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

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​NEJEF, or Meshed ʽAli, a town of Asiatic Turkey, in the pashalik of Bagdad, 50 m. S. of Kerbela and 5 or 6 m. W. of the ruins of ancient Kufa, out of the bricks of which it is chiefly built. It stands on the eastern edge of the Syrian desert, on the north-eastern shore of a deep depression, formerly a sea, the Assyrium Stagnum of the old geographers, but in latter years drained and turned into gardens for the town. It is a fairly prosperous city, supplied with admirable water by an underground aqueduct from the Hindieh canal, a few miles to the north, which also serves to water the gardens in the deep dry bed of the former lake. The town is enclosed by nearly square brick walls, flanked by massive round towers, dating from the time of the caliphs, but now falling into decay. Outside the walls, over the sterile sand plateau, stretch great fields of tombs and graves, for Nejef is so holy that he who is buried here will surely enter paradise. In the centre of the town stands Meshed (strictly Meshhed) ʽAli, the shrine of ʽAli, containing the reputed tomb of that caliph, which is regarded by the Shiʽite Moslems as being no less holy than the Kaʽba itself, although it should be said that it is at least very doubtful whether ʽAli was actually buried there. The dome of the shrine is plated with gold, and within the walls and roof are covered with polished silver, glass and coloured tiles. The resting-place of ʽAli is represented by a silver tomb with windows grated with silver bars and a door with a great silver lock. Inside this is a smaller tomb of damascened ironwork. In the court before the dome rise two minarets, plated, like the dome, with finely beaten gold from the height of a man and upward. While the population of Nejef is estimated at from 20,000 to 30,000, there is in addition a very large floating population of pilgrims, who are constantly arriving, bringing corpses in all stages of decomposition and accompanied at times by sick and aged persons, who have come to Nejef to die. At special seasons the number of pilgrims exceeds many times the population of the town. Nejef is also the point of departure from which Persian pilgrims start on the journey to Mecca. No Jews or Christians are allowed to reside there. The accumulated treasures of Meshed ʽAli were carried off by the Wāhhābites early in the 19th century, and in 1843 the town was deprived of many of its former liberties and compelled to submit to Turkish law; but it is again enormously wealthy, for what is given to the shrine may never be sold or used for any outside purpose, but constantly accumulates. Moreover, the hierarchy derives a vast revenue from the fees for burials in the sacred limits.
See W. K. Loftus, Chaldaea and Susiana (1857); J. P. Peters, Nippur (1897); B. Meissner, Hirau Huarnaq (1901). (J. P. Pe.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nelson, Robert

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​NELSON, ROBERT (1656–1715), English philanthropist and religious writer, son of John Nelson, a London merchant, was born on the 22nd of June 1656, and was educated as the private pupil of George Bull, afterwards bishop of St David’s. Having inherited a considerable fortune from his father, he followed no profession. About 1680 he went abroad and spent much time on the continent of Europe till 1691, when he settled at Blackheath. For many years he was an intimate friend and correspondent of Archbishop Tillotson, though not in agreement with his views; and he was also on terms of friendship with the astronomer Halley and other men of science. Nelson’s sympathies were with the Jacobites; and after his return to England he associated himself with the nonjurors, under whose influence he produced several of his writings on religious subjects. He was an active supporter of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and similar associations, and he used his influence largely in the establishment of charity schools and the building of churches in London. In 1687 he had published a controversial work against transubstantiation, and in 1704 appeared his Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England, which obtained a remarkable popularity lasting till the middle of the 19th century. Within five years of its publication ten thousand copies of the Companion were printed, and thirty-six editions appeared in a hundred and twenty years. After the death of Bishop Bull in 1710 Nelson wrote his biography, which was published three years later; and he was also the author of many other devotional and controversial works. He died in January ​1715, in which year was published his Address to Persons of Quality and Estate, containing suggestions for the establishment of special hospitals, schools and theological colleges, many of his proposals being afterwards carried into effect. Nelson married a Roman Catholic, Lady Theophila Lucy, daughter of the earl of Berkeley, and widow of Sir Kingsmill Lucy of Broxbourne.
See Charles F. Secretan, Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Pious Robert Nelson (1860); Thomas Birch, Life of Tillotson (2nd ed., 1753); Thomas Lathbury, History of the Nonjurors (1845).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nelson (England)

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​NELSON, a municipal borough in the Clitheroe parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 321/2 m. N. from Manchester by the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1891) 22,754, (1901) 32,816. It is of modern growth, possessing a town hall, market hall, free library, technical school, pleasant park and recreation grounds, and an extensive system of electric tramways and light railways, connecting with Burnley and Colne. Its chief manufacture is cotton. It was incorporated in 1890, and the corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 3466 acres.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nellore

