[Arabella Stuart], a cousin of King James I., the victim all her days of jealousy and state policy, suspected of aspiring to the crown on the death of Queen Elizabeth, was shut up in the Tower of London, where she died bereft of reason in 1615 at the age of 38.
[Arabesque], an ornamentation introduced by the Moors, consisting of imaginary, often fantastic, mathematical or vegetable forms, but exclusive of the forms of men and animals.
[Ara`bi, Ahmed Pasha], leader of an insurrectionary movement in Egypt in 1882; he claimed descent from the Prophet; banished to Ceylon; b. 1839.
[Arabia] (12,000), the most westerly peninsula of Asia and the largest in the world, being one-third the size of the whole of Europe, consisting of (a) a central plateau with pastures for cattle, and fertile valleys; (b) a ring of deserts, the Nefud in the N., stony, the Great Arabian, a perfect Sahara, in the S., sandy, said sometimes to be 600 ft. deep, and the Dahna between; and (c) stretches of coast land, generally fertile on the W. and S.; is divided into eight territories; has no lakes or rivers, only wadies, oftenest dry; the climate being hot and arid, has no forests, and therefore few wild animals; a trading country with no roads or railways, only caravan routes, yet the birthland of a race that threatened at one time to sweep the globe, and of a religion that has been a life-guidance to wide-scattered millions of human beings for over twelve centuries of time.
[Arabia Felix], the W. coast of Arabia, contains [Yemen] and [El Hejaz] (q. v.), and is subject to Turkey.
[Arabian Desert]. See [Arabia].
[Arabian Nights], or the Thousand and One Nights, a collection of tales of various origin and date, traceable in their present form to the middle of the 15th century, and first translated into French by Galland in 1704. The thread on which they are strung is this: A Persian monarch having made a vow that he would marry a fresh bride every night and sacrifice her in the morning, the vizier's daughter obtained permission to be the first bride, and began a story which broke off at an interesting part evening after evening for a thousand and one nights, at the end of which term the king, it is said, released her and spared her life.
[Arabs, The], "a noble-gifted people, swift-handed, deep-hearted, something most agile, active, yet most meditative, enthusiastic in their character; a people of wild, strong feelings, and iron restraint over these. In words too, as in action, not a loquacious people, taciturn rather, but eloquent, gifted when they do speak, an earnest, truthful kind of men, of Jewish kindred indeed, but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish." Such is Carlyle's opinion of the race from whom Mahomet sprang, as given in his "Heroes."
[Arach`ne], a Lydian maiden, who excelled in weaving, and whom Athena changed into a spider because she had proudly challenged her ability to weave as artistic a work; she had failed in the competition, and previously hanged herself in her despair.