Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/681

 the British sovereign was declared legal tender and the mohur was thus superseded.  MOIDORE, (a corruption of the Portuguese moeda d’ouro, literally, money of gold), the name of a gold Portuguese coin, coined from 1640 to 1732. This was of the sterling value of 13s. 5d. It is the double moida d’ouro, of the value of 4800 reis in 1688, that was current in western Europe and the West Indies for a long period after it ceased to be struck. It was the principal coin current in Ireland at the beginning of the 18th century, and spread to the west of England. At the same period it was current in the West Indies, particularly in Barbados. It was rated in English money at 27s.  MOIR, DAVID MACBETH (1798–1851), Scottish physician and writer, was born at Musselburgh on the 5th of January 1798. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, taking his degree in 1816. Entering into partnership with a Musselburgh doctor he practised there until his death on the 6th of July 1851. He was a contributor of both prose and verse to the magazines, and particularly, with the signature of “Delta,” to Blackwood’s. A collection of his poetry was edited in 1852 by Thomas Aird. Among his publications were the famous Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor (1828), which shows his gifts as a humorist, Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine (1831), and Sketch of the Poetical Literature of the Past Half Century (1851).  MOISSAC, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, 17 m. W.N.W. of Montauban on the Southern railway between Bordeaux and Toulouse. Pop. (1906) town, 4523; commune, 8218. Moissac stands at the foot of vine-clad hills on the right bank of the Tarn; it is divided into two parts by the lateral canal of the Garonne, which crosses the Tarn by way of an aqueduct a short distance above the town. It contains little of note except the abbey-church of St Pierre, a building of the 15th century with a porch of the 12th century which is decorated with elaborate Romanesque carving unsurpassed in France. The cloister of the early 12th century adjoining the north side of the church is also one of the finest of its kind. Romanesque in character, it has pointed arches resting alternately on single and clustered columns with sculptured capitals. Among other remains of the abbey is the abbot’s palace, which contains two halls of the Romanesque period. St Martin, the oldest of the other churches of Moissac, dates from before the year 1000. The town has a sub-prefecture, a tribunal of first instance, a communal college for boys, a library and a museum. Trade is in oil, wine, eggs, poultry and fruit (peaches, apricots, &c.).

The town owes its origin to an abbey probably founded in the 7th century by St Amand, the friend of Dagobert. After being devastated by the Saracens, the abbey was restored by Louis of Aquitaine, son of Charlemagne. Subsequently it was made dependent on Cluny, but in 1618 it was secularized by Pope Paul V., and replaced by a house of Augustinian monks, which was suppressed at the Revolution. The town, which was erected into a commune in the 13th century, was taken by Richard Cœur de Lion and by Simon de Montfort.  MOISSAN, HENRI (1852–1907), French chemist, was born at Paris on the 28th of September 1852. Educated at the Museum of Natural History, he was successively professor of toxicology (1886) and of inorganic chemistry (1889) at the School of Pharmacy, and of general chemistry at the Sorbonne (1900). In 1886 he succeeded in obtaining the element fluorine in the free state by the electrolysis of potassium fluoride and anhydrous hydrofluoric acid at a low temperature. Thence he was led to study the production of carbon in its three varieties and to attempt the artificial preparation of diamond, of which he was able to make some minute specimens (see ). In connexion with these experiments he developed the electric furnace as a convenient means of obtaining very high temperatures in the laboratory; and by its aid he prepared many new compounds, especially carbides, silicides and borides, and melted and volatilized substances which had previously been regarded as infusible. For his preparation of fluorine he was awarded the Lacase prize in 1887, and in 1906 he obtained the Nobel prize for chemistry. He died in Paris on the 20th of February 1907.

 MOJI, a town of Japan, on the Kiushiu side of the Shimonoseki Strait. The strait being only 1 m. in width, Moji and Shimonoseki would be practically the same port did not the swiftness of the current along the latter shore make it convenient for vessels to anchor off Moji. Moji is one of the places voluntarily opened by the Japanese for purposes of direct export. It is the starting-point of the Kiushiu railway, and as there is abundance of coal in its neighbourhood, it has become a town of considerable importance. In 1890 it was little more than a hamlet, but it had in 1901 a population of 25,274, and a considerable foreign trade.  MOJSISOVICS VON MOJSVAR, JOHANN AUGUST GEORG EDMUND (1839–1907), Austro-Hungarian geologist and palaeontologist, son of the surgeon Georg Mojsisovics von Mojsvar (1799–1860), was born at Vienna on the 18th of October 1839. He studied law in Vienna University, taking his doctor’s degree in 1864, and in 1867 he entered the Geological Institute, becoming chief geologist in 1870 and vice-director in 1892. He retired in 1900, and died at Mallnitz on the 2nd of October 1907. He paid special attention to the cephalopoda of the Austrian Trias, and his publications include Das Gebirge um Hallstatt (1873–1876); Die Dolomitrisse von Südtirol und Venetien (1878–1880); Grundlinien der Geologie von Bosnien-Herzegowina (1880) with E. Tietze and A. Bittner; Die Cephalopoden der Mediterranen Triasprovinz (1882); Die cephalopodenlowercase in original [sic] der Hällstatter Kalke (1873–1903); and Beiträge zur Kenntniss der obertriadischen Cephalopodenfaunen des Himalaya (1896). With Melchior Neumayr (1845–1890) he conducted the Beiträge zur Paläontologie und Geologie Oesterreich-Ungarns. In 1862, with Paul Grohmann and Dr Guido von Sommaruga, he founded the Austrian Alpine Club, and he also took part in establishing the German Alpine Club, which combined with the former in 1873.  MOKANNA (al-Moqanna’, the Veiled), the name given to Ḥakim, or ʽAṭā, a man of unknown parentage, originally a fuller in Merv, who posed as an incarnation of Deity, and headed a revolt in Khorāsān against the caliph Mahdī. For about three years he sustained himself in the field against the troops of the caliph and for two years longer in his fortress of Sanam; then, reduced to straits in 779, he and his followers took poison and set fire to the fortress. Much is related to his magical arts, especially of a moonlike light visible for an enormous distance which he made to rise from a pit near Nakhshab. He is the hero of the first part of Moore’s Lalla Rookh. <section end="Mokanna" /> <section begin="Mokha" />MOKHA (Mocha, properly Makha), a town in Arabia on the Red Sea coast in 13° 19′ N and 43° 12′ E. Formerly the chief port for the Yemen coffee export, it has much diminished in importance. The coffee grown in the mountain districts of Haraz, Uden, and Taʽiz is now shipped at Hodeda or Aden, though the article retains the trade name of “Mocha.” The town lies in a small bay 40 m. N. of Perim at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. The anchorage is not good, and the port is only used by native vessels. Seen from the sea the town has rather an imposing appearance, but a near review shows that the houses though large and built of stone are mostly in ruins. The neighbouring country is an arid plain without fresh water, the town being supplied by an aqueduct from the village of Muza, situated 16 m. to the east. This is probably identical with the Muza of the Periplus, a great seat of the Red Sea trade in antiquity, which like Betel Fakih, Zubed and other old Tehama towns, formerly seaports, has long since been left by the receding sea. There is a Turkish kaimakam and a small garrison at Mokha, which is part of the civil district of Taiz in the vilayet of Yemen. <section end="Mokha" /> <section begin="Mokshany" />MOKSHANY, a town of Russia, in the government of Penza, 24 m. N.W. of the city of Penza. Pop. (1900), 10,710. The<section end="Mokshany" />