to foist upon Norway as her official language in the place of
Dano-Norwegian. Aasen composed poems and plays in the composite
dialect to show how it should be used; one of these dramas,
The Heir (1855), was frequently acted, and may be considered
as the pioneer of all the abundant dialect-literature of the
last half-century, from Vinje down to Garborg. Aasen continued
to enlarge and improve his grammars and his dictionary. He
lived very quietly in lodgings in Christiania, surrounded by
his books and shrinking from publicity, but his name grew into
wide political favour as his ideas about the language of the
peasants became more and more the watch-word of the popular
party. Quite early in his career, 1842, he had begun to
receive a stipend to enable him to give his entire attention
to his philological investigations; and the Storthing--.
conscious of the national importance of his woth---treated hm
in this respect with more and more generosity as he advanced in
years. He continued his investigations to the last, but it
may be said that, after the 1873 edition of his Dictionary,
he added but little to his stores. Ivar Aasen holds perhaps
an isolated place in literary history as the one man who has
invented, or at least selected and constructed, a language
which has pleased so many thousands of his countrymen that
they have accepted it for their schools, their sermons
and their songs. He died in Christiania on the 23rd of
September 1896, and was buried with Public honours. (E. G.)
AB, the fifth month of the ecclesiastical and the
eleventh of the civil year of the Jews. It approximately
Corresponds to the period of the 15th of July to the 15th of
August. The word is of Babylonian origin, adopted by the
Jews with other calendar names after the Babylonian exile.
Tradition ascribes the death of Aaron to the first day of Ab.
On the ninth is kept the Fast of Ab, or the Black Fast, to
bewail the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadrezzar
(586 B.C.) and of the second by Titus (A.D. 70).
ABA. (1) A form of altazimuth instrument, invented by, and Cabled
after, Antoine d'Abbadie; (2) a rough homespun manufactured in
Bulgariai (3) a long coarse shirt worn by the Bedouin Arabs.
ABABDA (the Gebadei of Pliny, probably the Troglodytes of
classical writers), a nomad tribe of African ``Arabs,, of Hamitic
origin. They extend from the Nile at Assuan to the Red Sea,
and reach northward to the Kena-Kosseir road, thus occupying
the southern border of Egypt east of the Nile. They call
themselves ``sons of the Jinns.'' With some of the clans of
the Bisharin (q.v.) and possibly the Hadendoa (q.v.) they
represent the Blemmyes of classic geographers, and their location
to-day is almost identical with that assigned them in Roman
times. They were constantly at war with the Romans, who at
last subsidized them. In the middle ages they were known as
Beja (q.v.), and convoyed pilgrims from the Nile valley to
Aidhab, the port of embarkation for Jedda. From time immemorial
they have acted as guides to caravans through the Nubian
desert and up the Nile valley as far as Sennar. To-day many of
them are employed in the telegraph service across the Arabian
desert. They intermarried with the Nuba, and settled in small
Colonies at Shendi and elsewhere long before the Egyptian
invasion (A.D. 1820-1822). They are still great trade
carriers, and visit very distant districts. The Ababda of
Egypt, numbering some 30,000, are governed by an hereditary
``chief.'' Although nominally a vassal of the Khedive he pays no
tribute. Indeed he is paid a subsidy, a portion of the
road-dues, in return for his safeguarding travellers from Bedouin
robbers. The sub-sheikhs are directly responsible to him.
The Ababda of Nubia, reported by Joseph von Russegger, who
visited the country in 1836, to number some 40,000, have since
diminished, having probably amalgamated with the Bisharin,
their hereditary enemies when they were themselves a powerful
nation. The Ababda generally speak Arabic (mingled with
Barabra [Nubian] words), the result of their long-continued
contact with Egypt; but the southern and south-eastern portion
of the tribe in many cases still retain their Beja dialect,
ToBedawiet. Those of Kosseir will not speak this before
strangers, as they believe that to reveal the mysterious
dialect would bring ruin on them. Those nearest the Nile
have much fellah blood in them. As a tribe they claim an Arab
origin, apparently through their sheikhs. They have adopted
the dress and habits of the fellahin, unlike their kinsmen
the Bisharin and Hadendoa, who go practically naked. They
are neither so fierce nor of so fine a physique as these
latter. They are lithe and well built, but small: the average
height is little more than 5 ft., except in the sheikh clan,
who are obviously of Arab origin. Their complexion is more
red than black, their features angular, noses straight and hair
luxuriant. They bear the character of being treacherous and
faithless, being bound by no oath, but they appear to be honest
in money matters and hospitable, and, however poor, never
beg. Formerly very poor, the Ababda became wealthy after
the British occupation of Egypt. The chief settlements are in
Nubia, where they live in villages and employ themselves in
agriculture. Others of them fish in the Red Sea and then
hawk the salt fish in the interior. Others are pedlars,
while charcoal burning, wood-gathering and trading in gums
and drugs, especially in senna leaves, occupy many. Unlike
the true Arab, the Ababda do not live in tents, but build
huts with hurdles and mats, or live in natural caves, as
did their ancestors in classic times. They have few horses,
using the camel as beast of burden or their ``mount'' in
war. They live chiefly on milk and durra, the latter
eaten either raw or roasted. They are very superstitious,
believing, for example, that evil would overtake a family
if a girl member should, after her marriage, ever set eyes
on her mother: hence the Ababda husband has to make his
home far from his wife's village. In the Mahdist troubles
(1882-1898) many ``friendlies'' were recruited from the tribe.
