Turkish soldiers, during the troubles consequent on the death of Nadir Schah, and spent his early years as servant in a café at Rhodosto. He then joined a regiment raised for the service of the dey of Algiers, and eventually, by skill and bravery, rose to be governor of the province of Talimsan; but the dey having been prejudiced against him, Hassan was obliged to fly the country. In 1760 he returned and was thrown into prison, but through the influence of the Sicilian ambassador at the Porte he was released and brought under the notice of the sultan, who in 1768 raised him to the rank of rear-admiral. On the outbreak of the war with Russia he was second in command of the fleet; and at the battle of Tchesmé, where the Turkish fleet was destroyed, Hassan's ship was blown up and he escaped by swimming to shore. For his bravery on that occasion he received the title of Gazi, or conqueror. After gaining various successes over the Russians and quelling insurrections in Syria, he was made governor of Ismail; and when war broke out with Russia in 1788 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Turkish forces, and shortly after grand vizier. In every engagement during the campaign the Turks were unsuccessful; and the sultan, in order to appease the popular tumult at Constantinople, ordered Hassan to be beheaded. He is represented to have been brave, but severe.—W. W. E. T.
HASSE, Johann Adolf, a musician, was born at Bergedorf, near Hamburg, March 25, 1699, and died at Venice, December 23, 1783. His father, who was his chief teacher, was the organist and choir-master of his native village. Being desirous of greater opportunity for progress than this place presented, Hasse went to Hamburg in 1717, where he made the friendship of the poet König, by whose recommendation he was engaged in the following year as tenor singer at the theatre, then under the direction of the composer Keiser. He obtained the appointment of kapellmeister to the duke of Brunswick in 1722, in which capacity he produced his opera, "Antigonus," in 1723. Neither the success of this work nor the praises of his singing, rendered him insensible to his educational deficiencies, and he went therefore to Naples in 1724, and placed himself under the tuition of Porpora. He subsequently became the pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti, whose strongest interest was excited by his natural talent and modest manners. He was at first esteemed in Italy rather as a clavicinist than as a singer, but his fame as a composer soon outshone all his celebrity in both these capacities. In 1726 Hasse brought out his first Italian opera, "Sesostrate;" and in 1727 he left Naples for Venice, where he was engaged as director of the conservatorio degli incurabili. There he first met the famous Faustina Bordoni, who returned in 1728 from her two years' triumphs in London. This distinguished vocalist was a native of Venice, where she was born in 1700, and where she made her first public appearance in 1716. She now retired for a while from a course of most brilliant success, and in her retirement she engaged the affections of the young Saxon musician, whose works were exciting the admiration of all Italy. He married her in 1730, and in the same year she returned to the stage. Hasse occupied himself while at Venice with compositions for the church, until the year of his marriage; when, besides an opera for the reappearance of his wife, he produced his "Artaserse," the work that, with Farinelli in its principal character, introduced the name of the composer to the London public, when it was given in 1734 at the theatre established in opposition to Handel. In 1731 Hasse and Faustina were engaged at the court theatre in Dresden by command of Augustus III., king of Poland and elector of Saxony, and there he wrote "Alessandro nel l'lndie," for the display of her peculiar talent. The king was so enchanted with the songstress as to require the periodical absence of the composer, and for seven years Hasse's residence at the Season capital was interrupted by successive visits to the chief cities of Italy, in order that he might be no obstacle to the royal admiration of his wife, who for a time was almost absolute mistress of Saxony. In 1740, however, she returned to her conjugal duties; and from this time to the close of her very long life she was devoted to her husband. It is variously stated that, in 1733 or in 1740, Hasse came to London—he never came there; but when invited, and inquiring, "Is Handel dead?" refused, notwithstanding the magnificent reception his "Artaserse" had met with there, to enter the field against his illustrious countryman. For the next twenty-three years Hasse remained permanently at Dresden; and during this period