VOLUME XVII SLICE VIII Matter to Mecklenburg (continued 6)

From this point it is somewhat difficult to follow the career of the mysterious and terrible conspirator who for twenty years out of the next thirty led a life of voluntary imprisonment (as he himself tells us) “within the four walls of a room,” and “kept no record of dates, made no biographical notes, and preserved no copies of letters.” In 1833, however, he is known to have been concerned in an abortive revolutionary movement which took place in the Sardinian army; several executions took place, and he himself was laid under sentence of death. Before the close of the same year a similar movement in Genoa had been planned, but failed through the youth and inexperience of the leaders. At Geneva, also in 1833, Mazzini set on foot L’Europe Centrale, a journal of which one of the main objects was the emancipation of Savoy; but he did not confine himself to a merely literary agitation for this end. Chiefly through his agency a considerable body of German, Polish and Italian exiles was organized, and an armed invasion of the duchy planned. The frontier was actually crossed on the 1st of February 1834, but the attack ignominiously broke down without a shot having been fired. Mazzini, who personally accompanied the expedition, is no doubt correct in attributing the failure to dissensions with the Carbonari leaders in Paris, and to want of a cordial understanding between himself and the Savoyard Ramorino, who had been chosen as military leader.

In April 1834 the “Young Europe” association “of men believing in a future of liberty, equality and fraternity for all mankind, and desirous of consecrating their thoughts and actions to the realization of that future” was formed also under the influence of Mazzini’s enthusiasm; it was followed soon afterwards by a “Young Switzerland” society, having for its leading idea the formation of an Alpine confederation, to include Switzerland, Tyrol, Savoy and the rest of the Alpine chain as well. But La Jeune Suisse newspaper was compelled to stop within a year, and in other respects the affairs of the struggling patriot became embarrassed. He was permitted to remain at Grenchen in Solothurn for a while, but at last the Swiss diet, yielding to strong and persistent pressure from abroad, exiled him about the end of 1836. In January 1837 he arrived in London, where for many months he had to carry on a hard fight with poverty and the sense of spiritual loneliness, so touchingly described by himself in the first volume of the Life and Writings. Ultimately, as he gained command of the English language, he began to earn a livelihood by writing review articles, some of which have since been reprinted, and are of a high order of literary merit; they include papers on “Italian Literature since 1830” and “Paolo Sarpi” in the Westminster Review, articles on “Lamennais,” “George Sand,” “Byron and Goethe” in the Monthly Chronicle, and on “Lamartine,” “Carlyle,” and “The Minor Works of Dante” in the British and Foreign Review. In 1839 he entered into relations with the revolutionary committees sitting in Malta and Paris, and in 1840 he originated a working men’s association, and the weekly journal entitled Apostolato Popolare, in which the admirable popular treatise “On the Duties of Man” was commenced. Among the patriotic and philanthropic labours undertaken by Mazzini during this period of retirement in London may be mentioned a free evening school conducted by himself and a few others for some years, at which several hundreds of Italian children received at least the rudiments of secular and religious education. He also exposed and combated the infamous traffic carried on in southern Italy, where scoundrels bought small boys from poverty-stricken parents and carried them off to England and elsewhere to grind organs and suffer martyrdom at the hands of cruel taskmasters.

The most memorable episode in his life during the same period was perhaps that which arose out of the conduct of Sir James Graham, the home secretary, in systematically, for some months, opening Mazzini’s letters as they passed through the British post office, and communicating their contents to the Neapolitan government—a proceeding which was believed at the time to have led to the arrest and execution of the brothers Bandiera, Austrian subjects, who had been planning an expedition against Naples, although the recent publication of Sir James Graham’s life seems to exonerate him from the charge. The prolonged discussions in parliament, and the report of the committee appointed to inquire into the matter, did not, however, lead to any practical result, unless indeed the incidental vindication of Mazzini’s character, which had been recklessly assailed in the course of debate. In this connexion Thomas Carlyle wrote to The Times: “I have had the honour to know Mr Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, practise what is meant by that.”

Mazzini did not share the enthusiastic hopes everywhere raised in the ranks of the Liberal party throughout Europe by the first acts of Pius IX., in 1846, but at the same time he availed himself, towards the end of 1847, of the opportunity to publish a letter addressed to the new pope, indicating the nature of the religious and national mission which the Liberals expected him to undertake. The leaders of the revolutionary outbreaks in Milan and Messina in the beginning of 1848 had long been in secret correspondence with Mazzini; and their action, along with the revolution in Paris, brought him early in the same year to Italy, where he took a great and active interest in the events which dragged Charles Albert into an unprofitable war with Austria; he actually for a short time bore arms under Garibaldi immediately before the reoccupation of Milan, but ultimately, after vain attempts to maintain the insurrection in the mountain districts, found it necessary to retire to Lugano. In the beginning of the following year he was nominated a member of the short-lived provisional government of Tuscany formed after the flight of the grand-duke, and almost simultaneously, when Rome had, in consequence of the withdrawal of Pius IX., been proclaimed a republic, he was declared a member of the constituent assembly there. A month afterwards, the battle of Novara having again decided against Charles Albert in the brief struggle with Austria, into which he had once more been drawn, Mazzini was appointed a member of the Roman triumvirate, with supreme executive power (March 23, 1849). The opportunity he now had for showing the administrative and political ability which he was believed to possess was more apparent than real, for the approach of the professedly friendly French troops soon led to hostilities, and resulted in a siege which terminated, towards the end of June, with the assembly’s resolution to discontinue the defence, and Mazzini’s indignant resignation. That he succeeded, however, for so long a time, and in circumstances so adverse, in maintaining a high degree of order within the turbulent city is a fact that speaks for itself. His diplomacy, backed as it was by no adequate physical force, naturally showed at the time to very great disadvantage, but his official correspondence and proclamations can still be read with admiration and intellectual pleasure, as well as his eloquent vindication of the revolution in his published “Letter to MM. de Tocqueville and de Falloux.” The surrender of the city on the 30th of June was followed by Mazzini’s not too precipitate flight by way of Marseilles into Switzerland, whence he once more found his way to London. Here in 1850 he became president of the National Italian Committee, and at the same time entered into close relations with Ledru-Rollin and Kossuth. He had a firm belief in the value of revolutionary attempts, however hopeless they might seem; he had a hand in the abortive rising at Mantua in 1852, and again, in February 1853, a considerable share in the ill-planned insurrection at Milan on the 6th of February 1853, the failure of which greatly weakened his influence; once more, in 1854, he had gone far with preparations for renewed action when his plans were completely disconcerted by the withdrawal of professed supporters, and by the action of the French and English governments in sending ships of war to Naples.

The year 1857 found him yet once more in Italy, where, for complicity in short-lived émeutes which took place at Genoa, Leghorn and Naples, he was again laid under sentence of death. Undiscouraged in the pursuit of the one great aim of his life by any such incidents as these, he returned to London, where he edited his new journal Pensiero ed Azione, in which the constant burden of his message to the overcautious practical politicians of Italy was: “I am but a voice crying Action; but the state of Italy cries for it also. So do the best men and people of her cities. Do you wish to destroy my influence? Act.” The same tone was at a somewhat later date assumed in the letter he wrote to Victor Emmanuel, urging him to put himself at the head of the movement for Italian unity, and promising republican support. As regards the events of 1859-1860, however, it may be questioned whether, through his characteristic inability to distinguish between the ideally perfect and the practically possible, he did not actually hinder more than he helped the course of events by which the realization of so much of the great dream of his life was at last brought about. If Mazzini was the prophet of Italian unity, and Garibaldi its knight errant, to Cavour alone belongs the honour of having been the statesman by whom it was finally accomplished. After the irresistible pressure of the popular movement had led to the establishment not of an Italian republic but of an Italian kingdom, Mazzini could honestly enough write, “I too have striven to realize unity under a monarchical flag,” but candour compelled him to add, “The Italian people are led astray by a delusion at the present day, a delusion which has induced them to substitute material for moral unity and their own reorganization. Not so I. I bow my head sorrowfully to the sovereignty of the national will; but monarchy will never number me amongst its servants or followers.” In 1865, by way of protest against the still uncancelled sentence of death under which he lay, Mazzini was elected by Messina as delegate to the Italian parliament, but, feeling himself unable to take the oath of allegiance to the monarchy, he never took his seat. In the following year, when a general amnesty was granted after the cession of Venice to Italy, the sentence of death was at last removed, but he declined to accept such an “offer of oblivion and pardon for having loved Italy above all earthly things.” In May 1869 he was again expelled from Switzerland at the instance of the Italian government for having conspired with Garibaldi; after a few months spent in England he set out (1870) for Sicily, but was promptly arrested at sea and carried to Gaeta, where he was imprisoned for two months. Events soon made it evident that there was little danger to fear from the contemplated rising, and the occasion of the birth of a prince was seized for restoring him to liberty. The remainder of his life, spent partly in London and partly at Lugano, presents no noteworthy incidents. For some time his health had been far from satisfactory, but the immediate cause of his death was an attack of pleurisy with which he was seized at Pisa, and which terminated fatally on the 10th of March 1872. The Italian parliament by a unanimous vote expressed the national sorrow with which the tidings of his death had been received, the president pronouncing an eloquent eulogy on the departed patriot as a model of disinterestedness and self-denial, and one who had dedicated his whole life ungrudgingly to the cause of his country’s freedom. A public funeral took place at Pisa on the 14th of March, and the remains were afterwards conveyed to Genoa.

(J. S. Bl.)

