Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/779

Rh mere passing inroad, but a permanent occupation of the country, in which they established themselves in such numbers that they have ever since formed the predominant element in the population, and have to a great extent supplanted or absorbed all the previously existing races. But the dynasty of the house of Seljuk, established by the first conqueror Soliman, who had fixed his capital at Nice, within 100 miles of Constantinople, did not long retain its undivided sovereignty, and its power was broken by the armies of the first Crusade (1097 A.D.), which took Nice, defeated the Turks in a great battle at Doryltcum, and then swept over the land almost without opposition, up to the very walls of Antioch. The Byzantine emperor recovered possession of the whole circuit of the coast, from Trebizond to the Syrian gates; and the Seljukian sultans of Roum, as they termed themselves, who had removed their capital to Iconium, in the heart of the interior, found themselves cut off from the sea on all sides. Their domi nion svas gradually broken up, and divided among a number of small independent chieftains, until the rise of the Ottoman dynasty at the commencement of the 14th century once more consolidated the power of the Turks in Asia. The history of Asia Minor from this period is in separably connected with that of the Turkish empire, and will be given under the head of. To the same article we must refer our readers for the modern division of the country and the present system of administration, as well as for such statistical information concerning its present state as it is possible to collect in the absence of all official or trustworthy authorities.

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    Alphabetical Index.

 

 ASKEW, or,, one of the numerous sufferers for the cause of the Reformation in the reign of Henry VIII., was a lady of great worth and beauty, of a good family in Lincolnshire, and in correspondence with Queen Catherine Parr and the chief ladies of the court. At first a Roman Catholic, she had gradually become convinced of the falsity of transubstantiation ; and her husband, irritated at her change of religious opinions, compelled her to leave his house. On coming to London to seek for a divorce she was arrested, and interrogated by Chancellor Wriothesley and Bishop Bonner, at the instigation of whom, under threats of torture, she signed a qualified recantation. She was imprisoned, and wrote to the king, says Hume, &quot; that as to the Lord s Supper she believed as much as Christ himself had said of it, and as much of His divine doctrine as the Catholic church had required.&quot; But while she could not be brought to acknowledge the king s explications, this declaration availed her nothing, and was rather regarded as a fresh insult. She was cruelly racked in the presence, and it was said by the hand, of the chancellor himself, in order to extort confession of those ladies about court with whom she corresponded. Her fortitude and fidelity probably saved the lives of the queen and others. She dis closed nothing, although her limbs were so dislocated by the rack that, when condemned to be burnt alive she could not stand, and was carried in a chair to Smith- field, where on IGth July 1546, she and four others underwent this terrible mode of execution with undaunted courage.  ASMAI or (full name, ), is one of the most important representatives of Arabic literature in the 8th century of the Christian era. He was born at Basra 740 or 741, and attained, by his extensive erudition, to the high rank of preceptor to Harun al-Rashid, whose court was in that generation the great focus of intellectual activity in the East. Asmai was, as has been happily remarked by Barbier de Meynard, the almost perfect type of those nomadic devotees of literature who, after they had grown pale on the benches of Basra or Kufa, went to com plete their education in the desert, in possession of bound less stores of learning, and yet animated by an enthusiasm for further acquisition, which made them willing to travel across the sands for hundreds of leagues, if only they might preserve an ancient tradition or pick up the fragments of an ancient song. Of the results of his labours he was no niggard, and a long list might be drawn up of his various productions. It is sufficient, however, to mention his synchronous history of the kings of Persia and Arabia previous to Islam a work which Sir Henry Rawlinson has described as &quot; perhaps the most valuable and authentic historic volume in the whole range of Arabian literature &quot; and his wonderful romance of Antar, which might almost be called the Iliad of the desert. He attained a good old 