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​NELLORE, a town and district of India, in the Madras presidency. The town is on the right bank of the Pennar river, and has a station on the East Coast railway, 109 m. N of Madras city. Pop. (1901) 32,040. There are United Free Church, American Baptist and Catholic missions.
The District of Nellore has an area of 8761 sq. m. It comprises a tract of low-lying land extending from the base of the Eastern Ghats to the sea. Its general aspect is forbidding: the coast-line is a fringe of blown sand through which the waves occasionally break, spreading a salt sterility over the fields. Farther inland the country begins to rise, but the soil is not naturally fertile, nor are means of irrigation readily at hand. About one-half of the total area is cultivated; the rest is either rocky waste or is covered with low scrub jungle. The chief rivers are the Pennar, Suvarnamukhi and Gundlakamma. They are not navigable, but are utilized for irrigation purposes, the chief irrigation work being the anicut across the Pennar. Nellore, however, is subject both to droughts and to floods. Copper was discovered in the western hills in 1801, but several attempts by European capitalists to work the ore proved unremunerative, and the enterprise has been abandoned since 1840. Iron ore is smelted by indigenous methods in many places, but the most important mining industry is that of mica. Salt is largely manufactured along the sea-coast. Nellore, with the other districts of the Carnatic, passed under direct British administration in 1801. The population in 1901 was 1,496,987 showing an increase of 2·3% in the decade. In 1904 a portion of the district was transferred to the newly formed district of Guntur, reducing the remaining area to 7965 sq. m., with a population of 1,272,815. The principal crops are millets, rice, other food grains, indigo and oil-seeds. The breed of cattle is celebrated. The East Coast railway, running through the length of the district, was opened throughout for traffic in 1899. The section from Nellore town to Gudur, formerly on the metre gauge, has been converted to the standard gauge. Previously the chief means of communication with Madras was by the Buckingham canal. The sea-borne trade is insignificant.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nelson (New Zealand)

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​NELSON, a seaport of New Zealand, the seat of a bishop and capital of a provincial district of the same name; at the head of Blind Bay on the northern coast of the South Island. Pop. (1906) 8164. The woods and fields in the neighbourhood abound with English song-birds, and the streams are stocked with trout; while the orchards in the town and suburbs are famous for English kinds of fruit, and hops are extensively cultivated. The town possesses a small museum and art gallery, literary institute, government buildings, and boys’ and girls’ schools of high repute. The cathedral (Christ Church) is finely placed on a mound which was originally intended as a place of refuge from hostile natives. It is built of wood, the various native timbers being happily combined. Railways connect the harbour with the town, and the town with Motupiko, &c. The harbour, with extensive wharves, is protected by the long and remarkable Boulder Bank, whose southern portion forms the natural breakwater to that anchorage. The settlement was planted by the New Zealand Company in 1842. The borough returns one member to the house of representatives, and its local affairs are administered by a mayor and council.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Neleus

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​NELEUS, in Greek legend, son of Poseidon and Tyro, brother of Pelias. The two children were exposed by their mother, who afterwards married Cretheus, king of Iolcus in Thessaly. After the death of Cretheus, the boys, who had been brought up by herdsmen, quarrelled for the possession of Iolcus. Pelias expelled Neleus, who migrated to Messenia, where he became king of Pylos (Apollodorus i. 9; Diod. Sic. iv. 68) and the ancestor of a royal family called the Neleidae, who are historically traceable as the old ruling family in some of the Ionic states in Asia Minor. Their presence is explained by the legend that, when the Dorians conquered Peloponnesus, the Neleidae were driven out and took refuge in Attica, whence they led colonies to the eastern shores of the Aegean. By Chloris, daughter of Amphion, Neleus was the father of twelve sons (of whom Nestor was the most famous) and a daughter Pero. Through the contest for his daughter’s hand (see Melampus) he is connected with the legends of the prophetic race of the Melampodidae, who founded the mysteries and expiatory rites and the orgies of Dionysus in Argolis. According to Pausanias (ii. 2. 2, v. 8. 2) Neleus restored the Olympian games and died at Corinth, where he was buried on the isthmus.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Phillimore, Sir Robert Joseph

