AALI PASHA, Mehemed a-le' me-hem-ed' ft-min', a Turkish statesman: b. Constantinople 1815; d. 6 Sept. 1871. ing public life at 15, he was chargé d'affaires at London 1838, ambassador to Great Britain 1841-44; chancellor of the divan 1845; thrice minister of foreign affairs in the troublous years 1846-52; grand vizier a short time in 1852 but soon displaced as not in political cord with his companions. Recalled as foreign minister during the Crimean war of 1854, in March 1855 he took part in the treaty of the guarantees*; in July again became grand vizier, and at the Treaty of Paris in 1856 showed great decision and cleverness in looking after Turkish interests, but without entire success. In November his political tone forced him to resign, but he remained minister without portfolio, and member of the Great Council. After Reshid Pasha's death in 1858 he was again grand vizier, and soon again withdrawn; but in November 1861 he resumed the office of foreign minister. He was presi dent of the convention on Rumanian affairs, Paris 1864, and member of the Black Sea Con ference in London 1871. During the Sultan's absence at the Paris Exposition in 1867 he was regent; and while the very soul of the reform movement energetically suppressed the Cretan rebellion and the movement for Egyp tian independence. In the full tide of activity he suddenly died,*-- an excellent man and statesman who strove all his life, like Midhat Pasha, but with little success, to regenerate and modernize his country.
AAR or AARE, ar ('river'), the name of several German streams: chiefly, a Swiss river tributary to the Rhine, about 175 miles long, the largest in Switzerland save that and the Rhone. Formed by torrents from the vast
and famous Oberaar and Unteraar glaciers of the Bernese Alps in E. Bern, it flows northwest through the valley of Hash over the Handeck Falls, 200 feet high, expands into Lake Brienz, and past Interlaken into Lake Thun, becomes navigable, passes Bern, turns north and then northeast along the southern slopes of the Jura, past Solothurn and Aarau, and join ing the Limmat, shortly after breaks through the ridge and empties into the Rhine at Waldshut. Chief affluents, the Saane, Zihl, and Emme, the Reuss feeding it from the lake of Lucerne and Zuger See, the Limmat from the lake of Zurich and the Liitschine from the two splendid Grindelwald glaciers. The chief cities on its banks are Bern, Solothurn, Aarau and Interlaken.
AARAT.i, Switzerland, capital of the canton of Aargau; right bank of the Aar, 41 miles northeast of Bern, 1,100 feet above sea-level, in a fertile plain just south of the Jura, whose peaks close by are the Wasserfluh (2,850 feet) and Giselahfluh (2,540 feet). It has famous manufactures of cannon, bells, and fine scientific instruments, besides cutlery, leather, silk, and cotton; and holds eight fairs yearly. There are also historic, scientific, and ethnographic museums, a can tonal library rich in volumes of Swiss history, and a bronze statue of the historian and novel ist Heinrich' Zschokke (q.v.), who lived here. Here, December 1797, the old Swiss confeder acy held its last session; April to September 1798 it was the capital of the Helvetic Republic. Pop. 9,800.