6 S3 



DRUSES, DORONZ. 



DUAL NUMBER. 



Put to death. (Light's ' Travels.') In 1822, having supported the 

 rebellious Abdallah, pasha of Acre, he incurred the displeasure of the 

 Porte, and took refuge in Egypt, but returned soon after by the 

 mediation of Mehemet Ali, the pasha of Egypt. At the time of the 

 occupation of Syria by Ibrahim, llehemet's son, the Druses joined him 

 at first ; they afterwards quarrelled with him ; but they were beaten, 

 and peace was ultimately restored. Up to 1840 the emir Beshir 

 remained faithful to the Egyptians, but as he did not separate himself 

 before the restoration of Syria to the Turks, he was deprived of his 

 dignity; he then withdrew, first to Malta, and afterwards to Con- 

 stantinople, vainly soliciting his restoration. Kassim was named emir 

 Beshir in his stead. The Druses and the Maronites again commenced 

 hostilities between themselves, of which the Turks took advantage, in 

 order to weaken their power. The civil war endured for upwards of 

 two years, when the Porte displaced the emir el Kassim, and ap- 

 pointed Omar Pasha as administrator. His arbitrary conduct caused 

 the Druses to unite with the Maronites, and both broke out into 

 insurrection against the Turkish dominion. The Christian powers 

 interfered, Omar Pasha was recalled, and a Turkish kaimakan ap- 

 pointed. This produced a partial suspension of hostilities, but the 

 Druses still continued to acknowledge only their own chief, and in this 

 state the country yet continues ; while the Maronites sometimes have 

 a chief of their own, and sometimes submit to the chief of the Druses. 

 The emir has under him several subordinate emirs, or local chiefs, in 

 various districts of the mountains, some of whom are Druses and 

 others Maronites. As the whole population is armed and trained to 

 the use of the gun, it is said that in case of need the emir can collect in 

 a very short time 30,000 men ; but this, must be only part of the 

 individuals capable of bearing arms, as the Maronite population alone 

 is said to be more than 200,000, and the Druses are stated by Mr. 

 Paton (' The Modern Syrians,' 1841), to be about 70,000. 



The Druses are divided into two classes : the Akkal and the Jukhal, 

 the initiated and the ignorant. No religious duties are imposed, but 

 their creed includes a belief in the unity of God's five superior spiritual 

 messengers, including Hamza and Christ ; in the transmigration of 

 souls ; in the triumph of their religion ; and in the renunciation of 

 the seven points of Islamism. The Akkals make an assumption of 

 superior morality ; they neither smoke tobacco nor drink spirituous 

 liquors ; they use no bad language ; and profess to abhor falsehood, 

 but do not scruple to exercise equivocation. They meet for religious 

 purposes every Friday evening at an hour after dusk, when they 

 read extracts from their religious books. All the Druse women are 

 taught to read and write. The penalty of death, it is said, would be 

 incurred by any one who should turn Mussulman or Christian. They 

 make no proselytes. As to the nature of their secret doctrine, we 

 have an account of it in Do Sacy"8 ' Chrestomathie Arabe,' vol. ii. ; but 

 how far it can be relied upon is still a question with some, as it 

 depends upon the authenticity of the books from which De Sacy 

 has extracted it. It in doubtful whether in fact there are any secret 

 doctrines. It appears however pretty certain that the Druses are, or 

 were originally, disciples of Hakem biamr Ilia, the sixth Fatimite 

 caliph of Egypt, who in the llth century proclaimed himself to be 

 an incarnation of the Divinity, and who established a secret lodge at 

 Cairo, divided into nine degrees, the last of which taught the super- 

 fluousness of all religions, the indifference of human actions, &c. (Von 

 Hammer, 'Geschichte der Assassinen,' 1818.) The Assassins them- 

 selves were a derivation of Hakem' s sect, which was itself an offshoot 

 of the great schism of the Ismaelites, a remnant of whom still exists 

 in Syria, in the mountains east of Tortosa, near their ancient strong- 

 hold Maszyad. Hakem disappeared, probably by assassination, in one 

 of his solitary walks near Cairo, but his disciples expect his return, 

 when he is to reign over the world. 



The Assassins, however, now called Ansayrii, are distinct from the 

 Druses, with whom there are frequently hostile conflicts, though the 

 emir Beshir has a nominal sovereignty over them. All agree, how- 

 ever, in saying that all these sects. Druses, Maronites, and Ausayrii, 

 are industrious, brave, and hospitable : their country is a land of refuge 

 from Turkish oppression ; they pay few taxes, as the emir has lands or 

 domains belonging to him, from which he draws his chief revenue. 

 Silk is the staple article for exportation, by way of Beiroot. The mul- 

 berry, the vine, the fig, and other fruit-trees, are reared in the lower 

 ridges of the Libanus, while the higher range affords good pastures. 

 Cotton ia also cultivated and manufactured. The plains, especially 

 the Bekaa, produce com. There are a number of convents scattered 

 about the mountains; there is a Maronite college for the study of 

 c at Aain el \Varka, and another for the Melchite students at 

 Deir el Mhalles. Burckhardt, who crossed the Libanus in different 

 directions, gives the names of many towns or villages inhabited by 

 Druses and Maronites, some of them considerable places, such as 

 Hasbeya, with 700 houses ; Zahle, in the Bekaa, with 900, this is now 

 the residence of the emir Beshir, or chief ; Shirrei, near Tripoli, &c. 

