ABAUZIT, FIRMIN (ah-bo-ze) (1679-1767), French scholar, was born of Protestant parents at Vries, in Languedoc, Nov. 11, 1679, and died at Geneva, March 20, 1767. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 the family took refuge in Geneva where the boy received his education. Abauzit visited Holland and England, and was one of the earliest defenders of the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. He declined an offer from William III. to settle in England, also the offer of the chair of philosophy at Geneva. A sinecure as librarian to the city of Geneva provided him with leisure to pursue his multifarious studies. Rousseau praises him in his Nouvelle Heloise, and Voltaire, when a visitor told him he -had come to see a great man, asked if he had seen Abauzit. A collection of his writings was published at Geneva in 1770, and another in London in 1773.
His toire litteraire de Geneve, Harwood's Miscellanies, and W. Orme's Bibliotheca Biblica (1824).
the name of the Babylonian 'arnora of the third century, who established at Sura the systematic study of the Rabbinic traditions which, using the Mishnah as text, led to the compilation of the Talmud. He is commonly known as Rab. ABBADIDES, a Mohammedan dynasty which arose in Spain on the downfall of the western caliphate. The founder of the house was Abd-ul-Qasim Mohammed, the cadi of Seville in 1023. When he died in 1042 he had created a State which, though weak in itself, was strong as compared with the little powers about it. He had made his family the recognized leaders of the Moham medans of Arab and native Spanish descent against the Berber element, whose chief was the king of Granada. Abbad, surnamed ,E1 Motacklid, his son and successor, is one of the most remarkable figures in Spanish Mohammedan history. A poet and a lover of letters, he was also a poisoner, a drinker of wine, a sceptic and treacherous to the utmost degree. He killed with his own hand one of his sons who had rebelled against him. On one occasion he trapped a number of his enemies, the Berber chiefs of the Ronda, into visiting him in the Alcazar at Seville, and got rid of them by smothering them in the hot room of a bath. It was his taste to preserve the skulls of the enemies he had killed—those of the meaner men to be used as flower-pots, while those of the princes were kept in special chests. His reign until his death on Feb. 28, 1069, was mainly spent in extending his power at the expense of his smaller neighbours, and in conflicts with his chief rival the king of Granada. After 1063 he was assailed by Fer nando El Magno of Castile and Leon, who marched to the gates of Seville, and forced him to pay tribute. His son, Mohammed Abd-ul-Qasim Abenebet—who reigned by the title of El Motamid was the third and last of the Abbadides. He went further in patronage of literature than his father, for he chose as his favourite and prime minister the poet Ibn Ammar. He carried on the feuds of his family with the Berbers, and in his efforts to extend his dominions could be as faithless as his father. In i o8o he brought down upon himself the vengeance of Alphonso VI. of Castile by a typical piece of flighty oriental barbarity. He had endeavoured to pay part of his tribute to the Christian king with false money. The fraud was detected by a Jew, who was one of the envoys of Alphonso. El Motamid, in a moment of folly and rage, crucified the Jew and imprisoned the Christian members of the mission. Alphonso retaliated by a destructive raid. When Alphonso took Toledo in 1085, El Motamid called in Yusef ibn Tashfin, the Almoravide (see SPAIN : History and ALMORAVIDES). During the six years which preceded his deposition in 1091, El Motamid behaved with valour on the field, but with much mean ness and political folly. It was probably during this period that he surrendered his beautiful daughter Zaida to the Christian king, who made her his concubine, and is said by some authorities to have married her after she bore him a son, Sancho. In 1o91 the Almoravides stormed Seville. El Motamid, who had fought bravely, was weak enough to order his sons to surrender the fortresses they still held, in order to save his own life. He died in prison in Africa in 1o95.
See R. P. A. Dozy, Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne (Leyden, 1860 ; and Historic Abbadidarum (Scriptorum Arabum loci de Abbadidio, Leyden, 1846). (D. H.)