The published writings of Mazzini, mostly occasional, are very voluminous. An edition was begun by himself and continued by A. Saffi, Scritti editi e inediti di Giuseppe Mazzini, in 18 vols. (Milan and Rome, 1861-1891); many of the most important are found in the partially autobiographical Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini (1864-1870) and the two most systematic—Thoughts upon Democracy in Europe, a remarkable series of criticisms on Benthamism, St Simonianism, Fourierism, and other economic and socialistic schools of the day, and the treatise On the Duties of Man, an admirable primer of ethics, dedicated to the Italian working class—will be found in Joseph Mazzini: a Memoir, by Mrs E. A. Venturi (London, 1875). Mazzini’s “first great sacrifice,” he tells us, was “the renunciation of the career of literature for the more direct path of political action,” and as late as 1861 we find him still recurring to the long-cherished hope of being able to leave the stormy arena of politics and consecrate the last years of his life to the dream of his youth. He had specially contemplated three considerable literary undertakings—a volume of Thoughts on Religion, a popular History of Italy, to enable the working classes to apprehend what he conceived to be the “mission” of Italy in God’s providential ordering of the world, and a comprehensive collection of translations of ancient and modern classics into Italian. None of these was actually achieved. No one, however, can read even the briefest and most occasional writing of Mazzini without gaining some impression of the simple grandeur of the man, the lofty elevation of his moral tone, his unwavering faith in the living God, who is ever revealing Himself in the progressive development of humanity. His last public utterance is to be found in a highly characteristic article on Renan’s Réforme Morale et Intellectuelle, finished on the 3rd of March 1872, and published in the Fortnightly Review for February 1874. Of the 40,000 letters of Mazzini only a small part have been published. In 1887 two hundred unpublished letters were printed at Turin (Duecento lettere inedite di Giuseppe Mazzini), in 1895 the Lettres intimes were published in Paris, and in 1905 Francesco Rosso published Lettre inedite di Giuseppe Mazzini (Turin, 1905). A popular edition of Mazzini’s writings has been undertaken by order of the Italian government.

For Mazzini’s biography see Jessie White Mario, Della vita di Giuseppe Mazzini (Milan, 1886), a useful if somewhat too enthusiastic work; Bolton King, Mazzini (London, 1903); Count von Schack, Joseph Mazzini und die italienische Einheit (Stuttgart, 1891). A. Luzio’s Giuseppe Mazzini (Milan, 1905) contains a great deal of valuable information, bibliographical and other, and Dora Melegari in La giovine Italia e Giuseppe Mazzini (Milan, 1906) publishes the correspondence between Mazzini and Luigi A. Melegari during the early days of “Young Italy.” For the literary side of Mazzini’s life see Peretti, Gli scritti letterarii di Giuseppe Mazzini (Turin, 1904).

(L. V.*)

MAZZONI, GIACOMO (1548-1598), Italian philosopher, was born at Cesena and died at Ferrara. A member of a noble family and highly educated, he was one of the most eminent savants of the period. He occupied chairs in the universities of Pisa and Rome, was one of the founders of the Della Crusca Academy, and had the distinction, it is said, of thrice vanquishing the Admirable Crichton in dialectic. His chief work in philosophy was an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, and in this spirit he published in 1597 a treatise In universam Platonis et Aristotelis philosophiam praecludia. He wrote also De triplici hominum vita, wherein he outlined a theory of the infinite perfection and development of nature. Apart from philosophy, he was prominent in literature as the champion of Dante, and produced two works in the poet’s defence: Discorso composto in difesa della comedia di Dante (1572), and Della difesa della comedia di Dante (1587, reprinted 1688). He was an authority on ancient languages and philology, and gave a great impetus to the scientific study of the Italian language.

MAZZONI, GUIDO (1859- ), Italian poet, was born at Florence, and educated at Pisa and Bologna. In 1887 he became professor of Italian at Padua, and in 1894 at Florence. He was much influenced by Carducci, and became prominent both as a prolific and well-read critic and as a poet of individual distinction. His chief volumes of verse are Versi (1880), Nuove poesie (1886), Poesie (1891), Voci della vita (1893).

MEAD, LARKIN GOLDSMITH (1835- ), American sculptor, was born at Chesterfield, New Hampshire, on the 3rd of January 1835. He was a pupil (1853-1855) of Henry Kirke Brown. During the early part of the Civil War he was at the front for six months, with the army of the Potomac, as an artist for Harper’s Weekly; and in 1862-1865 he was in Italy, being for part of the time attached to the United States consulate at Venice, while William D. Howells, his brother-in-law, was consul. He returned to America in 1865, but subsequently went back to Italy and lived at Florence. His first important work was a statue of Ethan Allen, now at the State House, Montpelier, Vermont. His principal works are: the monument to President Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois; “Ethan Allen” (1876), National Hall of Statuary, Capitol, Washington; an heroic marble statue, “The Father of Waters,” New Orleans; and “Triumph of Ceres,” made for the Columbian Exposition, Chicago.

His brother, William Rutherford Mead (1846- ), graduated at Amherst College in 1867, and studied architecture in New York under Russell Sturgis, and also abroad. In 1879 he and J. F. McKim, with whom he had been in partnership for two years as architects, were joined by Stanford White, and formed the well-known firm of McKim, Mead & White.

MEAD, RICHARD (1673-1754), English physician, eleventh child of Matthew Mead (1630-1699), Independent divine, was born on the 11th of August 1673 at Stepney, London. He studied at Utrecht for three years under J. G. Graevius; having decided to follow the medical profession, he then went to Leiden and attended the lectures of Paul Hermann and Archibald Pitcairne. In 1695 he graduated in philosophy and physic at Padua, and in 1696 he returned to London, entering at once on a successful practice. His Mechanical Account of Poisons appeared in 1702, and in 1703 he was admitted to the Royal Society, to whose Transactions he contributed in that year a paper on the parasitic nature of scabies. In the same year he was elected physician to St Thomas’s Hospital, and appointed to read anatomical lectures at the Surgeons’ Hall. On the death of John Radcliffe in 1714 Mead became the recognized head of his profession; he attended Queen Anne on her deathbed, and in 1727 was appointed physician to George II., having previously served him in that capacity when he was prince of Wales. He died in London on the 16th of February 1754.

Besides the Mechanical Account of Poisons (2nd ed., 1708), Mead published a treatise De imperio solis et lunae in corpora humana et morbis inde oriundis (1704), A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Method to be used to prevent it (1720), De variolis et morbillis dissertatio (1747), Medica sacra, sive de morbis insignioribus qui in bibliis memorantur commentarius (1748), On the Scurvy (1749), and Monita et praecepta medica (1751). A Life of Mead by Dr Matthew Maty appeared in 1755.

MEAD. (1) A word now only used more or less poetically for the commoner form “meadow,” properly land laid down for grass and cut for hay, but often extended in meaning to include pasture-land. “Meadow” represents the oblique case, maédwe, of O. Eng. maéd, which comes from the root seen in “mow”; the word, therefore, means “mowed land.” Cognate words appear in other Teutonic languages, a familiar instance being Ger. matt, seen in place-names such as Zermatt, Andermatt, &c. (See Grass.) (2) The name of a drink made by the fermentation of honey mixed with water. Alcoholic drinks made from honey were common in ancient times, and during the middle ages throughout Europe. The Greeks and Romans knew of such under the names of ὁδρόμελι and hydromel; mulsum was a form of mead with the addition of wine. The word is common to Teutonic languages (cf. Du. mede, Ger. Met or Meth), and is cognate with Gr. μέθυ, wine, and Sansk. mádhu, sweet drink. “Metheglin,” another word for mead, properly a medicated or spiced form of the drink, is an adaptation of the Welsh meddyglyn, which is derived from meddyg, healing (Lat. medicus) and llyn, liquor. It therefore means “spiced or medicated drink,” and is not etymologically connected with “mead.”

MEADE, GEORGE GORDON (1815-1872), American soldier, was born of American parentage at Cadiz, Spain, on the 31st of December 1815. On graduation at the United States Military Academy in 1835, he served in Florida with the 3rd Artillery against the Seminoles. Resigning from the army in 1836, he became a civil engineer and constructor of railways, and was engaged under the war department in survey work. In 1842 he was appointed a second lieutenant in the corps of the topographical engineers. In the war with Mexico he was on the staffs successively of Generals Taylor, J. Worth and Robert Patterson, and was brevetted for gallant conduct at Monterey. Until the Civil War he was engaged in various engineering works, mainly in connexion with lighthouses, and later as a captain of topographical engineers in the survey of the northern lakes. In 1861 he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, and had command of the 2nd brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves in the Army of the Potomac under General M’Call. He served in the Seven Days, receiving a severe wound at the action of Frazier’s Farm. He was absent from his command until the second battle of Bull Run, after which he obtained the command of his division. He distinguished himself greatly at the battles of South Mountain and Antietam. At Fredericksburg he and his division won great distinction by their attack on the position held by Jackson’s corps, and Meade was promoted major-general of volunteers, to date from the 29th of November. Soon afterwards he was placed in command of the V. corps. At Chancellorsville he displayed great intrepidity and energy, and on the eve of the battle of Gettysburg was appointed to succeed Hooker. The choice was unexpected, but Meade justified it by his conduct of the operations, and in the famous three days’ battle he inflicted a complete defeat on General Lee’s army. His reward was the commission of brigadier-general in the regular army. In the autumn of 1863 a war of manœuvre was fought between the two commanders, on the whole favourably to the Union arms. Grant, commanding all the armies of the United States, joined the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1864, and remained with it until the end of the war; but he continued Meade in his command, and successfully urged his appointment as major-general in the regular army (Aug. 18, 1864), eulogizing him as the commander who had successfully met and defeated the best general and the strongest army on the Confederate side. After the war Meade commanded successively the military division of the Atlantic, the department of the east, the third military district (Georgia and Alabama) and the department of the south. He died at Philadelphia on the 6th of November, 1872. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Harvard University, and his scientific attainments were recognized by the American Philosophical Society and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. There are statues of General Meade in Philadelphia and at Gettysburg.

See I. R. Pennypacker, General Meade (“Great Commanders” series, New York, 1901).

