HARUGABI, an order in the United States, composed chiefly of Germans started in 1847, anti supposed to number over 20,000 members. Its aims are social and benevo lent, and particularly the preservation of the German language. There are a general or national lodge, state lodges, and about 240 subordinate lodges.
surnamed, AL-RAscrilD, i.e., the just, the most renowned of the Abbaside caliphs, succeeded his elder brother, Handi, in the caliphate, in the year 786, not having yet attained his twenty-first year. Various insurrections in the interior of the kingdom were speedily put down, and the wars against the Byzantines and the Chasars brought to an end. Though the boundaries of the vast empire, which extended from the Cau casus to the sources of the Nile, were notenlarged, the empire lost none of its provinces. Miran gave himself tip unreservedly to the pleasures of life, leaving the entire admin istration of his extensive kingdom in the hands of Yahya, the Barmecide, and his four sons; and the energy of their administration, the enforcement of order, and the general prosperity of the country proved that his confidence was not misplaced. His capital city of Bagdad he rendered the most flourishing city of that period. Tribute was paid to him from all quarters, and splendid edifices were erected by him at a prodigious cost. At the same time, he was the patron of learning, poetry, and music, and his court was the resort of the most eminent Mohammedans of the age. He was celebrated in countless songs and narratives; and is the hero of several of the stories in the Arabian Nights.
Towards the cud of his reign, he conceived a rooted hatred towards the Barmecides (see BARMECIDES); yet so well did he know their tried fidelity, that he suffered the reins of government to remain in their hands for sonic years afterwards. In 803 he caused the vizier, his four sons, and all their descendants, one only excepted, to be executed, not even excepting his favorite Jaafer, who had been his companion in, his nocturnal rambles through the streets of Bagdad. On the destruction of this family, his affairs fell immediately into irretrievable confusion; treason and rebellion, no longer dreading the far-reaching arm of the able vizier, showed themselves in every corner of the empire; and now, when it was too late, Hfirfin thought with bitter regret of his savage cruelty to that able family. The most formidable of these insurrections having broken out in Khorassan, in the n.e. of the empire, Harlin marched in person against the rebels. But an attack of apoplexy obliged him to remain behind in Tfis, where be soon afterwards died, in the month of March, 809. The tales of the Arabian Nights have thrown a false halo round his memory, for though he was undoubtedly the most enlightened monarch of the age, yet, like time most of the Abbaside race, lie could, when it suited him, act to perfection the part of the avaricious and bloody tyrant.