172 HARP HARPER ritories as often as Irene had declined pay- ment of the annual tribute. In 803 her suc- cessor Nicephorus demanded restitution of all the sums the empress had paid. * The caliph re- plied : " In the name of the most merciful God, Haroun al-Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold, my re- ply." He immediately traversed and ravaged a part of Asia Minor, laid siege to Heraclea, brought Nicephorus to acknowledge himself a tributary, and retired triumphant to his favor- ite palace of Racca on the Euphrates. The peace being violated in 806, he returned rapid- ly in the depth of winter, and at the head of 135,000 men defeated Nicephorus in Phrygia, in a battle in which the Greek emperor was three times wounded and 40,000 of his subjects were slain. Again the tribute was refused, and Haroun returned in 808 with 300, 000 men, desolated Asia Minor beyond Tyana and An- cyra, demolished Heraclea, devastated the isl- ands of Rhodes, Cyprus, and Crete, and im- posed a humiliating treaty on Nicephorus. It was soon broken, and Haroun again returned, took Sebaste, and swore never again to make peace with so perfidious an enemy. A revolt breaking out in Khorasan, the caliph died while on his march thither. In his latter years he corresponded with Charlemagne, and in 807 he sent him a tent, a clepsydra, an elephant, and the keys of the holy sepulchre. He per- formed the pilgrimage to Mecca nine times, cultivated poetry and the arts and sciences, protected many illustrious scholars, and is the principal hero of the Arabian tales. He select- ed ministers under whose wise administration prosperous towns sprang up, commerce flour- ished, and Bagdad was enlarged and adorned and made the centre of Arabic civilization. HARP (Sax. hearpa, Ger. ffarfe), a musical stringed instrument of a triangular shape, the chords of which are distended in parallel direc- tions from the upper limb to one of the sides, and are set in vibration by the action of the thumb and fingers. Its origin cannot be ascer- tained ; but it was familiar to the Hebrews in the time of the earlier prophets, and, as ap- pears by the sculpture in a tomb near the pyramids of Gizeh, was known to the Egyp- tians probably as early as 2000 B. 0. The re- searches of recent travellers show that the Egyptians attained great perfection in the con- struction of the harp, which was frequently richly ornamented and of elegant form, having from 4 to 21 chords, and in the later specimens strikingly resembled those in present use. In the Paris collection of Egyptian antiquities is a triangular harp of 21 chords, which, like all other Egyptian harps of which we have repre- sentations, has no pole or pillar to support the upper limb of the instrument. That the omis- sion was intentional there seems no doubt; but it is difficult to conceive how the tension of the strings could have been resisted. To the Greeks it seems always to have been un- known, and the Romans probably had no knowledge of it in anything like its present form. It was common to the northern races of Europe in the early centuries of the Chris- tian era, and in the opinion of many antiqua- ries was original among them. In Ireland and in Wales harps of many strings and of elegant form were in use as early as the 5th and 6th centuries, and in the former it was adopted as the national emblem. In Wales it is still cherished as the national instrument, and an- nual trials of skill in its use take place. The introduction of pedals, whereby it became pos- sible to modulate into all keys, first gave the harp a higher position than that of an instru- ment of accompaniment, and the improvements of Sebastien Erard have made it capable of per- forming any music written for the pianoforte. His double action harp, perfected in 1808, has a compass of six octaves, from E to E, with all the semitones, and even quarter tones. Its form and tone have long made it a favorite in- strument for the drawing room. In the or- chestra it is more sparingly used. HARP (harpa), a genus of gasteropod mol- lusks of the family of whelks or buccinidee. The shell is ventricose, with numerous ribs at regu- lar intervals, the shape and the ribs resembling the outline and the strings of a harp ; the aper- ture is large, notched in front, and without operculum. The foot is very large, crescent- I^irpa ventriculata. shaped in front, and deeply divided from the posterior part. There are about a dozen spe- cies, inhabiting deep water and soft bottoms in the East Indies and the Pacific islands ; thej are carnivorous ; the shells are finely colored and of elegant shape, generally about three inches long. Four fossil species have been found in the eocene strata of France. HARPER, a S. county of Kansas, bordering on the Indian territory, and drained by branch- es of the Nescatunga and Arkansas rivers; area, 1,152 sq. m. ; still unsettled. HARPER, Robert Goodloe, an American lawyer and statesman, born near Fredericksburg, Va., in 1765, died in Baltimore, Md., Jan. 15, 1825. His parents during his childhood removed to Granville, N. C. In his 15th year he joined a troop of horse, and under Gen. Greene served during the latter part of the southern revolu- tionary campaign. He graduated at Princeton
