part possess a unique and lasting interest. An excellent translation of the Ain by Francis Gladwin was published in Calcutta, 1783–1786. It was reprinted in London very inaccurately, and copies of the original edition are now exceedingly rare and correspondingly valuable. It was also translated by Professor Blockmann in 1848. Abul Fazl died by the hand of an assassin, while returning from a mission to the Deccan in 1602. The murderer was instigated by Prince Selim, afterwards Jahangir, who had become jealous of the minister’s influence.
ABULFEDA [Abū-l-Fidā’ Ismā‛īl ibn ʽAlī ʽImād-ud-Dnī] (1273–1331), Arabian historian and geographer, was born at Damascus, whither his father Malik ul-Afdal, brother of the prince of Hamah, had fled from the Mongols. He was a descendant of Ayyūb, the father of Saladin. In his boyhood he devoted himself to the study of the Koran and the sciences, but from his twelfth year was almost constantly engaged in military expeditions, chiefly against the crusaders. In 1285 he was present at the assault of a stronghold of the knights of St John, and he took part in the sieges of Tripoli, Acre and Qalʽat ar-Rūm. In 1298 he entered the service of the Mameluke Sultan Malik al-Nāṣir and after twelve years was invested by him with the governorship of Hamah. In 1312 he became prince with the title Malik us-Sālih, and in 1320 received the hereditary rank of sultan with the title Malik ul-Muʽayyad. For more than twenty years altogether he reigned in tranquillity and splendour, devoting himself to the duties of government and to the composition of the works to which he is chiefly indebted for his fame. He was a munificent patron of men of letters, who came in large numbers to his court. He died in 1331. His chief historical work is An Abridgment of the History of the Human Race, in the form of annals extending from the creation of the world to the year 1329 (Constantinople, 2 vols. 1869). Various translations of parts of it exist, the earliest being a Latin rendering of the section relating to the Arabian conquests in Sicily, by Dobelius, Arabic professor at Palermo, in 1610 (preserved in Muratori’s Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. i.). The section dealing with the pre-Islamitic period was edited with Latin translation by H. O. Fleischer under the title Abulfedae Historia Ante-Islamica (Leipzig, 1831). The part dealing with the Mahommedan period was edited, also with Latin translation, by J. J. Reiske as Annales Muslemici (5 vols., Copenhagen, 1789–1794). His Geography is, like much of the history, founded on the works of his predecessors, and so ultimately on the work of Ptolemy. A long introduction on various geographical matters is followed by twenty-eight sections dealing in tabular form with the chief towns of the world. After each name are given the longitude, latitude, “climate,” spelling, and then observations generally taken from earlier authors. Parts of the work were published and translated as early as 1650 (cf. Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Berlin, 1902, vol. ii. pp. 44-46). The text of the whole was published by M‘G. de Slane and M. Reinaud (Paris, 1840), and a French translation with introduction by M. Reinaud and Stanislas Guyard (Paris, 1848–1883). (G. W. T.)
ABŪ-L-QĀSIM [Khalaf ibn ʽAbbās uz-Zahrāwi], Arabian physician and surgeon, generally known in Europe as Abulcasis, flourished in the tenth century at Cordova as physician to the caliph ʽAbdur-Rahmān III. (912–961). No details of his life are known. A part of his compendium of medicine was published in Latin in the 16th century as Liber theoricae nec non practicae Alsaharavii (Augsburg, 1519). His manual of surgery was published at Venice in 1497, at Basel in 1541, and at Oxford Abulcasis de Chirurgia arabice et latine cura Johannis Channing (2 vols. 1778).
For his other works see Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Weimar, 1898), vol. i. pp. 239-240. (G. W. T.)
ABUNDANTIA (“Abundance”), a Roman goddess, the personification of prosperity and good fortune. Modelled after the Greek Demeter, she is practically identical with Copia, Annona and similar goddesses. On the coins of the later Roman emperors she is frequently represented holding a cornucopia, from which she shakes her gifts, thereby at the same time indicating the liberality of the emperor or empress. She may be compared with Domina Abundia (Old Fr. Dame Habonde, Notre Dame d’Abondance), whose name often occurs in poems of the Middle Ages, a beneficent fairy, who brought plenty to those whom she visited (Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, tr. 1880, i. 286-287).
