Historically Ayuthia is the most interesting spot in Siam. Among the innumerable ruins may be seen those of palaces, pagodas, churches and fortifications, the departed glories of which are recorded in the writings of the early European travellers who first brought Siam within the knowledge of the West, and laid the foundations of the present foreign intercourse and trade. The town was twice destroyed by the Burmese, once in 1555 and again in 1767, and from the date of the second destruction it ceased to be the capital of the country.
AZAÏS, PIERRE HYACINTHE (1766-1845), French philosopher, was born at Sorèze and died at Paris. He spent his early years as a teacher and a village organist. At the outbreak of the Revolution he viewed it with favour, but was soon disgusted at the violence of its methods. A critical pamphlet drew upon him the hatred of the revolutionists, and it was not until 1806 that he was able to settle in Paris. In 1809 he published his great work, Des Compensations dans les destinées humaines (5th ed. 1846), which pleased Napoleon so much that he made its author professor at St Cyr. In 1811 he became inspector of the public library at Avignon, and from 1812 to 1815 he held the same position at Nancy. The Restoration government at first suspected him as a Bonapartist, but at length granted him a pension. From that time he occupied himself in lecturing and the publication of philosophical works. In the Compensations he sought to prove that, on the whole, happiness and misery are equally balanced, and therefore that men should accept the government which is given them rather than risk the horrors of revolution. "Le principe de l'inégalité naturelle et essentielle dans les destinées humaines conduit inévitablement au fanatisme révolutionnaire ou au fanatisme religieux." The principles of compensation and equilibrium are found also in the physical universe, the product of matter and force, whose cause is God. Force, naturally expansive and operating on the homogeneous atoms which constitute elemental matter, is subject to the law of equilibrium, or equivalence of action and reaction. The development of phenomena under this law may be divided into three stages—the physical, the physiological, the intellectual and moral. The immaterial in man is the expansive force inherent in him. Moral and political phenomena are the result of the opposing forces of progress and preservation, and their perfection lies in the fulfilment of the law of equilibrium or universal harmony. This may be achieved in seven thousand years, when man will vanish from the world. In an additional five thousand, a similar equilibrium will obtain in the physical sphere, which will then itself pass away. In addition to his philosophical work, Azaïs studied music under his father, Pierre Hyacinthe Azaïs (1743-1796), professor of music at Sorèze and Toulouse, and composer of sacred music in the style of Gossec. He wrote for the Revue musicale a series of articles entitled Acoustique fondamentale (1831), containing an ingenious, but now exploded, theory of the vibration of the air. His other works are: Système universel (8 vols., 1812); Du Sort de l'homme (3 vols., 1820); Cours de philosophie (8 vols., 1824), reproduced as Explication universelle (3 vols., 1826-1828); Jeunesse, maturité, religion, philosophie (1837), De la phrénologie, du magnétisme, et de la folie (1843).
AZALEA, a genus of popular hardy or greenhouse plants, belonging to the heath order (Ericaceae), and scarcely separable botanically from Rhododendron. The beautiful varieties now in cultivation have been bred from a few originals, natives of the hilly regions of China and Japan, Asia Minor, and the United States. They are perhaps unequalled as indoor decorative plants. They are usually increased by grafting the half-ripened shoots on the stronger-growing kinds, the shoots of the stock and the grafts being in a similarly half-ripened condition, and the plants being placed in a moist heat of 65°. Large plants of inferior kinds, if healthy, may be grafted all over with the choicer sorts, so as to obtain a large specimen in a short time. They require a rich and fibrous peat soil, with a mixture of sand to prevent its getting water-logged. The best time to pot azaleas is three or four weeks after the blooming is over. The soil should be made quite solid to prevent its retaining too much water. To produce handsome plants, they must while young be stopped as required. Specimens that have got leggy may be cut back just before growth commences. The lowest temperature for them during the winter is about 35°, and during their season of growth from 55° to 65° at night, and 75° by day, the atmosphere being at the same time well charged with moisture. They are liable to the attacks of thrips and red spider, which do great mischief if not promptly destroyed.
The following are some well-known species:—A. arborescens (Pennsylvania), a deciduous shrub 10-20 ft. high; A. calendulacea (Carolina to Pennsylvania), a beautiful deciduous shrub 2-6 ft. high, with yellow, red, orange and copper-coloured flowers; A. hispida, a North American shrub, 10-15 ft. high, flowers white edged with red; A. indica (China), the so-called Indian azalea, a shrub 3-6 ft. or more high, the original of numerous single and double varieties, many of the more vigorous of which are hardy in southern England and Ireland; A. nudiflora, a North American shrub, 3-4 ft. high, which hybridizes freely with A. calendulacea, A. pontica and others, to produce single and
double forms of a great variety of shades; A. pontica (Levant, Caucasus, &c.), 4-6 ft. high, with numerous varieties differing in the colour of the flowers and the tint of the leaves; A. sinensis (China and Japan), a beautiful shrub, 3-4 ft. high, with orange-red or yellow bell-shaped flowers, hardy in the southern half of England, large numbers of varieties being in cultivation under the name of Japanese azaleas.
