The rock inscriptions in the wild district of Safah near Damascus which have been collected by Halevv are also written in an Arabic dialect, but, owing chiefly to their careless execution, they are to a large extent unintelligible. The character appears to be akin to the Sabaean. It has been suggesred that they were the work of Arabs who had wandered thus far from the south.

Persia.

There still remain for discussion the alphabets of the Indo-European peoples of Persia and India from which the other alphabets of the Farther East are descended. When Darius in 516 B.C. caused the great Behistun inscription to be engraved, it was the cuneiform writing, already long in use for the languages of Mesopotamia, that was adopted for this purpose. We have seen that at Babylon itself the Aramaic language and character were well known. It is probable therefore, a priori, that from the Aramaic alphabet the later writing of Persia should be developed. The conclusion is confirmed by the coins, the only records with Iranian script which go back so far; but the special form of Aramaic from which the Iranian alphabet is derived must at present be left undecided. The later developments of the Iranian alphabet are the Pahlavi and the Zend, in which the MSS. of the Avesta are written. Of Cese manuscripts none is older than the 15th century A.D. The Pahlavi is properly the alphabet of the Sassanid kings who ruled in Persia from A.D. 226 till the Arab conquest in the 7th century A.D. Under the Sassanids the old Persian worship, which had fallen with the Achaemenid dynasty in Alexander's time, and had been neglected by the subsequent Arsacid line, was revived and the remains of its liturgical literature collected. The name is, however, also applied to the alphabet on the coins of the Parthian or Arsacid dynasty, which in its beginnings was clearly under Greek influence; while later, when a knowledge of Greek had disappeared, the attempts to imitate the old legends are as grotesque as those in western Europe to copy the inscriptions on Roman coins. The relationship between the Pahlavi and the Aramaic is clearest in the records written in the "Chaldaeo-Pahlavi'' characters; the most important of these documents is the liturgical inscription of Hadji-abad, where the Arsacid and Sassanian alphabets are found side by side. Taylor (The Alphabet, ii. p. 248 f.) regards the former as probably derived from the "ancient alphabet of Eastern Iran, a sister alphaber of the Aramaean of the satrapies,'' while the Sassanian belongs to a later stage of Aramaic.

India.

The alphabets of India all spring from two sources: (a) the Kharosthi, (b) the Brahmi alphabet. The history of the former is clear. It was always a local alphabet, and never attained the importance of its rival. According to Buhler,34 its range lay between 69 deg. and 73 deg. 30' E. and 33 deg. to 35 deg. N., a conclusion which is not invalidated by the fact that some important modifications are found beyond this area, nor by Dr Stein's discovery of a great mass of documents in this alphabet at Khotan in Turkestan, for, according to tradition, the ancient inhabitants of Khotan were emigrants banished in the time of King Acoka from the area to which Buhler assigns this alphabet (see Stins's Preliminary Report, 1901, p. 51). Rapson35 has pointed out that both Kharosthi and Brahmi letters are found upon Persian silver sigloi, which were coined in the Punjab and belong to the period of the Achaemenid kings of Persia. As Buhler shows in detail, the Kharosthi alphabet is derived from the alphabet of the Aramaic inscriptions which date from the earlier part of the Achaemenid period. The Aramaic alphabet passed into India with the staff of subordinate officials by whom Darius organized his conquests there. The people of India already possessed their Brahmi alphabet, but had this other alphabet forced upon them in their dealings with their rulers. The Kharosthi is then the gradual development under local conditions of the Aramaic alphabet of the Persian period. As Stein's explorations show, both alphabets may be found on ooposite sides of the same piece of wood.