ABŪ NUWĀS [Abū ʽAlī Hal-asan ibn Hāni'al-Ḥakamī] (c. 756–810), known as Abū Nuwās, Arabian poet, was born in al-Ahwāz, probably about 756. His mother was a Persian, his father a soldier, a native of Damascus. His studies were made in Baṣra under Abū Zaid and Abū ʽUbaida (q.v.), and in Kufa under Khalaf al-Aḥmar. He is also said to have spent a year with the Arabs in the desert to gain purity of language. Settling in Bagdad he enjoyed the favour of Harūn al-Rashīd and al-Amīn, and died there probably about 810. The greater part of his life was characterized by great licentiousness and disregard of religion, but in his later days he became ascetic. Abū Nuwās is recognized as the greatest poet of his time. His mastery of language has led to extensive quotation of his verses by Arabian scholars. Genial, cynical, immoral, he drew on all the varied life of his time for the material of his poems. In his wine-songs especially the manners of the upper classes of Bagdad are revealed. He was one of the first to ridicule the set form of the qasīda (elegy) as unnatural, and has satirized this form in several poems. See I. Goldziher, Abhandlungen zur Arabischen Philologie (Leyden, 1896), i. pp. 145 ff. His poems were collected by several Arabian editors. One such collection (the MS. of which is now in Vienna) contains nearly 5000 verses grouped under the ten headings: wine, hunting, praise, satire, love of youths, love of women, obscenities, blame, elegies, renunciation of the world. His collected poems (Diwān) have been published in Cairo (1860) and in Beirūt (1884). The wine-songs were edited by W. Ahlwardt under the title Diwān des Abu Nowas. 1. Die Weinlieder (Greifswald, 1861).
(G. W. T.)
ABU SIMBEL, or Ipsambul, the name of a group of temples of Rameses II. (c. 1250 B.C.) in Nubia, on the left bank of the Nile, 56 m. by river S. of Korosko. They are hewn in the cliffs at the riverside, at a point where the sandstone hills on the west reach the Nile and form the southern boundary of a wider portion of the generally barren valley. The temples are three in number. The principal temple, probably the greatest and most imposing of all rock-hewn monuments, was discovered by Burckhardt in 1812 and opened by Belzoni in 1817. (The front has been cleared several times, most recently in 1892, but the sand is always pressing forward from the north end.) The hillside was recessed to form the façade, backed against which four immense seated colossi of the king, in pairs on either side of the entrance, rise from a platform or forecourt reached from the river by a flight of steps. The colossi are no less than 65 ft. in height, of nobly placid design, and are accompanied by smaller figures of Rameses’ queen and their sons and daughters; behind and over them is the cornice, with the dedication below in a line of huge hieroglyphs, and a long row of apes, standing in adoration of the rising sun above. The temple is dedicated primarily to the solar gods Amenrē of Thebes and Raharakht of Heliopolis, the true sun god; it is oriented to the east so that the rays of the sun in the early morning penetrate the whole length of two great halls to the innermost sanctuary and fall upon the central figures of Amenrē and Rameses, which are there enthroned with Ptah of Memphis and Raharakht on either side. The interior of the temple is decorated with coloured sculpture of fine workmanship and in good preservation; the scenes are more than usually interesting; some are of religious import (amongst them Rameses as king making offerings to himself as god), others illustrate war in Syria, Libya and Ethiopia: another series depicts the events of the famous battle with the Hittites and their allies at Kadesh, in which Rameses saved the Egyptian camp and army by his personal valour. Historical stelae of the same reign are engraved inside and outside the temple; the most interesting is that recording the marriage with a Hittite princess in the 34th year. Not the least important feature of the temple belongs to a later age, when some Greek, Carian and Phoenician
