Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/927

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KONIA—KÖNIG
893

of Christiania by rail. Pop. (1900), 5585. With the exception of the church and the town-house, the buildings are mostly of wood. The origin and whole industry of the town are connected with the government silver-mines in the neighbourhood. Their first discovery was made by a peasant in 1623, since which time they have been worked with varying success. During the 18th century Kongsberg was more important than now, and contained double its present population. Within the town are situated the smelting-works, the mint, and a Government weapon factory. Three miles below the Laagen forms a fine fall of 140 ft. (Labrofos). The neighbouring Jonksnut (2950 ft.) commands extensive views of the Telemark. A driving-road from Kongsberg follows a favourite route for travellers through this district, connecting with routes to Sand and Odde on the west coast.

KONIA. (1) A vilayet in Asia Minor which includes the whole, or parts of, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Phrygia, Lycaonia, Cilicia and Cappadocia. It was formed in 1864 by adding to the old eyalet of Karamania the western half of Adana, and part of south-eastern Anadoli. It is divided into five sanjaks: Adalia, Buldur, Hamid-abad, Konia and Nigdeh. The population (990,000 Moslems and 80,000 Christians) is for the most part agricultural and pastoral. The only industries are carpet-weaving and the manufacture of cotton and silk stuffs. There are mines of chrome, mercury, cinnabar, argentiferous lead and rock salt. The principal exports are salt, minerals, opium, cotton, cereals, wool and livestock; and the imports cloth-goods, coffee, rice and petroleum. The vilayet is now traversed by the Anatolian railway, and contains the railhead of the Ottoman line from Smyrna.

(2) The chief town [anc. Iconium (q.v.)], altitude 3320 ft., situated at the S.W. edge of the vast central plain of Asia Minor, amidst luxuriant orchards famous in the middle ages for their yellow plums and apricots and watered by streams from the hills. Pop. 45,000, including 5000 Christians. There are interesting remains of Seljuk buildings, all showing strong traces of Persian influence in their decorative details. The principal ruin is that of the palace of Kilij Arslan II., which contained a famous hall. The most important mosques are the great Tekke, which contains the tomb of the poet Mevlana Jelal ed-din Rumi, a mystic (sufi) poet, founder of the order of Mevlevi (whirling) dervishes, and those of his successors, the “Golden” mosque and those of Ala ed-Din and Sultan Selim. The walls, largely the work of Ala ed-Din I., are preserved in great part and notable for the number of ancient inscriptions built into them. They once had twelve gates and were 30 ells in height. The climate is good—hot in summer and cold, with snow, in winter. Konia is connected by railway with Constantinople and is the starting-point of the extension towards Bagdad. After the capture of Nicaea by the Crusaders (1097), Konia became the capital of the Seljuk Sultans of Rum (see Seljuks and Turks). It was temporarily occupied by Godfrey, and again by Frederick Barbarossa, but this scarcely affected its prosperity. During the reign of Ala ed-Din I. (1219–1236) the city was thronged with artists, poets, historians, jurists and dervishes, driven westwards from Persia and Bokhara by the advance of the Mongols, and there was a brief period of great splendour. After the break up of the empire of Rum, Konia became a secondary city of the amirate of Karamania and in part fell to ruin. In 1472 it was annexed to the Osmanli empire by Mahommed II. In 1832 it was occupied by Ibrahim Pasha who defeated and captured the Turkish general, Reshid Pasha, not far from the walls. It had come to fill only part of its ancient circuit, but of recent years it has revived considerably, and, since the railway reached it, has acquired a semi-European quarter, with a German hotel, cafés and Greek shops, &c.

See W. M. Ramsay, Historical Geography of Asia Minor (1890); St Paul the Traveller (1895); G. Le Strange, Lands of the E. Caliphate (1905).  (D. G. H.) 

