BASHI, bash'i (Turk. bashi, head, chief). A generic title for Turkish military officials. Some of the most prominent are: Toptchjy-Bashi, general of artillery and inspector of forts, etc.; Solaki-Bashi, commander of the archers (now practically extinct); Sanjak-Darlars-Bashi, chief of the fifty color-bearers; Konadji, or Konakji-Bashi, quartermaster-general (or chief of the barracks); Boyuk-Bashi, great high chief, or colonel of a regiment of 1000 militia. Other military and civil Turkish titles are: Pasha, general — which title, however, may be conferred as a distinction on naval officers or distinguished professional men in the civil walks of life. It is the Turkish equivalent of the European 'Lord,' or 'Baron,' and is the title of viceroys, provincial governors, etc. Bey, a civil title equivalent to the English baronet or knight, which may be conferred on all classes, civil or otherwise. Effendi, the courtesy title of a gentleman, used in the same relation as the English word esquire. Bimbashi, or Hinhashi, is the title adopted in the Anglo-Egyptian Army for the colonel of a battalion or regiment; its native usage is 'leader of a thousand.' Beg, or Beik-Bey is a title commonly applied to all military and naval officers and distinguished visitors. It applies also to the governor of a small district, who displays a horsetail as an insignia of rank.
BASHI-BAZOUKS, bash'i-ba-zoUks'
(Turk. bashi, head, head dress, appearance + bozug, spoilt, disorderly, from boz, to spoil, damage, destroy). Turkish irregular troops; natives chiefly of the wretchedly governed pashalics of Asiatic Turkey, and possessing the worst reputation of any body or class of fighting men in the world. They are wild, turbulent, and wholly undisciplined, more ready to plunder and kill than to fight, and speak a debased Turkish patois not easily understood. Physically, they are, as a rule, men of splendid proportions, their tall red fez adding to their apparent height, while the uniform ensemble — not unlike the Scottish Highlander — adds to their picturesque appearance. Their equipment consists mainly of a great number of knives and swords, completely loading the waist belt, and compelling them to adopt a gait peculiar to themselves, caused by the necessity of swinging the arms and legs clear of their equipment. Such rifles as they usually possess are of patterns long since obsolete. They are willing to attach themselves to any leader who understands their jargon, and who can promise them plunder, and are frequently used by municipal governors depending on pillage and plunder for their pay. It was thought, during the Crimean War of 1854, that they could be usefully employed against the Cossacks, particularly in the sort of irregular warfare usually waged by them. Consequently, in 1855, when the British Government took into its pay a Turkish contingent, a corps of Bashi-Bazouks was put under the command of an officer of the British-Indian Army. The experiment, so far as the Bashi-Bazouks were concerned, proved a complete failure, as the war ended before they were even partially reduced to discipline. They frequently torture their enemies, and mutilate the dead. It is a matter of record that in May, 1876, under the leadership of Achmet Agha, they slew in cold blood over 1000 defenseless Bulgarians who had sought shelter in a church.
BASHI (bil'she) IS'LANDS. A small group
of islands, the northernmost of the Batan group in the Philippines. The name Bashi is sometimes applied to the whole Batan group. Bashi Channel separates the islands from Formosa.
BASHKIRS, bash-kerz'.
A Finno-Turkic people of Mongolian stock (height 1.650 metres), living in the Orenburg District of Russia, along the slopes of the Urals. They number about 1,000,000, and subsist on their flocks and herds. In faith, the Bashkirs are Mussulmans; their language is Tatar.
BASHKIETSEFF, bash-kert'sef,
Marie (1860-84). A Russian artist and writer, one of the most individual characters in the literary annals of the Nineteenth Century. She was born in Russia, and died of inherited consumption in Paris. Her parents were very wealthy and of noble descent, and their daughter, who was gifted with beauty, an unusual voice, and a mind of remarkable maturity, had the advantage of residence in Rome, Nice, Paris, and other cities, where she moved in the highest society. A weakness of the throat, followed by deafness, obliged her to abandon the hope of achieving fame as a singer, and in her seventeenth year she began the study of art in Paris under Robert-Fleury, pursuing it later under Bastien-Lepage until her death, and producing, in spite of her physical disabilities, paintings of much merit. Her peculiar work, however, was a journal begun in her thirteenth year and faithfully continued. It was designed for publication after her death, and intended to be, to use her own words, "the transcript of a woman's life — her thoughts and hopes, her deceptions, weaknesses, good qualities, sorrows, and joys." She herself believed it to be unparalleled in literature, and the same opinion was expressed by Gladstone, one of her many reviewers (Nineteenth Century, October, 1889). Consult: Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff (Paris, 1887), and the full translation of the same (Chicago, 1890); Lettres de Marie Bashkirtseff (Paris, 1891); the suppressed portions of her diary have appeared in the Revue des Revues, February and September, 1900.
BA'SIC BES'SEMER STEEL PROC'ESS. See Iron and Steel, Metallurgy of.
BASID'IOMYCE'TES (basidium, see below + Gk. μύκητες, mykētes, mushrooms, fungi). Probably the largest of the great groups of Fungi in number of species. It includes the smuts (Ustilaginales), the numerous rusts (Uredinales), and the immense assemblage of forms called mushrooms, toadstools, bracket-fungi, and puffballs, besides many smaller groups. The higher forms of Basidiomycetes are readily distinguished by the peculiar method of spore-formation. The end of a filament (hypha) becomes swollen, and then puts out generally four small processes, which become spores attached to the end of the parent filament by delicate stalks ('sterigmata'). Such a filament is called a 'basidium' (dimin. of Gk. βάσις, basis, base, foundation), and its spores 'basidiospores.' The basidium is in all essentials the same, whether the fructification be a mushroom, toadstool, bracket-fungus, puffball, or some simpler structure. The smuts and rusts, however, present conditions that have only within comparatively recent years been related to the basidium. This matter is discussed in the article on Fungi,
