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 Uzès, 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 Héloïse, 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 and astronomical articles from his pen appeared in the Journal Helvétique 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 république de Genève. A collection of his writings was published at Geneva in 1770 (Œuvres de feu M. Abauzit), and another at London in 1773 (Œuvres 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 Littéraire de Genève, Harwood’s Miscellanies, and W. Orme’s Bibliotheca Biblica (1824).
ʼABAYE, the name of a Babylonian ʼamora (q.v.), born in the middle of the 3rd century. He died in 339.
ʼABBA ʼARIKA, the name of the Babylonian ʼamora (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-Qāsim 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-Qāsim 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-Qāsim 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 Motaḍḍid, 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 Filipo Maria Visconti. El Motaḍḍid 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-Qāsim 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
