Volume 1

The cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia : commercial, industrial and scientific, products of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures / by Edward Balfour.

Balfour, Edward, 1813-1889.

Date:: 1885

Credit: The cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia : commercial, industrial and scientific, products of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures / by Edward Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

23/1296 (page 11)

$ABUL WAHID MUHAMMAD. ABYSSINIA. Persian poets, still well known and popular in Central Asia. He is remarkable for the fertility of his pen, and the purity of his language. Hammer states that, according to the commen- tators of the Yamini, his history of Persian poetry, he is said to have written 1,300,000 distiches, collected in a hundred books. His magnificence was princely. He went about preceded by 200 slaves, and followed by 400 camels laden with valuables.—P. Arminius Vambery, Bokhara, p. 77. ABUL WAHID MUHAMMAD-ibn AHMAD- ibn MUHAMMAD-ibn RASHID, is known to Western Europe as Averhoes. He was a philo- sopher and physician of great eminence. He was born at Cordova, of illustrious parentage, about a.d. 1149. He studied under Avanzoar and other distinguished Arabian scholars, and his education extended to all the branches both of literature and science, as then taught in the Saracenic colleges of Spain. He followed Aristotle as a philosopher, and Galen as a physician. His treatises, seventy-two in number, acquired the highest reputation, and for many centuries were standard works. He also wrote an epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest, aud a treatise on astrology. His medical writings were gathered together as the Kulliat, or complete works, and were trans- lated into Latin, and have been repeatedly printed along with the Tasir of Avanzoar, one of them reappearing at the commencement of the 17th century. He carried Aristotle’s mode of reason- ing by induction into the religious doctrines of Mahomedanism, and twice suffered persecu- tion. ABU RIHAN, AL BIRUNI, a native of Khar- azm (born A.D. 970, died 1038), spent forty years in India, and composed his excellent work, the Tarikh-i-Hind, which gives a complete account of the literature and sciences of the Hindus at that time. A1 Biruni had been appointed by the Sultan of Kharazm to accompany an embassy which he sent to Mahmud of Ghazni and Masaud of Lahore.—Muller's Lectures, p. 141. ABU SAID SENAN, ibn SABIT, ibn KOR- RAH was a Sabian, physician, astronomer, and mathematician. He was born at Haran in Mesopotamia, and died at Baghdad a.d. 942. He was physician to Mukhtasar and Kahar, the 18th and 19th of the Abbasside Khalifs, who reigned from a.d. 908 to 934. Mukhtasar gave him the title of Rais ul Ataba, physician-general, and he was appointed public examiner a.d. 931, no one being allowed to practise until licensed by Senan. The number who were examined at Baghdad are stated at 830. Under pressure from Kahar, he became a Mahomedan; but as Kahar continued to treat him harshly, he fled to Khorasan, though he after- wards returned to Baghdad, where he died a.d. 942. ABUSHAHR, generally abridged into Bushahr, or Busbire, a town in the Persian Gulf, which rose into notice during the 18th century, and is said to have been previously an inconsider- able village. In excavating to form reservoirs for rain water, architectural remains have been discovered, indicating that a succession of towns have stood there. The well water is brackish, and causes diarrhoea in new-comers.—Ouseley’s Travels, vol. i. p. 192. See Bushire. ABU SHAM, a familiar address in the Hejaz to Syrians. They are called ‘ abusers of the salt,’ from their treachery, and ‘ offspring of Shimr’ (the execrated murderer of the Imam Husain), because he was a native of that country. —Burton's Mecca, iii. p. 114. ABUTILON INDICUM. G. Don. Skla Indica, Linn. Sida populifolia, Roxb. Potari, .... Beng. Tha ma khai ok, . Burm. Kangni, Kanghi, . Hind. Ati or Khirati pala, Panj. Pataka, Simbal, . ,, Uram, Pettaka, Maleal. Abut. Asiaticum, W.andA. Payrun tuthi, . . Tuttura-benda, Nugu or Botla- benda, . . . Pedda or Tutti benda, . . . Tam. Tel. This is a small plant, of two to three feet, common in most parts of India, and cultivated in Burma. It yields a rather strong fibre, fit for the manufacture of ropes. The leaves are used in India and Burma in the same manner as the marsh - mallow in Europe, in decoction as an emollient fomentation, and an infusiou of the root is a cooling drink in fevers. To obtain the fibre, the plants are gathered and freed of their leaves and twigs, and are put out to dry in the sun for a couple of days. They are then taken up, tied into bundles, and placed under water for about ten days, after which they are taken out, and the fibres are well washed to remove the bark and other foreign matter that may be adhering to them, and then placed in the sun to dry.— Voigt, 114 ; Roxburgh, iii. 179 ; Drs. Wight, Mason, Shortt, Stewart, and Mr. Powell. ABUTILON POLYANDRUM. W. and A. Sida polyandra, . Roxb. \ Sida Persica, . . Burm. Grows at Kandalla, on the Neilgherries and Nundidroog; yields a long silky fibre resembling hemp, fit for making ropes.—Roxb.; Jur. Rep. Mad. Ex.; Useful Plants. ABUTILON TOMENTOSUM. W. and A. Sida tomentosa, . Roxb. | Too-thi Tam. Fibres from this were exhibited from two or three districts at the Madras Exhibition of 1855. — Roxburgh; Madras Exhibition Juries' Reports. ABUWA. Tel. Trichosanthes palmata, R.—• Tr briict6&tci ABU-ZAID-UL-HASAN, a native of Siraf, who wrote a continuation of the Arabic work by Suli- man the merchant. He never travelled in India, but he made inquiries of travellers, and completed the account given by the merchant Suliman. Abu Zaid met Masudi at Basra in (a.h. 303) a.d. 916, and he obtained from Masudi much information. He begins by remarking the great change in the commerce of the East that had taken place in the interval since Suliman wrote. A rebellion had broken out in Khan-fu, which had utterly stopped the Arab trade with China, and carried ruin to many families in distant Siraf and Oman. He gives also an account of a visit which an acquaintance of his own had made to Khumdan (Chang-gan or Sin-gan-fu), the capital of China. ABWAB. Arab. Heads or subjects of taxa- tion ; miscellaneous cesses, imposts, and charges. — Wilson. ABYSSINIA, a country in the N.E. of Africa, known to the people of Persia and India as Habash and Habashtan, and its people as the I Habush or Habshi, though in India this latter$