MEADE, WILLIAM (1789-1862), American Protestant Episcopal bishop, the son of Richard Kidder Meade (1746-1805), one of General Washington’s aides during the War of Independence, was born on the 11th of November 1789, near Millwood, in that part of Frederick county which is now Clarke county, Virginia. He graduated as valedictorian in 1808 at the college of New Jersey (Princeton); studied theology under the Rev. Walter Addison of Maryland, and in Princeton; was ordained deacon in 1811 and priest in 1814; and preached both in the Stone Chapel, Millwood, and in Christ Church, Alexandria, for some time. He became assistant bishop of Virginia in 1829; was pastor of Christ Church, Norfolk, in 1834-1836; in 1841 became bishop of Virginia; and in 1842-1862 was president of the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, near Alexandria, delivering an annual course of lectures on pastoral theology. In 1819 he had acted as the agent of the American Colonization Society to purchase slaves, illegally brought into Georgia, which had become the property of that state and were sold publicly at Milledgeville. He had been prominent in the work of the Education Society, which was organized in 1818 to advance funds to needy students for the ministry of the American Episcopal Church, and in the establishment of the Theological Seminary near Alexandria, as he was afterwards in the work of the American Tract Society, and the Bible Society. He was a founder and president of the Evangelical Knowledge Society (1847), which, opposing what it considered the heterodoxy of many of the books published by the Sunday School Union, attempted to displace them by issuing works of a more evangelical type. A low Churchman, he strongly opposed Tractarianism. He was active in the case against Bishop Henry Ustick Onderdonk (1789-1858) of Pennsylvania, who because of intemperance was forced to resign and was suspended from the ministry in 1844; in that against Bishop Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk (1791-1861) of New York, who in 1845 was suspended from the ministry on the charge of intoxication and improper conduct; and in that against Bishop G. W. Doane of New Jersey. He fought against the threatening secession of Virginia, but acquiesced in the decision of the state and became presiding bishop of the Southern Church. He died in Richmond, Virginia, on the 14th of March 1862.

Among his publications, besides many sermons, were A Brief Review of the Episcopal Church in Virginia (1845); Wilberforce, Cranmer, Jewett and the Prayer Book on the Incarnation (1850); Reasons for Loving the Episcopal Church (1852); and Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia (1857); a storehouse of material on the ecclesiastical history of the state.

See the Life by John Johns (Baltimore, 1867).

MEADVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Crawford county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on French Creek, 36 m. S. of Erie. Pop. (1900), 10,291, of whom 912 were foreign-born and 173 were negroes; (1910 census) 12,780. It is served by the Erie, and the Bessemer & Lake Erie railways. Meadville has three public parks, two general hospitals and a public library, and is the seat of the Pennsylvania College of Music, of a commercial college, of the Meadville Theological School (1844, Unitarian), and of Allegheny College (co-educational), which was opened in 1815, came under the general patronage of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1833, and in 1909 had 322 students (200 men and 122 women). Meadville is the commercial centre of a good agricultural region, which also abounds in oil and natural gas. The Erie Railroad has extensive shops here, which in 1905 employed 46.7% of the total number of wage-earners, and there are various manufactures. The factory product in 1905 was valued at $2,074,600, being 24.4% more than that of 1900. Meadville, the oldest settlement in N.W. Pennsylvania, was founded as a fortified post by David Mead in 1793, laid out as a town in 1795, incorporated as a borough in 1823 and chartered as a city in 1866.

MEAGHER, THOMAS FRANCIS (1823-1867), Irish nationalist and American soldier, was born in Waterford, Ireland, on the 3rd of August 1823. He graduated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, in 1843, and in 1844 began the study of law at Dublin. He became a member of the Young Ireland Party in 1845, and in 1847 was one of the founders of the Irish Confederation. In March 1848 he made a speech before the Confederation which led to his arrest for sedition, but at his trial the jury failed to agree and he was discharged. In the following July the Confederation created a “war directory” of five, of which Meagher was a member, and he and William Smith O’Brien travelled through Ireland for the purpose of starting a revolution. The attempt proved abortive; Meagher was arrested in August, and in October was tried for high treason before a special commission at Clonmel. He was found guilty and was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Van Diemen’s Land, whither he was transported in the summer of 1849. Early in 1852 he escaped, and in May reached New York City. He made a tour of the cities of the United States as a popular lecturer, and then studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1855. He made two unsuccessful ventures in journalism, and in 1857 went to Central America, where he acquired material for another series of lectures. In 1861 he was captain of a company (which he had raised) in the 69th regiment of New York volunteers and fought at the first battle of Bull Run; he then organized an Irish brigade, of whose first regiment he was colonel until the 3rd of February 1862, when he was appointed to the command of this organization with the rank of brigadier-general. He took part in the siege of Yorktown, the battle of Fair Oaks, the seven days’ battle before Richmond, and the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, where he was wounded, and Chancellorsville, where his brigade was reduced in numbers to less than a regiment, and General Meagher resigned his commission. On the 23rd of December 1863 his resignation was cancelled, and he was assigned to the command of the military district of Etowah, with headquarters at Chattanooga. At the close of the war he was appointed by President Johnson secretary of Montana Territory, and there, in the absence of the territorial governor, he acted as governor from September 1866 until his death from accidental drowning in the Missouri River near Fort Benton, Montana, on the 1st of July 1867. He published Speeches on the Legislative Independence of Ireland (1852).

W. F. Lyons, in Brigadier-General Thomas Francis Meagher (New York, 1870), gives a eulogistic account of his career.

MEAL. (1) (A word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Mehl, Du. meel; the ultimate source is the root seen in various Teutonic words meaning “to grind,” and in Eng. “mill,” Lat. mola, molěre, Gr. μύλη), a powder made from the edible part of any grain or pulse, with the exception of wheat, which is known as “flour.” In America the word is specifically applied to the meal produced from Indian corn or maize, as in Scotland and Ireland to that produced from oats, while in South Africa the ears of the Indian corn itself are called “mealies.” (2) Properly, eating and drinking at regular stated times of the day, as breakfast, dinner, &c., hence taking of food at any time and also the food provided. The word was in O.E. mael, which also had the meanings (now lost) of time, mark, measure, &c., which still appear in many forms of the word in Teutonic languages; thus Ger. mal, time, mark, cf. Denkmal, monument, Mahl, meal, repast, or Du. maal, Swed. mal, also with both meanings. The ultimate source is the pre-Teutonic root me- ma-, to measure, and the word thus stood for a marked-out point of time.

MEALIE, the South African name for Indian corn or maize. The word as spelled represents the pronunciation of the Cape Dutch milje, an adaptation of milho (da India), the millet of India, the Portuguese name for millet, used in South Africa for maize.

MEAN, an homonymous word, the chief uses of which may be divided thus. (1) A verb with two principal applications, to intend, purpose or design, and to signify. This word is in O.E. maenan, and cognate forms appear in other Teutonic languages, cf. Du. meenen, Ger. meinen. The ultimate origin is usually taken to be the root men-, to think, the root of “mind.” (2) An adjective and substantive meaning “that which is in the middle.” This is derived through the O. Fr. men, meien or moien, modern moyen, from the late Lat. adjective medianus, from medius, middle. The law French form mesne is still preserved in certain legal phrases (see Mesne). The adjective “mean” is chiefly used in the sense of “average,” as in mean temperature, mean birth or death rate, &c.

“Mean” as a substantive has the following principal applications; it is used of that quality, course of action, condition, state, &c., which is equally distant from two extremes, as in such phrases as the “golden (or happy) mean.” For the philosophic application see Aristotle and Ethics.

In mathematics, the term “mean,” in its most general sense, is given to some function of two or more quantities which (1) becomes equal to each of the quantities when they themselves are made equal, and (2) is unaffected in value when the quantities suffer any transpositions. The three commonest means are the arithmetical, geometrical, and harmonic; of less importance are the contraharmonical, arithmetico-geometrical, and quadratic.

From the sense of that which stands between two things, “mean,” or the plural “means,” often with a singular construction, takes the further significance of agency, instrument, &c., of which that produces some result, hence resources capable of producing a result, particularly the pecuniary or other resources by which a person is enabled to live, and so used either of employment or of property, wealth, &c. There are many adverbial phrases, such as “by all means,” “by no means,” &c., which are extensions of “means” in the sense of agency.

The word “mean” (like the French moyen) had also the sense of middling, moderate, and this considerably influenced the uses of “mean” (3). This, which is now chiefly used in the sense of inferior, low, ignoble, or of avaricious, penurious, “stingy,” meant originally that which is common to more persons or things than one. The word in O. E. is gemaéne, and is represented in the modern Ger. gemein, common. It is cognate with Lat. communis, from which “common” is derived. The descent in meaning from that which is shared alike by several to that which is inferior, vulgar or low, is paralleled by the uses of “common.”

In astronomy the “mean sun” is a fictitious sun which moves uniformly in the celestial equator and has its right ascension always equal to the sun’s mean longitude. The time recorded by the mean sun is termed mean-solar or clock time; it is regular as distinct from the non-uniform solar or sun-dial time. The “mean moon” is a fictitious moon which moves around the earth with a uniform velocity and in the same time as the real moon. The “mean longitude” of a planet is the longitude of the “mean” planet, i.e. a fictitious planet performing uniform revolutions in the same time as the real planet.

The arithmetical mean of n quantities is the sum of the quantities divided by their number n. The geometrical mean of n quantities is the nth root of their product. The harmonic mean of n quantities is the arithmetical mean of their reciprocals. The significance of the word “mean,” i.e., middle, is seen by considering 3 instead of n quantities; these will be denoted by a, b, c. The arithmetic mean b, is seen to be such that the terms a, b, c are in arithmetical progression, i.e. b = 1⁄2(a + c); the geometrical mean b places a, b, c in geometrical progression, i.e. in the proportion a : b :: b : c or b2 = ac; and the harmonic mean places the quantities in harmonic proportion, i.e. a : c :: a − b : b − c, or b = 2ac/(a + c). The contraharmonical mean is the quantity b given by the proportion a : c :: b − c : a − b, i.e. b = (a2 + c2)/(a + c). The arithmetico-geometrical mean of two quantities is obtained by first forming the geometrical and arithmetical means, then forming the means of these means, and repeating the process until the numbers become equal. They were invented by Gauss to facilitate the computation of elliptic integrals. The quadratic mean of n quantities is the square root of the arithmetical mean of their squares.

