ASAF-UD-DOWLAH, nawab wazir of Oudh from 1775 to 1797, was the son of Shuja-ud-Dowlah, his mother and grandmother being the begums of Oudh, whose spoliation formed one of the chief counts in the charges against Warren Hastings. When Shuja-ud-Dowlah died he left two million pounds sterling buried in the vaults of the zenana. The widow and mother of the deceased prince claimed the whole of this treasure under the terms of a will which was never produced. When Warren Hastings pressed the nawab for the payment of debt due to the Company, he obtained from his mother a loan of 26 lakhs of rupees, for which he gave her a jagir of four times the value; he subsequently obtained 30 lakhs more in return for a full acquittal, and the recognition of her jagirs without interference for life by the Company. These jagirs were afterwards confiscated on the ground of the begum’s complicity in the rising of Chai Singh, which was attested by documentary evidence. The evidence now available seems to show that Warren Hastings did his best throughout to rescue the nawab from his own incapacity, and was inclined to be lenient to the begums.
See The Administration of Warren Hastings, 1772-1785, by G.W. Forrest (1892).
ASAPH, the eponym of the Asaphite gild of singers, one of the hereditary choirs that superintended the musical services of the temple at Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The names occur in the titles of certain Psalms, and the writer of the Book of Chronicles makes Asaph a seer (2 Chron. xxix. 30), contemporary with David and Solomon, and chief of the singers of his time.
ASBESTOS, a fibrous mineral from Gr. ἄσβεστος, unquenchable, by transference, incombustible, in allusion to its power of resisting the action of fire. The word was applied by Dioscorides and other Greek authors to quicklime, but Pliny evidently used it in its modern sense. It was occasionally woven by the ancients into handkerchiefs, and, it has been said, into shrouds which were used in cremation to prevent the ashes of the corpse from mingling with the wood-ashes of the pyre.
In different varieties of asbestos the fibres vary greatly in character. When silky and flexible they are sometimes known as mountain flax. The finer kinds are often termed amianthus (q.v.). When the fibres are naturally interwoven, so as to form a felted mass, the mineral passes under such trivial names as mountain leather, mountain cork, mountain paper, &c. The asbestos formerly used in the arts was generally a fibrous form of some kind of amphibole, like tremolite, or anthophyllite, though occasionally perhaps a pyroxene. In recent years, however, most of the asbestos in the market is a fibrous variety of serpentine, known mineralogically as chrysotile, and probably some of the ancient asbestos was of this character (see [Amianthus]). Both minerals possess similar properties, so far as resistance to heat is concerned. The amphibole-asbestos, or hornblende-asbestos, is usually white or grey in colour, and may present great length of fibre, some of the Italian asbestos reaching exceptionally a length of 5 or 6 ft., but it is often harsh and brittle. The serpentine-asbestos occurs in narrow veins, yielding fibres of only 2 or 3 in. in length, but of great tensile strength: they are usually of a delicate silky lustre, very flexible and elastic, and of yellowish or greenish colour.
The Canadian asbestos, which of all kinds is at present the most important industrially, occurs in a small belt of serpentine in the province of Quebec, principally near Black Lake and Thetford, where it was first recognized as commercially valuable about 1877. The rock is generally quarried, cobbed by hand, dried if necessary, crushed in rock-breakers, and then passed between rollers; it is reduced to a finer state of division by so-called fiberizers, and graded on a shaking screen, where the loosened fibres are sorted. The process varies in different mills.
In the United States asbestos is worked only to a very limited extent. An amphibole-asbestos is obtained from Sall Mountain, Georgia; and asbestos has also been worked in the serpentine of Vermont. It occurs also in South Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Arizona and elsewhere. Dr G.P. Merrill has shown that some asbestos results from a process of shearing in the rocks.
Formerly asbestos was obtained almost exclusively from Italy and Corsica, and a large quantity is still yielded by Italian workings. This is mostly an amphibole. It is in some cases associated with nodules of green garnet known as “seeds”— Semenze dell’ amianto. Asbestos is widely distributed, but only in a few localities does it occur in sufficient abundance and purity to be worked commercially; it is found, for example, to a limited extent, at many localities in Tirol, Hungary and Russia; Queensland, New South Wales and New Zealand. In the British Isles it is not unknown, being found among the old rocks of North Wales and in parts of Ireland. Byssolite or asbestoid is a blue or green fibrous amphibole from Dauphiny.