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Rh In Persia, where the finest turquoise is found, the mines have been worked for at least eight centuries. The workings have been described by General Houtum Schindler, an Austrian, who was at one time in charge of the mines. The principal locality is north-west of the village of Madan, on the southern slopes of Mt Ali-Mirsai, a peak near Nishapur, in the province of Khorasan. Here the turquoise occurs in narrow seams in a brecciated trachyte-porphyry. It is found also in some other localities in Persia and in Turkestan. Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689) states that the best turquoise, reserved for the sole use of the shah, was obtained from the Vieille Roche, whilst inferior stones were got from the Nouvelle Roche. These terms still survive, for turquoise of fine colour is sometimes said in trade to be from the “old rock,” and that of pale tint or of unstable colours is described as from the “new rock.” The latter is sometimes not true Oriental turquoise, but the material called “bone-turquoise” or odontolite, and known also as “occidental turquoise.” This is merely fossil bone or ivory coloured by iron phosphate (vivianite) or perhaps stained in some cases by cupriferous solutions, and is readily distinguished from true turquoise by showing organic structure under the microscope. Bone-turquoise occurs in Europe; and it may be noted that mineral turquoise also is known from certain localities in Saxony and Silesia, but the quantity is very limited and the quality poor, so that it has no commercial importance. Chrysocolla has been sometimes mistaken in various parts of the world for turquoise.

In 1849 turquoise was found by Major C. Macdonald in Wadi Maghara and Wadi Sidreh in the Sinaitic Peninsula; and a large series of the specimens was shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851. According to H. Bauerman, who described the locality geologically, the turquoise occurs in a red sandstone, in the form of embedded nodules and as an incrustation lining the joint-faces. The turquoise was worked for some time by Macdonald, and many years afterwards workings were resumed on a systematic scale by an English company, but without great success. Relics of extensive ancient mining operations for turquoise show that the rock was at one time worked with flint implements. The locality was examined by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1905.

In ancient Mexico much use was made of turquoise as an inlay for mosaic work, with obsidian, malachite, shell and iron pyrites. Such work is illustrated by line specimens in the ethnographical gallery of the British Museum and elsewhere. Relics of extensive workings are found in the mountains of Los Cerillos near Santa Fé in New Mexico, where mining for turquoise is now actively carried on. One of the hills in which old workings occur has been called Mt Chalchihuitl, since it is believed that the turquoise was known by the name chalchihuitl, which in some places was applied also to jade. Another of the Cerillos hills in which workings have bee n opened up is called Turquoise Hill. The matrix at Los Cerillos is described by D. W. Johnson as an altered angite-andesite, in which the turquoise occurs in thin veins and in small nodules in patches of kaolin. It appears probable that the alumina of the turquoise was derived from the alteration of felspar, and the phosphorus from apatite in the rock, whilst the copper was brought up by heated vapours which altered the andesite. Turquoise is found also at Turquoise Mountain, Cochise county, Arizona, and at Mineral Park, Mohave county, in the same state; it occurs in the Columbus district, southern Nevada; in Fresno county, California; and near Idaho, Clay county, Alabama. Mexican turquoise is known from the state of Zacatecas. Turquoise was discovered in 1894 near Bodalla, in New South Wales; and it has also been found in Victoria.

Turquoise is sometimes termed by mineralogists callaite, since it is believed to be the callais of Pliny—a stone which he describes as resembling lapis lazuli, but paler, and in colour more like the shallow sea. The callaina of Pliny was a pale green stone from beyond India, whilst his collaica was a kind of turbid callaina. The name callainite was suggested by Professor J. D. Dana for a bright green mineral which was found in the form of beads, with stone hatchets, in ancient graves near Mané-er-H’roek (Rock of the Fairy), near Locmariaquer in Brittany, and which A. Damour sought to identify with Pliny’s callais. The mineral in question seems to be identical with variscite, a hydrous aluminium phosphate named by A. Breithaupt, and occurring as a beautiful green amorphous mineral, sometimes polished as an ornamental stone; fine examples occur in Utah. Somewhat allied to turquoise is the blue mineral called lazulite (to be distinguished from lazurite, see ), which has the formula (Fe2Mg)Al2(OH)(PO4), and has occasionally been used as an ornamental stone.