MEASLES, (Morbilli, Rubeola; the M. E. word is maseles, properly a diminutive of a word meaning “spot,” O.H.G. māsa, cf. “mazer”; the equivalent is Ger. Masern; Fr. Rougeole), an acute infectious disease occurring mostly in children. It is mentioned in the writings of Rhazes and others of the Arabian physicians in the 10th century. For long, however, it was held to be a variety of small-pox. After the non-identity of these two diseases had been established, measles and scarlet-fever continued to be confounded with each other; and in the account given by Thomas Sydenham of epidemics of measles in London in 1670 and 1674 it is evident that even that accurate observer had not as yet clearly perceived their pathological distinction, although it would seem to have been made a century earlier by Giovanni Filippo Ingrassias (1510-1580), a physician of Palermo. The specific micro-organism responsible for measles has not been definitely isolated.

Its progress is marked by several stages more or less sharply defined. After the reception of the contagion into the system, there follows a period of incubation or latency during which scarcely any disturbance of the health is perceptible. This period generally lasts for from ten to fourteen days, when it is followed by the invasion of the symptoms specially characteristic of measles. These consist in the somewhat sudden onset of acute catarrh of the mucous membranes. At this stage minute white spots in the buccal mucous membrane frequently occur; when they do, they are diagnostic of the disease. Sneezing, accompanied with a watery discharge, sometimes bleeding, from the nose, redness and watering of the eyes, cough of a short, frequent, and noisy character, with little or no expectoration, hoarseness of the voice, and occasionally sickness and diarrhoea, are the chief local phenomena of this stage. With these there is well-marked febrile disturbance, the temperature being elevated (102°-104° F.), and the pulse rapid, while headache, thirst, and restlessness are usually present. In some instances, these initial symptoms are slight, and the child is allowed to associate with others at a time when, as will be afterwards seen, the contagion of the disease is most active. In rare cases, especially in young children, convulsions usher in, or occur in the course of, this stage of invasion, which lasts as a rule for four or five days, the febrile symptoms, however, showing some tendency to undergo abatement after the second day. On the fourth or fifth day after the invasion, sometimes later, rarely earlier, the characteristic eruption appears on the skin, being first noticed on the brow, cheeks, chin, also behind the ears, and on the neck. It consists of small spots of a dusky red or crimson colour, just like flea-bites, slightly elevated above the surface, at first isolated, but tending to become grouped into patches of irregular, occasionally crescentic, outline, with portions of skin free from the eruption intervening. The face acquires a swollen and bloated appearance, which, taken with the catarrh of the nostrils and eyes, is almost characteristic, and renders the diagnosis at this stage a matter of no difficulty. The eruption spreads downwards over the body and limbs, which are soon thickly studded with the red spots or patches. Sometimes these become confluent over a considerable surface. The rash continues to come out for two or three days, and then begins to fade in the order in which it first showed itself, namely from above downwards. By the end of about a week after its first appearance scarcely any trace of the eruption remains beyond a faint staining of the skin. Usually during convalescence slight peeling of the epidermis takes place, but much less distinctly than is the case in scarlet fever. At the commencement of the eruptive stage the fever, catarrh, and other constitutional disturbance, which were present from the beginning, become aggravated, the temperature often rising to 105° or more, and there is headache, thirst, furred tongue, and soreness of the throat, upon which red patches similar to those on the surface of the body may be observed. These symptoms usually decline as soon as the rash has attained its maximum, and often there occurs a sudden and extensive fall of temperature, indicating that the crisis of the disease has been reached. In favourable cases convalescence proceeds rapidly, the patient feeling perfectly well even before the rash has faded from the skin.

Measles may, however, occur in a very malignant form, in which the symptoms throughout are of urgent character, the rash but feebly developed, and of dark purple hue, while there is great prostration, accompanied with intense catarrh of the respiratory or gastro-intestinal mucous membrane. Such cases are rare, occurring mostly in circumstances of bad hygiene, both as regards the individual and his surroundings. On the other hand, cases of measles are often of so mild a form throughout that the patient can scarcely be persuaded to submit to treatment.

Measles as a disease derives its chief importance from the risk, by no means slight, of certain complications which are apt to arise during its course, more especially inflammatory affections of the respiratory organs. These are most liable to occur in the colder seasons of the year and in very young and delicate children. It has been already stated that irritation of the respiratory passages is one of the symptoms characteristic of measles, but that this subsides with the decline of the eruption. Not unfrequently, however, these symptoms, instead of abating, become aggravated, and bronchitis of the capillary form (see Bronchitis), or pneumonia, generally of the diffuse or lobular variety (see Pneumonia), supervene. By far the greater proportion of the mortality in measles is due to its complications, of which those just mentioned are the most common, but which also include inflammatory affections of the larynx, with attacks resembling croup, and also diarrhoea assuming a dysenteric character. Or there may remain as direct results of the disease chronic ophthalmia, or discharge from the ears with deafness, and occasionally a form of gangrene affecting the tissues of the mouth or cheeks and other parts of the body, leading to disfigurement and gravely endangering life.

Apart from those immediate risks there appears to be a tendency in many cases for the disease to leave behind a weakened and vulnerable condition of the general health, which may render children, previously robust, delicate and liable to chest complaints, and is in not a few instances the precursor of some of those tubercular affections to which the period of childhood and youth is liable. These various effects or sequelae of measles indicate that although in itself a comparatively mild ailment, it should not be regarded with indifference. Indeed it is doubtful whether any other disease of early life demands more careful watching as to its influence on the health. Happily many of those attending evils may by proper management be averted.

Measles is a disease of the earlier years of childhood. Like other infectious maladies, it is admittedly rare, though not unknown, in nurslings or infants under six months old. It is comparatively seldom met with in adults, but this is due to the fact that most persons have undergone an attack in early life. Where this has not been the case, the old suffer equally with the young. All races of men appear liable to this disease, provided that which constitutes the essential factor in its origin and spread exists, namely, contagion. Some countries enjoy long immunity from outbreaks of measles, but it has frequently been found in such cases that when the contagion has once been introduced the disease extends with great rapidity and virulence. This was shown by the epidemic in the Faroe Islands in 1846, where, within six months after the arrival of a single case of measles, more than three-fourths of the entire population were attacked and many perished; and the similarly produced and still more destructive outbreak in Fiji in 1875, in which it was estimated that about one-fourth of the inhabitants died from the disease in about three months. In both these cases the great mortality was due to the complications of the malady, specially induced by overcrowding, insanitary surroundings, the absence of proper nourishment and nursing for the sick, and the utter prostration and terror of the people, and to the disease being specially malignant, occurring on what might be termed virgin soil.1 It may be regarded as an invariable rule that the first epidemic of any disease in a community is specially virulent, each successive attack conferring a certain immunity.

In many lands, such as the United Kingdom, measles is rarely absent, especially from large centres of population, where sporadic cases are found at all seasons. Every now and then epidemics arise from the extension of the disease among those members of a community who have not been in some measure protected by a previous attack. There are few diseases so contagious as measles, and its rapid spread in epidemic outbreaks is no doubt due to the well-ascertained fact that contagion is most potent in the earlier stages, even before its real nature has been evinced by the characteristic appearances on the skin. Hence the difficulty of timely isolation, and the readiness with which the disease is spread in schools and families. The contagion is present in the skin and the various secretions. While the contagion is generally direct, it can also be conveyed by the particles from the nose and mouth which, after being expelled, become dry and are conveyed as dust on clothes, toys, &c. Fortunately the germs of measles do not retain their virulence long under such conditions, comparing favourably with those of some other diseases.

Treatment.—The treatment embraces the preventive measures to be adopted by the isolation of the sick at as early a period as possible. Epidemics have often, especially in limited localities, been curtailed by such a precaution. In families with little house accommodation this measure is frequently, for the reason given regarding the communicable period of the disease, ineffectual; nevertheless where practicable it ought to be tried. The unaffected children should be kept from school for a time (probably about three weeks from the outbreak in the family would suffice if no other case occur in the interval), and all clothing in contact with the patient or nurses should be disinfected. In extensive epidemics it is often desirable to close the schools for a time. As regards special treatment, in an ordinary case of measles little is required beyond what is necessary in febrile conditions generally. Confinement to bed in a somewhat darkened room, into which, however, air is freely admitted; light, nourishing, liquid diet (soups, milk, &c.), water almost ad lib. to drink, and mild diaphoretic remedies such as the acetate of ammonia or ipecacuanha, are all that is necessary in the febrile stage. When the fever is very severe, sponging the body generally or the chest and arms affords relief. The serious chest complications of measles are to be dealt with by those measures applicable for the relief of the particular symptoms (see Bronchitis; Pneumonia). The preparations of ammonia are of special efficacy. During convalescence the patient must be guarded from exposure to cold, and for a time after recovery the state of the health ought to be watched with a view of averting the evils, both local and constitutional, which too often follow this disease.

“German measles” (Rötheln, or Epidemic Roseola) is a term applied to a contagious eruptive disorder having certain points of resemblance to measles, and also to scarlet fever, but exhibiting its distinct individuality in the fact that it protects from neither of these diseases. It occurs most commonly in children, but frequently in adults also, and is occasionally seen in extensive epidemics. Beyond confinement to the house in the eruptive stage, which, from the slight symptoms experienced, is often difficult of accomplishment, no special treatment is called for. There is little doubt that the disease is often mistaken for true measles, and many of the alleged second attacks of the latter malady are probably cases of rötheln. The chief points of difference are the following: (1) The absence of distinct premonitory symptoms, the stage of invasion, which in measles is usually of four days’ duration, and accompanied with well-marked fever and catarrh, being in rötheln either wholly absent or exceedingly slight, enduring only for one day. (2) The eruption of rötheln, which, although as regards its locality and manner of progress similar to measles, differs somewhat in its appearance, the spots being of smaller size, paler colour, and with less tendency to grouping in crescentic patches. The rash attains its maximum in about one day, and quickly disappears. There is not the same increase of temperature in this stage as in measles. (3) The presence of white spots on the buccal mucous membrane, in the case of measles. (4) The milder character of the symptoms of rötheln throughout its whole course, and the absence of complications and of liability to subsequent impairment of health such as have been seen to appertain to measles.

