Page:EB1911 - Volume 14.djvu/918

 ISOXAZOLES, monazole chemical compounds corresponding to furfurane, in which the ≡CH group adjacent to the oxygen atom is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and therefore they contain the ring system They may be prepared by the elimination of water from the monoximes of -diketones, -ketone aldehydes or oxymethylene ketones (L. Claisen, Ber., 1891, 24, p. 3906), the general reaction proceeding according to the equation

EB1911 Isoxazoles 2.jpg

W. Dunstan and T. S. Dymond (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1891, 49, p. 410) have also prepared isoxazoles by the action of alkalis on nitroparaffins, but have not been able to obtain the parent substance. Those isoxazoles in which the carbon atom adjacent to nitrogen is substituted are stable compounds, but if this is not the case, rearrangement of the molecule takes place and nitriles are formed. The isoxazoles are feebly basic.

The isoxazolones are the keto derivatives of the as yet unknown dihydroisoxazole, and are compounds of strongly acid nature, decomposing the carbonates of the alkaline earth metals and forming salts with metals and with ammonia. Their constitution is not yet definitely fixed and they may be regarded as derived from one of the three types



By the action of nitrous acid on the oxime of o-aminobenzophenone as -phenyl indoxazene, is obtained; this is a derivative of benzisoxazole.

ISRAEL (Hebrew for “God strives” or “rules”; see Gen. xxxii. 28; and the allusion in Hosea xii. 4), the national designation of the Jews. Israel was a name borne by their ancestor Jacob the father of the twelve tribes. For some centuries the term was applied to the northern kingdom, as distinct from Judah, although the feeling of national unity extended it so as to include both. It emphasizes more particularly the position of the Hebrews as a religious community, bound together by common aims and by their covenant-relation with the national God, Yahweh.

See further, , ,
 * History and Palestine.

ISRAELI, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON (9th–10th centuries), Jewish physician and philosopher. A contemporary of (q.v.), he was born and passed his life in North Africa. He died c. 950. At Kairawan, Israeli was court physician; he wrote several medical works in Arabic, and these were afterwards translated into Latin. Similarly his philosophical writings were translated, but his chief renown was in the circle of Moslem authors.

ISRAËLS, JOSEF (1824– &emsp;&emsp; ), Dutch painter, was born at Groningen, of Hebrew parents, on the 27th of January 1824. His father intended him to be a man of business, and it was only after a determined struggle that he was allowed to enter on an artistic career. However, the attempts he made under the guidance of two second-rate painters in his native town—Buÿs and van Wicheren—while still working under his father as a stockbroker’s clerk, led to his being sent to Amsterdam, where he became a pupil of Jan Kruseman and attended the drawing class at the academy. He then spent two years in Paris, working in Picot’s studio, and returned to Amsterdam. There he remained till 1870, when he moved to The Hague for good. Israëls is justly regarded as one of the greatest of Dutch painters. He has often been compared to J. F. Millet. As artists, even more than as painters in the strict sense of the word, they both, in fact, saw in the life of the poor and humble a motive for expressing with peculiar intensity their wide human sympathy; but Millet was the poet of placid rural life, while in almost all Israëls’ pictures we find some piercing note of woe. Duranty said of them that “they were painted with gloom and suffering.” He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he went to recruit his strength at the fishing-town of Zandvoort near Haarlem, and there he was struck by the daily tragedy of life. Thenceforth he was possessed by a new vein of artistic expression, sincerely realistic, full of emotion and pity. Among his more important subsequent works are “The Zandvoort Fisherman” (in the Amsterdam gallery), “The Silent House” (which gained a gold medal at the Brussels Salon, 1858) and “Village Poor” (a prize at Manchester). In 1862 he achieved great success in London with his “Shipwrecked,” purchased by Mr Young, and “The Cradle,” two pictures of which the Athenaeum spoke as “the most touching pictures of the exhibition.” We may also mention among his maturer works “The Widower” (in the Mesdag collection), “When we grow Old” and “Alone in the World” (Amsterdam gallery), “An Interior” (Dordrecht gallery), “A Frugal Meal” (Glasgow museum), “Toilers of the Sea,” “A Speechless Dialogue,” “Between the Fields and the Seashore,” “The Bric-à-brac Seller” (which gained medals of honour at the great Paris Exhibition of 1900). “David Singing before Saul,” one of his latest works, seems to hint at a return on the part of the venerable artist to the Rembrandtesque note of his youth. As a water-colour painter and etcher he produced a vast number of works, which, like his oil paintings, are full of deep feeling. They are generally treated in broad masses of light and shade, which give prominence to the principal subject without any neglect of detail.

See Jan Veth, Mannen of Beteckenis: Jozef Israëls; Chesneau, Peintres français et étrangers; Ph. Zilcken, Peintres hollandais modernes (1893); Dumas, Illustrated Biographies of Modern Artists (1882–1884); J. de Meester, in Max Rooses’ Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century (1898); Jozef Israëls, Spain: the Story of a Journey (1900).

ISSACHAR (a Hebrew name meaning apparently “there is a hire,” or “reward”), Jacob’s ninth “son,” his fifth by Leah; also the name of a tribe of Israel. Slightly differing explanations of the reference in the name are given in Gen. xxx. 16 (J) and v. 18 (E). The territory of the tribe (Joshua xix. 17-23) lay to the south of that allotted to Zebulun, Naphtali, Asher and Dan, and included the whole of the great plain of Esdraelon, and the hills to the east of it, the boundary in that direction extending from Tabor to the Jordan, apparently along the deep gorge of Wadi el Bīreh. In the rich territory of Issachar, traversed by the great commercial highway from the Mediterranean and Egypt to Bethshean and the Jordan, were several important towns which remained in the hands of the Canaanites for some time (Judges i. 27), separating the tribe from Manasseh. Although Issachar is mentioned as having taken some part in the war of freedom under Deborah (Judges v. 15), it is impossible to misunderstand the reference to its tributary condition in the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 14 seq.), or the fact that the name of this tribe is omitted from the list given in Judges i. of those who bestirred themselves against the earlier inhabitants of the country. In the “blessing upon Zebulun and Issachar” in Deut. xxxiii. 18 seq., reference is made to its agricultural life in terms suggesting that along with its younger, but more successful “brother,” it was the guardian of a sacred mountain (Carmel, Tabor?) visited periodically for sacrificial feasts.

ISSEDONES, an ancient people of Central Asia at the end of the trade route leading north-east from (q.v.), described by Herodotus (iv. 26). The position of their country is fixed as the Tarym basin by the more precise indications of Ptolemy, who tells how a Syrian merchant penetrated as far as Issedon. They had their wives in common and were accustomed to slay the old people, eat their flesh and make cups of their skulls. Such usages survived among Tibetan tribes and make it likely that the Issedones were of Tibetan race. Some of the Issedones seem to have invaded the country of the Massagetae to the west, and similar customs are assigned to a section of these.