The history of the Brami alphabet is more difficult. In its later forms it is so unlike other alphabets that many scholars have regarded it as an invention within India itself. The discovery of earlier inscriptions than were hitherto known has, however, caused this view to be discarded, and the problem is to decide from which form of the Semitic alphabet it is derived. Taylor (The Alphabet, ii. p. 314 ff.), following Weber, argues that it comes from the Sabaeans who were carrying on trade with India as early as 1000 B.C. Even if the alphabet had not reached India till the 6th century B.C., there would be time, he contends, for the peculiarities of the Indian form of it to develop before the period when records begin. The alphabet, according to Taylor, shows no resemblance to any northern Semitic script, while its stiff, straight lines and its forms seem like the Sabaean. Buhler, on the other hand, shows from literary evidence that writing was in common use in India in the 5th, possibly in the 6th, century B.C. The oldest alphabet must have been the Brahmi lipi, which is found all over India. But he rejects Taylor's derivation of this alphabet from the Sabaean script, and contends that it is borrowed from the North Semitic. To the pedantry of the Hindu he attributes its main characteristics, viz. (a) letters made as upright as possible, and with few exceptions equal in height; (b) the majority of the letters constructed of vertical lines, with appendages attached mostly at the foot, occasionally at the foot and at the top, or (rarely) in the middle, but never at the top alone: (c) at the tops of the characters the ends of vertical lines, less frequently straight horizontal lines, still more rarely curves or the points of angles opening downwards, and quite exceptionally, in the symbol ma, two lines rising upwards. A remarkable feature of the alphabet is that the letters are hung from and do not stand upon a line, a characteristic which, as Buhler notes (Indian Studies, iii. p. 57 n.), belongs even to the most ancient MSS., and to the Asoka inscriptions of the 3rd century B.C. When these specially Indian features have been allowed for, Buhler contends that the symbols borrowed from the Semitic alphabet can be carried back to the forms of The Phoenician and Moabite alphabets. The proof deals with each symbol separarately; as might be expected of its author, it is both scholarly and ingenious, but, it must be admitted, not very convincing. Further evidence as to the early history of this alphabet must be discovered before we can definitely decide what its origin may be. That such evidence will be forthcoming there is little doubt. Even since Buhler wrote, the vase, the top of which is reproduced (see Plate), has been discovered on the borders of Nepal in a stupa where some of the relics of Buddha were kept. The inscription is of the same type as the Asoka inscriptions, but, in Buhler's opinion (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxx., 1898, p. 389), is older than Asoka's time. It reads as follows: iyam salilanidhane Budhasa bhagavate sakiyanam sukitibhatinaim sabhaginikam saputadalanam. "This casket of relics of the blessed Buddha is the pious foundation (so Pischel, no doubt rightly, Zeitsch. d. deutsch. morg. Gesell. lvi. 158) of the Sakyas, their brothers and their sisters, together with children and wives.''

How this alphabet was modified locally, and how it spread to other Eastern lands, must be sought in the specialist works to which reference has already been made. Its extension to new and hitherto unknown languages was in 1910 in process of being rapidly demonstrated by English and German expeditions in Chinese Turkestan.

AUTHORITIES.—-Owing to the rapid increase of materials, all early works are out of date. The best general accounts, though already somewhat antiquated, are: (1) The Alphabet (2 vols., with references to earlier works), by Canon Isaac Taylor (1883), reprinted from the stereotyped plates with small necessary corrections (1899); and (2) Histoire de l'ecriture dans l'antiquite, by M. Philippe Berger (Paris, 1891, 2nd ed. 1892). An excellent popular account is The Story of the Alphabet, by E. Clodd (no date, about 1900). Faulmann's Illustrierte Geschichte der Schrift (1880) is a popular work with good illustrations. For the beginnings of the alphabet, Dr A. J. Evans's Scripta Minoa (vol. i., 1900) is indispensable, whether his theories hold their ground or not. The Semitic alphabet is excellently treated by Lidzbarski in the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1901); his Nordsemitlsche Epigraphik (1898) has excellent facsimiles and tables of the alphabets, and there are many contributions to the history of the alphabet in the same writer's Ephemeris fur semitische Epigraphik (Giessen, since 1900). See also "Writing'' (by A. A. Bevan) in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, and "Alphabet''(by Isaac Taylor) in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. A very good article, now somewhat antiquated, is Schlottmann's "Schrift und Schriftzeichen'' in Riehm's Handworterbuch des biblischen Altertums (1884, reprinted 1894). For Greek epigraphy the fullest and also most recent work is W. Larfeld's Handbuch der griechischen Epigraphik (vol. ii., 1902; vol. i., 1907) (see especially Herkunft un Alter des griechischen Alphabets, i. 330 ff.). For the history of the Greek alphabet the fundamental work was A. Kirchhoff's Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets (4th ed., 1887).: His theories were adopted and worked out on a much larger scale in E. S. Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, pt. i. "The Archaic Inscriptions and the Greek Alphabet'' (1887), pt. ii. (wirh E. A. Gardner) "The Inscriptions of Attica'' (1905); See also Salomon Reinach's Traite d' epigraphie grecque (1885). in Iwan von Muller's Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft important articles on both Greek and Latin epigraphy and alphabets have appeared (Greek in edition 1 by G. Heinrichs, 1886; in edition 2 by W. Larfeld, 1892; Latin by Emil Hubner). See also "Alphabet,'' by W. Deecke, in Baumeister's Denkmaler des klassischen Altertums (1884), and by Szanto (Greek) and Joh. Schmidt (italic) in Pauly's Realencyclopadie edited by Wissowa (1894). Mommsen's Die unteritalischen Dialekte (1850) is not without value even now. Other literature and references to fuller bibliographies in separate departments have been given in the notes. Elsewhere in this edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica the articles on the various languages and under the headings INSCRIPTIONS, PALAEOGRAPHY, WRITING, &c., should be consulted, while separate articles are given on each letter of the English alphabet. The writer is indebted to Dr A. J. Evans for a photograph of the Cretan linear script, and to Professors A. A. Bevan and Rapson of Cambridge, and to Mr F. W. Thomas, librarian of the India Office, for help in their respective departments of Semitic and Indian languages. (P. Gt.) 1 Breasted, History of Egypt (1906), p. 45.