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​PHILLIMORE, SIR ROBERT JOSEPH (1810–1885), English judge, third son of a well-known ecclesiastical lawyer, Dr Joseph Phillimore, was born at Whitehall on the 5th of November 1810. Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, where a lifelong friendship with W. E. Gladstone began, his first appointment was to a clerkship in the board of control, where he remained from 1832 to 1835. Admitted as an advocate at Doctors Commons in 1839, he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1841, and rose very rapidly in his profession. He was engaged as counsel in almost every case of importance that came before the admiralty, probate or divorce courts, and became successively master of faculties, commissary of the deans and chapters of St Paul’s and Westminster, official of the archdeaconries of Middlesex and London, and chancellor of the dioceses of Chichester and Salisbury. In 1853 he entered parliament as member for Tavistock. A moderate in politics, his energies were devoted to non-party measures, and in 1854 he introduced the bill for allowing viva voce evidence in the ecclesiastical courts. He sat for Tavistock until 1857, when he offered himself as a candidate for Coventry, but was defeated. He was appointed judge of the Cinque Ports in 1855, Queen’s Counsel in 1858, and advocate general in admiralty in 1862, and succeeded Dr Stephen Lushington (1782–1873) as judge of the court of arches five years later. Here his care, patience and courtesy, combined with unusual lucidity of expression, won general respect. In 1875, in accordance with the Public Worship Regulation Act, he resigned, and was succeeded by Lord Penzance. When the Judicature Act came into force the powers of the admiralty court were transferred to the High Court of justice, and Sir Robert Phillimore was therefore the last judge of the historic court of the lord high admiral of England. He continued to sit as judge for the new admiralty, probate and divorce division until 1883, when he resigned. He wrote Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England, a book which still holds its ground, Commentaries on International Law, and a translation of Lessing’s Laocoon. He married, in 1844, Charlotte Anne, daughter of John Denison of Ossington Hall, Newark. He was knighted in 1862, and created a baronet in 1881. He died at Shiplake, near Henley-on-Thames, on the 4th of February 1885. His eldest son, Sir Walter G. F. Phillimore (b. 1845), also distinguished as an authority on ecclesiastical and admiralty law, became in 1897 a judge of the high court.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philippsburg

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​PHILIPPSBURG, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Baden, situated on a sluggish arm of the Rhine, 15 m. N. of Karlsruhe, on the railway Bruchsal-Germersheim. Pop. (1905) 2625. It has manufactures of tobacco and cigars, and some trade in cattle and hops. Philippsburg, formerly an important fortress, originally belonged to the ecclesiastical principality of Spires, and was named Udenheim. In 1338 it was surrounded with walls by bishop Gerhard. A later bishop of Spires, Philipp Christoph von Sotern, made the place his residence early in the 17th century, strengthened the fortifications, and renamed it Philippsburg after himself. At the peace of Westphalia in 1648 the French remained in possession of the town, but in 1679 it was restored to Germany, and though again captured by the French in 1688 it was once more restored in 1697. In 1734 the dilapidated fortress fell an easy prey to the French under Marshal Berwick, who, however, lost his life beneath its walls. It was restored to Germany in 1735, and was again besieged by the French in 1799. The town was assigned to Baden in 1803.
See Nopp, Geschichte der Stadt Philippsburg (Philippsburg, 1881).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philips, John

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​PHILIPS, JOHN (1676-1708), English poet and man of letters, son of Dr Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Shropshire, was born at his father's vicarage at Bampton, Oxfordshire, on the 30th of December 1676. He was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a careful reader of Virgil and of Milton. In 1701 his poem, The Splendid Shilling, was published without his consent, and a second unauthorized version in 1705 induced him to print a correct edition in that year. The Splendid Shilling, which Addison in The Tatler called "the finest burlesque poem in the British language," recites in Miltonic blank verse the miseries consequent on the want of that piece of money. Its success introduced Philips to the notice of Robert Harley and Henry St John, who commissioned him to write a Tory counterblast to Joseph Addison's Campaign. Philips was happier in burlesquing his favourite author than in genuine imitation of a heroic theme. His Marlborough is modelled on the warriors of Homer and Virgil, he rides precipitate over heaps of fallen horses, changing the fortune of the battle by his own right arm. Cyder (1708) is modelled on the Georgics of Virgil. Cerealia, an Imitation of Milton (1706), although printed without his name, may safely be ascribed to him. In all his poems except Blenheim he found an opportunity to insert a eulogy of tobacco. Philips died at Hereford on the 15th of February 1708/9. There is an inscription to his memory in Westminster Abbey.
See The Whole Works of . . . John Philips . . . To which is prefixed his life, by Mr [G.] Sewell (3rd ed., 1720); Johnson, Lives of the Poets; and Biographia Britannica.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philippus, Marcus Julius

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​PHILIPPUS, MARCUS JULIUS, Roman emperor A.D. 244 to 249, often called "Philip the Arab," was a native of Bostra in Arabia Trachonitis. Having entered the Roman army, he rose to be praetorian praefect in the Persian campaign of Gordian III., and, inspiring the soldiers to slay the young emperor, was raised by them to the purple (244). Of his reign little is known except that he celebrated the secular games with great pomp in 248, when Rome was supposed to have reached the thousandth year of her existence. A rebellion broke out among the legions of Moesia, and Decius, who was sent to quell it, was forced by the troops to put himself at their head and march upon Italy. Philip was defeated and slain in a battle near Verona. According to Christian writers, he was a convert to Christianity.
See Aurelius Victor, Caesares, 28; Eutropius, ix. 3; Zonaras, xii. 19.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philips, Katharine

