Act 1826, which required the court to amend according to the
truth, and the Criminal Procedure Act 1851, which rendered
description of the defendant unnecessary. All pleas in abatement
are now abolished (R.S.G. Order 21, r. 20). See PLEADING.
ABATEMENT IN LITIGATION. In civil proceedings, no action
abates by reason of the marriage, death or bankruptcy of any
of the parties, if the cause of action survives or continues,
and does not become defective by the assignment, creation or
devolution of any estate or title pendente lite (R.S.C. Order
17, r. 1). Criminal proceedings do not abate on the death of
the prosecutor, being in theory instituted by the crown, but
the crown itself may bring about their termination without any
decision on the merits and without the assent of the prosecutor.
ABATEMENT OF FALSE LIGHTS. By the Merchant Shipping Act
1854, the general lighthouse authority (see LIGHTHOUSE) has
power to order the extinguishment or screening of any light
which may be mistaken for a light proceeding from a lighthouse.
ABATEMENT IN COMMERCE is a deduction sometimes made at a
custom-house from the fixed duties on certain kinds of goods, on
account of damage or loss sustained in warehouses. The rate and
conditions of such deductions are regulated, in England, by the
Customs Consolidation Act 1853. (See also DRAWBACK; REBATE.)
ABATEMENT IN HERALDRY is a badge in coat-armour, indicating some
kind of degradation or dishonour. It is called also rebatement.
ABATI, or DELL' ABBATO, NICCOLO (1512--1571), a celebrated
fresco-painter of Modena, whose best works are there and at
Bologna. He accompanied Primaticcio to France, and assisted
in decorating the palace at Fontainebleau (1552--1571). His
pictures exhibit a combination of skill in drawing, grace
and natural colouring. Some of his easel pieces in oil are
in different collections; one of the finest, in the Dresden
Gallery, represents the martyrdom of St Peter and St Paul.
ABATIS,ABATTIS or ABBATTIS (a French word meaning
a heap of material thrown), a term in field fortification
for an obstacle formed of the branches of trees laid
in a row, with the tops directed towards the enemy and
interlaced or tied with wire. The abatis is used alone or
in combination with wire-entanglements and other obstacles.
ABATTOIR (from abattre, to strike down), a French word often
employed in English as an equivalent of ``slaughter-house''
(q.v.), the place where animals intended for food are killed.
ABAUZIT, FIRMIN (1679-1767), a learned Frenchman, was born of
Protestant parents at Uzes, in Languedoc. His father died when
he was but two years of age; and when, on the revocation of the
edict of Nantes in 1685, the authorities took steps to have him
educated in the Roman Catholic faith, his mother contrived his
escape. For two years his brother and he lived as fugitives in
the mountains of the Cevennes, but they at last reached Geneva,
where their mother afterwards joined them on escaping from
the imprisonment in which she was held from the time of their
flight. Abauzit at an early age acquired great proficiency in
languages, physics and theology. In 1698 he went to Holland,
and there became acquainted with Pierre Bayle, P. Jurieu and J.
Basnage. Proceeding to England, he was introduced to Sir Isaac
Newton, who found in him one of the earliest defenders of his
discoveries. Sir Isaac corrected in the second edition of
his Principia an error pointed out by Abauzit, and, when
sending him the Commercium Epistolicum, said, ``You are
well worthy to judge between Leibnitz and me.'' The reputation
of Abauzit induced William III. to request him to settle in
England, but he did not accept the king's offer, preferring
to return to Geneva. There from 1715 he rendered valuable
assistance to a society that had been formed for translating
the New Testament into French. He declined the offer of
the chair of philosophy in the university in 1723, but
accepted, in 1727, the sinecure office of librarian to the
city of his adoption. Here he died at a good old age, in
1767. Abauzit was a man of great learning and of wonderful
versatility. Whatever chanced to be discussed,it used to be
said of Abauzit, as of Professor W. Whewell of more modern
times, that he seemed to have made it a subject of particular
study. Rousseau, who was jealously sparing of his praises,
addressed to him, in his Nouvelle Heloise, a fine panegyric;
and when a stranger flatteringly told Voltaire he had come
to see a great man, the philosopher asked him if he had seen
Abauzit. Little remains of the labours of this intellectual
giant, his heirs having, it is said, destroyed the papers
that came into their possession, because their own religious
opinions were different. A few theological, archaeological
abd astronomical articles from his pen appeared in the
Journal Helvetique and elsewhere, and he contributed
several papers to Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique
(1767). He wrote a work throwing doubt on the canonical
authority of the Apocalypse, which called forth a reply
from Dr Leonard Twells. He also edited and made valuable
additions to J. Spon's Histoire de la republique de Geneve.
A collection of his writings was published at Geneva in
1770 (OEuvres de feu M. Abauzit), and another at London
in 1773 (OEuvres diverses de M. Abauzit). Some of them
were translated into English by Dr Edward Harwood (1774).
Information regarding Abauzit will be found in J.
Senebier's HIstoire Litteraire de Geneve, Harwood's
Miscellanies, and W. Orme's Bibliotheca Biblica (1824).
'ABAYE, the name of a Babylonian 'amora (q.v.),
born in the middle of the 3rd century. He died in 339.