1 Transactions of the Epidemiological Society (London, 1877).

MEAT, a word originally applied to food in general, and so still used in such phrases as “meat and drink”; but now, except as an archaism, generally used of the flesh of certain domestic animals, slaughtered for human food by butchers, “butcher’s meat,” as opposed to “game,” that of wild animals, “fish” or “poultry.” Cognate forms of the O. Eng. mete are found in certain Teutonic languages, e.g. Swed. mat, Dan. mad and O. H. Ger. Maz. The ultimate origin has been disputed; the New English Dictionary considers probable a connexion with the root med-, “to be fat,” seen in Sansk. mēda, Lat. madere, “to be wet,” and Eng. “mast,” the fruit of the beech as food for pigs.

See Dietetics; Food Preservation; Public Health; Agriculture; and the sections dealing with agricultural statistics under the names of the various countries.

MEATH (pronounced with th soft, as in the), a county of Ireland in the province of Leinster, bounded E. by the Irish Sea, S.E. by Dublin, S. by Kildare and King’s County, W. by Westmeath, N.W. by Cavan and Monaghan, and N.E. by Louth. Area 579,320 acres, or about 905 sq. m. In some districts the surface is varied by hills and swells, which to the west reach a considerable elevation, although the general features of a fine champain country are never lost. The coast, low and shelving, extends about 10 m., but there is no harbour of importance. Laytown is a small seaside resort, 5 m. S.E. of Drogheda. The Boyne enters the county at its south-western extremity, and flowing north-east to Drogheda divides it into two almost equal parts. At Navan it receives the Blackwater, which flows south-west from Cavan. Both these rivers are noted for their trout, and salmon are taken in the Boyne. The Boyne is navigable for barges as far as Navan whence a canal is carried to Trim. The Royal Canal passes along the southern boundary of the county from Dublin.

In the north is a broken country of Silurian rocks with much igneous material, partly contemporaneous, partly intrusive, near Slane. Carboniferous Limestone stretches from the Boyne valley to the Dublin border, giving rise to a flat plain especially suitable for grazing. Outliers of higher Carboniferous strata occur on the surface; but the Coal Measures have all been removed by denudation.

The climate is genial and favourable for all kinds of crops, there being less rain than even in the neighbouring counties. Except a small portion occupied by the Bog of Allen, the county is verdant and fertile. The soil is principally a rich deep loam resting on limestone gravel, but varies from a strong clayey loam to a light sandy gravel. The proportion of tillage to pasturage is roughly as 1 to 31⁄2. Oats, potatoes and turnips are the principal crops, but all decrease. The numbers of cattle, sheep and poultry, however, are increasing or well maintained. Agriculture is almost the sole industry, but coarse linen is woven by hand-looms, and there are a few woollen manufactories. The main line of the Midland Great Western railway skirts the southern boundary, with a branch line north from Clonsilla to Navan and Kingscourt (county Cavan). From Kilmessan on this line a branch serves Trim and Athboy. From Drogheda (county Louth) a branch of the Great Northern railway crosses the county from east to West by Navan and Kells to Oldcastle.

The population (76,111 in 1891; 67,497 in 1901) suffers a large decrease, considerably above the average of Irish counties, and emigration is heavy. Nearly 93% are Roman Catholics. The chief towns are Navan (pop. 3839), Kells (2428) and Trim (1513), the county town. Lesser market towns are Oldcastle and Athboy, an ancient town which received a charter from Henry IV. The county includes eighteen baronies. Assizes are held at Trim, and quarter sessions at Kells, Navan and Trim. The county is in the Protestant dioceses of Armagh, Kilmore and Meath, and in the Roman Catholic dioceses of Armagh and Meath. Before the Union in 1800 it sent fourteen members to parliament, but now only two members are returned, for the north and south divisions of the county respectively.

History and Antiquities.—A district known as Meath (Midhe), and including the present county of Meath as well as Westmeath and Longford, with parts of Cavan, Kildare and King’s County, was formed by Tuathal (c. 130) into a kingdom to serve as mensal land or personal estate of the Ard Ri or over-king of Ireland. Kings of Meath reigned until 1173, and the title was claimed as late as the 15th century by their descendants, but at the date mentioned Hugh de Lacy obtained the lordship of the country and was confirmed in it by Henry II. Meath thus came into the English “Pale.” But though it was declared a county in the reign of Edward I. (1296), and though it came by descent into the possession of the Crown in the person of Edward IV., it was long before it was fully subdued and its boundaries clearly defined. In 1543 Westmeath was created a county apart from that of Meath, but as late as 1598 Meath was still regarded as a province by some, who included in it the counties Westmeath, East Meath, Longford and Cavan. In the early part of the 17th century it was at last established as a county, and no longer considered as a fifth province of Ireland.

There are two ancient round towers, the one at Kells and the other in the churchyard of Donaghmore, near Navan. By the river Boyne near Slane there is an extensive ancient burial-place called Brugh. Here are some twenty burial mounds, the largest of which is that of New Grange, a domed tumulus erected above a circular chamber, which is entered by a narrow passage enclosed by great upright blocks of stone, covered with carvings. The mound is surrounded by remains of a stone circle, and the whole forms one of the most remarkable extant erections of its kind. Tara (q.v.) is famous in history, especially as the seat of a royal palace referred to in the well-known lines of Thomas Moore. Monastic buildings were very numerous in Meath, among the more important ruins being those of Duleek, which is said to have been the first ecclesiastical building in Ireland of stone and mortar; the extensive remains of Bective Abbey; and those of Clonard, where also were a cathedral and a famous college. Of the old fortresses, the castle of Trim still presents an imposing appearance. There are many fine old mansions.

MEAUX, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Seine-et-Marne, and chief town of the agricultural region of Brie, 28 m. E.N.E. of Paris by rail. Pop. (1906), 11,089. The town proper stands on an eminence on the right bank of the Marne; on the left bank lies the old suburb of Le Marché, with which it is united by a bridge of the 16th century. Two rows of picturesque mills of the same period are built across the river. The cathedral of St Stephen dates from the 12th to the 16th centuries, and was restored in the 19th century. Of the two western towers, the completed one is that to the north of the façade, the other being disfigured by an unsightly slate roof. The building, which is 275 ft. long and 105 ft. high, consists of a short nave, with aisles, a fine transept, a choir and a sanctuary. The choir contains the statue and the tomb of Bossuet, bishop from 1681 to 1704, and the pulpit of the cathedral has been reconstructed with the panels of that from which the “eagle of Meaux” used to preach. The transept terminates at each end in a fine portal surmounted by a rose-window. The episcopal palace (17th century) has several curious old rooms; the buildings of the choir school are likewise of some archaeological interest. A statue of General Raoult (1870) stands in one of the squares.

Meaux is the centre of a considerable trade in cereals, wool, Brie cheeses, and other farm-produce, while its mills provide much of the flour with which Paris is supplied. Other industries are saw-milling, metal-founding, distilling, the preparation of vermicelli and preserved vegetables, and the manufacture of mustard, hosiery, plaster and machinery. There are nursery-gardens in the vicinity. The Canal de l’Ourcq, which surrounds the town, and the Marne furnish the means of transport. Meaux is the seat of a bishopric dating from the 4th century, and has among its public institutions a sub-prefecture, and tribunals of first instance and of commerce.

In the Roman period Meaux was the capital of the Meldi, a small Gallic tribe, and in the middle ages of the Brie. It formed part of the kingdom of Austrasia, and afterwards belonged to the counts of Vermandois and Champagne, the latter of whom established important markets on the left bank of the Marne. Its communal charter, received from them, is dated 1179. A treaty signed at Meaux in 1229 after the Albigensian War sealed the submission of Raymond VII., count of Toulouse. The town suffered much during the Jacquerie, the peasants receiving a severe check there in 1358; during the Hundred Years’ War; and also during the Religious Wars, in which it was an important Protestant centre. It was the first town which opened its gates to Henry IV. in 1594. On the high-road for invaders marching on Paris from the east of France, Meaux saw its environs ravaged by the army of Lorraine in 1652, and was laid under heavy requisitions in 1814, 1815 and 1870. In September 1567 Meaux was the scene of an attempt made by the Protestants to seize the French king Charles IX., and his mother Catherine de’ Medici. The plot, which is sometimes called the “enterprise of Meaux,” failed, the king and queen with their courtiers escaping to Paris. This conduct, however, on the part of the Huguenots had doubtless some share in influencing Charles to assent to the massacre of St Bartholomew.

MECCA (Arab. Makkah),1 the chief town of the Hejaz in Arabia, and the great holy city of Islām. It is situated two camel marches (the resting-place being Bahra or Hadda), or about 45 m. almost due E., from Jidda on the Red Sea. Thus on a rough estimate Mecca lies in 21° 25′ N., 39° 50′ E. It is said in the Koran (Sur. xiv. 40) that Mecca lies in a sterile valley, and the old geographers observe that the whole Haram or sacred territory round the city is almost without cultivation or date palms, while fruit trees, springs, wells, gardens and green valleys are found immediately beyond. Mecca in fact lies in the heart of a mass of rough hills, intersected by a labyrinth of narrow valleys and passes, and projecting into the Tehāma or low country on the Red Sea, in front of the great mountain wall that divides the coast-lands from the central plateau, though in turn they are themselves separated from the sea by a second curtain of hills forming the western wall of the great Wādi Marr. The inner mountain wall is pierced by only two great passes, and the valleys descending from these embrace on both sides the Mecca hills.

