official returns to consist of about 39,000 Moslems and 4000 non-Moslems. The curious Hamath inscriptions first men tioned by Burckhardt have lately attracted much attention. Four stones exist covered with ideographic designs in a character as yet quite unknown. The latest researches of Mr George Smith, however, indicate that the inscriptions are probably of Hittite origin, and other relics of that once powerful nation resembling the Hamath stones have been
discovered farther east.
In the year 854 b.c. (according to the late George Smith) Hamath was taken by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, who defeated an army of 1400 chariots and 10,000 footmen under Irliulena, king of the district. Again in 743 b.c. Tiglath Pileser II. reduced the city to tribute, and in 740 b.c. he defeated the Haniathites, who were assisted by Azariah, king of Judah. Another rebellion was crushed by Sargou in 720 b.c. After the Macedonian conquest of Syria Hamath was called Epiphania by the Greeks in honour of Antiochus IV. , Epiphanes, and in the early Byzantine period it was known by both its Hebrew and its Greek name. In 639 a.d. the town sur rendered to Abu Obeideh, one of Omar s generals, and the church was turned into a mosque. In 1108 a.d. Tancred captured the city and massacred the Ism aileh defenders. In 1115 it was retaken by the Moslems, and in 1178 was occupied by Saladin. Abulfeda, prince of Hamali in the early part of the 14th century, is well known as an authority on Arab geography.
HAMANN, Johann Georg (1730–1788), a distin guished writer on philosophical and theological subjects, was born at Konigsberg in Prussia in 1730. His parents were of humble rank and small means. The education he received was comprehensive bat unsystematic, and the want of definiteuess in this early training doubtless tended to aggravate the peculiar instability of character which troubled Hamann s after life. In 1746 he began theological studies, but speedily deserted them and turned his attention to law. That too was taken up in a desultory fashion and quickly relinquished. Hamann seems at this time to have thought that any strenuous devotion to "bread-and-butter" studies was lowering, and accordingly gave himself entirely to read ing, criticism, and philological inquiries. Such studies, how ever, were pursued without any definite aim or systematic arrangement, and consequently were productive of nothing. In 1752, constrained to secure some position in the world, he accepted a tutorship in a family resident in Livonia, but only retained it a few months. A similar situation in Courlaad he also resigned after about a year. In both cases apparently the rupture might be traced to the curious and unsatisfactory character of Hamann himself. After leaving hh S3cond post he was received into the house of a merchant at Riga named Berens, who contracted a great friendship for him and selected him as his companion for a tour through Dantzic, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and London. Hamann, however, was quite unfitted for business, and, when left in London, gave himself up entirely to his fancies, and was quicklyreduced to astate of extreme poverty and want. It was at this period of his life, when his inner troubbs of spirit harmonized with the unhappy external conditions of his lot, that he began an earnast and prolonged study of the Bible ; and from this time dates the tone of extreme pietism which is characteristic of his writings, and which undoubtedly alienated many of his friends. He returned to Riga, and was well received by the Berens family, in whose house he resided for some time. A quarrel, the precise nature of which is not very clear though the occasion is evident, led to an entire separation from these friends. In 1759 Hamann returned to Konigsberg, and lived for several years with his father, fill ing occasional posts in Konigsberg and Mitau. In 1767 he obtained a situation as translator in the excise office, and ten years later a post as storekeeper in a mercantile house. During this period of comparative rest Hamann was able to indulge in the long correspondence with learned friends v/hich seems to have been his greatest pleasure. In 1784 the failure of some commercial speculations greatly reduced his means, and about the same time he was dismissed with a small pension from his situation. The kindness of friends, how ever, supplied provision for his children, and enabled him to carry out the long-cherished wish of visiting some of his philosophical allies. He spent some time with Jacobi at Fempelfort and with Buchholz at Walbergen. At the latter place he was seized with illness, and died on the 21st June 1788.