For their earlier history see BEJA; see also BISHARIN,
HADENDOA, KABBABish; and the following authorities:---Sir
F. R. Wingate, Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan (Lond.
1891); Giuseppe Sergi, Africa: Antropologia della Stirpe
Camitica (Turin, 1897); A. H. Keane, Ethnology of Egyptian
Sudan (Lond. 1884); Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by
Count Gleichen (Lond. 1905); Joseph von Russegger, Die
Reisen in Afrika (Stuttgart, 1841-1850). (T. A. J.)
ABACA, or ABAKA, a native name for the plant Musa textilis,
which produces the fibre called Manila Hemp (q.v.). .
ABACUS (Gr. abax, a slab Fr. abaque, tailloir), in
architecture, the upper member of the capital of a column.
Its chief function is to provide a larger supporting surface
for the architrave or arch it has to carry. In the Greek Doric
order the abacus is a plain square slab. In the Roman and
Renaissance Doric orders it is crowned by a moulding. In the
Archaic-Greek Ionic order, owing to the greater width of the
capital, the abacus is rectangular in plan, and consists of a
carved ovolo moulding. In later examples the abacus is square,
except where there are angle volutes, when it is slightly
curved over the same. In the Roman and Renaissance Ionic
capital, the abacus is square with a fillet On the top of an
ogee moulding, but curved over angle volutes. In the Greek
Corinthian order the abacus is moulded, its sides are concave
and its angles canted (except in one or two exceptional Greek
capitals, where it is brought to a sharp angle); and the same
shape is adopted in the Roman and Renaissance Corinthian and
Composite capitals, in some cases with the ovolo moulding
carved. In Romanesque architecture the abacus is square with
the lower edge splayed off and moulded or carved, and the
same was retained in France during the medieval period; but
in England,in Early English work, a circular deeply moulded
abacus was introduced, which in the 14th and 15th centuries
was transformed into an octagonal one. The diminutive of
Abacus, ABACISCUS, is applied in architecture to the chequers
or squares of a tessellated pavement . ``Abacus'' is also the
name of an instrument employed by the ancients for arithmetical
calculations; pebbles, hits of bone or coins being used as
counters. Fig. 1 shows a Roman abacus taken from an ancient
monument. It contains seven long and seven shorter rods
or bars, the former having four perforated beads running
on them and the latter one. The bar marked 1 indicates
units, X tens, and so on up to millions. The beads on the
shorter bars denote fives,--five units, five tens, &c. The
rod O and corresponding short rod are for marking ounces;
and the short quarter rods for fractions of an ounce.
The Swan-Pan of the Chinese (fig. 2) closely resembles
the Roman abacus in its construction and use. Computations
are made with it by means of balls of bone or ivory running
on slender bamboo rods, similar to the simpler board,
fitted up with beads strung on wires, which is employed in
teaching the rudiments of arithmetic in English schools.
FIG. 2.--Chinese Swan-Pan. The name of ``abacus'' is also
given, in logic, to an instrument, often called the ``logical
machine,'' analogous to the mathematical abacus. It is
constructed to show all the possible combinations of a set of
logical terms with their negatives, and, further, the way in which
these combinations are affected by the addition of attributes
or other limiting words, i.e. to simplify mechanically the
solution of logical problems. These instruments are all more
or less elaborate developments of the ``logical slate,'' on
which were written in vertical columns all the combinations
of symbols or letters which could be made logically out of a
definite number of terms. These were compared with any given
premises, and those which were incompatible were crossed
off. In the abacus the combinations are inscribed each on a
single slip of wood or similar substance, which is moved by a
key; incompatible combinations can thus be mechanically removed
at will, in accordance with any given series of premises.
The principal examples of such machines are those of W. S.
Jevons (Element. Lessons in Logic, C. xxiii.), John Venn
(see his Symbolic Logic, 2nd ed., 1894, p. 135), and Allan
Marquand (see American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1885, pp.
303-7, and Johns Hopkins University Studies in Logic, 1883).
ABADDON, a Hebrew word meaning ``destruction.'' In poetry
it comes to mean ``place of destruction,'' and so the
underworld or Sheol (cf. Job xxvi. 6; Prov. xv. 11). In Rev.
ix. 11 Abaddon ((Abaddon) is used of hell personified,
the prince of the underworld. The term is here explained
as Apollyon (q.v.), the ``destroyer.', W. Baudissin
(Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklo padie) notes that Hades and
Abaddon in Rabbinic writings are employed as personal names,
just as shemayya in Dan. iv. 23, shamayim (``heaven''),
and makom (``place'') among the Rabbins, are used of God.
ABADEH, a small walled town of Persia, in the province of
Fars, situated at an elevation of 6200 ft. in a fertile
plain on the high road between Isfahan and Shiraz, 140 m.
from the former and 170 m. from the latter place. Pop.
4000. It is the chief place of the Abadeh-Iklid district,
which has 30 villages; it has telegraph and post offices,
and is famed for its carved wood-work, small boxes, trays,
sherbet spoons, &c., made of the wood of pear and box trees.
