OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Avempace

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​AVEMPACE [Abu Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥya, known as Ibn Bājja or Ibn Ṣa‛igh, i.e. son of the goldsmith, the name being corrupted by the Latins into Avempace, Avenpace or Aben Pace], the earliest and one of the most distinguished of the Arab philosophers of Spain. Little is known of the details of his life. He was born probably at Saragossa towards the close of the 11th century. According to Ibn Khāqān, a contemporary writer, he became a student of the exact sciences and was also a musician and a poet. But he was a philosopher as well, and apparently a sceptic. He is said to have rejected the Koran, to have denied the return to God, and to have regarded death as the end of existence. But even in that orthodox age he became vizier to the amir of Murcia. Afterwards he went to Valencia, then to Saragossa. After the fall of Saragossa (1119) he went to Seville, then to Xativa, where he is said to have returned to Islam to save his life. Finally he retired to the Almoravid court at Fez, where he was poisoned in 1138. Ibn ‛Usaibi‛a gives a list of twenty-five of his works, but few of these remain. He had a distinct influence upon Averroes (see Arabian Philosophy).
For his life see M‘G. de Slane’s trans. of Ibn Khallikān’s Biographical Dictionary (Paris and London, 1842), vol. iii. pp. 130 ff., and Ibn ‛Usaibi‛a’s biography translated in P. de Gayangos’ edition of the History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, by al-Maqqari (London, 1840), vol. ii., appendix, p. xii. List of extant works in C. Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, vol. i. p. 460. For his philosophy cf. T. J. de Boer’s The History of Philosophy in Islām (London, 1903), ch. vi. (G. W. T.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bethel

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​BETHEL (Heb. “House of God”), originally called Luz, an ancient city of Palestine, on the N.W. border of the tribe of Benjamin, 11 m. N. of Jerusalem and nearly 2900 ft. above sea-level. From very early times it was a holy place, a circumstance probably due primarily to a very extraordinary group of boulders and rock-outcrops north of the town. Abraham recognized its sanctity (Gen. xii. 8); Jacob, in ignorance, slept in the sacred enclosure and was granted a vision (“Jacob’s ladder,” Gen. xxviii). For a while the ark seems to have been deposited here (Judg. xx. 27), and it was a place for consulting the oracle (Judg. xx. 18). At the secession of the northern kingdom under Jeroboam, Bethel became a royal residence and a national shrine (1 Kings xii. 29-31, Amos vii. 13), for which its position at the junction of main roads from N. to S. and E. to W. well fitted it. It was taken from Jeroboam by Abijah, king of Judah (2 Chr. xiii. 19). It seems to have continued to flourish down into the Christian era; remains of its ecclesiastical buildings still exist. The present village, which bears the name of Beitin, occupies about three or four acres, and has a population of 2000.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bethlehemites

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​BETHLEHEMITES, a name borne at different times by three orders in the Roman Catholic Church. (1) A community of friars at Cambridge, in 1257, whose habit was distinguished from that of the ordinary Dominicans by a five-rayed red star (in reference to Matt. ii. 9 f). (2) An order of knighthood similar to the Knights of St John, established by Pius II. in 1459 to resist the inroads of the Turks. (3) The Bethlehemite Order of Guatemala, a nursing community founded in 1650 by Pedro Betancourt (d. 1667), extended by the brothers Rodrigo and Antonio of the Cross, and raised to an order by Innocent XI. in 1687. They wore a dress like that of the Capuchins, and Clement XI. in 1707 gave them the privileges of the mendicant orders. They spread throughout Central America and Mexico and as far south as Lima, and with the order of sisters, founded in 1668 by Anna Maria del Galdo, were conspicuous for their devotion during times of plague and other contagious diseases. This order became extinct about 1850. The name Bethlehemites has also sometimes been given to the Hussites of Bohemia because their leader preached in the Bethlehem church at Prague.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bethnal Green

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​BETHNAL GREEN, an eastern metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded N. by Hackney, E. by Poplar, S. by Stepney and W. by Shoreditch. Pop. (1901) 129,680. It is a district of poor houses, forming part of the area commonly known as the “East End.” The working population is employed in the making of match-boxes, boot-making, cabinet-making and other industries; but was formerly largely devoted to silk-weaving, which spread over the district from its centre in Spitalfields (see Stepney). This industry is still maintained. The Bethnal Green museum was opened in 1872. It contains exhibits of food and animal products, formerly at South Kensington, entomological collections, &c.; and various loan exhibitions are held from time to time. The Museum also housed the Wallace collection until the opening of Hertford House, and the pictures now in the National Portrait Gallery. It stands in public gardens; there are several other small open spaces; and some 70 out of the 217 acres of Victoria Park are within the borough. Close by the park there stood, until the 19th century, a house believed to have belonged to the notorious Bishop Bonner, the persecutor of Protestants in the reign of Mary; his name is still attached to a street here. Among institutions are the missionary settlement of the Oxford House, founded in 1884, with its women’s branch, St Margaret’s House; the North-Eastern hospital for children, the Craft school und the Leather Trade school. The parliamentary borough of Bethnal Green has two divisions, each returning one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 5 aldermen and 30 councillors. Area, 759·3 acres.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Betterment

