Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/665

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MOAT—MOBILE
635

here and there exercised an influence on the text of that collection. It would be well if our manuscripts at least gave the Mo‛allaqāt in the exact form of Ḥammād’s days. The best text—in fact, we may say, a really good text—is that of the latest Mo‛allaqa, the song of Labīd.

The Mo‛allaqāt exist in many manuscripts, some with old commentaries, of which a few are valuable. They have also been several times printed. Especial mention is due to the edition of Charles (afterwards Sir Charles) Lyall with the commentary of Tibrīzī (Calcutta, 1894). Attempts to translate these poems, verse for verse, in poetical form, could scarcely have a happy result. The strangeness, both of the expression and of the subjects, only admits of a paraphrastic version for large portions, unless the sense is to be entirely obliterated. An attempt at such a translation, in conjunction with a commentary based on the principles of modern science, has been made by the present author: “Fünf Mo‛allaqāt übersetzt und erklärt,” in the Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akad. d. Wiss. in Wien. Philos.-hist. Classe. Bde. cxl.–cxiv. A supplement to this is formed by an article, by Dr Bernh. Geiger, on the Mo‛allaqa of Ṭarafa, in the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlands, xix. 323 sqq. See further the separate articles on the seven poets.  (Th. N.) 


MOAT, a ditch filled with water surrounding a castle, town or other fortified place for purposes of defence. The word is taken from the O. Fr. mote, or motte, a mound or embankment of earth used as a means of defence; the transition in meaning from the heap of earth to the trench left by excavating the earth is parallel with the similar interchange of meaning in dike and ditch (see Dike). In mod. Fr. motte means a lump or clod of earth. The word is probably of Teutonic origin, and may be connected with Eng. “mud.” (See Fortification and Siegecraft.)

MOB. (1) A disorderly crowd, a rabble, also a contemptuous name for the common people, the lower orders, the Greek ὄχλος, (whence “ochlocracy,” mob-rule). The word is a shortened form of Lat. mobile (sc. vulgus), the movable or mutable emotional, easily stirred crowd. “Mobile” in the sense of rabble was used in the 17th century, and was still used after the shortened form, for some time considered a vulgarism, had become common. Thus Addison (Spectator, No. 135) writes, “It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more than we needs must which has so miserably curtailed some of our words. . . . I dare not answer that ‘mob’ . . . ‘incog.’ and the like will not in time be looked at as part of our tongue.” Roger North’s Examen, vii., 574 (1740), dates the beginning of the use of the shortened form “mob.” “I may note that the rabble first changed their title and were called the ‘mob’ in the assemblies of this club. It was their beast of burden, and called first mobile vulgus, but fell naturally into the contraction of one syllable, and ever since is become proper English.” The club alluded to is the Green Ribbon Club (q.v.), and the date would be about 1680. (2) A kind of head-dress for women, usually called a “mob cap,” worn during the 18th and early part of the 19th centuries. It was a large cap covering all the hair, with a bag-shaped crown, a broad band and frilled edge. It seems to have been originally an article of wear for the mornings. It is probably connected with words such as “mop,” “mab,” meaning untidy, négligé.

MOBERLY, GEORGE (1803–1885), English divine, was born on the 10th of October 1803, and educated at Winchester and Balliol. After a distinguished academic career he became head master of Winchester in 1835. This post he resigned in 1866, and retired to Brightstone Rectory, Isle of Wight. Mr. Gladstone, however, in 1869 called him to be bishop of Salisbury, in which see he kept up the traditions of his predecessors, Bishops Hamilton and Denison, his chief addition being the summoning of a diocesan synod. Though Moberly left Oxford at the beginning of the Oxford movement, he fell under its influence: the more so that at Winchester he formed a most intimate friendship with Keble, spending several weeks every year at Otterbourne, the next parish to Hursley. Moberly, however, retained his independence of thought, and in 1872 he astonished his High Church friends by joining in the movement for the disuse of the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed. His chief contribution to theology is his Bampton Lectures of 1868, on The Administration of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ. He died on the 6th of July 1885.

MOBERLY, ROBERT CAMPBELL (1845–1903), English theologian, was born on the 26th of July 1845. He was the son of George Moberly, bishop of Salisbury, and faithfully maintained the traditions of his father’s teaching. Educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, he was appointed senior student of Christ Church in 1867 and tutor in 1869. In 1876 he went out with Bishop Copleston to Ceylon for six months. After his return he became the first head of St Stephen’s House, Oxford (1876–1878), and then, after presiding for two years over the Theological College at Salisbury, where he acted as his father’s chaplain, he accepted the college living of Great Budworth in Cheshire in 1880, and the same year married Alice, the daughter of his father’s predecessor, Walter Kerr Hamilton. In 1892 Lord Salisbury made him Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology of Oxford; and after a long period of delicate health he died at Christ Church on the 8th of June 1903. His chief writings were: An essay in Lux Mundi on “The Incarnation as the Basis of Dogma” (1889); a paper, Belief in a Personal God (1891); Reason and Religion (1896), a protest against the limitation of the reason to the understanding; Ministerial Priesthood (1897); and Atonement and Personality (1901). In this last work, by which he is chiefly known, he aimed at presenting an explanation and a vindication of the doctrine of the Atonement by the help of the conception of personality. Rejecting the retributive view of punishment, he describes the sufferings of Christ as those of the perfect “Penitent,” and finds their expiatory value to lie in the Person of the Sufferer, the God-Man.

MOBERLY, a city of Randolph county, Missouri, U.S.A., in the north central part of the state, about 130 m. E. by N. of Kansas City. Pop. (1890), 8215; (1900), 8012, (923 negroes); (1910), 10,923. It is served by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas and the Wabash railways, and is a division headquarters of the latter. The city is regularly laid out on a level prairie site. There are two public parks, a Carnegie library, a commercial college, a Y.M.C.A. building, and a hospital maintained by the Wabash Employees Hospital Association. The most important industrial establishments are the large machine shops (established here in 1872) of the Wabash railway. Moberly was platted in 1866, was incorporated as a town and became the county-seat in 1868, and in 1873 secured a special city charter, which it surrendered in 1889 for city status under the general statute.

MOBILE, a city and the county-seat of Mobile county, Alabama, U.S.A., in the S.W. part of the state, at the mouth of Mobile River, and the head of Mobile Bay. Pop. (1890), 31,076; (1900), 38,469, of whom 17,045 were negroes and 2111 foreign-born (562 German, 492 Irish, 202 English); (1910 census), 51,521. It is served by the Southern, the Louisville & Nashville, the Mobile & Ohio, the Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City, and the Tombigbee Valley railways; by steamboat lines to ports in Europe, Cuba, Mexico, Central America (especially Panama) and South America; by a coastwise steamboat line to New York; and by river boats on a river system embracing nearly 2000 m. of navigable waters in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. The city occupies about 17 sq. m. of a sandy plain, which rises gradually from a low water front along the river to a range of hills a few miles to the westward. Among the principal buildings are the customs-house and post-office, the court-house, the Battle House (a hotel), the United States marine hospital, the city hospital, the Providence infirmary, Barton Academy (a part of the public school system), a Young Men’s Christian Association building, St Joseph’s church (Roman Catholic), the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the Van Antwerp office building, and the southern market and armoury. Mobile is the see of a Roman Catholic bishopric and the headquarters of the United States district court for the southern district of Alabama. In the city are a public library; the departments of medicine and pharmacy of the university of Alabama; the academy of the Visitation, and the