TURRET (from O. Fr. tourette, diminutive of tour, tower, mod. Fr. tourelle), a small tower, especially at the angles of larger buildings, sometimes overhanging and built on corbels, when it is often called a “” (q.v.), and sometimes rising from the ground.

 TURRETIN, or, the name of three Swiss divines.

(1588–1631), the son of Francesco Turretini, a native of Lucca, who settled in Geneva in 1579, was born at Zürich on the 9th of November 1588. He was ordained a pastor in Geneva in 1612, and became professor of theology in 1618. In 1620 he represented the Genevan Church at the national synod of Alais, when the decrees of the synod of Dort were introduced into France; and in 1621 he was sent on a successful mission to the states-general of Holland, and to the authorities of the Hanseatic towns, with reference to the defence of Geneva against the threatened attacks of the duke of Savoy. He published in 1618–1620 (2 vols.) a defence of the Genevan translation of the Bible, Eine Verteidigung der genfer Bibelübersetzung (Défense de la fidélité des traductions de la Bible faites à Genève), against P. Cotton's Genève plagiaire. He died on the 4th of March 1631.

(1623–1687), son of the preceding, was born at Geneva on the 17th of October 1623. After studying theology in Geneva, Leiden and France, he became pastor of the Italian congregation in Geneva in 1647; after a brief pastorate at Lyons he again returned to Geneva as professor of theology in 1653, having modestly declined a professorship of philosophy in 1650. He was one of the most influential supporters of the Formula Consensus Helvetica, drawn up chiefly by Johann Heinrich Heidegger (1633–1698), in 1675, and of the particular type of Calvinistic theology which that symbol embodied, and an opponent of the theology of Moses Amyraut and the school of Saumur. His Institutio theologicae elencticae (3 vols., Geneva 1680–1683) has passed through frequent editions, the last reprint having been made in Edinburgh in 1847–1848. He was also the author of volumes entitled De satisfactione Christi disputationes (Geneva, 1666) and De necessaria secessione nostra ab ecclesia romana (Geneva, 1687). He died on the 28th of September 1687.

(1671–1737), son of the preceding, was born at Geneva on the 13th of August 1671. He studied theology at Geneva under L. Tronchin, and after travelling in Holland, England and France was received into the “Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs” of Geneva in 1693. Here he became pastor of the Italian congregation, and in 1697 professor of church history, and later (1705) of theology. During the next forty years of his life he enjoyed great influence in Geneva as the advocate of a more liberal theology than had prevailed under the preceding generation, and it was largely through his instrumentality that the rule obliging ministers to subscribe to the Formula Consensus Helvetica was abolished in 1706, and the Consensus itself renounced in 1725. He also wrote and laboured for the promotion of union between the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, his most important work in this connexion being Nubes testium pro moderato et pacifico de rebus theologicis judicio, et instituenda inter Protestantes concordia (Geneva, 1729). Besides this he wrote Cogitationes et dissertationes theologicae, on the principles of natural and revealed religion (2 vols., Geneva, 1737; in French, Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne) and commentaries on Thessalonians and Romans. He died on the 1st of May 1737.

See E. de Budé, François et J. Alphonse Turretini (2 vols., 1880), and Lettres inédites à Jean Alphonse Turretini (3 vols., 1887–1888); F. Turretini, Notice biographique sur Bénédict Turretini (1871); C. Borgeaud, Histoire de l’université de Genève (1900).

TURRIFF, a municipal and police burgh of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 2273. It lies near the Deveron, 38 m. N.W. of Aberdeen by the Great North of Scotland railway, via Inveramsay. In the choir of the ancient church, now in ruins, is a fresco painting of St Ninian. On the 14th of May 1639 the national struggle for civil and religious liberty was inaugurated in the county with the skirmish known as the Trot of Turriff. Some 4 m. south are the remains of the castle of Towie Barclay, the seat of the old family of the Barclays.

 TURRIS LIBISONIS (mod., q.v.), an ancient seaport town of Sardinia, situated at the north-western extremity of the island, and connected with Carales by two roads, which diverged at Othoca, one (the more important) keeping inland and the other following the west coast. It was probably of purely Roman origin, founded apparently by Julius Caesar, as it bears the title Colonia Julia; and in Pliny’s time it was the only colony in the island. It is noteworthy that it apparently belonged to one of the urban tribes, the Collina; Puteoli, which belonged to the Palatina is the only other