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​BETTERMENT (i.e. “making better,” as opposed to “worsement”), a general term, used particularly in connexion with the increased value given to real property by causes for which a tenant or the public, but not the owner, is responsible; it is thus of the nature of “unearned increment.” When, for instance, some public improvement results in raising the value of a piece of private land, and the owner is thereby “bettered” through no merit of his own, he gains by the betterment, and many economists and politicians have sought to arrange, by taxation or otherwise, that the increased value shall come into the pocket of the public rather than into his. A betterment tax would be so assessed as to divert from the owner of the property the profit ​thus accruing “unearned” to him. (See also Compensation.) The whole problem is one of the incidence of taxation and the question of land values, and various applications of the principle of betterment have been tried in America and in England, raising considerable controversy from time to time.
See A. A. Baumann, Betterment, Worsement and Recoupment (1894).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bethesda (Jerusalem)

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​BETHESDA (i.e. “House of Mercy,” John v. 2), better perhaps Bethzatha or Bethsaida, a pool or public bath in Jerusalem, where miraculous cures were believed to be performed. The following identifications have been suggested: Birket Isra’il, near St Stephen’s gate; a large cistern, near St Anne’s church; the “Twin Pools,” north of the Haram (the ancient Temple area); the Hammam esh-Shifa‘ or pool of healing, west of the Haram; the Virgin’s fountain, south of the Haram; and the “Pool of Siloam.” Which, if any, of these identifications is correct, it is impossible to say.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bethlehem

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​BETHLEHEM (Heb. “House of Bread,” or, according to a more questionable etymology, “of [the god] Lakhmu”), a small town in Palestine, situated on a limestone ridge (2550 ft. above sea-level), 5 m. S. of Jerusalem. The neighbourhood produces wheat, barley, olives and vines in abundance. It was occupied in very early times, though the references in Judges xvii., xix., and Ruth are of doubtful date. It was the early home of David and of Joab (2 Sam. ii. 32). It was fortified by Rehoboam, and in the neighbouring inn of Chimham the murderers of Gedaliah took refuge (Jer. xli. 17). Micah (v. 2) and other writers speak of it as Bethlehem-Ephrathah; perhaps Ephrathah was the name of the district. Almost complete obscurity, however, was gathering round it when it became (according to Matt. ii. and Luke ii.) the birthplace of Jesus. The traditional scene of the Nativity, a grotto on the eastern part of the ridge, is alleged to have been desecrated during the reign of Hadrian by a temple of Adonis. In 330 it was enclosed by a basilica built by the orders of the emperor Constantine. This basilica (S. Maria a Praesepio), which is still standing, was restored and added to by Justinian, and was later surrounded by the three convents successively erected by the Greek, Latin and Armenian Churches (see de Vogüé, Les Églises de la Terre Sainte). Captured by the Crusaders in the 11th century, Bethlehem was made an episcopal see; but the bishopric soon sank to a titular dignity. Beside the grotto of the Nativity other traditional sites are shown within the church, such as the Altar of the Magi, the Tomb of Eusebius, the cave wherein Jerome made his translation of the Bible, &c.
There are several monasteries and convents, and British, French and German schools. The village is well built and comparatively clean. The population (8000) has contained few Moslems since the Moslem quarter was destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha, in revenge for the murder of one of his favourites, after the insurrection of 1834. The carving of crucifixes and other sacred mementoes gives employment to a large proportion of the population. In 1850 a dispute arose between France and Russia, in the name of the Latin and Greek Churches respectively, concerning the possession of the key of the chief door of the basilica, and concerning the right to place a silver star, with the arms of France, in the grotto of the Nativity. The Porte, after much futile temporizing, yielded to France. The disappointment thus inflicted on Russia was a determining cause of the outbreak of the Crimean War (see Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, chap. iii.). [There is a tiny village of the same name in Zebulun, 7 m. N.W. of Nazareth (Josh. xv. 19).]
See bibliography under Palestine. For the modern town see Palmer, “Das jetzige Bethlehem,” in the Zeitschrift of the Deutsche Palästina-Verein, xvii. p. 89. (R. A. S. M.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)

