Synod. The city has a public library, and owns and operates its own water-supply system. There is a good water power, and among the city’s manufactures are flour, beer, shoes, furniture, rattan-ware, warehouse trucks, canned goods, cane syrup, waggons and carriages, gasolene engines, wind-mills, pianos and woollen goods. Faribault, named in honour of Jean Baptiste Faribault, a French fur-trader and pioneer who made his headquarters in the region in the latter part of the 18th century, was permanently settled about 1848, and was chartered as a city in 1872. A French millwright, N. La Croix, introduced here, about 1860, a new process of making flour, which revolutionized the industry in the United States, but his mill was soon destroyed by flood and he removed to Minneapolis, where the process was first successful on a large scale. Faribault was for many years the home of Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822–1901), the pioneer bishop (1850–1901) of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Minnesota, famous for his missionary work among the Indians.
FARIDKOT, a native state of India in the Punjab. It ranks
as one of the Cis-Sutlej states, which came under British influence
in 1809. Its area is 642 sq. m., and its population in 1901 was
124,912. It is bounded on the W. and N.E. by the British district
of Ferozepore, and on the S. by Nabha state. During the Sikh
wars in 1845 the chief, Raja Pahar Singh, exerted himself in the
British cause, and was rewarded with an increase of territory.
In the Mutiny of 1857, too, his son and successor, Wazir Singh,
did good service by guarding the Sutlej ferries, and in attacking
a notorious rebel, whose stronghold he destroyed. The estimated
gross revenue is £28,300; there is no tribute. The
territory is traversed by the Rewari-Ferozepore railway, and also
crossed by the Fazilka line, which starts from Kotkapura, the
old capital. It is irrigated by a branch of the Sirhind canal.
The town of Faridkot has a railway station, 84 m. from
Lahore.
FARIDPUR, or Furreedpore, a town and district of British
India, in the Dacca division of eastern Bengal and Assam.
The town, which has a railway station, stands on an old channel
of the Ganges. Pop. (1901) 11,649. There are a Baptist mission
and a government high school. The district comprises an area
of 2281 sq. m. The general aspect is flat, tame and uninteresting,
although in the northern tract the land is comparatively high,
with a light sandy soil, covered with water during the rainy
season, but dry during the cold and hot weather. From the
town of Faridpur the ground slopes, until in the south, on the
confines of Backergunje, it becomes one immense swamp, never
entirely dry. During the height of the inundations the whole
district may be said to be under water. The villages are built
on artificially raised sites, or the high banks of the deltaic streams.
Along many of the larger rivers the line of hamlets is unbroken
for miles together, so that it is difficult to say where one ends
and another begins. The huts, however, except in markets and
bazaars, are seldom close together, but are scattered amidst small
garden plots, and groves of mango, date and betel-nut trees.
The plains between the villages are almost invariably more or
less depressed towards the centre, where usually a marsh, or
lake, or deep lagoon is found. These marshes, however, are
gradually filling up by the silt deposited from the rivers; in
the north of the district there now only remain two or three
large swamps, and in them the process may be seen going on.
The climate of Faridpur is damp, like that of the other districts
of eastern Bengal; the average annual rainfall is 66 in. and the
average mean temperature 76.9° F.
The principal rivers of Faridpur are the Ganges, the Arial Khan and the Haringhata. The Ganges, or Padma as it is locally called, touches the extreme north-west corner of the district, flows along its northern boundary as far as Goalanda, where it receives the waters of the Jamuna or main stream of the Brahmaputra, and whence the united stream turns southwards and forms the eastern boundary of the district. The river is navigable by large cargo boats throughout the year, and has an average breadth during the rainy season of 1600 yds. Rice is the great crop of the district. In 1901 the population was 1,937,646, showing an increase of 6% in the decade. The north of the district is crossed by the line of the Eastern Bengal railway to Goalanda, the port of the Brahmaputra steamers, and a branch runs to Faridpur town. But most of the trade is conducted by river.
