679 



SOLARIO, ANTONIO DE. 



SOLIMAN. 



6so 



published in the fifth volume of ' The Observations and Inquiries of a 

 Society of Physicians.' 



Although Dr. Solander published little with his name attached, 

 his labours were by no means few or of little importance. He left 

 behind him a large mass of manuscripts, which are still existing in the 

 British Museum, and containing, as they do, a vast store of informa- 

 tion on all tiiat passed under his observant eye, they afford abundant 

 materials for the further prosecution of the subjects to which he 

 devoted his attention. 



The arrival of Dr. Solander in England may bo looked upon as an 

 important era in the history of botany in this country, as by his 

 means the sexual system of arrangement of plants, which was only 

 imperfectly understood in Great Britain, became more widely ex- 

 tended. Wo will not stop here to inquire into the amount of benefit 

 conferred on botany by this system, which is now pretty well exploded, 

 but from the perfect knowledge of it possessed by Dr. Solander, and 

 the ease with which it was acquired by others, there can be no doubt 

 that during his lifetime the cultivation of the Linnsean system had a 

 very favourable influence in developing and extending a taste for 

 botany in this country. 



But botany was not the only department pursued by Dr. Solander. 

 In 1786, the important work of Ellis, on the ' Natural History of 

 Zoophytes,' was published, in the preface to which the editor thus 

 expresses himself . " For the arrangements and the descriptions we 

 are indebted to Dr. Solander, whose premature death prevented this 

 and other valuable works from appearing in so complete a manner as 

 they otherwise would have done, since it must be universally allowed 

 that the world suffered in Dr. Solander the loss of one of the greatest 

 naturalists ever known, while his more intimate friends that of an 

 invaluable member of society." 



SOLA'RIO, ANTONIO DE, called ' II Zingaro/ or the Gipsy, was 

 born in or about 1382, at Chivita, in the Abruzzi, according to Do- 

 minici (' Vite do' Pittori Napolitani '), but others have contended that 

 ho was a Venetian. He was a gipsy by birth, and in his youth was a 

 sort of itinerant blacksmith. He was not a mere tinker, a mender of 

 kettles and saucepans, for he is s^id to have been admitted into the 

 house of the painter Colantonio del Fiore at Naples, on account of his 

 skill in making implements of iron. Nearly the same story is related 

 of Sqlario as of Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp. [MATSYS.] Solario 

 fell in love with the daughter of Colantouio, and she fell in love with 

 him. Solario made proposals, but Colantonio said that he would 

 never consent that his daughter should marry any one but a painter of 

 reputation at least equal to his own. The gipsy was not to be thus 

 got rid of ; he asked to be allowed ten years to study the art, and 

 Colantonio, to satisfy his daughter, assented. Solario became a pupil 

 of Lippo Dalmasi at Bologna, with whom he remained six or seven 

 years, and afterwards travelled through the chief towns of Italy in 

 order to study the works of other masters. In rather more than nine 

 years he returned in disguise to Naples, and having presented to the 

 Queen of Naples a picture of the Virgin, with the infant Jesus crowned 

 by angels, and also been permitted to paint a portrait of the queen, 

 Colantonio was then invited to view the productions of the unknown 

 artist, of which he expressed the highest admiration. Solario then 

 discovered himself, and soon afterwards became the son-in-law of Col- 

 antonio. His reputation was immediately established, and he was 

 much employed, especially at Naples, in painting altar-pieces, and in 

 decorating the walls of convents and other religious houses with 

 frescoes. In the fine expression of his heads, and in the richness and 

 harmony of his colouring, he has been compared to Titian. He is 

 also praised for the graceful action of his figures, but is said to be 

 defective in the drawing of the hands and feet. Solario was also 

 distinguished as an illuminator of manuscripts, especially Bibles. 

 He died in 1455. Vaaari has not included Solario in his ' Lives.' 



(Dominici, Vite de' Pittori Napolitani; Moschini, Memorie della 

 Vita di Antonio de Salario, detto II Zingaro, Pittore Viniziano, Venezh, 

 1828.) 



SOLIMAN, EBN ABD-AL-MALEK, the seventh kalif of the race 

 of the Ommiyades, succeeded his elder brother Walid I. A.D. 715 

 (A.H. 96). He acquired high popularity at the commencement of his 

 reign by dismissing the various governors whom the inertness of 

 Walid had suffered to oppress the people at their pleasure ; and Kati- 

 bah, the first Moslem conqueror of Transoxiana, who alone refused to 

 acknowledge his authority, was seized and put to death by his own 

 soldiers. Another of his lieutenants, Yezid Ibn Mohalleb, reduced 

 the rugged and impenetrable provinces of Tabrestan and Jorjan, on 

 the south coast of the Caspian, which had never before been com- 

 pletely subdued. But the principal military undertaking of his reign 

 was the siege of Constantinople, commenced the year after his acces- 

 sion, by a vast fleet and army under his brother Moslemah. (Gibbon, 

 s. 52.) The Saracen fleet was however destroyed by the Greek fire ; 

 the strength of the fortifications reduced the siege to a blockade ; and 

 the kahf was preparing t, lead a second army to reinforce his brother 

 when he died of a surfeit at Chalcis in Syria, A.D. 717 (A.H. 99), nomi- 

 nating in his last moments his cousin Omar Ebn-Abd-al-Azez as his 

 successor, to the exclusion of his own sons and brothers. The reign 

 of Soliman is said to have beon the epoch of the first rise of the 

 Barmecides, who afterwards became famous as the ministers of the 

 Abbasides. 