'ABBA 'ARIKA, the name of thc Babylonian 'amora (q.v.) of
the 3rd century, who established at Sura the systematic study
of the Rabbinic traditions which, using the Mishnah as text, led
to the compilation of the Talmud. He is commonly known as Rab.
ABBADIDES, a Mahommedan dynasty which arose in Spain on the
downfall of the western caliphate. It lasted from about 1023
till 1091, but during the short period of its existence was
singularly active and typical of its time. The founder of
the house was Abd-ul-Qasim Mahommed, the cadi of Seville in
1023. He was the chief of an Arab family settled in the city
from the first days of the conquest. The Beni-abbad were not
of ancient descent, though the poets, whom they paid largely,
made an illustrious pedigree for them when they had become
powerful. They were, however, very rich. Abd-ul-Qasim gained
the confidence of the townsmen by organizing a successful
resistance to the Berber soldiers of fortune who were grasping
at the fragments of the caliphate. At first he professed to
rule only with the advice of a council formed of the nobles,
but when his power became established he dispensed with this
show of republican government, and then gave himself the
appearance of a legitimate title by protecting an impostor
who professed to be the caliph Hisham II. When Abd-ul-Qasim
died in 1042 he had created a state which, though weak in
itself, was strong as compared to the little powers about
it. He had made his family the recognized leaders of the
Mahommedans of Arab and native Spanish descent against
the Berber element, whose chief was the king of Granada.
Abbad, surnamed El Motaddid, his son and successor, is
one of the most remarkable figures in Spanish Mahommedan
history. He had a striking resemblance to the Italian princes
of the later middle ages and the early renaissance, of the
stamp of Fiiipo Maria Visconti. El Motaddid was a poet and
a lover of letters, who was also a poisoner, a drinker of
wine, a sceptic and treacherous to the utmost degree. Though
he waged war all through his reign he very rarely appeared in
the field, but directed the generals, whom he never trusted,
from his ``lair'' in the fortified palace, the Alcazar of
Seville. He killed with his own hand one of his sons who had
rebelled against him. On one occasion he trapped a number
of his enemies, the Berber chiefs of the Ronda, into visiting
him, and got rid of them by smothering them in the hot room
of a bath. It was his taste to preserve the skulls of the
enemies he had killed--those of the meaner men to be used as
flower-pots, while those of the princes were kept in special
chests. His reign until his death on the 28th of February
1069 was mainly spent in extending his power at the expense
of his smaller neighbours, and in conflicts with his chief
rival the king of Granada. These incessant wars weakened the
Mahommedans, to the great advantage of the rising power of
the Christian kings of Leon and Castile, but they gave the
kingdom of Seville a certain superiority over the other little
states. After 1063 he was assailed by Fernando El Magno of
Castile and Leon, who marched to the gates of Seville, and
forced him to pay tribute. His son, Mahommed Abd-ul-Qasim
Abenebet---who reigned by the title of El Motamid--was the
third and last of the Abbadides, He was a no less remarkable
person than his father and much more amiable. Like him he was
a poet, and a favourer of poets. El Motamid went, however,
considerably further in patronage of literature than his father,
for he chose as his favourite and prime minister the poet Ibn
Ammar. In the end the vanity and featherheadedness of Ibn
Ammar drove his master to kill him. El Motamid was even
more influenced by his favourite wife, Romaica, than by his
vizir. He had met her paddling in the Guadalquivir, purchased
her from her master, and made her his wife. The caprices
of Romaica, and the lavish extravagance of Motamid in his
efforts to please her, form the subject of many stories.
In politics he carried on the feuds of his family with the
Berbers, and in his efforts to extend his dominions could be
as faithless as his father. His wars and his extravagance
exhausted his treasury, and he oppressed his subjects by
taxes. In 1080 he brought down upon himself the vengeance of
Alphonso VI. of Castile by a typical piece of flighty oriental
barbarity. He had endeavoured to pay part of his tribute to the
Christian king with false money. The fraud was detected by a
Jew, who was one of the envoys of Alphonso. El Motamid, in
a moment of folly and rage, crucified the Jew and imprisoned
the Christian members of the mission. Alphonso retaliated
by a destructive raid. When Alphonso took Toledo in 1085,
El Motamid called in Yusef ibn Tashfin, the Almoravide (see
SPAIN, History, and ALMORAVIDES). During the six years
which preceded his deposition in 1091, El Motamid behaved
with valour on the field, but with much meanness and political
folly. He endeavoured to curry favour with Yusef by betraying
the other Mahommedan princes to him, and intrigued to secure
the alliance of Alphonso against the Almoravide. It was
probably during this period that he surrendered his beautiful
daughter Zaida to the Christian king, who made her his
concubine, and is said by some authorities to have married
her after she bore him a son, Sancho. The vacillations and
submissions of El Motamid did not save him from the fate
which overtook his fellow-princes. Their scepticism and
extortion had tired their subjects, and the mullahs gave Yusef
a ``fetva'' authorzing him to remove them in the interest of
religion. In 1091 the Almoravides stormed Seville. El
Motamid, who had fought bravely, was weak enough to order his
sons to surrender the fortresses they still held, in order
to save his own life. He died in prison in Africa in 1095.
AUTHORITIES.--Dozy, Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne,