Holding this position commanding two great routes between the lowlands and inner Arabia, and situated in a narrow and barren valley incapable of supporting an urban population, Mecca must have been from the first a commercial centre.2 In the palmy days of South Arabia it was probably a station on the great incense route, and thus Ptolemy may have learned the name, which he writes Makoraba. At all events, long before Mahomet we find Mecca established in the twofold quality of a commercial centre and a privileged holy place, surrounded by an inviolable territory (the Haram), which was not the sanctuary of a single tribe but a place of pilgrimage, where religious observances were associated with a series of annual fairs at different points in the vicinity. Indeed in the unsettled state of the country commerce was possible only under the sanctions of religion, and through the provisions of the sacred truce which prohibited war for four months of the year, three of these being the month of pilgrimage, with those immediately preceding and following. The first of the series of fairs in which the Meccans had an interest was at Okaz on the easier road between Mecca and Taif, where there was also a sanctuary, and from it the visitors moved on to points still nearer Mecca (Majanna, and finally Dhul-Majāz, on the flank of Jebel Kabkab behind Arafa) where further fairs were held,3 culminating in the special religious ceremonies of the great feast at ‘Arafa, Quzaḥ (Mozdalifa), and Mecca itself. The system of intercalation in the lunar calendar of the heathen Arabs was designed to secure that the feast should always fall at the time when the hides, fruits and other merchandise were ready for market,4 and the Meccans, who knew how to attract the Bedouins by hospitality, bought up these wares in exchange for imported goods, and so became the leaders of the international trade of Arabia. Their caravans traversed the length and breadth of the peninsula. Syria, and especially Gaza, was their chief goal. The Syrian caravan intercepted, on its return, at Badr (see Mahomet) represented capital to the value of £20,000, an enormous sum for those days.5

The victory of Mahommedanism made a vast change in the position of Mecca. The merchant aristocracy became satraps or pensioners of a great empire; but the seat of dominion was removed beyond the desert, and though Mecca and the Hejāz strove for a time to maintain political as well as religious predominance, the struggle was vain, and terminated on the death of Ibn Zubair, the Meccan pretendant to the caliphate, when the city was taken by Hajjāj (A.D. 692). The sanctuary and feast of Mecca received, however, a new prestige from the victory of Islām. Purged of elements obviously heathen, the Ka‘ba became the holiest site, and the pilgrimage the most sacred ritual observance of Mahommedanism, drawing worshippers from so wide a circle that the confluence of the petty traders of the desert was no longer the main feature of the holy season. The pilgrimage retained its importance for the commercial well-being of Mecca; to this day the Meccans live by the Hajj—letting rooms, acting as guides and directors in the sacred ceremonies, as contractors and touts for land and sea transport, as well as exploiting the many benefactions that flow to the holy city; while the surrounding Bedouins derive support from the camel-transport it demands and from the subsidies by which they are engaged to protect or abstain from molesting the pilgrim caravans. But the ancient “fairs of heathenism” were given up, and the traffic of the pilgrim season, sanctioned by the Prophet in Sur. ii. 194, was concentrated at Minā and Mecca, where most of the pilgrims still have something to buy or sell, so that Minā, after the sacrifice of the feast day, presents the aspect of a huge international fancy fair.6 In the middle ages this trade was much more important than it is now. Ibn Jubair (ed. Wright, p. 118 seq.) in the 12th century describes the mart of Mecca in the eight days following the feast as full of gems, unguents, precious drugs, and all rare merchandise from India, Irāk, Khorāsān, and every part of the Moslem world.

The hills east and west of Mecca, which are partly built over and rise several hundred feet above the valley, so enclose the city that the ancient walls only barred the valley at three points, where three gates led into the town. In the time of Ibn Jubair the gates still stood though the walls were ruined, but now the gates have only left their names to quarters of the town. At the northern or upper end was the Bāb el Mā‘lā, or gate of the upper quarter, whence the road continues up the valley towards Minā and Arafa as well as towards Zeima and the Nejd. Beyond the gate, in a place called the Hajūn, is the chief cemetery, commonly called el Mā‘lā, and said to be the resting-place of many of the companions of Mahomet. Here a cross-road, running over the hill to join the main Medina road from the western gate, turns off to the west by the pass of Kadā, the point from which the troops of the Prophet stormed the city (A.H. 8).7 Here too the body of Ibn Zubair was hung on a cross by Ḥajjāj. The lower or southern gate, at the Masfala quarter, opened on the Yemen road, where the rain-water from Mecca flows off into an open valley. Beyond, there are mountains on both sides; on that to the east, commanding the town, is the great castle, a fortress of considerable strength. The third or western gate, Bāb el-Omra (formerly also Bāb el-Zāhir, from a village of that name), lay almost opposite the great mosque, and opened on a road leading westwards round the southern spurs of the Red Mountain. This is the way to Wādi Fātima and Medīna, the Jidda road branching off from it to the left. Considerable suburbs now lie outside the quarter named after this gate; in the middle ages a pleasant country road led for some miles through partly cultivated land with good wells, as far as the boundary of the sacred territory and gathering place of the pilgrims at Tanīm, near the mosque of Ayesha. This is the spot on the Medīna road now called the Omra, from a ceremonial connected with it which will be mentioned below.

The length of the sinuous main axis of the city from the farthest suburbs on the Medina road to the suburbs in the extreme north, now frequented by Bedouins, is, according to Burckhardt, 3500 paces.8 About the middle of this line the longitudinal thoroughfares are pushed aside by the vast courtyard and colonnades composing the great mosque, which, with its spacious arcades surrounding the Ka‘ba and other holy places, and its seven minarets, forms the only prominent architectural feature of the city. The mosque is enclosed by houses with windows opening on the arcades and commanding a view of the Ka‘ba. Immediately beyond these, on the side facing Jebel Abu Kobais, a broad street runs south-east and north-west across the valley. This is the Mas‘ā (sacred course) between the eminences of Safā and Merwa, and has been from very early times one of the most lively bazaars and the centre of Meccan life. The other chief bazaars are also near the mosque in smaller streets. The general aspect of the town is picturesque; the streets are fairly spacious, though ill-kept and filthy; the houses are all of stone, many of them well-built and four or five storeys high, with terraced roofs and large projecting windows as in Jidda—a style of building which has not varied materially since the 10th century (Mukaddasī, p. 71), and gains in effect from the way in which the dwellings run up the sides and spurs of the mountains. Of public institutions there are baths, ribāṭs, or hospices, for poor pilgrims from India, Java, &c., a hospital and a public kitchen for the poor.

The mosque is at the same time the university hall, where between two pilgrim seasons lectures are delivered on Mahommedan law, doctrine and connected branches of science. A poorly provided public library is open to the use of students. The madrassehs or buildings around the mosque, originally intended as lodgings for students and professors, have long been let out to rich pilgrims. The minor places of visitation for pilgrims, such as the birthplaces of the prophet and his chief followers, are not notable.9 Both these and the court of the great mosque lie beneath the general level of the city, the site having been gradually raised by accumulated rubbish. The town in fact has little air of antiquity; genuine Arab buildings do not last long, especially in a valley periodically ravaged by tremendous floods when the tropical rains burst on the surrounding hills. The history of Mecca is full of the record of these inundations, unsuccessfully combated by the great dam drawn across the valley by the caliph Omar (Kutbeddin, p. 76), and later works of Mahdī.10

The fixed population of Mecca in 1878 was estimated by Assistant-Surgeon ‘Abd el-Razzāq at 50,000 to 60,000; there is a large floating population—and that not merely at the proper season of pilgrimage, the pilgrims of one season often beginning to arrive before those of the former season have all dispersed. At the height of the season the town is much overcrowded, and the entire want of a drainage system is severely felt. Fortunately good water is tolerably plentiful; for, though the wells are mostly undrinkable, and even the famous Zamzam water only available for medicinal or religious purposes, the underground conduit from beyond Arafa, completed by Sultan Selim II. in 1571, supplies to the public fountains a sweet and light water, containing, according to ‘Abd el-Razzāq, a large amount of chlorides. The water is said to be free to townsmen, but is sold to the pilgrims at a rather high rate.11

Medieval writers celebrate the copious supplies, especially of fine fruits, brought to the city from Tāif and other fertile parts of Arabia. These fruits are still famous; rice and other foreign products are brought by sea to Jidda; mutton, milk and butter are plentifully supplied from the desert.12 The industries all centre in the pilgrimage; the chief object of every Meccan—from the notables and sheikhs, who use their influence to gain custom for the Jidda speculators in the pilgrim traffic, down to the cicerones, pilgrim brokers, lodging-house keepers, and mendicants at the holy places—being to pillage the visitor in every possible way. The fanaticism of the Meccan is an affair of the purse; the mongrel population (for the town is by no means purely Arab) has exchanged the virtues of the Bedouin for the worst corruptions of Eastern town life, without casting off the ferocity of the desert, and it is hardly possible to find a worse certificate of character than the three parallel gashes on each cheek, called Tashrīṭ, which are the customary mark of birth in the holy city. The unspeakable vices of Mecca are a scandal to all Islām, and a constant source of wonder to pious pilgrims.13 The slave trade has connexions with the pilgrimage which are not thoroughly clear; but under cover of the pilgrimage a great deal of importation and exportation of slaves goes on.