SOLIMAN, EBN AL-HAKEM, a Moorish chief, who, in the civil 

 wars preceding the extinction of the kalifate of the Ommiyades at 

 Cordova, possessed himself of the capital by the aid of the African 

 troops whom he commanded, and proclaimed himself king A.D. 1009 

 (A.H. 400), under the title of Al-Mostain Billah. Though soon 

 expelled by Mohammed, one of the Ommiyan competitors, he 

 recovered Cordova in 1112, dethroning Hesham II., who had been 

 replaced on the throne on the death of Mohammed ; but his valour 

 and abilities were not able to maintain him in his usurped authority : 

 the walls, or governors of the African and Spanish provinces, refused 

 obedience ; and after various changes of fortune he was overthrown 

 and slain, A.D. 1016 (A.H. 407), by All Ebn Hamid, wall of Tangier, 

 who was proclaimed king in his room, but speedily perished by 

 another revolution. The first discovery of the Azores has been 

 attributed to the reign of this prince, on the authority of a passage 

 in the ' Geography ' of Sherif-Al-Edrisi ; but it ia not very clear that 

 the Azores are the islands there alluded to as discovered by some 

 Moslem adventurers from Lisbon. D'Herbelot erroneously mentions 

 Soliman as the nephew of Hesham II., whereas he was a stranger to 

 the blood of the Ommiyades. 



SOLIMAN EBN CUTULMISH, a Seljukian prince who founded 

 the first Turkish dynasty in Room, or Asia Minor. His father had 

 perished in a revolt against Alp-Arslan, the great Seljukian sultan of 

 Persia ; and Malek-Shah, the son of Alp-Arslan, was glad to rid him- 

 self of the turbulent ambition of Soliman by furnishing him with 

 an army for the conquest of the west, A.D. 1074 (A.H. 467). The 

 internal dissensions of the Greeks facilitated his progress. In a few 

 years he had subdued nearly all Asia Minor except the districts on 

 the western coast and the isolated city of Trebizond ; his capital was 

 fixed at Nicaea, within 100 miles of Constantinople, and his Turkoman 

 followers spread themselves all over the country, which was thence- 

 forward permanently lost to Christendom. Antioch (which had been 

 held by the Greeks since its capture by John Zimisces in 968) was 

 betrayed to him (1084) by the son of the governor ; but this acqui- 

 sition brought on a rupture between Soliman and Moslem-Ebn- 

 Koreish, prince of Aleppo, to whom the Greeks had paid a tribute for 

 Antioch, which Soliman refused to continue. Moslem was defeated 

 and killed ; but in attempting to pursue his advantage and occupy 

 Aleppo, Soliman was opposed and overthrown by Sultan Tutush, 

 viceroy of Syria for his brother Malek Shah (whose vassal Moslem 

 had been), and either fell in the battle, or, as some say, perished by 

 his own hand, A.D. 1086 (A.H. 479). His sons were however restored 

 by Malek-Shah to the kingdom of Room, where one of them, Kilidj- 

 Arslan, was reigning at the appearance of the first Crusaders, who 

 erroneously call him Soliman. 



SOLIMAN (often mentioned with the surname of Tchelibi, ' gentle 

 or noble,' which is however the general title of the sons of the 

 Ottoman sultans) was the eldest surviving son of Bayezid I. After 

 the fatal battle of Angora, in which his father was defeated and made 

 prisoner by Timour, A.D. 1402 (A.H. 804), he effected his escape to 

 Europe with the vizir AH Pasha, and reigned several years in tran- 

 quillity at Adrianople, while the fragments of Asia Minor were dis- 

 puted by his three brothers. He was frustrated however in an attempt 

 to possess himself of the Asiatic provinces (1406) by an insurrection 

 excited against him at home by his brother Mousa, which recalled 

 him to Europe. Mousa was defeated, and fled into Wallachia, but he 

 returned in 1410 with a fresh army, and Soliman, surprised in 

 Adrianople, was slain in his flight. Mousa was himself dethroned 

 three years later by Mohammed 1., under whom the Ottoman dominions 

 were reunited. 



Soliman is not generally included in the list of the Turkish sultans, 

 the interval between the death of Bayezid and the final establishment 

 of Mohammed being regarded as an interregnum. He was a brave 

 and generous prince, and the first of the line of Othmanwho patronised 

 literature; but his good qualities were obscured by his excessive 

 indolence and indulgence in wine. 



SOLIMAN (surnamed by the Turks KANOONI, or ' the Legislator,' 

 and by European writers ' the Magnificent '), the tenth and greatest 

 of the Ottoman sultans, succeeded his father Selim I., A.D. 1520 (A.U. 

 926), in the twenty-seventh year of his age ; and as he was an only 

 son, his succession was not disturbed, like those of his father and 

 grandfather, by civil wars. His first exploit was an invasion of 

 Hungary (1521), in which he captured Belgrade, the key of that king- 

 dom, a conquest often attempted in vain by his predecessors ; and in 

 the following year Rhodes, which had defied all the efforts of 

 Mohammed II., was, after an arduous siege, surrendered to him by the 

 knights of St. John. The suppression of a rebellion in Egypt, and of 

 a revolt of the Janissaries (as a counterpoise to whom the corps of 

 Bostandjis was instituted), occupied the next three years ; but in 

 1526 Hungary was again invaded; the king, Lewis II., and nearly all 

 his army, slain in the fatal battle of Mohacz, and the whole kingdom 

 overrun by the Turks. The Hungarian crown was conferred by 

 Soliman on John Zapolya, who received it as a vassal of the Porte ; 

 but the rival pretensions of Ferdinand of Austria kindled the first of 

 the long wars between the sultans and the German emperors ; and in 

 1529 Vienna was besieged without success by Soliman in person. A 

 war with Persia followed, in which Armenia and Irak, with the cities 

 of Tabreez and Baghdad (1534), were subdued by the Ottomans; 