2 Op. cit. p. 484.

3 Die Schrift und Sprache der alten Agypter (1907), p. 24.

4 Scripta Minoa, i. (1909), sec. 10, pp. 77 ff.

5 E. Piette, L'Anthropologie, vii. (1896) pp. 384 ff.

6 E. Piette, L'Anthropologie, xvi. (1905) pp. 8-9. The apparent inscriptions of this period are conveniently collected and figured together in Dechelette's Malnuel d'archeologie prehistorique celtique et gallo-romaine, i. (1908) p. 233.

7 Der Ursprung des alt-semitischen Alphabets aus der neu-assyrischen Keilschrift (ZDMG. xxxi. pp. 102 ff.). A still more sweeping theory of the same nature is propounded by the Rev. C. J. Ball in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, xv. 1893) pp. 392 ff.

8 In an excellent summary of the different views held as to the origin of the alphabet (Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxii, first half, 1901), Dr J. P. Peters agrees (pp. 191 fl.) that the best test is ihe etymology of the names of the letters. He shows that twelve of the letter-names are words wiih meanings [in the northern dialects of Semitic], all of them indicating simple objects, six of the twelve being parts of the body. The objects denoted by the other six names—ox, house, valve of a door, water, fish and mark or cross—clearly do not belong to any people in a nomadic state, but to a settled, town-abiding population. . . . Six of the letter-names are not words in any known tongue, and appear to be syllables only. Four lerter-names are triliterals, and resemble in their form Semitic words.'' As 11 of the 12 which have meanings are to be found in the Assyrian-Babylonian syllabaries, he suggests a possible Babylonian origin. Different views with regard to some of these symbols are expressed by Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fur semitische Epigraphik, ii. pp. 125 ff. (1906). The earliest tradition of the names is discussed by Noldeke in his Beitrage zur semitischen Sprachwissenschait (1904), pp. 124 fl.

9 See, for example, the tables at the end of Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887); or Kirchhoff's Studien zur Geschichte des grieschischen Alphabets (4th ed. 1887); or Larfeld's Handbuch der grieschischen Epigraphik, vol. i. (1907).

10 Cp. Frankel, Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum Pelopennesi, i., No. 1607.

11 See Witton, in American Journal of Philology, xix. pp. 420 ff., and Lagercrantz, Zur griechischen Lautgeschichte (Upsala, 1898).

12. See Foat, "Tsade and Sampi'' (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxv. pp. 338 fl., xxvi. p. 286). A number of ingenious points often uncertain are raised by A. Gercke, "Zur Geschichie des altesten griechischen Alphabets'' (Hermes, xli., 1906, pp. 540 ff.).

13 See especially Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaology for 1895, p. 40; cf. also Kalinka, Neue Jahrbucher fur Philologie, iii. (1899), p. 683. Similar forms are also found in the Safa inscriptions (South Semitic) with similar values, and Praetorius argues (Z.D.M.G. lvi., 1902, pp. 677 ff., and again lviii., 1904, pp. 725 f.) that these were somehow borrowed by Greek in the 8th century B.C., while in lxii. pp.283 ff. he argues that the reason why the Greeks borrowed Th for the aspirated t was its form, the cross in @ being regarded as T and the surrounding circle as a variety of @ an occasional form of @ the aspirate. Here also (p. 287) as in his Ursprung des kanaanaischen Alphabets, pp. 13 f., he argues that the two forms of the digamma f and @, and also the South Semitic @ = o, could all have developed from the Cyprian I = we. But proof is impossible without evidence of the intermediate steps.

14 Inscriptiones Graecae, xii., fasc. iii. Nos. 811, 1149.

15 See especially Athenische Mitteilungen, xxi. p. 426.

16 Figured in Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, p. 65.

17 Details of the history of the individual letters will be found in separate articles.

18 It is figured most accessibly in Egbert's Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions, p. 16.

19 Gardthausen "Ursprung und Entwicklung der grieschen-lateinischen Schrift '' (Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, i. (1909), pp. 337 ff.) argues for a "proto-Tyrrhenian '' alphabet from which Etruscan, Umbrian and Oscan descended as one group, and Faliscan and Latin as the other. Evidence in favour of such a position for the Latin alphabet is not forthcoming.

