GALLABAT, or Galabat, called by the Abyssinians Matemma (Metemma), a town of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, in 13° N. 36° 12′ E. It is built, at the foot of a steep slope, on the left bank of a tributary of the Atbara called the Khor Abnaheir, which forms here the Sudan-Abyssinian frontier. Gallabat lies 90 m. W. by N. of Gondar, the capital of Amhara, and being on the main route from Sennar to Abyssinia, is a trade centre of some importance. Pop. about 3000. The majority of the buildings are grass tukls. Slaves, beeswax, coffee, cotton and hides were formerly the chief articles of commerce. The slave market was closed about 1874. Being on the frontier line, the possession of the town was for long a matter of dispute between the Sudanese, and later the Egyptians, on the one hand and the Abyssinians on the other. About 1870 the Egyptians garrisoned the town, which in 1886 was attacked by the dervishes and sacked. From Gallabat a dervish raiding party penetrated to Gondar, which they looted. In revenge an Abyssinian army under King John attacked the dervishes close to Gallabat in March 1889. The dervishes suffered very severely, but King John being killed by a stray bullet, the Abyssinians retired (see [Egypt]: Military Operations, 1885-1896). In December 1898 an Anglo-Egyptian force entered Gallabat. The Abyssinians then held the fort, but as the result of frontier arrangement the town was definitely included in the Sudan, though Abyssinia takes half the customs revenue. Since 1899 the trade of the place has revived, coffee and live stock being the most important items.
The town and district form a small ethnographical island, having been peopled in the 18th century by a colony of Takruri from Darfur, who, finding the spot a convenient resting-place for their fellow-pilgrims on their way to Mecca and back, obtained permission from the negus of Abyssinia to make a permanent settlement. They are an industrious agricultural race, and cultivate cotton with considerable success. They also collect honey in large quantities. The Takruri possess jagged throwing knives, which are said to have been brought from their original home in the Upper Congo regions.
GALLAIT, LOUIS (1810-1887), Belgian painter, was born at Tournay, in Hainaut, Belgium, on the 9th of May 1810. He first studied in his native town under Hennequin. In 1832 his first picture, “Tribute to Caesar,” won a prize at the exhibition at Ghent. He then went to Antwerp to prosecute his studies under Mathieu Ignace Van Brée, and in the following year exhibited at the Brussels Salon “Christ Healing the Blind.” This picture was purchased by subscription and placed in the cathedral at Tournay. Gallait next went to Paris, whence he sent to the Belgian Salons “Job on the Dunghill,” “Montaigne Visiting Tasso in Prison”; and, in 1841, “The Abdication of Charles V.,” in the Brussels Gallery. This was hailed as a triumph, and gained for the painter a European reputation. Official invitations then caused him to settle at Brussels, where he died on the 20th of November 1887. Among his greater works may be named: “The Last Honours paid to Counts Egmont and Horn by the Corporations of the Town of Brussels,” now at Tournay; “The Death of Egmont,” in the Berlin gallery; the “Coronation of Baudouin, Emperor of Constantinople,” painted for Versailles; “The Temptation of St Anthony,” in the palace at Brussels; “The Siege of Antioch,” “Art and Liberty,” a “Portrait of M.B. Dumortier” and “The Plague at Tournay,” all in the Brussels gallery. “A Gipsy Woman and her Children” was painted in 1852. “M. Gallait has all the gifts that may be acquired by work, taste, judgment and determination,” wrote Théophile Gautier; his art is that of a man of tact, a skilled painter, happy in his dramatic treatment but superficial. No doubt, this Walloon artist, following the example of the Flemings of the Renaissance and the treatment of Belgian classical painters and the French Romantic school, sincerely aimed at truth; unfortunately, misled by contemporary taste, he could not conceive of it excepting as dressed in sentimentality. As an artist employed by the State he exercised considerable influence, and for a long period he was the leader of public taste in Brussels.
See Teichlin, Louis Gallait und die Malerei in Deutschland (1853); J. Dujardin, L’Art flamand (1899); C. Lemonnier, Histoire des beaux-arts en Belgique (1881).
GALLAND, ANTOINE (1646-1715), French Orientalist and archaeologist, the first European translator of the Arabian Nights, was born on the 4th of April 1646 at Rollot, in the department of Somme. The completion of his school education at Noyon was followed by a brief apprenticeship to a trade, from which, however, he soon escaped, to pursue his linguistic studies at Paris. After having been employed for some time in making a catalogue of the Oriental manuscripts at the Sorbonne, he was, in 1670, attached to the French embassy at Constantinople; and in 1673 he travelled in Syria and the Levant, where he copied a great number of inscriptions, and sketched, and in some cases removed historical monuments. After a brief visit to France, where his collection of ancient coins attracted some attention, Galland returned to the Levant in 1676; and in 1679 he undertook a third voyage, being commissioned by the French East India Company to collect for the cabinet of Colbert; on the expiration of this commission he was instructed by the government to continue his researches, and had the title of “antiquary to the king” conferred upon him. During his prolonged residences abroad he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages and literatures, which, on his final return to France, enabled him to render valuable assistance to Thevenot, the keeper of the royal library, and to Barthélemy d’Herbelot. After their deaths he lived for some time at Caen under the roof of Nicolas Foucault (1643-1721), the intendant of Caen, himself no mean archaeologist; and there he began the publication (12 vols., 1704-1717) of Les mille et une nuits, which excited immense interest during the time of its appearance, and is still the standard French translation. It had no pretensions to verbal accuracy, and the coarseness of the language was modified to suit European taste, but the narrative was adequately rendered. In 1701 Galland had been admitted into the Academy of Inscriptions, and in 1709 he was appointed to the chair of Arabic in the Collège de France. He continued to discharge the duties of this post until his death, which took place on the 17th of February 1715.
Besides a number of archaeological works, especially in the department of numismatics, he published a compilation from the Arabic, Persian and Turkish, entitled Paroles remarquables, bons mots et maximes des orientaux (1694), and a translation from an Arabic manuscript, De l’origine et du progrès du café (1699). The former of these works appeared in an English translation in 1795. His Contes et fables indiennes de Bidpaï et de Lokman was published (1724) after his death. Among his numerous unpublished manuscripts are a translation of the Koran and a Histoire générale des empereurs turcs. His Journal was published by M. Charles Schefer in 1881.