are put on, and the graves of relatives are visited. The second, or “Greater Festival,” is called by the Turks Qurbān Bairām, “Sacrifice Bairam,” and by Arabic speakers Al-ʽīd al-kabīr, “Greater Festival,” or ʽĪḍ al-aḍḥā, “Festival of Sacrifice.” It falls on the tenth, and two or three following days, of the last month, Dhū-l-ḥijja, when the pilgrims each slay a ram, a he-goat, a cow or a camel in the valley of Minā in commemoration of the ransom of Ishmael with a ram. Similarly throughout the Moslem world, all who can afford it sacrifice at this time a legal animal, and either consume the flesh themselves or give it to the poor. Otherwise it is celebrated like the “Lesser Festival,” but with less ardour. Both festivals, of course, belong to a lunar calendar, and move through the solar year every thirty-two years.
See Lane’s Modern Egyptians, chap. xxv.; Michell, Egyptian Calendar; Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, pp. 192 ff.; Sir R. Burton, Pilgrimage, chaps. vii., xxx. (D. B. Ma.)
BAIRD, SIR DAVID (1757–1829), British general, was born at Newbyth in Aberdeenshire in December 1757. He entered the British army in 1773, and was sent to India in 1779 with the 73rd (afterwards 71st) Highlanders, in which he was a captain. Immediately on his arrival, Baird was attached to the force commanded by Sir Hector Munro, which was sent forward to assist the detachment of Colonel Baillie, threatened by Hyder Ali. In the action which followed the whole force was destroyed, and Baird, severely wounded, fell into the hands of the Mysore chief. The prisoners, who were most barbarously treated, remained captive for over four years. Baird’s mother, on hearing that her son and other prisoners were in fetters, is said to have remarked, “God help the chiel chained to oor Davie.” The bullet was not extracted from Baird’s wound until his release. He became major in 1787, visited England in 1789, and purchased a lieutenant-colonelcy in 1790, returning to India in the following year. He held a brigade command in the war against Tippoo, and served under Cornwallis in the Seringapatam operations of 1792, being promoted colonel in 1795. Baird served also at the Cape of Good Hope as a brigadier-general, and he returned to India as a major-general in 1798. In the last war against Tippoo in 1799 Baird was appointed to the senior brigade command in the army. At the successful assault of Seringapatam Baird led the storming party, and was soon a master of the stronghold in which he had long been a prisoner. He had been disappointed that the command of the large contingent of the nizam was given to Colonel Arthur Wellesley; and when after the capture of the fortress the same officer obtained the governorship, Baird judged himself to have been treated with injustice and disrespect. He afterwards received the thanks of parliament and of the East India Company for his gallant bearing on that important day, and a pension was offered to him by the Company, which he declined, apparently from the hope of receiving the order of the Bath from the government. General Baird commanded the Indian army which was sent in 1801 to co-operate with Abercromby in the expulsion of the French from Egypt. Wellesley was appointed second in command, but owing to ill-health did not accompany the expedition. Baird landed at Kosseir, conducted his army across the desert to Kena on the Nile, and thence to Cairo. He arrived before Alexandria in time for the final operations. On his return to India in 1802, he was employed against Sindhia, but being irritated at another appointment given to Wellesley he relinquished his command and returned to Europe. In 1804 he was knighted, and in 1805–1806, being by now a lieutenant-general, he commanded the expedition against the Cape of Good Hope with complete success, capturing Cape Town and forcing the Dutch general Janssens to surrender. But here again his usual ill luck attended him. Commodore Sir Home Popham persuaded Sir David to lend him troops for an expedition against Buenos Aires; the successive failures of operations against this place involved the recall of Baird, though on his return home he was quickly re-employed as a divisional general in the Copenhagen expedition of 1807. During the bombardment of Copenhagen Baird was wounded. Shortly after his return, he was sent out to the Peninsular War in command of a considerable force which was sent to Spain to co-operate with Sir John Moore, to whom he was appointed second in command. It was Baird’s misfortune that he was junior by a few days both to Moore and to Lord Cavan, under whom he had served at Alexandria, and thus never had an opportunity of a chief command in the field. At the battle of Corunna he succeeded to the supreme command after Moore’s fall, but shortly afterwards his left arm was shattered, and the command passed to Sir John Hope. He again obtained the thanks of parliament for his gallant services, and was made a K.B. and a baronet. Sir David married Miss Campbell-Preston, a Perthshire heiress, in 1810. He was not employed again in the field, and personal and political enmities caused him to be neglected and repeatedly passed over. He was not given the full rank of general until 1814, and his governorship of Kinsale was given five years later. In 1820 he was appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland, but the command was soon reduced, and he resigned in 1822. He died on the 18th of August 1829.
See Theodore Hook’s Life of Sir David Baird.
BAIRD, HENRY MARTYN (1832–1906), American historian and educationalist, a son of Robert Baird (1798–1863), a Presbyterian preacher and author who worked earnestly both in the United States and in Europe for the cause of temperance, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 17th of January 1832. He spent eight years of his early youth with his father in Paris and Geneva, and in 1850 graduated at New York University. He then lived for two years in Italy and Greece, was a student in the Union Theological Seminary in New York city from 1853 to 1855, and in 1856 graduated at the Princeton Theological Seminary. He was a tutor for four years in the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and from 1859 until his death was professor of Greek language and literature in New York University. He is best known, however, as a historian of the Huguenots. His work, which appeared in three parts, entitled respectively History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France (2 vols., 1879), The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (2 vols., 1886), and The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (2 vols., 1895), is characterized by painstaking thoroughness, by a judicial temper, and by scholarship of a high order. He also published Modern Greece, A Narrative of a Residence and Travels in that Country (1856); a biography of his father, The Life of the Rev. Robert Baird, D.D. (1866); and Theodore Beza, the Counsellor of the French Reformation (1899). He died in New York city on the 11th of November 1906.
His brother, Charles Washington Baird (1828–1887), a graduate of New York University (1848) and of the Union Theological Seminary (1852), and the minister in turn of a Dutch Reformed church at Brooklyn, New York, and of a Presbyterian church at Rye, New York, also was deeply interested in the history of the Huguenots, and published a scholarly work entitled The History of the Huguenot Emigration to America (2 vols., 1885), left unfinished at his death.
BAIRD, JAMES (1802–1876) Scottish iron-master, was born at Kirkwood, Lanarkshire, on the 5th of December 1802, the son of a coal-master. In 1826 his father, two brothers and himself leased coalfields at Gartsherrie and in the vicinity, and in 1828 iron mines near by, and in 1830 built blast furnaces. In this year the father retired, the firm of William Baird & Co. was organized, and James Baird assumed active control. His improvements in machinery largely increased the output of his furnaces, which by 1864 had grown in number to nearly fifty, producing 300,000 tons annually and employing 10,000 hands. The brothers became great landowners, and James was M.P. for the Falkirk burghs in 1851–1852 and 1852–1857. He died at his estate near Ayr on the 20th of June 1876, leaving property valued at three million pounds. He had been during his life a great public benefactor, founding schools and the Baird Lectures (1871) for the defence of orthodox theology, and in 1873 the Baird Trust of £500,000 to enable the Established Church of Scotland to cope with the spiritual needs of the masses. He was twice married but left no children.
BAIRD, SPENCER FULLERTON (1823–1887), American naturalist, was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on the 3rd of