Since the fall of Ibn Zubair the political position of Mecca has always been dependent on the movements of the greater Mahommedan world. In the splendid times of the caliphs immense sums were lavished upon the pilgrimage and the holy city; and conversely the decay of the central authority of Islām brought with it a long period of faction, wars and misery, in which the most notable episode was the sack of Mecca by the Carmathians at the pilgrimage season of A.D. 930. The victors carried off the “black stone,” which was not restored for twenty-two years, and then only for a great ransom, when it was plain that even the loss of its palladium could not destroy the sacred character of the city. Under the Fatimites Egyptian influence began to be strong in Mecca; it was opposed by the sultans of Yemen, while native princes claiming descent from the Prophet—the Hāshimite amīrs of Mecca, and after them the amīrs of the house of Qatāda (since 1202)—attained to great authority and aimed at independence; but soon after the final fall of the Abbasids the Egyptian overlordship was definitely established by sultan Bībars (A.D. 1269). The Turkish conquest of Egypt transferred the supremacy to the Ottoman sultans (1517), who treated Mecca with much favour, and during the 16th century executed great works in the sanctuary and temple. The Ottoman power, however, became gradually almost nominal, and that of the amīrs or sherīfs increased in proportion, culminating under Ghālib, whose accession dates from 1786. Then followed the wars of the Wahhābīs (see Arabia and Wahhābīs) and the restoration of Turkish rule by the troops of Mehemet ‘Ali. By him the dignity of sherīf was deprived of much of its weight, and in 1827 a change of dynasty was effected by the appointment of Ibn ‘Aun. Afterwards Turkish authority again decayed. Mecca is, however, officially the capital of a Turkish province, and has a governor-general and a Turkish garrison, while Mahommedan law is administered by a judge sent from Constantinople. But the real sovereign of Mecca and the Hejāz is the sherīf, who, as head of a princely family claiming descent from the Prophet, holds a sort of feudal position. The dignity of sherīf (or grand sherīf, as Europeans usually say for the sake of distinction, since all the kin of the princely houses reckoning descent from the Prophet are also named sherīfs), although by no means a religious pontificate, is highly respected owing to its traditional descent in the line of Hasan, son of the fourth caliph ‘Ali. From a political point of view the sherīf is the modern counterpart of the ancient amīrs of Mecca, who were named in the public prayers immediately after the reigning caliph. When the great Mahommedan sultanates had become too much occupied in internecine wars to maintain order in the distant Hejāz, those branches of the Hassanids which from the beginning of Islam had retained rural property in Arabia usurped power in the holy cities and the adjacent Bedouin territories. About A.D. 960 they established a sort of kingdom with Mecca as capital. The influence of the princes of Mecca has varied from time to time, according to the strength of the foreign protectorate in the Hejāz or in consequence of feuds among the branches of the house; until about 1882 it was for most purposes much greater than that of the Turks. The latter were strong enough to hold the garrisoned towns, and thus the sultan was able within certain limits—playing off one against the other the two rival branches of the aristocracy, viz. the kin of Ghālib and the house of Ibn‘Aun—to assert the right of designating or removing the sherīf, to whom in turn he owed the possibility of maintaining, with the aid of considerable pensions, the semblance of his much-prized lordship over the holy cities. The grand sherīf can muster a considerable force of freedmen and clients, and his kin, holding wells and lands in various places through the Hejāz, act as his deputies and administer the old Arabic customary law to the Bedouin. To this influence the Hejāz owes what little of law and order it enjoys. During the last quarter of the 19th century Turkish influence became preponderant in western Arabia, and the railway from Syria to the Hejāz tended to consolidate the sultan’s supremacy. After the sherīfs, the principal family of Mecca is the house of Shaibah, which holds the hereditary custodianship of the Ka‘ba.

The Great Mosque and the Ka‘ba.—Long before Mahomet the chief sanctuary of Mecca was the Ka‘ba, a rude stone building without windows, and having a door 7 ft. from the ground; and so named from its resemblance to a monstrous astragalus (die) of about 40 ft. cube, though the shapeless structure is not really an exact cube nor even exactly rectangular.14 The Ka‘ba has been rebuilt more than once since Mahomet purged it of idols and adopted it as the chief sanctuary of Islām, but the old form has been preserved, except in secondary details;15 so that the “Ancient House,” as it is titled, is still essentially a heathen temple, adapted to the worship of Islām by the clumsy fiction that it was built by Abraham and Ishmael by divine revelation as a temple of pure monotheism, and that it was only temporarily perverted to idol worship from the time when ‘Amr ibn Lohai introduced the statue of Hobal from Syria16 till the victory of Islam. This fiction has involved the superinduction of a new mythology over the old heathen ritual, which remains practically unchanged. Thus the chief object of veneration is the black stone, which is fixed in the external angle facing Safā. The building is not exactly oriented, but it may be called the south-east corner. Its technical name is the black corner, the others being named the Yemen (south-west), Syrian (north-west), and Irāk (north-east) corners, from the lands to which they approximately point. The black stone is a small dark mass a span long, with an aspect suggesting volcanic or meteoric origin, fixed at such a height that it can be conveniently kissed by a person of middle size. It was broken by fire in the siege of A.D. 683 (not, as many authors relate, by the Carmathians), and the pieces are kept together by a silver setting. The history of this heavenly stone, given by Gabriel to Abraham, does not conceal the fact that it was originally a fetish, the most venerated of a multitude of idols and sacred stones which stood all round the sanctuary in the time of Mahomet. The Prophet destroyed the idols, but he left the characteristic form of worship—the ṭawāf, or sevenfold circuit of the sanctuary, the worshipper kissing or touching the objects of his veneration—and besides the black stone he recognized the so-called “southern” stone, the same presumably as that which is still touched in the ṭawāf at the Yemen corner (Muh. in Med. pp. 336, 425). The ceremony of the ṭawāf and the worship of stone fetishes was common to Mecca with other ancient Arabian sanctuaries.17 It was, as it still is, a frequent religious exercise of the Meccans, and the first duty of one who returned to the city or arrived there under a vow of pilgrimage; and thus the outside of the Ka‘ba was and is more important than the inside. Islām did away with the worship of idols; what was lost in interest by their suppression has been supplied by the invention of spots consecrated by recollections of Abraham, Ishmael and Hagar, or held to be acceptable places of prayer. Thus the space of ten spans between the black stone and the door, which is on the east side, between the black and Irāk corners, and a man’s height from the ground, is called the Multazam, and here prayer should be offered after the ṭawāf with outstretched arms and breast pressed against the house. On the other side of the door, against the same wall, is a shallow trough, which is said to mark the original site of the stone on which Abraham stood to build the Ka‘ba. Here the growth of the legend can be traced, for the place is now called the “kneading-place” (Ma‘jan), where the cement for the Ka‘ba was prepared. This name and story do not appear in the older accounts. Once more, on the north side of the Ka‘ba, there projects a low semicircular wall of marble, with an opening at each end between it and the walls of the house. The space within is paved with mosaic, and is called the Ḥijr. It is included in the ṭawāf, and two slabs of verde antico within it are called the graves of Ishmael and Hagar, and are places of acceptable prayer. Even the golden or gilded mīzāb (water-spout) that projects into the Ḥijr marks a place where prayer is heard, and another such place is the part of the west wall close to the Yemen corner.

The feeling of religious conservatism which has preserved the structural rudeness of the Ka‘ba did not prohibit costly surface decoration. In Mahomet’s time the outer walls were covered by a veil (or kiswa) of striped Yemen cloth. The caliphs substituted a covering of figured brocade, and the Egyptian government still sends with each pilgrim caravan from Cairo a new kiswa of black brocade, adorned with a broad band embroidered with golden inscriptions from the Korān, as well as a richer curtain for the door.18 The door of two leaves, with its posts and lintel, is of silver gilt.

The interior of the Ka‘ba is now opened but a few times every year for the general public, which ascends by the portable staircase brought forward for the purpose. Foreigners can obtain admission at any time for a special fee. The modern descriptions, from observations made under difficulties, are not very complete. Little change, however, seems to have been made since the time of Ibn Jubair, who describes the floor and walls as overlaid with richly variegated marbles, and the upper half of the walls as plated with silver thickly gilt, while the roof was veiled with coloured silk. Modern writers describe the place as windowless, but Ibn Jubair mentions five windows of rich stained glass from Irāk. Between the three pillars of teak hung thirteen silver lamps. A chest in the corner to the left of one entering contained Korans, and at the Irāk corner a space was cut off enclosing the stair that leads to the roof. The door to this stair (called the door of mercy—Bāb el-Raḥma) was plated with silver by the caliph Motawakkil. Here, in the time of Ibn Jubair, the Maqām or standing stone of Abraham was usually placed for better security, but brought out on great occasions.19

The houses of ancient Mecca pressed close upon the Ka‘ba, the noblest families, who traced their descent from Ḳoṣai, the reputed founder of the city, having their dwellings immediately round the sanctuary. To the north of the Ka‘ba was the Dār el-Nadwa, or place of assembly of the Koreish. The multiplication of pilgrims after Islām soon made it necessary to clear away the nearest dwellings and enlarge the place of prayer around the Ancient House. Omar, Othmān and Ibn Jubair had all a share in this work, but the great founder of the mosque in its present form, with its spacious area and deep colonnades, was the caliph Mahdī, who spent enormous sums in bringing costly pillars from Egypt and Syria. The work was still incomplete at his death in A.D. 785, and was finished in less sumptuous style by his successor. Subsequent repairs and additions, extending down to Turkish times, have left little of Mahdī’s work untouched, though a few of the pillars probably date from his days. There are more than five hundred pillars in all, of very various style and workmanship, and the enclosure—250 paces in length and 200 in breadth, according to Burckhardt’s measurement—is entered by nineteen archways irregularly disposed.

After the Ka‘ba the principal points of interest in the mosque are the well Zamzam and the Maqām Ibrāhīm. The former is a deep shaft enclosed in a massive vaulted building paved with marble, and, according to Mahommedan tradition, is the source (corresponding to the Beer-lahai-roi of Gen. xvi. 14) from which Hagar drew water for her son Ishmael. The legend tells that the well was long covered up and rediscovered by ‘Abd al-Moṭṭalib, the grandfather of the Prophet. Sacred wells are familiar features of Semitic sanctuaries, and Islām, retaining the well, made a quasi-biblical story for it, and endowed its tepid waters with miraculous curative virtues. They are eagerly drunk by the pilgrims, or when poured over the body are held to give a miraculous refreshment after the fatigues of religious exercise; and the manufacture of bottles or jars for carrying the water to distant countries is quite a trade. Ibn Jubair mentions a curious superstition of the Meccans, who believed that the water rose in the shaft at the full moon of the month Shaban. On this occasion a great crowd, especially of young people, thronged round the well with shouts of religious enthusiasm, while the servants of the well dashed buckets of water over their heads. The Maqām of Abraham is also connected with a relic of heathenism, the ancient holy stone which once stood on the Ma‘jan, and is said to bear the prints of the patriarch’s feet. The whole legend of this stone, which is full of miraculous incidents, seems to have arisen from a misconception, the Maqām Ibrāhīm in the Korān meaning the sanctuary itself; but the stone, which is a block about 3 spans in height and 2 in breadth, and in shape “like a potter’s furnace” (Ibn Jubair), is certainly very ancient. No one is now allowed to see it, though the box in which it lies can be seen or touched through a grating in the little chapel that surrounds it. In the middle ages it was sometimes shown, and Ibn Jubair describes the pious enthusiasm with which he drank Zamzam water poured on the footprints. It was covered with inscriptions in an unknown character, one of which was copied by Fākihī in his history of Mecca. To judge by the facsimile in Dozy’s Israeliten te Mekka, the character is probably essentially one with that of the Syrian Safā inscriptions, which extended through the Nejd and into the Ḥejāz.20

Safā and Merwa.—In religious importance these two points or “hills,” connected by the Mas‘ā, stand second only to the Ka‘ba. Safā is an elevated platform surmounted by a triple arch, and approached by a flight of steps.21 It lies south-east of the Ka‘ba, facing the black corner, and 76 paces from the “Gate of Safā,” which is architecturally the chief gate of the mosque. Merwa is a similar platform, formerly covered with a single arch, on the opposite side of the valley. It stands on a spur of the Red Mountain called Jebel Kuayḳian. The course between these two sacred points is 493 paces long, and the religious ceremony called the “sa‘y” consists in traversing it seven times, beginning and ending at Safā. The lowest part of the course, between the so-called green milestones, is done at a run. This ceremony, which, as we shall presently see, is part of the omra, is generally said to be performed in memory of Hagar, who ran to and fro between the two eminences vainly seeking water for her son. The observance, however, is certainly of pagan origin; and at one time there were idols on both the so-called hills (see especially Azraqī, pp. 74, 78).

