HAMMERBEAM ROOF, in architecture, the name given to a Gothic open timber roof, of which the finest example is that over Westminster Hall (1395-1399). In order to give greater height in the centre, the ordinary tie beam is cut through, and the portions remaining, known as hammerbeams, are supported by curved braces from the wall; in Westminster Hall, in order to give greater strength to the framing, a large arched piece of timber is carried across the hall, rising from the bottom of the wall piece to the centre of the collar beam, the latter being also supported by curved braces rising from the end of the hammerbeam. The span of Westminster Hall is 68 ft. 4 in., and the opening between the ends of the hammerbeams 25 ft. 6 in. The height from the paving of the hall to the hammerbeam is 40 ft., and to the underside of the collar beam 63 ft. 6 in., so that an additional height in the centre of 23 ft. 6 in. has been gained. Other important examples of hammerbeam roofs exist over the halls of Hampton Court and Eltham palaces, and there are numerous examples of smaller dimensions in churches throughout England and particularly in the eastern counties. The ends of the hammerbeams are usually decorated with winged angels holding shields; the curved braces and beams are richly moulded, and the spandrils in the larger examples filled in with tracery, as in Westminster Hall. Sometimes, but rarely, the collar beam is similarly treated, or cut through and supported by additional curved braces, as in the hall of the Middle Temple, London.
HAMMERFEST, the most northern town in Europe. Pop. (1900) 2300. It is situated on an island (Kvalö) off the N.W. coast of Norway, in Finmarken amt (county), in 70° 40′ 11″ N., the latitude being that of the extreme north of Alaska. Its position affords the best illustration of the warm climatic influence of the north-eastward Atlantic drift, the mean annual temperature being 36° F. (January 31°, July 57°). Hammerfest is 674 m. by sea N.E. of Trondhjem, and 78 S.W. from the North Cape. The character of this coast differs from the southern, the islands being fewer and larger, and of table shape. The narrow strait Strömmen separates Kvalö from the larger Seiland, whose snow-covered hills with several glaciers rise above 3500 ft., while an insular rampart of mountains, Sorö, protects the strait and harbour from the open sea. The town is timber-built and modern; and the Protestant church, town-hall, and schools were all rebuilt after fire in 1890. There is also a Roman Catholic church. The sun does not set at Hammerfest from the 13th of May to the 29th of July. This is the busy season of the townsfolk. Vessels set out to the fisheries, as far as Spitsbergen and the Kara Sea; and trade is brisk, not only Norwegian and Danish but British, German and particularly Russian vessels engaging in it. Cod-liver oil and salted fish are exported with some reindeer-skins, fox-skins and eiderdown; and coal and salt for curing are imported. In the spring the great herds of tame reindeer are driven out to swim Strömmen and graze in the summer pastures of Seiland; towards winter they are called home again. From the 18th of November to the 23rd of January the sun is not seen, and the enforced quiet of winter prevails. Electric light was introduced in the town in 1891. On the Fuglenaes or Birds’ Cape, which protects the harbour on the north, there stands a column with an inscription in Norse and Latin, stating that Hammerfest was one of the stations of the expedition for the measurement of the arc of the meridian in 1816-1852. Nor is this its only association with science; for it was one of the spots chosen by Sir Edward Sabine for his series of pendulum experiments in 1823. The ascent of the Sadlen or the Tyven in the neighbourhood is usually undertaken by travellers for the view of the barren, snow-clad Arctic landscape, the bluff indented coast, and the vast expanse of the Arctic Ocean.
