Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/613

 SAMARIA SAMARITANS 589 Bokhara, about lat. 39 40' N., Ion. 67 18' E. ; pop. from 15,000 to 20,000, mostly Uzbecks. It is situated in the fertile valley of the Zeraf- shan, 4 m. S. of that river, and in site and sur- roundings is said to be the most beautiful city in Turkistan ; but much of its interior aspect is miserable. It contains a citadel and a large public market place, and a considerable trade is carried on at the bazaars, especially in the products of leather manufacture. Samarcand stands on higher ground than Bokhara, and before the Russian conquest was a summer re- sort of the emir in consequence of its lower temperature. The principal buildings are the summer palace of Tamerlane, his mosque sur- mounted by a melon-shaped dome, his recep- tion hall containing the celebrated kolctash, or blue stone, on which his throne was placed, and his sepulchre in a domed chapel without the city. Three sacred colleges (medreses) bor- der the market place. Samarcand was known to the Chinese as Tshin prior to the times of Alexander the Great. In classical geography it appears as Maracanda, the capital of Sogdi- ana. Alexander, who occupied it in 328 B. 0., slew there his friend Clitus. The Nestorian Christians early made their way thither, and according to Col. H. Yule the see of a Chris- tian bishop was established there early in the 6th century. About the time of the Arab invasion of Turkistan, the city and territory appear to have been ruled by a Turkish prince bearing the title of tarlchan. About 710 they fell under the dominion of the Arabs, and sub- sequently became subject to the dynasty of the Samanides, after the fall of which the city was ruled by various contending chieftains until its capture and the destruction of its fortress by Genghis Khan about 1220. A century and a half later it reappears prominently in history as the capital of Tamerlane, who made it the most famous, luxurious, and magnificent city of central Asia, adorned with imperial palaces and surrounded by extensive and splendid gar- dens. Vamb6ry declares that the reputed mag- nificence of the buildings is fully borne out by the existing ruins. At that time the city con- tained 150,000 inhabitants, and was not only the centre of important manufactures and a vast emporium of trade, but also a prominent seat of Mohammedan learning. It maintained 40 colleges, one of which accommodated 1,000 students, and is still even in ruins remarkable for the handsome specimens of fine earth mo- saic work in its walls. With the fall of the Timour dynasty Samarcand began permanent- ly to decline, and it is now politically and com- mercially inferior to Bokhara. It was captured by the Russians in May, 1868, in the course of the war against Bokhara, and was ceded to Rus- sia a few months later. A Russian garrison occupies the citadel, and Samarcand is now the capital of the military district of Zerafshan in the Russian province of Turkistan. SAMARIA (Heb. Shomerori), an ancient city in middle Palestine, in the tribe of Ephraim, so called after the hill of Shomeron, upon which it was founded about 925 B. 0. by Omri, the sixth king of Israel. Omri made Samaria the royal residence, and it remained so until the captivity of the ten tribes. In 721 it was con- quered by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, and peopled with colonists from the Assyrian prov- inces. In 109 it was besieged, conquered, and razed to the ground by the Asmonean John Hyrcanus; but it must have been soon re- built, for in 104 it is mentioned as a town belonging to the Jewish territory. Augustus gave it to Herod the Great, who embellished it with a temple of Augustus and other build- ings, strongly fortified it, and called it, in honor of the emperor, Sebaste (the Greek word cor- responding to Augusta). The ancient name of the city was also retained, and is mentioned in the New Testament. The later history of the town is unknown, but a little village, Sebus- tieh, with some ruins, still exists on its site, and contains about 60 houses, substantially built of old materials, which exhibit here and there traces of the splendor of ancient Sebaste. Under the Romans a whole division of Pales- tine was also called Samaria, forming a sepa- rate province between Judea and Galilee. SAMARITANS (Heb. Shomeronim, later Ku- tTiim, Cuthroans), a people commonly sup- posed to have sprung, after the conquest of Samaria by Shalmaneser, from the mixture of the natives with foreign colonists from Baby- lon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. As they were a mixed race, their religion was also mixed. More strictly following the Bib- lical narrative (2 Kings xvii.), Hengstenberg (who has been followed by Havernick, Rob- inson, and others) argues that the entire He- brew population of Samaria had been carried away, that the Samaritan people were wholly of heathen origin, and that the Israelitish wor- ship was established when the colonists ob- tained from the Assyrian king an Israelite priest, in order to appease the supposed wrath of the national deity by restoring his worship. After the return of the Jews from the Baby- lonish captivity the Samaritans asked permis- sion to participate in the restoration of the temple, but it was refused ; and from this event (535 B. C.) dates the hostility between Jews and Samaritans. It increased in the latter part of the 5th century B. C., when the Persian governor Sanballat erected for the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim, near Shechem, a temple of Jehovah, and gave them an independent high priesthood, which was bestowed by him upon his son-in-law Manasses, son of the Jewish high priest. Alexander the Great took a Samaritan army with him to Egypt, and many settled in the Thebaid. The colony received reenforce- ments from Samaria under Ptolemy Soter, and again at the time of John Hyrcanus, who de- stroyed that city, crushing the power of the Sa- maritans in Palestine. Remnants of the Egyp- tian colony are extant, and form a congregation at Cairo. In Palestine a few families are found