The Ceremonies and the Pilgrimage.—Before Islām the Ka‘ba was the local sanctuary of the Meccans, where they prayed and did sacrifice, where oaths were administered and hard cases submitted to divine sentence according to the immemorial custom of Semitic shrines. But, besides this, Mecca was already a place of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage with the ancient Arabs was the fulfilment of a vow, which appears to have generally terminated—at least on the part of the well-to-do—in a sacrificial feast. A vow of pilgrimage might be directed to other sanctuaries than Mecca—the technical word for it (ihlāl) is applied, for example, to the pilgrimage to Manāt (Bakri, p. 519). He who was under such a vow was bound by ceremonial observances of abstinence from certain acts (e.g. hunting) and sensual pleasures, and in particular was forbidden to shear or comb his hair till the fulfilment of the vow. This old Semitic usage has its close parallel in the vow of the Nazarite. It was not peculiarly connected with Mecca; at Tāif, for example, it was customary on return to the city after an absence to present oneself at the sanctuary, and there shear the hair (Muh. in Med., p. 381). Pilgrimages to Mecca were not tied to a single time, but they were naturally associated with festive occasions, and especially with the great annual feast and market. The pilgrimage was so intimately connected with the well-being of Mecca, and had already such a hold on the Arabs round about, that Mahomet could not afford to sacrifice it to an abstract purity of religion, and thus the old usages were transplanted into Islām in the double form of the omra or vow of pilgrimage to Mecca, which can be discharged at any time, and the ḥajj or pilgrimage at the great annual feast. The latter closes with a visit to the Ka‘ba, but its essential ceremonies lie outside Mecca, at the neighbouring shrines where the old Arabs gathered before the Meccan fair.

The omra begins at some point outside the Ḥaram (or holy territory), generally at Tanim, both for convenience sake and because Ayesha began the omra there in the year 10 of the Hegira. The pilgrim enters the Ḥaram in the antique and scanty pilgrimage dress (iḥrām), consisting of two cloths wound round his person in a way prescribed by ritual. His devotion is expressed in shouts of “Labbeyka” (a word of obscure origin and meaning); he enters the great mosque, performs the ṭawāf and the sa‘y22 and then has his head shaved and resumes his common dress. This ceremony is now generally combined with the ḥajj, or is performed by every stranger or traveller when he enters Mecca, and the iḥrām (which involves the acts of abstinence already referred to) is assumed at a considerable distance from the city. But it is also proper during one’s residence in the holy city to perform at least one omra from Tanim in connexion with a visit to the mosque of Ayesha there. The triviality of these rites is ill concealed by the legends of the sa‘y of Hagar and of the ṭawāf being first performed by Adam in imitation of the circuit of the angels about the throne of God; the meaning of their ceremonies seems to have been almost a blank to the Arabs before Islām, whose religion had become a mere formal tradition. We do not even know to what deity the worship expressed in the ṭawāf was properly addressed. There is a tradition that the Ka‘ba was a temple of Saturn (Shahrastānī, p. 431); perhaps the most distinctive feature of the shrine may be sought in the sacred doves which still enjoy the protection of the sanctuary. These recall the sacred doves of Ascalon (Philo vi. 200 of Richter’s ed.), and suggests Venus-worship as at least one element (cf. Herod i. 131, iii. 8; Ephr. Syr., Op. Syr. ii. 457).

To the ordinary pilgrim the omra has become so much an episode of the ḥajj that it is described by some European pilgrims as a mere visit to the mosque of Ayesha; a better conception of its original significance is got from the Meccan feast of the seventh month (Rajab), graphically described by Ibn Jubair from his observations in A.D. 1184. Rajab was one of the ancient sacred months, and the feast, which extended through the whole month and was a joyful season of hospitality and thanksgiving, no doubt represents the ancient feasts of Mecca more exactly than the ceremonies of the ḥajj, in which old usage has been overlaid by traditions and glosses of Islām. The omra was performed by crowds from day to day, especially at new and full moon.23 The new moon celebration was nocturnal; the road to Tanim, the Mas‘ā, and the mosque were brilliantly illuminated; and the appearing of the moon was greeted with noisy music. A genuine old Arab market was held, for the wild Bedouins of the Yemen mountains came in thousands to barter their cattle and fruits for clothing, and deemed that to absent themselves would bring drought and cattle plague in their homes. Though ignorant of the legal ritual and prayers, they performed the ṭawāf with enthusiasm, throwing themselves against the Ka‘ba and clinging to its curtains as a child clings to its mother. They also made a point of entering the Ka‘ba. The 29th of the month was the feast day of the Meccan women, when they and their little ones had the Ka‘ba to themselves without the presence even of the Sheybās.

The central and essential ceremonies of the ḥajj or greater pilgrimage are those of the day of Arafa, the 9th of the “pilgrimage month” (Dhu‘l Ḥijja), the last of the Arab year; and every Moslem who is his own master, and can command the necessary means, is bound to join in these once in his life, or to have them fulfilled by a substitute on his behalf and at his expense. By them the pilgrim becomes as pure from sin as when he was born, and gains for the rest of his life the honourable title of ḥajj. Neglect of many other parts of the pilgrim ceremonial may be compensated by offerings, but to miss the “stand” (woqūf) at Arafa is to miss the pilgrimage. Arafa or Arafat is a space, artificially limited, round a small isolated hill called the Hill of Mercy, a little way outside the holy territory, on the road from Mecca to Taif. One leaving Mecca after midday can easily reach the place on foot the same evening. The road is first northwards along the Mecca valley and then turns eastward. It leads through the straggling village of Mina, occupying a long narrow valley (Wādi Mina), two to three hours from Mecca, and thence by the mosque of Mozdalifa over a narrow pass opening out into the plain of Arafa, which is an expansion of the great Wādi Naman, through which the Taif road descends from Mount Kara. The lofty and rugged mountains of the Hodheyl tower over the plain on the north side and overshadow the little Hill of Mercy, which is one of those bosses of weathered granite so common in the Hejāz. Arafa lay quite near Dhul-Majaz, where, according to Arabian tradition, a great fair was held from the 1st to the 8th of the pilgrimage month; and the ceremonies from which the ḥajj was derived were originally an appendix to this fair. Now, on the contrary, the pilgrim is expected to follow as closely as may be the movements of the prophet at his “farewell pilgrimage” in the year 10 of the Hegira (A.D. 632). He therefore leaves Mecca in pilgrim garb on the 8th of Dhu‘l Ḥijja, called the day of tarwīya (an obscure and pre-Islamic name), and, strictly speaking, should spend the night at Mina. It is now, however, customary to go right on and encamp at once at Arafa. The night should be spent in devotion, but the coffee booths do a lively trade, and songs are as common as prayers. Next forenoon the pilgrim is free to move about, and towards midday he may if he please hear a sermon. In the afternoon the essential ceremony begins; it consists simply in “standing” on Arafa shouting “Labbeyka” and reciting prayers and texts till sunset. After the sun is down the vast assemblage breaks up, and a rush (technically ifāḍa, daf‘, nafr) is made in the utmost confusion to Mozdalifa, where the night prayer is said and the night spent. Before sunrise next morning (the 10th) a second “stand” like that on Arafa is made for a short time by torchlight round the mosque of Mozdalifa, but before the sun is fairly up all must be in motion in the second ifāḍa towards Mina. The day thus begun is the “day of sacrifice,” and has four ceremonies—(1) to pelt with seven stones a cairn (jamrat al ‘aqaba) at the eastern end of W. Mina, (2) to slay a victim at Mina and hold a sacrificial meal, part of the flesh being also dried and so preserved, or given to the poor,24 (3) to be shaved and so terminate the iḥrām, (4) to make the third ifāḍa, i.e. go to Mecca and perform the ṭawāf and sa‘y (‘omrat al-ifāḍa), returning thereafter to Mina. The sacrifice and visit to Mecca may, however, be delayed till the 11th, 12th or 13th. These are the days of Mina, a fair and joyous feast, with no special ceremony except that each day the pilgrim is expected to throw seven stones at the jamrat al ‘aqaba, and also at each of two similar cairns in the valley. The stones are thrown in the name of Allah, and are generally thought to be directed at the devil. This is, however, a custom older than Islām, and a tradition in Azraqī, p. 412, represents it as an act of worship to idols at Mina. As the stones are thrown on the days of the fair, it is not unlikely that they have something to do with the old Arab mode of closing a sale by the purchaser throwing a stone (Bīrūnī, p. 328).25 The pilgrims leave Mina on the 12th or 13th, and the ḥajj is then over. (See further Mahommedan Religion.)