FARĪD UD-DĪN ʽATTĀR, or Ferid Eddin-Athar (1119–1229),
Persian poet and mystic, was born at Nishapur, 513 A.H.
(1119 A.D.), and was put to death 627 A.H. (1229 A.D.), thus having
reached the age of 110 years. The date of his death is, however,
variously given between the years 1193 and 1235, although
the majority of authorities support 1229; it is also probable
that he was born later than 1119, but before 1150. His real name
was Abu Ṭalib (or Abu Ḥamid) Mahommed ben Ibrahim, and
Farīd ud-dīn was simply an honourable title equivalent to Pearl
of Religion. He followed for a time his father’s profession of
druggist or perfumer, and hence the name ʽAttar (one who sold
ʽitr, otto of roses; hence, simply, dealer in drugs), which he
afterwards employed as his poetical designation. According to
the account of Dawlatshah, his interest in the great mystery
of the higher life of man was awakened in the following way.
One day a wandering fakir gazed sadly into his shop, and,
when ordered to be gone, replied: “It is nothing for me to go;
but I grieve for thee, O druggist, for how wilt thou be able to
think of death, and leave all these goods of thine behind thee?”
The word was in season; and Mahommed ben Ibrahim the
druggist soon gave up his shop and began to study the mystic
theosophy of the Sufis under Sheik Rukneddin. So thoroughly
did he enter into the spirit of that religion that he was before
long recognized as one of its principal representatives. He
travelled extensively, visited Mecca, Egypt, Damascus and India,
and on his return was invested with the Sufi mantle by Sheik
Majd-ud-din of Bagdad. The greater portion of his life was spent
in the town of Shadyakh, but he is not unfrequently named
Nishapuri, after the city of his boyhood and youth. The story
of his death is a strange one. Captured by a soldier of Jenghiz
Khan, he was about to be sold for a thousand dirhems, when he
advised his captor to keep him, as doubtless a larger offer would
yet be made; but when the second bidder said he would give
a bag of horse fodder for the old man, he asserted that he was
worth no more, and had better be sold. The soldier, irritated
at the loss of the first offer, immediately slew him. A noble tomb
was erected over his grave, and the spot acquired a reputation
for sanctity. Farīd was a voluminous writer, and left no fewer
than 120,000 couplets of poetry, though in his later years he
carried his asceticism so far as to deny himself the pleasures of
poetical composition. His most famous work is the Mantiḳ
uṭṭair, or language of birds, an allegorical poem containing a
complete survey of the life and doctrine of the Sufis. It is extremely
popular among Mahommedans both of the Sunnite and
Shiite sects, and the manuscript copies are consequently very
numerous. The birds, according to the poet, were tired of a
republican constitution, and longed for a king. As the lapwing,
having guided Solomon through the desert, best knew what
a king should be, he was asked whom they should choose. The
Simorg in the Caucasus, was his reply. But the way to the
Caucasus was long and dangerous, and most of the birds excused
themselves from the enterprise. A few, however, set out;
but by the time they reached the great king’s court, their
number was reduced to thirty. The thirty birds (sī morg), wing-weary
and hunger-stricken, at length gained access to their
chosen monarch the Simorg; but only to find that they strangely
lost their identity in his presence—that they are he, and he is
they. In such strange fashion does the poet image forth the
search of the human soul after absorption into the divine.
The text of the Mantiḳ uṭṭair was published by Garcin de Tassy in 1857, a summary of its contents having already appeared as La Poésie philosophique et religieuse chez les Persans in 1856; this was succeeded by a complete translation in 1863. Among Farīd ud-dīn’s other works may be mentioned his Pandnāma (Book of Counsel), of which a translation by Silvestre de Sacy appeared in 1819; Bulbul Nama (Book of the Nightingale); Wasalet Nama (Book of Conjunctions); Khusru va Gul (The King and the Rose); and Tadhkiratu ‘l Awliyā (Memoirs of the Saints) (ed. R. A. Nicholson in
