SHEIK 



5343 



SHELL 



parish church, dating from the reign of Henry 

 I, the town hall, Saint George's Museum 

 (founded by Ruskin) and Albert Hall, with a 

 seating capacity of 3,000. The fine botanical 

 gardens are visited by all tourists. Besides the 

 thriving cutlery establishments, the city has 

 factories producing bicycles, boilers, stoves, 

 railway springs, ties and rails and other com- 

 modities. In an old castle of Sheffield, demol- 

 ished in 1644, Mary Queen of Scots spent 

 twelve years as a prisoner. The place was 

 chartered by Edward I and was constituted a 

 city in 1893. 



SHEIK, sheek, an Arabic title, used very 

 loosely, but always meaning a venerable, aged 

 man or a chieftain. It may be the term ap- 

 plied to the head man of a village, the chief of 

 a tribe, the leader of a religious order, or sim- 

 ply a person who is old and highly respected; 

 its use down to this day is restricted, as it 

 was centuries ago, to the Arabs and to their 

 religion, Mohammedanism. The power of a 

 sheik depends wholly upon the character and 

 influence of the individual to whom the title is 

 given. The most powerful sheik is the so- 

 called grand mufti, the head of the Moham- 

 medan Church in the Turkish Empire, located 

 at Constantinople. 



SHEKEL, shek"L This word, so frequently 

 used in the Bible, meant most anciently a unit 

 of weight, though later it referred as well to a 

 coin. As a weight 'it was first employed in 

 Babylonia, but its use spread to the Phoeni- 

 cians and the Hebrews, each of whom, how- 

 ever, modified its value. The Hebrew shekel, 

 to which references are most common, weighed 

 14.1 grams, or 218 grains. Intrinsically, the 

 gold Hebrew shekel was worth about $10, the 

 silver between sixty and seventy-five cents, 

 though of course the purchasing power was far 

 in advance of such sums to-day. For even 

 while it was but a unit of weight, long before 

 any Hebrew coins were minted, the shekel was 

 used as a medium of exchange, uncoined ingots 

 of gold or silver of known weight being em- 

 ployed. 



In the time of Simon Maccabaeus the Jews 

 first issued coins of their own, and it is prob- 

 able that the first ones were struck between 

 141 and 134 B. c. This is by no means certain, 

 however, as these early Jewish coins bear no 

 date. The most important of these coins was 

 the silver shekel, which weighed between 212 

 and 220 grains and was of about the diameter 

 of a United States cent. Upon one side was 

 the representation of a chalice, probably a pot 



of manna, with the words Shekel of Israel; 

 while on the other was the legend Jerusalem 

 the Holy, surrounding a flower device, presum- 

 ably Aaron's rod that budded. Half shekels 

 were also coined. 



In loose language of the present day the term 

 shekel has come to refer to money in general. 



SEELBYVILLE, shel'bivil, LND., the county 

 seat of Shelby County, and a center of furni- 

 ture manufacturing, situated twenty-six miles 

 southeast of Indianapolis and eighty-six miles 

 northwest of Cincinnati, at the junction of the 

 Big Blue and Little Blue rivers. It is served 

 by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & Saint 

 Louis and the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago 

 & Saint Louis railroads and by electric inter- 

 urban lines. In 1910 the population was 9,500; 

 it was 10,65 (Federal estimate) in 1916. The 

 area is nearly two square miles. Shelbyville 

 has a county courthouse, a city hall, Carnegie 

 Library, the Major Memorial Hospital and a 

 Masonic Temple, Furniture is made by six- 

 teen factories. Other plants produce flour, 

 brick, carriages, glue, baking powder, mirror 

 screen for picture, shows and other commodi- 

 ties. Shelbyville was settled in 1822. It was 

 the birthplace and home of the novelist Charles 

 Major, author of When Knighthood Was in 

 Flower. 



SHEL'DON, CHARLES MONROE (1857- ), 

 an American clergyman and author. He was 

 born at Wellsville, N. Y., educated at Brown 

 University and Andover Theological Seminary, 

 and in 1886 ordained in the Congregational 

 ministry. From 1886 to 1888 he preached at 

 Waterbury, Vt., and from 1889 to 1912 at To- 

 peka, Kan., but in the latter year resigned his 

 pastorate to take part in an antisaloon cam- 

 paign in New Zealand. In 1900 his name came 

 prominently before the public when for one 

 week he edited the Topeka Daily Capital on 

 what he felt were strictly Christian principles. 

 Sheldon's works, some of which have been very 

 popular, include Robert Hardy's Seven Days; 

 The Crucifixion of Philip Strong; His Brother's 

 Keeper; In His Steps, by far the best known 

 and most widely discussed; The Miracle at 

 Markham; Who Killed Joe's Baby? and The 

 Narrow Gate. He has also edited various 

 works of a religious character. There is the 

 spirit of the crusader in nearly everything he 

 has written; he uses a book to drive home to 

 the reader a great spiritual or moral principle. 



SHELL, the hard covering of the bodies of 

 mollusks and of various other groups among 

 the lower animals. The mollusks are the typ- 