 The Druses dress differently from the Maronites : the men wear a 

 coarse woollen beneesh, or cloak, black, with white stripes, thrown 

 over a, waistcoat, and loose breeches of the same stuff, tied round the 

 waist by a sash of white or red linen with fringed ends ; their turban 

 is swelled out from the head into a shape resembling a turnip, and 

 flat at the top. The women wear a coarse blue jacket and petticoat, 

 without any stocking*, and their hair plaited and hanging down in 



tails behind. When they dress they put on their head the Takeel, a 

 hollow tube of silver or tin, from six to twelve inches high, shaped 

 like a truncated cone ; this cone is worn even by young female children 

 whom Mr. Paton says he has seen adorned with it while sleeping in 

 bed. Over this cone when the ladies are full dressed is thrown a white 

 piece of linen, which completely envelopes the body ; they also wear 

 silver bobs tied to their tresses. 



DRY PILE, a voltaic arrangement originally intended to consist of 

 solid elements. [GALVANISM.] 



DRY ROT, a term very incorrectly given to a species of decompo- 

 sition and destruction of the wood used in constructive operations, 

 arising from the fermentation of the alburnum of the sap retained in 

 the wood (under the influence of moist warmth and confined air) ; and 

 the subsequent growth of a fungoid excrescence, which destroys the 

 cohesion of the fibres of the wood to such an extent as to reduce it to 

 a powder. It is from the latter phenomenon that the peculiar action 

 known as the " dry rot " takes its name, though, unquestionably, the 

 action itself is not properly speaking a dry one. 



It is usually considered that wood felled at those periods of the 

 year in which the sap is rising in the trees is more exposed to this 

 species of decay than when it has been felled later in the season ; but, 

 in fact, it would appear that the really important condition to be 

 attained in employing any description of wood is, that a free circu- 

 lation of air should be maintained around it in every direction. There 

 have been suggested a countless number of processes for the pre- 

 vention of dry rot ; amongst the most successful of which may be 

 cited Kyan's process, or the use of a solution of the bichloride of mer- 

 cury ; Payne's process, or the use of the sulphate and muriate of lime 

 and the sulphate of iron in solution ; Margary's process, or the use of 

 a solution of the sulphate of copper ; Burnett's process, or the use of a 

 solution of the chloride of zinc ; Boucherie's process, or the use of the 

 pyrolignite of iron ; and Bethell's process, or the use of creosote, with 

 a small proportion of the pyrolignite of iron. It seems, nevertheless, 

 that the results of all these processes are at the best uncertain ; and it 

 therefore behoves the builder carefully to select the soundest timber 

 for the bearings in walls, and such other positions wherein it may be 

 exposed to damp ; and, above all things, to leave as much space as 

 possible around the bearings, and to secure a free circulation of air 

 about them. 



There are some valuable treatises by Faraday and by Birkbeck on 

 the subject of the prevention of dry rot, based upon the principles 

 mentioned here. 



DRYING MACHINES. A valuable improvement has been made 

 within the last few years in the mode of drying textile fabrics which 

 have been bleached or otherwise wetted. In the ordinary mode of 

 drying by exposure to the open air, the moisture gradually evaporates ; 

 hi a hot room this evaporation is expedited ; but in the drying machine 

 the mechanical principle of centrifugal force is applied in a singular 

 way. I 



A drying machine was brought into use in Paris in 1839, by Messrs. 

 Penzolt and Levesque. It acted on the centrifugal system. It con- 

 sisted of two drums or cylinders, one within the other ; the inner one 

 being pierced with holes. The textile goods, wetted by the process of 

 washing, scouring, or bleaching, were placed within the inner cylinder, 

 which was then made to revolve with a rapidity of 4000 turns in a 

 minute ; the cloth was driven forcibly against the perforated surface, 

 and the water driven through the holes with such irresistible force that 

 the cloth became nearly dry in three or four minutes. 



In 1844 Messrs Keeley and Alliott, of Nottingham, patented a very 

 elaborate machine to facilitate the scouring, bleaching, or dyeing of 

 cloth. The same inventors had before introduced a machine very 

 similar in principle to that of Messrs. Penzolt and Levesque ; but in 

 the new machine, the cloth is put into a certain compartment, the 

 bleaching or scouring liquid into another compartment, and the 

 machine is made to revolve rapidly ; the centrifugal force generated by 

 the movement drives the liquid speedily and effectually through every 

 pore of the cloth leaving the cloth instantly afterwards almost in a 

 state of dryness, and bleached likewise. 



This principle, the application of centrifugal force to produce a 

 drying action, is now very extensively adopted; the methods vary 

 considerably in detail, but their general arrangement may be under- 

 stood from the above two examples.1 



DUAL NUMBER. The Greek, Sanscrit, and Gothic of ancient, and 

 the Lithuanian of modern languages, in addition to the undefined 

 plural which they share with other tongues, possess also forms of the 

 verb and noun in which two persons or things are denoted, called the 

 dual number. On a careful consideration of the suffixes which are 

 supposed to convey this notion, there seems reason for believing that 

 the idea of duality was not originally contained in them, but simply 

 that of unlimited plurality. 



The suffix of plurality which belongs to the Indo-Teutonic languages 

 seems to have had two forms, en and ea, as in the English houscn and 

 houeet. Thus the Greeks had two forms for the first person plural of 

 their verbs active, tuptomen and tuptome. In the second person, the 

 Latin language gives the suffix tis, ecribitis ; probably the Greek, in 

 its oldest character, would have presented us with a suffix tea, but the 

 forms of that language which have come down to us give only the 

 abbreviated te, tuptete. But if there existed a double form for the 