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​BETHLEHEM, a borough of Northampton and Lehigh counties, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the N. bank of the Lehigh river, opposite South Bethlehem and 55 m. N. by W. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 6762; (1900) 7293 (350 foreign-born); (1910) 12,837. It is served by the Central of New Jersey, the Lehigh & New England, the Lehigh Valley and the Philadelphia & Reading railways, and is connected by two long bridges with South Bethlehem. The borough lies on a ridge of ground commanding delightful landscape scenery extending north up the course of the river to the Blue Mountains 20 m. away. In Church Street and its vicinity still stand several specimens of the 17th-century style of architecture of eastern Germany. The same sect that erected these buildings, the Moravians, or United Brethren, maintain here the Moravian College and Theological Seminary, and a well-known school for girls (the Moravian Seminary), founded as a church boarding school in 1749 and reorganized in 1785, for girls of all denominations. During the War of Independence, from December 1776 to April 1777, and from September 1777 to April 1778, the old Colonial Hall in this seminary (built 1748) was used as a general hospital of the continental army. From its roof the famous Moravian trombones were long played on festal or funeral occasions, and later summoned the people to musical festivals. The Moravians have given Bethlehem a national reputation as a musical centre. Only a few years after the city was founded, Benjamin Franklin was strongly impressed with the fine music in its church, and towards the close of the 19th century a choir under the direction of the organist, J. Frederick Wolle, became widely known by rendering for the first time in America Bach’s St John Passion (in 1888), followed after short intervals by the St Matthew Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, the Mass in B Minor, and finally by an annual Bach festival continuing for three days, which was discontinued after Wolle’s removal to the university of California in 1905. Bethlehem has often been called the American Bayreuth. Among the borough’s industrial establishments, the manufactories of iron and steel are the most important, but it also manufactures brass, zinc, and silk and knit goods. The municipality owns and operates its waterworks. Bethlehem was founded by the Moravians, led by Count Nikolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, shortly before Christmas in 1741, and the season of the year suggested its name; for the first century of its existence it was almost exclusively a settlement of that sect, and it is still their American headquarters. Bethlehem was incorporated as a borough in 1845. In 1904 the borough of West Bethlehem (pop. in 1900, 3465) was consolidated with Bethlehem.
See J. M. Levering, A History of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (Bethlehem, 1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bethesda (Wales)

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​BETHESDA, an urban district of Carnarvonshire, N. Wales, 5 m. from Bangor, by a branch of the London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 5281. It lies near the lower end of the ​fine Nant Ffrancon (valley of the Ogwen stream). The scriptural name is due, as often in Wales, to the village or hamlet taking its title from the Nonconformist church. Here are extensive slate quarries belonging to Lord Penrhyn. A narrow-gauge railway connects these with Port Penrhyn, at the mouth of the stream Cegid (hemlock, “cicuta”), which admits the entry of vessels of 300 tons to the quay at low water.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antalcidas

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​ANTALCIDAS, Spartan soldier and diplomatist. In 393 (or 392 B.C.) he was sent to Tiribazus, satrap of Sardis, to undermine the friendly relations then existing between Athens and Persia by offering to recognize Persian claims to the whole of Asia Minor. The Athenians sent an embassy under Conon to counteract his efforts. Tiribazus, who was favourable to Sparta, threw Conon into prison, but Artaxerxes II. (Mnemon) disapproved and recalled his satrap. In 388 Antalcidas, then commander of the Spartan fleet, accompanied Tiribazus to the Persian court, and secured the active assistance of Persia against Athens. The success of his naval operations in the neighbourhood of the Hellespont was such that Athens was glad to accept terms of peace (the “Peace of Antalcidas”), by which (1) the whole of Asia Minor, with the islands of Clazomenae and Cyprus, was recognized as subject to Persia, (2) all other Greek cities—so far as they were not under Persian rule—were to be independent, except Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, which were to belong, as formerly, to the Athenians. The terms were announced to the Greek envoys at Sardis in the winter 387-386, and were finally accepted by Sparta in 386. Antalcidas continued in favour with Artaxerxes, until the annihilation of Spartan supremacy at Leuctra diminished his influence. A final mission to Persia, probably in 367, was a failure, and Antalcidas, deeply chagrined and fearful of the consequences, is said to have starved himself to death. (See Sparta.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ante-choir

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​ANTE-CHOIR, the term given to the space enclosed in a church between the outer gate or railing of the rood screen and the door of the screen; sometimes there is only one rail, gate or door, but in Westminster Abbey it is equal in depth to one bay of the nave. The ante-choir is also called the “fore choir.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antae