AZAMGARH, or Azimgarh, a city and district of British India, in the Gorakhpur division of the United Provinces. The town is situated on the river Tons, and has a railway station. It is said to have been founded about 1665 by a powerful landholder named Azim Khan, who owned large estates in this part of the country. Pop. (1901) 18,835.
The area of the district is 2207 sq. m. It is bounded on the N. by the river Gogra, separating it from Gorakhpur district; on the E. by Ghazipur district and the river Ganges; on the S. by the districts of Jaunpur and Ghazipur; and on the W. by Jaunpur and Fyzabad. The portion of the district lying along the banks of the Gogra is a low-lying tract, varying considerably in width; south of this, however, the ground takes a slight rise. The slope of the land is from north-west to south-east, but the general drainage is very inadequate. Roughly speaking, the district consists of a series of parallel ridges, whose summits are depressed into beds or hollows, along which the rivers flow; while between the ridges are low-lying rice lands, interspersed with numerous natural reservoirs. The soil is fertile, and very highly cultivated, bearing magnificent crops of rice, sugar-cane and indigo. There are several indigo factories. A branch of the Bengal & North-Western railway to Azamgarh town was opened in 1898. In 1901 the population was 1,529,785, showing a decrease of 11% in the decade. The district was ceded to the Company in 1801 by the wazirs of Lucknow. In 1857 it became a centre of mutiny. On the 3rd of June 1857 the 17th Regiment of Native Infantry mutinied at Azamgarh, murdered some of their officers, and carried off the government treasure to Fyzabad. The district became a centre of the fighting between the Gurkhas and the rebels, and was not finally cleared until October 1858 by Colonel Kelly.
AẒĀN (Arabic for "announcement"), the call or summons to public prayers proclaimed by the Muezzin (crier) from the mosque twice daily in all Mahommedan countries. In small mosques the Muezzin at Aẓān stands at the door or at the side of the building; in large ones he takes up his position in the minaret. The call translated runs: "God is most great!" (four times), "I testify there is no God but God!" (twice), "I testify that Mahomet is the apostle of God!" (twice), "Come to prayer!" (twice), "Come to salvation!" (twice), "God is most great!" (twice), "There is no God but God!" To the morning Aẓān are added the words, "Prayer is better than sleep!" (twice). The devout Moslem has to make a set response to each phrase of the Muezzin. At first these are mere repetitions of Aẓān, but to the cry "Come to prayer!" the listener must answer, "I have no power nor strength but from God the most High and Great." To that of "Come to salvation!" the formal response is, "What God willeth will be: what He willeth not will not be." The recital of the Aẓān must be listened to with the utmost reverence. The passers in the streets must stand still, all those at work must cease from their labours, and those in bed must sit up.
The Muezzin, who is a paid servant of the mosque, must stand with his face towards Mecca and with the points of his forefingers in his ears while reciting Aẓān. He is specially chosen for good character, and Aẓān must not be recited by any one unclean, by a drunkard, by the insane, or by a woman. The summons to prayers was at first simply "Come to prayer!" Mahomet, anxious to invest the call with the dignity of a ceremony, took counsel of his followers. Some suggested the Jewish trumpet, others the Christian bell, but according to legend the matter was finally settled by a dream:—"While the matter was under discussion, Abdallah, a Khazrajite, dreamed that he met a man clad in green raiment, carrying a bell. Abdallah sought to buy it, saying that it would do well for bringing together the assembly of the faithful. 'I will show thee a better way,' replied the stranger; 'let a crier cry aloud "God is most great, &c."' On awaking, Abdallah went to Mahomet and told him his dream," and Aẓān was thereupon instituted.
AZARA, DON JOSE NICHOLAS DE (1731-1804), Spanish diplomatist, was born in 1731 at Barbunales, Aragon, and was appointed in 1765 Spanish agent and procurator-general, and in 1785 ambassador at Rome. During his long residence there he distinguished himself as a collector of Italian antiquities and as a patron of art. He was also an able and active diplomatist, took a leading share in the difficult and hazardous task of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, and was instrumental in securing the election of Pius VI. He withdrew to Florence when the French took possession of Rome in 1798, but acted on behalf of the pope during his exile and after his death at Valence in 1799. He was afterwards Spanish ambassador in Paris. In that post it was his misfortune to be forced by his government to conduct the negotiations which led to the treaty of San Ildefonso, by which Spain was wholly subjected to Napoleon. Azara was friendly to a French alliance, but his experience showed him that his country was being sacrificed to Napoleon. The First Consul liked him personally, and found him easy to influence. Azara died, worn out, in Paris in 1804. His end was undoubtedly embittered by his discovery of the ills which the French alliance must produce for Spain.