Hamann s works resemble his life and character. They are entirely unsystematic so far as matter is concerned, chaotic and disjointed in style. To a reader not acquainted with the peculiar nature of the man, which led him to regard what commended itself to him as therefore objectively true, they must be moreover entirely unintelligible and, from their peculiar pietistie tone and scriptural jargon, probably offensive. A place in the history of philosophy can be yielded to Hamann only because he expresses in uncouth, barbarous fashion an idea to which other writers have given more effective shape. The fundamental thought is with him the unsatisfactoriness of abstraction or onesidedness. The Avfkld- rung, with its rational theology, was to him the type of abstraction. Even Epicureanism, which might appear concrete, was by him rightly designated abstract. Quite naturally, then, Hamann is led to object strongly to much of the Kantian philosophy. The sepa ration of sense and understanding is for him unjustifiable, and only paralleled by the extraordinary blunder of severing matter and form. Concreteness, therefore, is the one demand which Hamann expresses, and as representing his own thought he used to refer to Giordano Bruno s conception of the identity of contraries. The demand, however, remains but a demand. Nothing that Hamann has given can be regarded as in the slightest degree a response to it. His hatred of system, incapacity for abstract thinking, and intense personality rendered it impossible for him to do more than utter the disjointed, oracular, obscure dicta which gained for him among his friends the name of "Magus of the North." Two results only appear throughout his writings, first, the accentuation of belief, and, secondly, the transference of many philosophical difficulties to language. Belief is, according to Hamann, the groundwork of knowledge, and he accepts in all sincerity Hume s analysis of ex perience as being most helpful in constructing a theological view. In language, which he appears to regard as somehow acquired, he finds a solution for the problems of reason which Kant had discussed in the Critique. On the application of these thoughts to the Christian theology one need not enter.
None of Hamann s writings are of great bulk ; most are mere pamphlets of some thirty or forlv pages. A complete collection has been published by Roth (Schriften, 8vo, 1821-42), and by Gildemeister (Lcbcn vnd Schriften, 6 vols., 1851-73). See also Petri, Hamanrfs Schriften u. Bricfc, 4 vols. ,1872-3 ; Pod, Hamann, dcr Marjus im Nordcn, scin Lcbcn u. Mittheilunycn aus seincn Schriften, 2 vols., 1874-76. A very comprehensive essay on Hamann is to be found in Hegel s Vcrmisclitc Schriften, ii. (Wcrke, bd. xvii. ).
famous Arabian anthology compiled by Habib ibu Aus et- Tai, surnamed Abu Temmatn (corruptly Abu-Teman, q.v.). The collection is so-called from the title of its first book, con taining poems descriptive of constancy and valour in battle, patient endurance of calamity, steadfastness in seeking vengeance, manfulness under reproach and temptation, all which qualities make up the attribute called by the Arabs hamaseh (briefly paraphrased by Et-Tebrizi as esh-shiddeh fi-l-amr}. It consists of ten books or parts, containing in all 884 poems or fragments of poems, and named respect ively (1) El-Ifamdseh, 261 pieces; (2) El-MarcWu, "Dirges," 1G9 pieces ; (3) El-Adal, " Manners," 54 pieces ; (4) EiirNestb, "The Beauty and Love of Women," 139 pieces; (5) El-Hija, Satires," 80 pieces; (6) El-Adyuf iva-l-Metlih, Hospitality and Panegyric," 143 pieces; (7) Es-Si/at, Miscellaneous Descriptions," 3 pieces; (8) Es-Seyr iva-n-Nods, "Journeying and Drowsiness," 9 pieces ; (9) El-Mulah, " Pleasantries," 38 pieces ; and (10) Medhemmet-en-nisd, "Dispraise of Women," 18 pieces. Of these books the first is by far the longest, both in the number and extent of its poems, and the first two together make up more than half the bulk of the work. The poems are for the most part fragments selected from longer com positions, though a considerable number are probably entire.
They are taken from the works of Arab poets of all periods