Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/502

 482 BEKK E., 126 m. S. E. of the city of Sattara. It was once of great size, strongly fortified with out- works of great extent, and, according to the tradition of the natives, was the largest city of the East. The modern city retains few traces of its former grandeur. There is a street 3 m. long, several magnificent Saracenic edifices huilt in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a Brahman temple of unknown antiquity. This last is a remarkable structure, consisting of a rudely built roof of stone, supported by pillars each of which is a monolith. Another note- worthy edifice, partly in ruins, is the mosque and mausoleum of Ibrahim Adil Shah. The building is 400 ft. in length and 150 in width, and is surmounted by a dome of immense size. The city and the province of which it was the capital were brought by native wars suc- cessively under the dominion of the Bahmenee empire (till 1489), of Adil Shah and his succes- sors (till 1689), of Aurnngzebe until his death, of the Mahrattas, and finally of the British, who in 1818 expelled the native ruler, and added Bejapoor to the territory assigned under their protection to the rajah of Sattara. BEKE, Charles Tilstone, an English geogra- pher and explorer in Africa, born in London, Oct. 10, 1800. He received a commercial ed- ucation, then studied law, and afterward en- gaged in mercantile pursuits, residing for sev- eral years in the island of Mauritius. In 1836- '8 he resided at Leipsic, acting as British con- sul for Saxony. Considering Abyssinia of great importance in connection with the commerce of central Africa, he set out in 1840 on a journey of discovery in that region. In 1861, in com- pany with his wife, he made a journey in Syria, in the course of which he identified Harran, near Damascus, as the residence of the patriarch Abraham. In 1865 Mr. and Mrs. Beke left England on a fruitless mission to effect the re- lease of the Abyssinian captives. In 1870 he received a pension of 100 in consideration of his geographical researches, and especially of the value of his explorations in Abyssinia. Among his works are : " Origines Biblicae, or Researches in Primeval History" (1834), for which the university of Tubingen conferred upon him the degree of Ph. D. ; " Statement of Facts" relating to his journey to Abyssinia (1845) ; " Essay on the Nile and its Tributa- ries " (1847) ; " The Sources of the Nile in the Mountains of the Moon " (1848) ; " Geographi- cal Distribution of Languages in Abyssinia" (1849) ; " Sources of the Nile, with the History of Nilotic Discovery," in which are incorpo- rated the results of his previous labors (1860) ; "Jacob's Flight, or a Pilgrimage to Harran," written in conjunction with his wife (1865) ; and "The British Captives in Abyssinia" (1867). BEKES. I. A county of S. E. Hungary, watered by the Koros, an affluent of the Theiss ; area,l,320 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 209,729, of whom about two thirds are Magyars, upward of one fourth Slavs, and the rest chiefly Germans and Roumans. The county is exceedingly fertile, BELA but exposed to inundations. Agriculture and the raising of cattle, horses, and sheep are the main occupations. The ptuztas and studs of Bekes are renowned. Capital, Gyula. II. A town of the preceding county, situated at the confluence of the White and Black Koros, 33 m. S. W. of Grosswardein; pop. in 1870, 22,- 547. It has a considerable grain trade. It was formerly strongly fortified. BEKKER, Imniiiiiurl. a German philologist, born in Berlin, May 21, 1785, died there, June 7, 1871. He studied at Halle under F. A. Wolf, and afterward in the royal library at Paris (1810-'12), having in the interval been appointed professor of philology in the newly founded university of Berlin. In 1815 he was sent to Paris by the Berlin academy of sciences to collate the papers of Fourmont for the Cor- pus Imcriptionum Grcecarum. In 1817 the academy sent him to Italy, in conjunction with Goschen, to edit the Institutes of Gaius, the manuscript of which had been discovered at Verona by Niebuhr, and to prepare an edition of Aristotle. He passed three summers in Mi- lan, Venice, Florence, Ravenna, and Naples, and three winters in Rome. In 1819 he went again to Paris, and in the year following to Oxford, Cambridge, and London, and thence to Leyden and Heidelberg. He now resumed his duties as professor in the university of Berlin, and continued his labors in philology, especially in the Greek language. He published editions, with extensive critical notes, of the Anecdota Or<eca } Plato, Theognis, Thucydides, the Athe- nian orators, Photius, Aristophanes, the scholia upon the Iliad, Aristotle, Harpocration and Moeris, and Pollux, the whole comprising 42 volumes. He also furnished accurate texts of Apollodorus, Appian, Dio Cassius, Diodorus, Heliodorus, Herodian, Herodotus, Homer, Jo- sephus, Lucian, Pausanias, Plutarch's Parallels, Polybius, Suidas, Livy, and Tacitus. His part in the Corpus Scriptorum Historic Byzantina, published at Bonn, fills 24 volumes. In addition to these strictly classical labors, he busied him- self with the remains of the Provencal roman- cers and song-writers, the results of his investi- gations appearing mainly in the periodicals of the Berlin academy. In the HomeriscJie Blat- ter (Bonn, 1863) he published German notes upon Homer. Reminiscences of Bekker by his son were published in the Preusiiche Jahr- lucher for May, 1872. BEL, or Bit. See BELTJS. liiil.l. the name of several Hungarian kings to escape to Poland, on account of domestic dissensions occasioned by his brothers; but in 1061, supported partly by Poles, partly by Magyars, he succeeded in seizing the throne. He subdued the remains of paganism and strengthened the royal power, but his reign was too short to carry out all the reforms which Magyar annalists ascribe to him. Bela II. reigned from 1131 to 1141. In his youth
 * of the lineage of Arpad. Bela I. reigned from
 * 1061 to 1063. As prince he was twice obliged