HAMMER-KOP, or Hammerhead, an African bird, which has been regarded as a stork and as a heron, the Scopus umbretta of ornithologists, called the “Umbre” by T. Pennant, now placed in a separate family Scopidae between the herons and storks. It was discovered by M. Adanson, the French traveller, in Senegal about the middle of the 19th century, and was described by M. J. Brisson in 1760. It has since been found to inhabit nearly the whole of Africa and Madagascar, and is the “hammerkop” (hammerhead) of the Cape colonists. Though not larger than a raven, it builds an enormous nest, some six feet in diameter, with a flat-topped roof and a small hole for entrance and exit, and placed either on a tree or a rocky ledge. The bird, of an almost uniform brown colour, slightly glossed with purple and its tail barred with black, has a long occipital crest, generally borne horizontally, so as to give rise to its common name. It is somewhat sluggish by day, but displays much activity at dusk, when it will go through a series of strange performances.
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HAMMER-PURGSTALL, JOSEPH, Freiherr von (1774-1856), Austrian orientalist, was born at Graz on the 9th of June 1774, the son of Joseph Johann von Hammer, and received his early education mainly in Vienna. Entering the diplomatic service in 1796, he was appointed in 1799 to a position in the Austrian embassy in Constantinople, and in this capacity he took part in the expedition under Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith and General Sir John Hely Hutchinson against the French. In 1807 he returned home from the East, after which he was made a privy councillor, and, on inheriting in 1835 the estates of the countess Purgstall in Styria, was given the title of “freiherr.” In 1847 he was elected president of the newly-founded academy, and he died at Vienna on the 23rd of November 1856.
For fifty years Hammer-Purgstall wrote incessantly on the most diverse subjects and published numerous texts and translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish authors. It was natural that a scholar who traversed so large a field should lay himself open to the criticism of specialists, and he was severely handled by Friedrich Christian Diez (1794-1876), who, in his Unfug und Betrug (1815), devoted to him nearly 600 pages of abuse. Von Hammer-Purgstall did for Germany the same work that Sir William Jones (q.v.) did for England and Silvestre de Sacy for France. He was, like his younger but greater English contemporary, Edward William Lane, with whom he came into friendly conflict on the subject of the origin of The Thousand and One Nights, an assiduous worker, and in spite of many faults did more for oriental studies than most of his critics put together.
Von Hammer’s principal work is his Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (10 vols., Pesth, 1827-1835). Another edition of this was published at Pesth in 1834-1835, and it has been translated into French by J. J. Hellert (1835-1843). Among his other works are Constantinopolis und der Bosporos (1822); Sur les origines russes (St Petersburg, 1825); Geschichte der osmanischen Dichtkunst (1836); Geschichte der Goldenen Horde in Kiptschak (1840); Geschichte der Chane der Krim (1856); and an unfinished Litteraturgeschichte der Araber (1850-1856). His Geschichte der Assassinen (1818) has been translated into English by O. C. Wood (1835). Texts and translations—Eth-Thaālabi, Arab. and Ger. (1829); Ibn Wahshiyah, History of the Mongols, Arab. and Eng. (1806); El-Wassāf, Pers. and Ger. (1856); Esch-Schebistani’s Rosenflor des Geheimnisses, Pers. and Ger. (1838); Ez-Zamakhsheri, Goldene Halsbānder, Arab. and Germ. (1835); El-Ghazzālī, Hujjet-el-Islám, Arab. and Ger. (1838); El-Hamawi, Das arab. Hohe Lied der Liebe, Arab. and Ger. (1854). Translations of—El-Mutanebbi’s Poems; Er-Resmi’s Account of his Embassy (1809); Contes inédits des 1001 nuits (1828). Besides these and smaller works, von Hammer contributed numerous essays and criticisms to the Fundgruben des Orients, which he edited; to the Journal asiatique; and to many other learned journals; above all to the Transactions of the “Akademie der Wissenschaften” of Vienna, of which he was mainly the founder; and he translated Evliya Effendi’s Travels in Europe, for the English Oriental Translation Fund. For a fuller list of his works, which amount in all to nearly 100 volumes, see Comptes rendus of the Acad. des Inscr. et des Belles-Lettres (1857). See also Schlottman, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (Zurich, 1857).