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​PHILIPS, KATHARINE (1631-1664), English poet, daughter of John Fowler, a merchant of Bucklersbury, London, was born on the 1st of January 1631. Her father was a Presbyterian, and Katharine is said to have read the Bible through before she was five years old. On arriving at years of discretion she broke with Presbyterian traditions in both religion and politics, became an ardent admirer of the king and his church policy, and in 1647 married James Philips, a Welsh royalist. Her home at the Priory, Cardigan, became the centre of a "society of friendship," the members of which were known to one another by fantastic names, Mrs Philips being "Orinda," her husband "Antenor," Sir Charles Cotterel "Poliarchus." The "matchless" Orinda, as her admirers called her, posed as the apostle of female friendship. That there was much solid worth under her affectations is proved by the respect and friendship she inspired. Jeremy Taylor in 1659 dedicated to her his "Discourse on the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship," and Cowley, Henry Vaughan the Silurist, the earl of Roscommon and the earl of Cork and Orrery all celebrated her talent. In 1662 she went to Dublin to pursue her husband's claim to certain Irish estates, and there she completed a translation of Corneille's Pompée, produced with great success in 1663 in the Smock Alley Theatre, and printed in the same year both in Dublin and London. She went to London in March 1664 with a nearly completed translation of Corneille's Horace, but died of smallpox on the 22nd of June. The literary atmosphere of her circle is preserved in the excellent Letters of Orinda to Poliarchus, published by Bernard Lintot in 1705 and 1709. "Poliarchus" (Sir Charles Cotterel) was master of the ceremonies at the court of the Restoration, and afterwards translated the romances of La Calprenède. Mrs Philips had two children, one of whom, Katharine, became the wife of Lewis Wogan of Boulston, Pembrokeshire. According to Mr Gosse, this lady may have been "Joan Philips," the author of a volume of Female Poems . . . written by Ephelia, which are in the style of Orinda, and display genuine feeling with very little reserve.
See E. W. Gosse, Seventeenth Century Studies (1883). Poems, By the Incomparable Mrs K. P. appeared surreptitiously in 1664 and an authentic edition in 1667. Selected Poems, edited with an appreciation by Miss L. I. Guiney, appeared in 1904; but the best modern edition is in Saintsbury's Minor Poets of the Caroline Period (vol. i., 1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philistus

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​PHILISTUS, Greek historian of Sicily, was born at Syracuse about the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (432 B.C.). He was a faithful supporter of the elder Dionysius, and commander ​of the citadel. In 386 he excited the jealousy of the tyrant by secretly marrying his niece, and was sent into banishment. He settled at Thurii, but afterwards removed to Adria, where he remained until the death of Dionysius (366). He was then recalled by the younger Dionysius, whom he persuaded to dismiss Plato and Dion. When Dion set sail from Zacynthus with the object of liberating Syracuse from the tyrannis, Philistus was entrusted with the command of the fleet, but he was defeated and put to death (356). During his stay at Adria, Philistus occupied himself with the composition of his Σικελικά, a history of Sicily in eleven books. The first part (bks. i.–vii.) comprised the history of the island from the earliest times to the capture of Agrigentum by the Carthaginians (406); the second, the history of the elder and the younger Dionysius (down to 363). From this point the work was carried on by Philistus’s fellow countryman Athanas. Cicero (ad. Q. Fr. ii. 13), who had a high opinion of his work, calls him the “miniature Thucydides” (pusillus Thucydides). He was admitted by the Alexandrian critics into the canon of historiographers, and his work was highly valued by Alexander the Great.
See Diod. Sic. xiii. 103, xiv. 8, xv. 7, xvi 11, 16; Plutarch, Dion, 11-36; Cicero, Brutus, 17, De oratore, ii 13; Quintillian, Instit. x. 1, 74; fragments and life in C. W. Müller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum, vol. i. (1841); C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte (1895), E. A. Freeman, History of Sicily (1891–1894); A. Holm, Geschichte Siciliens im Altert. (1870–1898).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Phillaur

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​PHILLAUR, a town of British India, in Jullundur district, Punjab, on the north bank of the river Sutlej, 8 m. N. of Ludhiana. Pop. (1901), 6986. Founded by the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan, it was long of importance as commanding the crossing of the Sutlej. At the Mutiny in 1857 the fort contained the siege train, which was sent safely to Delhi; but the sepoy regiment in the cantonment shortly afterwards mutinied and escaped. The fort is now occupied by the police training school and the central bureau of the criminal identification department.