Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/427

Rh 12 ; Ainos iv. 1 ; Isa. ii. 13 ; Jer. 1. 19 ; Ezek. xxxix. 18, xxvii. 6); and its extraordinary fertility is attested by the density of its population (Deut. iii. 4, 5, 14) a density proved by the unparalleled abundance with which ruined towns and cities are now strewn over the whole country. In the disturbed period which followed the breaking up of the empire of Alexander, its possession was an object of continual contest. &quot; Idumsean princes, Nabathtean kings, Arab chiefs, ruled in their turn.&quot; The central portion of the country, Trachonitis, early became a refuge for outlaws and haunt of robbers, a character for which it is singularly fitted by nature, and which it retains to the .present day. (Cf. Josephus, Ant. Jud., xv. 1; xvi. 9, 2; Strabo, Geoy., xvi. p. 520; Gul. Tyr., Hist., xv. 10.) In Arabian tradi tion Bashan is regarded as the country of the patriarch Job (see Abulfeda, Hist. A iiteislamica, p. 27, 208, and esp. Wetzsteiu, in Delitzsch, Das Buck Job, p. 507, /.}; and it holds a prominent place in authentic Arabian history as the seat of the dynasty of the Ghassanides (see Caussin de Perceval, L Histoire des Arabes, vol. ii. 202, /. ; &quot;VYetzstein, op. cit., 121, f.). At the present day the Hauran is one of the seats of that singular people, the Druzes (see ). Both in its natural and its archaeological aspects, the country of Bashan is full of interest. The Jebel ed-Druz, which rises to nearly 6000 feet in height, is a congeries of extinct volcanoes, and the products of eruption from this source, spread over the adjoining plains, have given to the soil that character of fertility for which it has been in all ages remarkable. (Cf. Lyell, Principles of Geology, 9th ed., p. 394.) This volcanic soil, we are told, yields on the average, in some places, eighty returns of wheat, and a hundred of barley (Wetzstein, op. cit., p. 30.) The mountains themselves are richly clothed, at least on their western side, with forests of various kinds of trees, among which the evergreen oak is especially abundant. The Lejah is one of the most remarkable regions on the earth s surface. &quot;It is,&quot; says one of the latest observers (Burton, Unex plored Syria, vol. i. p. 164), &quot;in fact a lava bed; a stone torrent poured out. . . over the ruddy yellow clay and the limestone floor of the Hauran valley, high raised by the ruins of repeated eruptions, broken up by the action of fumaroles or blow holes, and cracked and crevassed when cooling by earthquakes, and by the weathering of ages.&quot; (See also Burckhardt, op. cit., p. 112; Porter s Five Years in Damascus, vol. ii. p. 241 ; Wetzstein, op. cit., p. 25.) In regard to the architectural monuments of the Hauran, the &quot; striking feature,&quot; says Count de Vogue 1 (Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 423), &quot;is the exclusive use of stone. The country produces no wood, and the only rock which can be obtained is a basalt, very hard and very difficult to work.&quot; The walls are formed of large blocks, carefully dressed, and laid together without cement, and often let into one another with a kind of dovetail. Hoofs, doors, stairs, and windows, are all of stone. This, of course, imparts to the buildings great massiveness of appearance and great solidity, and in multitudes of cases the houses, though &quot; without inhabitant,&quot; are as perfect as when first reared. Since buildings so strong are apparently capable of enduring for any length of time, and since some of these are known, from the inscriptions upon them, to date from before the commencement of the Christian era, it is not unnatural to regard them as, in fact, the work of the earliest known inhabitants of the land, the Amorites or the Rephaim. (See Hitter, Palcist. vnd Syrien, ii. 964, Porter, Giant Cities, p. 79,/.). This, however, is contested, on the ground that the extant inscriptions and the archi tectural style point to a much later date, and must be regarded as at least unproved. (See Wetzstein, op. cit., p. 103 ; Fergusson, in Athencevm, July 1870, p. 143 ; Burton, op. cit., vol. i. p. 192.) Many inscriptions have been found in this region, most of them composed in Greek, a considerable number in two forms of Shemitic writing (the Palmyrenian or Aramaean, and the Sinaitic or ISTabathaeau), and some in an unknown character, resembling the Himyaritic. Arabic inscriptions are numerous on buildings of more recent date. The oldest recognizable Greek record bears the name of Herod the Great ; and the Nabathsean kings, of the dynasty of Aretas, who reigned from about 100 B.C. at Bozrah have also left memorials.

1em  BASHKIRS, a people who inhabit the Russian govern ments of Orenburg, Perm, and Samar, and parts ^of Viatka, especially on the slopes and confines of the Ural, and in the neighbouring plains. The Bashkirs are a Tatarized Finnish race, and are called Eestyak by the Kirghiz, in allusion to their origin from a mixture of Ostyaks and Tatars. The name Bashkir or Bash-kurt appears for the first time in the beginning of the 10th century in the writings of Ibn-Foslan, tt ho, describing his travels among the Volga-Bulgarians, mentions the Bashkirs as a warlike and idolatrous race. The name was not used by the people themselves in the 10th century, but is a mere nickname. It probably points to the fact that the Bashkirs, then as now, were distin guished by their large, round, short, and, possibly, close- cropped heads. Of European writers the first to mention the Bashkirs are Plano-Carpini and Rubruquis. These travellers, who fell in with them in the upper parts of the River Ural, call them Pascatir, and assert that they spoke at that time the same language as the Hungarians. Till the arrival of the Mongolians, about the. middle of the 13th century, the Bashkirs were a strong and independent people, and troublesome to their neighbours, the Bulgarians and Pechenegs. At the time of the downfal of the Kazan kingdom they were in a weak state. In 1556 they volun tarily recognized the supremacy of Russia, and, in conse quence, the city of Upha was founded to defend them from the Kirghiz, and they were subjected to a fur-tax. In 1676 they rebelled under a leader named Seit, and were with difficulty reduced; and again in 1707, under Aldar and Kusyom, on account of ill-treatment by the Russian officials. Their third and last insurrection was in 1735, at the time of the foundation of Orenburg, and it lasted for six years. In 1786 they were freed from taxes ; and in 1798 an irregular army was formed from among them. They are now divided into thirteen cantons, and each canton into yurts or districts, the whole being under the jurisdiction of the Orenburg governor-general. In military matters they are subject to an Ataman, chosen from the generals of the army ; but in civil affairs the yurts and cantons are administered by Bashkir officials. They main tain a military cordon, escort caravans through the Kirghiz steppes, and are employed in various other services. By mode of life the Bashkirs are divided into settled and nomadic. The former, who are not distinguishable from the inhabitants of the Tatar villages, are engaged in agriculture, cattle-rearing, and bee-keeping, and live without want. The nomadic portion is subdivided, according to the districts iu which they wander, into those of the mountains and those of the steppes. Almost their sole occupation is the rearing of cattle ; and they attend to that in a very negligent manner, not collecting a sufficient store of winter fodder for all their herds, but allowing part of them to perish. The Bashkirs are usually very poor, and in winter live partly on a kind of gruel called yuryu, and badly prepared cheese named skurt. They are hospitable but suspicious, apt to plunder, and to the last degree lazy. They have 