119 



ALGAROTTI, FRANCESCO. 



ALT PASHA. 



150 



Algardi died of a fever in 1654. His biographers speak of his cha- 

 racter as generally good, though when he became rich he became also 

 avaricious ; he was never married, and in his youth he was very dissi- 

 pated. The bulk of his property was inherited by a sister, whose 

 marriage against Algardi's consent was partly or perhaps chiefly the 

 cause of his death. Algardi's reputation is nearly exclusively that of 

 a sculptor, and as such he ranks amongst the greatest of the moderns. 

 His de-ign is vigorous and natural, and his draperies are well studied ; 

 but his style, when compared with the antique, is somewhat vulgar 

 and affected. He excelled in representing infants. His architectural 

 designs, of which there are not many, are purely ornamental; the 

 design itself is subservient to its ornaments; they want mass and 

 feature. 



(Passeri, Vite tie' Pittori, &c. ; Bellori, Vite de' Pittori, &c. ; Cicog- 

 nara, Storia delta Scvltura ; Milizia, Opere.) 



ALGAROTTI, FRANCESCO, was bora at Venice in 1712. His 

 father was a wealthy merchant. He studied at Rome and Bologna, in 

 which latter place he had for instructors Eustachio Manfredi and 

 Francesco Zanotti, who afterwards continued his friends and corre- 

 spondents. Algarotti made great progress in the study of languages, 

 the mathematics, astronomy, and anatomy. Being at Paris at the age 

 of twenty-one, he there wrote hia ' Neutonianismo per le Dame,' or 

 explanation of the system of Newton, adapted to the taste and under- 

 standing of female students. This is still considered as his best work. 

 He n-xt proceeded to London, whence he accompanied Lord Balti- 

 more to St. Petersburg. He gave an account of this journey in his 

 ' Letters on Russia,' a country then comparatively little known. From 

 Russia he went to Germany, where he became acquainted with Frederic, 

 then Crown Prince of Prussia, who was living in philosophical retire- 

 ment at Kheinsberg. The prince was so much pleased with his society, 

 that four days after his accession to the throne, he wrote to Algarotti, 

 who was thru in Kngland, inviting him in the most pressing manner 

 to come to Berlin. Algarotti accepted the invitation, and remained 

 afterwards in the Prussian capital or at Potsdam the greater part of 

 his life, not as a servile courtier, but as the friend and confidant of 

 Frederic. The king gave him the title of count, made him his cham- 

 berlain, and employed him occasionally in diplomatic affairs. He waa 

 also commissioned by the Elector of Saxony to collect objects of art 

 throughout Italy for the gallery of Dresden. For five-and-twenty 

 years from Algarotti's first acquaintance with Frederic to the moment 

 of his death, their mutual friendship aud confidence were never inter- 

 rupted. Towards the latter part of his life, Algarotti, finding the 

 climate of Prussia too cold for his declining health, returned to Italy, 

 where he lived first in his own house in Venice, afterwards at Bologna, 

 among his literary friends, and lastly at Pisa, where the mildness of 

 the air induced him to remain, as he was evidently sinking under con- 

 sumption of the lungs. There he corrected the edition of his works 

 then publishing at Leghorn ; the study of the fine arts and music filled 

 up the remainder of his time. In this calm retirement he waited for 

 death, which came on the 3rd of Hay, 1764, in his fifty second year. 

 Frederic, to whom Algarotti had bequeathed a fine painting, ordered a 

 monument to be raised to him in the Campo Santo, or great cemetery 

 of Pisa, where it is to be seen. It is asserted by Ugoni, in his biogra- 

 phy of Algarotti, that Frederic forgot to pay Count Bonomo the 

 expense of this mausoleum. Algarotti was an honorary member of 

 many universities and academies of Italy, Germany, and England. 

 He na* the friend and correspondent of most of the literary men and 

 women of his time, among others, of Voltaire, Maupertuis, Metastasio, 

 Bettinelli, Lord Chesterfield, Lady Wortley Montague, Madame du 

 Bocage, &c. Besides the two works above mentioned, he wrote 

 ' Letters on Painting,' in which he has described several frescoes which 

 are now lost ; he also wrote a number of essays on various subjects. 

 His works have been swell-d, by the insertion of his extensive corre- 

 spondence, into seventeen volumes, octavo, Venice, 1791. Algarotti's 

 style seldom rises above mediocrity ; his chief merit is that of having 

 rendered science and literature fashionable among the upper classes of 

 his time and country. He was a man of much information and con- 

 siderable taste, but of a cold imagination, and not profound in any 

 particular branch of learning. 



ALUAZEX, or ALLACEN, properly Al-Hatan, or, with his com- 

 plete name, Abu AH al-ffatan ben al-IIasan ben Haitam, a distinguished 

 mathematician, who lived during the earlier part of the llth century. 

 He waa a native of Basra. Having boasted that he could construct a 

 machine by means of which the inundations of the Nile could be 

 predicted and regulated, the Fatimide kalif, Hakim biamr-allah, sent 

 for him, in order to carry his plan into effect. But Al-Hasan soon 

 found that he had undertaken an impossibility, and in order to avoid 

 the consequences of Hakim's anger at his disappointment, he feigned 

 insanity till Hakim died (A.D. 1020). He lived at Cairo, where he 

 supported himself by copying books, and devoted his leisure hours to 

 itudy and original composition. He died in 1038. A long list of his 

 works may be found in Casiri's ' Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Kscu- 

 rialensis,' voL i. p. 415. A treatise on optics, by Al-Hasan, was trans- 

 l..t,.-d into Latin by Risuer, and printed at Basil, under the title of 

 ' Opticu: Thesaurus,' in 1572. 