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​ANTAE (a Lat. plural word, possibly from ante, before), an architectural term given to slightly projecting pilaster strips which terminate the winged walls of the naos of a Greek temple. They owe their origin to the vertical posts of timber employed in the primitive palaces or temples of Greece, as at Tiryns and in the Heraeum at Olympia, to carry the roof timbers, as no reliance could be placed on the walls built with unburnt brick or in rubble masonry with clay mortar. When between these winged walls there are columns to carry the architrave, so as to form a porch, the latter is said to be in-antis. (See Temple.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ante-chapel

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​ANTE-CHAPEL, the term given to that portion of a chapel which lies on the western side of the choir screen. In some of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge the ante-chapel is carried north and south across the west end of the chapel, constituting a western transept or narthex. This model, based on Merton College chapel (13th century), of which only chancel and transept were built though a nave was projected, was followed at Wadham, New and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford, in the new chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, and in Eton College. In Jesus College, Cambridge, the transept and a short nave constitute the ante-chapel; in Clare College an octagonal vestibule serves the same purpose; and in Christ’s, Trinity and King’s Colleges, Cambridge, the ante-chapel is a portion of the main chapel, divided off from the chancel by the choir screen.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ante-fixae

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​ANTE-FIXAE (from Lat. antefigere, to fasten before), the vertical blocks which terminate the covering tiles of the roof of a Greek temple; as spaced they take the place of the cymatium and form a cresting along the sides of the temple. The face of the ante-fixae was richly carved with the anthemion (q.v.) ornament.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antaeus

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​ANTAEUS, in Greek mythology, a giant of Libya, the son of Poseidon and Gaea. He compelled all strangers passing through the country to wrestle with him, and as, when thrown, he derived fresh strength from each successive contact with his mother earth, he proved invincible. With the skulls of those whom he had slain he built a temple to his father. Heracles, in combat with him, discovered the source of his strength, and lifting him up from the earth crushed him to death (Apollodorus ii. 5; Hyginus, Fab. 31). The struggle between Antaeus and Heracles is a favourite subject in ancient sculpture.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antanànarìvo

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​ANTANÀNARÌVO, i.e. “town of a thousand” (Fr. spelling Tananarive), the capital of Madagascar, situated centrally as regards the length of the island, but only about 90 m. distant from the eastern coast, in 18° 55′ S., 47° 30′ E. It is 135 m. W.S.W. of Tamatave, the principal seaport of the island, with which it is connected by railway, and for about 60 m. along the coast lagoons, a service of small steamers. The city occupies a commanding position, being chiefly built on the summit and slopes of a long and narrow rocky ridge, which extends north and south for about 21/2 m., dividing to the north in a Y-shape, and rising at its highest point to 690 ft. above the extensive rice plain to the west, which is itself 4060 ft. above sea-level. For long only the principal village of the Hova chiefs, Antananarivo advanced in importance as those chiefs made themselves sovereigns of the greater part of Madagascar, until it became a town of some 80,000 inhabitants. Until 1869 all buildings within the city proper were of wood or rush, but even then it possessed several timber palaces of considerable size, the largest being 120 ft. high. These crown the summit of the central portion of the ridge; and the largest palace, with its lofty roof and towers, is the most conspicuous object from every point of view. Since the introduction of stone and brick, the whole city has been rebuilt and now contains numerous structures of some architectural pretension, the royal palaces, the houses formerly belonging to the prime minister and nobles, the French residency, the Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals, several stone churches, as well as others of brick, colleges, schools, hospitals, courts of justice and other government buildings, and hundreds of good dwelling-houses. Since the French conquest in 1895 good roads have been constructed throughout the city, broad flights of steps connect places too steep for the formation of carriage roads, and the central space, called Andohalo, has become a handsome place, with walks and terraces, flower-beds and trees. A small park has been laid out near the residency, and the planting of trees and the formation of gardens in various parts of the city give it a bright and attractive appearance. Water is obtained from springs at the foot of the hill, but it is proposed to bring an abundant supply from the river Ikopa, which skirts the capital to the south and west. The population, including that of the suburbs, is 69,000 (1907). The city is guarded by two forts built on hills to the east and south-west respectively. Including an Anglican and a Roman Catholic cathedral, there are about fifty churches in the city and its suburbs, as well as a Mahommedan mosque. (J. Si.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antarctic

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​ANTARCTIC (Gr. ἀντί, opposite, and ἄρκτος, the Bear, the northern constellation of Ursa Major), the epithet applied to the region (including both the ocean and the lands) round the South Pole. The Antarctic circle is drawn at 66° 30′ S., but polar conditions of climate, &c., extend considerably north of the area thus enclosed. (See Polar Regions.)