See McG. de Slane’s transl. of Ibn Khaldūn’s Prolégomènes, i. 384 seq., 402 seq., 426 seq., 445; iii. 35, 58 seq.; Ostrorog’s transl. of Māwardī’s Ahkām i. 89 seq.; Haarbrücker’s transl. of Shahrastānī by index; Juynboll’s De Mohammedanische Wet, 316 seq.; Sell’s Faith of Islam, 95 seq.; Macdonald’s Development of Muslim Theology, 56 seq.
(D. B. Ma.)
IMBECILE (through the French from Lat. imbecillus or imbecillis, weak, feeble; of unknown origin), weak or feeble, particularly in mind. The term “imbecility” is used conventionally of a condition of mental degeneration less profound than “idiotcy” (see [Insanity]).
IMBREX (Latin for “tile”), in architecture the term given to the covering tile of the ancient roof: the plain tile is turned up on each side and the imbrex covers the joint. In the simpler type of roof the imbrex is semicircular, but in some of the Greek temples it has vertical sides and an angular top. In the temple of Apollo at Bassae, where the tiles were in Parian marble, the imbrex on one side of the tile and the tile were worked in one piece out of the solid marble.
IMBROS, a Turkish island in the Aegean, at the southern end of the Thracian Chersonese peninsula. It forms with Samothrace, about 17 m. distant, a caza (or canton) in the sanjak of Lemnos and province of the Archipelago Isles. Herodotus (v. 26) mentions it as an abode of the historic Pelasgians (q.v.). It was, like Samothrace, a seat of the worship of the Cabeiri (q.v.). The island is now the seat of a Greek bishopric. There is communication with the mainland by occasional vessels. The island is of great fertility—wheat, oats, barley, olives, sesame and valonia being the principal products, in addition to a variety of fruits. Pop. about 92,000, nearly all Turks.
IMERETIA, or Imeritia a district in Russian Transcaucasia, extends from the left bank of the river Tskheniz-Tskhali to the Suram range, which separates it from Georgia on the east, and is bounded on the south by Akhaltsikh, and thus corresponds roughly to the eastern part of the modern government of Kutais. Anciently a part of Colchis, and included in Lazia during the Roman empire, Imeretia was nominally under the dominion of the Greek emperors. In the early part of the 6th century it became the theatre of wars between the Byzantine emperor Justinian and Chosroes, or Khosrau, king of Persia. Between 750 and 985 it was ruled by a dynasty (Apkhaz) of native princes, but was devastated by hostile incursions, reviving only after it became united to Georgia. It flourished until the reign of Queen Thamar, but after her death (1212) the country became impoverished through strife and internal dissensions. It was reunited with Georgia from 1318 to 1346, and again in 1424. But the union only lasted forty-five years; from 1469 until 1810 it was governed by a Bagratid dynasty, closely akin to that which ruled over Georgia. In 1621 it made the earliest appeal to Russia for aid; in 1650 it acknowledged Russian suzerainty and in 1769 a Russian force expelled the Turks. In 1803 the monarch declared himself a vassal of Russia, and in 1810 the little kingdom was definitively annexed to that empire. (See [Georgia].)