ALI BEN ABI TALEB, surnamed by the Arabs Aiad Allah, and 

 by the Persians Nhir-i-Jfhoda, that is, the Lion of God, was the fourth 

 kalif or successor of Mohammed in the government founded by him, 



aud occupied the throne during the years 35-10 after the Hegira, 

 A.D. 655-660. He was the cousin-german of Mohammed, lived from 

 childhood under his care, and when ten or eleven years old, was, 

 according to tradition, the first to acknowledge him as a prophet. 

 From these circumstances, and also on account of his marriage with 

 Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, AH appeared to have strong 

 claims to the command ership over the Faithful, when the Prophet 

 died, in 632, without leaving male issue. Three other associates of 

 the Prophet, Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman, were however successively 

 appointed kalifs, before Ali came to the throne in 655. The contro- 

 versy concerning the respective rights of Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman, 

 on the one side, and of Ali ben Abi Taleb and his lineal descendants 

 on the other, gave rise to the schism of the Suunites aud Shiites in the 

 Mohammedan community. [Asu BBKB.] Othman had been killed 

 during a revolt at Medina, where a number of malcontents from dif- 

 ferent parts of the empire were assembled; those from Egypt succeeded 

 in elevating Ali to the kalifate. Two of his competitors, Zobair and 

 Talha, at first acknowledged him as sovereign ; but when Ali refused 

 to appoint them governors of the important towns of Basra and Kufa, 

 by the inhabitants of which their claims to the kalifate had been 

 chiefly supported, both deserted him, and in common with Ayeshah, 

 the widow of Mohammed, formed a strong party against Ali. They 

 had already made themselves masters of Basra, when Ali, at the head 

 of an army of 30,000 men, defeated them in a battle near Khoraiba in 

 656. Talha and Zobair were killed : Ayeshah, who had been present 

 at the conflict, was taken prisoner, aud sent to Mecca. 



New disturbances soon arose at Damascus, where Moawia, a near 

 relative of Othman, had by a strong party been appointed Amir, or 

 chief. Ali encountered him near Saffein in 657, iu the neighbourhood 

 of which place nearly a whole year was consumed in skirmishes 

 between the two armies, but no decisive battle ensued. At last the 

 two opponents agreed to withdraw, appointing each a delegate to 

 arrange the controversy in a peaceable convention. This measure 

 excited much dissatisfaction among the adherents of Ali, many of 

 whom seceded, and assembled at Naharvan under the command of 

 Abdallah ben Waheb. They were however dispersed after a decisive 

 battle in 658, in which Ali was victorious. 



The caution with which the governor of Egypt, Saad ben Kais, had 

 conducted himself during these disputes rendered him suspected by 

 the kalif. Ali removed him in 658, and appointed Mohammed, the 

 son of Abu Bekr, who behaved with such rigour towards the adherents 

 of Moawia, that much discontent was excited in Egypt. Moawia 

 availed himself of this opportunity to send an army into Egypt under 

 the command of Amru ben al-As, who vanquished aud killed Moham- 

 med. Soon afterwards Moawia took possession also of Basra, which 

 Ali's governor, Zayyad, made but a feeble effort to defend. Abdallah 

 ben Abbas however reconquered that town fur the kalif. 



In 660 Moawia sent an army under the command of Bosr ben Artha 

 into Hejaz, who took possession of the two sacred cities, Mecc:i and 

 Medina, and on his return defeated aud killed Abdallah ben Abbas, 

 the governor of Basra. 



About this time three of the zealots of Naharvan, with the design 

 of restoring unity, entered into a conspiracy to murder Amru ben 

 al-As, the kalif Ali, and Moawia. Amru ben al-As and Moawia escaped, 

 but Ali was struck with a poisoned sword in his residence at Kufa, 

 and died after three days, in 660, at the age of fifty-nine, or according 

 to others, sixty-five years. 



Ali had by Fatima three sons, Hassan, Hossain, and Mohsen. Hassan 

 succeeded his father for a short time in the government, and witli him 

 terminated, according to Arabic historians, the legitimate kalifate, that 

 is, the succession of those kalifs who had been appointed by tho free 

 choice of the Faithful. 



ALI, HYDER. [HYDER ALL] 



ALI PASHA, a celebrated Albanian chief, was born about 1750, in 

 tho little town of Tepelen, in the pashalic of Berat, on the left bank of 

 the river Voioussa, the ancient Aoua, at the foot of the Klissoura 

 Mountains. Ali's, family was distinguished by the name of Hissas, 

 and had been for ages settled in the country; it belonged to the 

 Albanian tribe or clan of the Toske or Toxide, who boast of being old 

 Mussulmans. One of Ali's ancestors, after being for somo time a 

 klephtis, or highwaj^robber, made himself master of Tepelen, and 

 assumed the title of Bey, holding it as a fief of the pacha of Berat. 

 Ali's grandfather distinguished himself in the Ottoman service by his 

 bravery, and was killed at the siege of Corfu against the Venetians, in 

 the beginning of the 18th century. Hia son, Vehli Bey, the father of 

 Ali Pasha, was a good, quiet, liberal-minded man, very partial towards 

 the Greeks. The neighbouring beys or feudal Albanian chiefs com- 

 bined against him, and deprived him of the greater part of his estates; 

 but the mother of Ali was a woman of masculine courage, though of 

 cruel disposition, and, on her husband's death, secured the succession 

 to her own son Ali, then fourteen years of age, by the adoption of the 

 most unscrupulous queans. 



The early life of Ali was passed in the usual vicissitudes of predatory 

 warfare, and sufficiently varied by a succession of adventures possessing 

 the interest of romance, though marked by ferocity, treachery, and most 

 other atrocities. His power however continued to become gradually 

 consolidated, and several of the surrounding districts submitted to 

 him, until at length hia riches gave him the means of intriguing at 