the opera, under his direction, became the wonder of Europe. In 1745 Hasse was peculiarly distinguished by Frederick the Great, who, when he entered the city after the battle of Kesseldorf, commanded a performance of his opera of "Armenio," and munificently rewarded the composer. Faustina finally quitted the stage in the winter of 1753. Two years later Hasse was attacked by a hoarseness, which not only incapacitated him for singing, but rendered him unable to speak above a whisper for the rest of his life. When Dresden was bombarded by Frederick the Great in 1760, the house of Hasse was burned; and in it his very voluminous manuscripts, which he had lately prepared for publication, were destroyed. Impoverished by the war, the electoral court was compelled in 1763 to reduce its expenditure, and Hasse and his wife were therefore dismissed; but they retired on a considerable pension. They now took up their residence at Vienna, where Hasse resumed his indefatigable labours as a composer. In 1771 he visited Milan to produce his last dramatic work "Ruggiero;" there he encountered Mozart, who, before completing his fifteenth year, had just produced his opera of Mitridate; and he said of him, how truly, "This child will make us all be forgotten." Hasse was still resident in Vienna when Burney was there in 1773. He left this capital for Venice, but, despite his very advanced age, he ceased not even now to produce. He wrote among other things a requiem for the obsequies of Augustus III., and his last work was a Te Deum, which he composed for performance before the pope when he was eighty-one years old. Faustina is said by some to have survived him, but this can have been but for a very few months. Fétis enumerates ninety compositions of Hasse for the church, for the theatre, and for the chamber; these, however, form but a very small portion of the whole, the number of which was so great that himself was unable to name them all. His genius and a long exercise of it in Germany had an important effect on the progress of dramatic music in his native country; and this would have been still greater had he written more to the German language instead of, in his operas at least, almost exclusively to the Italian. He is, however, classed with Graun as chiefly influential in the establishment of the school of the opera music in Germany.—G. A. M.
HASSELQUIST, Friedrich, a Swedish naturalist and traveller, was born at Törnevalla in East Gothland, on 14th January, 1722, and died at Bagda, near Smyrna, on 9th February, 1752. His father was vicar of Törnevalla, and on his death his family were left totally unprovided for. An uncle named Pontin took charge of young Hasselquist, and educated him with his own children at the school of Linköping. On the death of his uncle he commenced teaching, with the view of procuring the means of continuing his studies. In 1741 he went to the university of Upsal, where his taste for natural history was fostered by the great Linnæus. In 1746 he obtained a royal scholarship, and in 1747 he became a licentiate in medicine, publishing a thesis, "De Viribus Plantarum," in which he treated of the medicinal qualities of plants, and endeavoured to show that "like virtues" were associated with "like forms." He became a favourite and distinguished pupil of Linnæus, who was instrumental in procuring for him one of the scholarships which enabled students to travel. Hasselquist fixed on the Holy Land as the country for his travels, and he was assisted in his enterprise by friends at Upsal, Stockholm, and Gottenburg. After two years of preparatory study, he visited Smyrna, then traversed Egypt and Palestine, examining carefully the flora of these countries, and particularly directing his attention to plants mentioned in the Bible. On his return home he reached Smyrna, where he was taken ill and died. Two years after his death the results of his travels were published by Linnæus, under the title of "Iter Palestinum," which was translated into English in 1766. An umbelliform plant, Hasselquistia cordata, has been named after him by Jacquin. Linnæus' Flora Palestinæ is founded on the herbarium collected by Hasselquist.—J. H. B.
HASSENFRATZ, Jean Henri, born in 1753 or 1755 at Paris, commenced life on board a French man-of-war as a shipboy, and became subsequently carpenter and geographical surveyor. In 1782 he visited Austria in the capacity of a student of mining. He was amanuensis to the celebrated Lavoisier, and during the French revolution played a part in politics. In 1795 he was made professor of mineralogy in the school of mines, and died in Paris, February 26, 1827. His writings are very numerous. With Cassini, Monge, and Bertholon, he undertook the "Dictionnaire de Physique."—J. A. W.