KONIECPOLSKI, STANISLAUS (1591–1646), Polish soldier, was the most illustrious member of an ancient Polish family which rendered great services to the Republic. Educated at the academy of Cracow, he learned the science of war under the great Jan Chodkiewicz, whom he accompanied on his Muscovite campaigns, and under the equally great Stanislaus Zolkiewski, whose daughter Catherine he married. On the death of his first wife he wedded, in 1619, Christina Lubomirska. In 1619 he took part in the expedition against the Turks which terminated so disastrously at Cecora, and after a valiant resistance was captured and sent to Constantinople, where he remained a close prisoner for three years. On his return he was appointed commander of all the forces of the Republic, and at the head of an army of 25,000 men routed 60,000 Tatars at Martynow, following up this success with fresh victories, for which he received the thanks of the diet and the palatinate of Sandomeria from the king. In 1625 he was appointed guardian of the Ukraine against the Tatars, but in 1626 was transferred to Prussia to check the victorious advance of Gustavus Adolphus. Swedish historians have too often ignored the fact that Koniecpolski’s superior strategy neutralized all the efforts of the Swedish king, whom he defeated again and again, notably at Homerstein (April 1627) and at Trzciand (April 1629). But for the most part the fatal parsimony of his country compelled Koniecpolski to confine himself to the harassing guerrilla warfare in which he was an expert. In 1632 he was appointed to the long vacant post of hetman wielki koronny, or commander in chief of Poland, and in that capacity routed the Tatars at Sasowy Rogi (April 1633) and at Paniawce (April and October 1633), and the Turks, with terrific loss, at Abazd Basha. To keep the Cossacks of the Ukraine in order he also built the fortress of Kudak. As one of the largest proprietors in the Ukraine he suffered severely from Cossack depredations and offered many concessions to them. Only after years of conflict, however, did he succeed in reducing these unruly desperadoes to something like obedience. In 1644 he once more routed the Tatars at Ockmatow, and again in 1646 at Brody. This was his last exploit, for he died the same year, to the great grief of Wladislaus IV., who had already concerted with him the plan for a campaign on a grand scale against the Turks, and relied principally upon the Grand Hetman for its success. Though less famous than his contemporaries Zolkiehwski and Chodkiewicz, Koniecpolski was fully their equal as a general, and his inexorable severity made him an ideal lord-marcher.

See an unfinished biography in the Tyg. Illus. of Warsaw for 1863; Stanislaw Przylenski, Memorials of the Koniecpolskis (Pol.) (Lemberg, 1842).  (R. N. B.) 

KÖNIG, KARL RUDOLPH (1832–1901), German physicist, was born at Königsberg (Prussia) on the 26th of November 1832, and studied at the university of his native town, taking the degree of Ph.D. About 1852 he went to Paris, and became apprentice to the famous violin-maker, J. B. Vuillaume, and some six years later he started business on his own account. He called himself a “maker of musical instruments,” but the instruments for which his name is best known are tuning-forks, which speedily gained a high reputation among physicists for their accuracy and general excellence. From this business König derived his livelihood for the rest of his life. He was, however, very far from being a mere tradesman, and even as a manufacturer he regarded the quality of the articles that left his workshop as a matter of greater solicitude than the profits they yielded. Acoustical research was his real interest, and to that he devoted all the time and money he could spare from his business. An exhibit which he sent to the London Exhibition of 1862 gained a gold medal, and at the Philadelphia Exposition at 1876 great admiration was expressed for a tonometric apparatus of his manufacture. This consisted of about 670 tuning-forks, of as many different pitches, extending over four octaves, and it afforded a perfect means for testing, by enumeration of the beats, the number of vibrations producing any given note and for accurately tuning any musical instrument. An attempt was made to secure this apparatus for the university of Pennsylvania, and König was induced to leave it behind him in America on the assurance that it would be purchased; but, ultimately, the money not being forthcoming, the arrangement fell through, to his great disappointment and pecuniary loss. Some of the forks he disposed of to the university of Toronto and the remainder he used as a