were Armenians, as against 15,977 in 1867. From 1579 to 1828 Akhaltsikh was the capital of Turkish Armenia. In the last-mentioned year it was captured by the Russians. The Turks invested it in 1853.
AK-HISSAR (anc. Thyateira, the “town of Thya”), a town situated in a fertile plain on the Gürdük Chai (Lycus), in the Aidin vilayet, 58 m. N.E. of Smyrna. Pop. about 20,000, Mussulmans forming two-thirds. Thyateira was an ancient town re-peopled with Macedonians by Seleucus about 290 B.C. It became an important station on the Roman road from Pergamum to Laodicea, and one of the “Seven Churches” of Asia (Rev. ii. 18), but was never a metropolis or honoured with a neocorate, though made the centre of a conventus by Caracalla. The modern town is connected with Smyrna by railway, and exports cotton, wool, opium, cocoons and cereals. The inhabitants are Greeks, Armenians and Turks. The Greeks are of an especially fine type, physical and moral, and noted all through Anatolia for energy and stability. W. M. Ramsay believes them to be direct descendants of the ancient Christian population; but there is reason to think they are partly sprung from more recent immigrants who moved in the 18th century from western Greece into the domain of the Karasmans of Manisa and Bergama, as recorded by W. M. Leake. Cotton of excellent quality is grown in the neighbourhood, and the place is celebrated for its scarlet dyes.
See W. M. Ramsay, Letters to the Seven Churches (1904); M. Clerc, De rebus Thyatirenorum (1893).
AKHMIM, or Ekhmim, a town of Upper Egypt, on the right bank of the Nile, 67 m. by river S. of Assiut, and 4 m. above Suhag, on the opposite side of the river, whence there is railway communication with Cairo and Assuan. It is the largest town on the east side of the Nile in Upper Egypt, having a population in 1907 of 23,795, of whom about a third were Copts. Akhmim has several mosques and two Coptic churches, maintains a weekly market, and manufactures cotton goods, notably the blue shirts and check shawls with silk fringes worn by the poorer classes of Egypt. Outside the walls are the scanty ruins of two ancient temples. In Abulfeda’s days (13th century A.D.) a very imposing temple still stood here. Akhmim was the Egyptian Apu or Khen-min, in Coptic Shmin, known to the Greeks as Chemmis or Panopolis, capital of the 9th or Chemmite nome of Upper Egypt. The ithyphallic Min (Pan) was here worshipped as “the strong Horus.” Herodotus mentions the temple dedicated to “Perseus” and asserts that Chemmis was remarkable for the celebration of games in honour of that hero, after the manner of the Greeks, at which prizes were given; as a matter of fact some representations are known of Nubians and people of Puoni (Somalic coast) clambering up poles before the god Min. Min was especially a god of the desert routes on the east of Egypt, and the trading tribes are likely to have gathered to his festivals for business and pleasure, at Coptos (which was really near to Neapolis, Kena) even more than at Akhmim. Herodotus perhaps confused Coptos with Chemmis. Strabo mentions linen-weaving as an ancient industry of Panopolis, and it is not altogether a coincidence that the cemetery of Akhmim is one of the chief sources of the beautiful textiles of Roman and Coptic age that are brought from Egypt. Monasteries abounded in this neighbourhood from a very early date; Shenout (Sinuthius), the fiery apostle and prophet of the Coptic national church, was a monk of Atrēpe (now Suhag), and led the populace to the destruction of the pagan edifices. He died in 451; some years earlier Nestorius, the ex-patriarch, had succumbed perhaps to his persecution and to old age, in the neighbourhood of Akhmim. Nonnus, the Greek poet, was born at Panopolis at the end of the 4th century. (F. Ll. G.)
