 30 58,000, makes baskets, mats, &c., of straw and osiers, and miles S. of the Sungari. Population, about 30,000. articles of the pith of the fig. Some 7250 acres are annually planted with vines, which yield 496,000 gallons of Azjer. See Sahara. wine, valued at £42,250. Its capital is Horta (populaAzores, an archipelago of islands belonging to tion, 6879), in Fayal. Meteorological stations are situated Portugal, and lying in the Atlantic W. of that country, at Ponta Delgada and Angra de Heroismo. with an area of 922 sq. miles, and a population of Azrek, Bahr el. See Abyssinia. 255,594. The vineyards cover about 9450 acres, and produce 972,850 gallons of wine (the greater part in Azuay, a province of Ecuador, bounded on the X. Pico), valued at £89,350. On St Michael tea is grown, the produce being consumed in Lisbon. The fish caught in by the province of Cahar, on the S. by that of Loja, on 1898 were valued at an aggregate of £33,100, the number the E. by Oriente, and on the W. by the province of the of fishermen being 5860, and their vessels 1092. In Oro. Its area covers 3870 sq. miles, and the population 1897 the ports of the archipelago were entered and cleared numbers 132,400. The capital, Cuenca, has about 25,000 by a total of 1062 vessels of 2,052,792 tons; and the im- inhabitants. Amongst the principal towns are Gualacco ports and exports together were valued at £210,000. The (3000), Paute, Jiron, Sigsig. The province is divided district of Ponta Delgada, embracing the islands St Mary into 44 parishes.

apparent, salaries and pay to Government officials and troops, pensions, etc. The revenue from customs, most of it remitted to Tehran, was reported to have been £94,000 in 1887 and £90,333 in 1889, and is now about £80,000. The value of the imports and exports exceeded £2,000,000 in 1898. A concession for working some copper ore in the Karadagh district was granted in 1898 to a Russian company.

BadUhek, ancient Heliopolis, altitude 3850 feet, situated on the east side of the fertile valley of the Lft&nl, not far from the water-parting between that river and the Orontes. The remarkable ruins of the temples are described in the ninth edition of this work. In the centre of the main court of the Great Temple are the remains of a' basilica, possibly built by Theodosius, with its apse at the west end. The ruins suffered severely from an earthquake in 1759, and in 1870 it became necessary to support the keystone of the portal of the Temple of the Sun with a wall. In the quarries near the town is a stone 68 feet long and 14 feet high, weighing about 1500 tons, which is still attached to its quarry bed, and was evidently intended for the temple wall. Important excavations have been made in the temple enclosure by Germany. A good description #of the ruins will be found in Baedeker’s Palestine and Syria, Leipzig, 1898. BctbfiSin is the religion founded in Persia in a.d. 1844-45 by Mfrzh 'All Muhammad of Shiraz, a young Sayyid who was at that time not twenty-five years of age. Before his “ manifestation ” (zulmr), of which he gives in the Persian Bay an a date corresponding to 23rd May 1844, he was a disciple of Sayyid Kazim of Rasht, the leader of the Shaykhls, a sect of extreme Shfites characterized by the doctrine (called by them Rukn-i-rdbi, “the fourth support”) that at all times there must exist an intermediary between the twelfth Im&m and his faithful followers. This intermediary they called “the perfect Shl'ite,” and his prototype is to be found in the four successive Bdbs or “gates” through whom alone the twelfth Imdm, during the period of his “minor occupation ” (Ghaybat-i-sughrd, a.d. 874-940), held communication with his partisans. It was in this sense, and not, as has been often asserted, in the sense of “ Gate of God ” or “Gate of Religion,” that the title Bdb was understood and assumed by Mlrzd All Muhammad; but, though still generally thus styled by non-Babls, he soon assumed the higher title of Nxiqta (“ Point ”), and the title Bdb,

thus left vacant, was conferred on his ardent disciple^ Mulla Husayn of Bushrawayh. The history of the Bdbl movement down to the execution of the Bib at Tabriz (8th July 1850) and the great persecution which followed the attempt of three or four Bibls to assassinate the late Shah, Xisiru’d-Dln, in the summer of 1852, is best told by Gobineau, and is summarized in vols. iii., xviii., and xxii. of the ninth edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica, s.v. “ Babi or Baby,” “ Persia : Modern History,” and “ Sunnites and Shl'ites.” The Bib was succeeded on his death by Mirzi Yahyi of Niir (at that time only about twenty years of age), who escaped to Baghdad, and, under the title of Subh-i-Ezel (“the Morning of Eternity”), became the pontiff of the sect. He lived, however, in great seclusion, leaving the direction of affairs almost entirely in the hands of his elder half-brother (born 12th November 1817), Mlrza Husayn 'All, entitled Bahd’u'lldh (“the Splendour of God”), who thus gradually became the most conspicuous and most influential member of the sect, though in the Iqdn, one of the most important polemical works of the Bibls, composed in 1858-59, he still implicitly recognized the supremacy of Subh-i-Ezel. In 1863, however, Bah4 declared himself to be “ He whom God shall manifest ” {Man Yuz-hirulm’lldh, with prophecies of whose advent the works of the Bab are filled), and called on all the Babls to recognize his claim. The majority responded, but Subh-i-Ezel and some of his faithful adherents refused. Since that date the Babls have been divided into two sects, Ezells and Baha’is, of which the former have steadily lost and the latter gained ground, so that at the present day there are probably from half a million to a million of the latter, and at most only a hundred or two of the former. In 1863 the Babls were, at the instance of the Persian Government, removed from Baghdad to Constantinople, whence they were shortly afterwards transferred to Adrianople. In 1868 Balia and his followers were exiled to Acre in Syria, and Subh-i-Ezel with his few adherents to Famagusta in Cyprus, where he