AKHTAL [Ghiyāth ibn Ḥārith] (c. 640–710), one of the most famous Arabian poets of the Omayyad period, belonged to the tribe of Taghlib in Mesopotamia, and was, like his fellow-tribesmen, a Christian, enjoying the freedom of his religion, while not taking its duties very seriously. Of his private life few details are known, save that he was married and divorced, and that he spent part of his time in Damascus, part with his tribe in Mesopotamia. In the wars of the Taghlibites with the Qaisites he took part in the field, and by his satires. In the literary strife between his contemporaries Jarīr and Ferazdaq he was induced to support the latter poet. Akhtal, Jarīr and Ferazdaq form a trio celebrated among the Arabs, but as to relative superiority there is dispute. In the ʽAbbasid period there is no doubt that Akhtal’s Christianity told against his reputation, but Abu ʽUbaida placed him highest of the three on the ground that amongst his poems there were ten flawless qasidas (elegies), and ten more nearly so, and that this could not be said of the other two. The chief material of his poems consists of panegyric of patrons and satire of rivals, the latter being, however, more restrained than was usual at the time.
The Poetry of al-Akhtal has been published at the Jesuit press in Beirūt, 1891. A full account of the poet and his times is given in H. Lammens’ Le chantre des Omiades (Paris, 1895) (a reprint from the Journal Asiatique for 1894). (G. W. T.)
AKHTYRKA, a town of Russia, in the government of Kharkov, near the Vorskla river, connected by a branch (11 m.) with the railway from Kiev to Kharkov. It has a beautiful cathedral, built after a plan by Rastrelli in 1753, to which pilgrims resort to venerate an ikon of the Virgin. There are manufactures of light woollen stuffs and a trade in corn, cattle and the produce of domestic industries. The environs are fertile, the orchards producing excellent fruit. A fair is held on the 9th of May. The place was founded by the Poles in 1642. Pop. (1867) 17,411; (1900) 25,965.
AKKA (Tikki-Tikki) a race of African pygmies first seen by the traveller G. A. Schweinfurth in 1870, when he was in the Mangbettu country, N.W. of Albert Nyanza. The home of the Akka is the dense forest zone of the Aruwimi district of the Congo State. They form a branch of the primitive pygmy negroid race, and appear to be divided into groups, each with its own chief. Of all African “dwarfs” the Akka are believed the best representatives of the “little people” mentioned by Herodotus. Giovanni Miani, the Italian explorer who followed Schweinfurth, obtained two young Akka in exchange for a dog and a calf. These, sent to Italy in 1873, were respectively 4 ft. 4 in. and 4 ft. 8 in. high, while the tallest seen by Schweinfurth did not reach 5 ft. None of the four Akka brought to Europe in 1874 and 1876 exceeded 3 ft. 4 in. The average height of the race would seem to be somewhat under 4 ft., but sufficient measurements have not been taken to allow of a conclusive statement. Schweinfurth says the Akka have very large and almost spherical skulls (this last detail proves to be an exaggeration). They are of the colour of coffee slightly roasted, with hair almost the same colour, woolly and tufted; they have very projecting jaws, flat noses and protruding lips, which give them an “ape-like” appearance. Marked physical features are an abdominal protuberance which makes all Akka look like pot-bellied children, and a remarkable hollowing of the spine into a curve like an S. Investigation has shown that these are not true racial characteristics, but tend to disappear, the abdominal enlargement subsiding after some weeks of regular and wholesome diet. The upper limbs are long, and the hands, according to Schweinfurth, are singularly delicate. The lower limbs are short, relatively to the trunk, and curve in somewhat, the feet being bent in too, which gives the Akka a topheavy, tottering gait. There is a tendency to steatopygia among the women. The Akka are nomads, living in the forests, where they hunt game with poisoned arrows, with pitfalls and springs set everywhere, and with traps built like huts, the roofs of which, hung by tendrils only, fall in on the animal. They collect ivory and honey, manufacture poison, and bring these to market to exchange for cereals, tobacco and iron weapons. They are courageous hunters, and do not hesitate to attack even elephants, both sexes joining in the chase. They are very agile, and are said by the neighbouring negroes to leap about in the high grass like grasshoppers. They are timid, as children before strangers, but are declared to be malevolent and treacherous fighters. In dress, weapons and utensils they are as the surrounding negroes. They build round huts of branches and leaves in the forest