20 For further details of these alphabets, see Conway, The Italic Dialects, ii. pp. 458 ff. The recent discovery by Keil and Premerstein (Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie, liii., 1908) of Lydian inscriptions containing the symbol @ suggests that the old derivation of the Etruscans from Lydia may be true and that they brought this symbol with them (see article on f.) But the inscriptions are not yet deciphered, so that conclusive proof is still wanting.

21 R. M. Meyer, Paul Braune und Sievers' Beitrage, xxi. (1896), pp. 162 ff.

22 In a paper published in the volume of Philologische Studien, presented as a "Festgabe'' to Professor Sievers in 1896, and in a second paper in the Journal of Germanic Philology, ii. (1899), pp. 370 ff.

23 See Literaturblott fur germanische und romanische Philologie for 1897, col. 429 f.

24 A species of cryptography exactly like this, based upon the 'abjad' order of the Arabic letters, is still in use among the Eastern Persia is (E G. Browne, A Year amongst the Persians, p. 391 f.).

25 Cf. Rhys, Outlines of Manx Phonology, p. 73 (publications of the Manx Society, vol. xxxiii.) ; Rhys and Brynmor Jones, The Welsh People, pp 3, 502. An interpretation of the oldest ogam inscriptions is given by Whitley Stokes in Bezzenberger's Beitrage, xi (1886), p 183 ff. Besides the collections of ogams by Brash (1879) and Fergeson (1887), a new collection by Mr R. A. S. Macalister is in course of publication (Studies in Irish Epigraphy, 1897, 1902, 1907). Professor Rhys, who at one time considered runes and ogam to be connected, now thinks that ogam was the invention of a grammarian in South Wales who was familiar with Latin letters.

26 Archiv fur slavische Philologie, v. 191 ff., where the Glagolitic and the cursive Greek, the Cyrillic and the Greek uncial are set side by side in facsimile.

27 For further details and references to literature see the introduction to Leskien's Grammatik (not to be confused with his Handbuch), from which this is abbreviated.

28 These are figured most accessibly in Lidzbarski's article on the alphabet in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, vol. i. (1901) ; see also his table of symbols added to the 27th edition of Gesenius' Hebraische, Grammatik (1902).

29 See Berger's Histoire de l'ecriture dans l'antiquite, p. 252 ff.; Nordsemitische Epigraphik, p. 186 ff., from whom this summary is taken. Lidzbarski's second volume and G. A. Cooke's Textbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford, 1903) contain the most convenient collections of Northern Semitic inscriptions for the student's purposes.

30 Muller, Epigraphische Denkmaler aus Arabien (Vienna, 1889).

31 Epigraphische Denkmaler aus Abessinien (Vienna, 1894). Praetorius (Z.D.M.G. lviii. p. 724) holds that the oldest Sabaean inscriptions may date from about 700 B.C., that the Lihyan inscriptions are at earliest of the Hellenistic period and the Safa inscriptions still later.

32 Praetorius (Z.D.M.G. lviii. p. 461 f.) attempts to trace the development of the Sabaean form from the Phoenician.

33 Hommel, Sud-arabische Chrestomathie (Munich, 1893), p. 5.

34 Buhler, Indian Studies, iii. (2nd. ed., 1898), p. 93. The account of these alphabets is drawn from this work and from the same author's Indische Palaographie in the Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie, to which is attached an atlas of plates (Strassburg, 1896), and in which a full bibliography is given.

35 For a coin and a gild token with inscriptions see Rapson's Indian Coins (in Grundriss d. ind.-ar. Phil.), Plate I.

AL-PHASI, ISAAC (1013—1103), Jewish rabbi and codifier, known as Riph, was born near Fez in 1013 and died at Lucena in 1103. 'Al-Pinasi means the "man of Fez'' (medieval Jews were often named after their birthplaces). He was forced to leave Fez when an old man of 75, being accused on some unknown political charge. He then settled in Spain where he was held in much esteem. His magnanimous character was illustrated by two incidents. When 'Al-phasi's opponent Isaac 'Albalia died, 'Al-pinasi received 'Albalia's son with the greatest kindness and adopted him as a son. When, again, 'Al-phasi was himself on the point of death, he recommended as his successor in the Lucena rabbinate, not his own son, but his pupil Joseph ibn Migash. The latter became the teacher of Maimonides, and thus 'Al-phasi's teaching as well as his work must have directly influenced Maimonides. 'Al-phasi's fame rests on his Talmudical Digest called Halakhoth or Decisions. The Talmud was condensed by him with a special view to practical law. He omitted all the homiletical passages, and also excluded those parts of the Talmud which deal with religious duties practicable only in Palestine. 'Al-pinasi thus occupies an important place in the development of the Spanish method of studying the Talmud. In contradistinction to the French rabbis, the Spanish sought to simplify the Talmud and free it from casuistical detail. 'Al-pinasi succeeded in producing a Digest, which became the object of close study, and led in its turn to the great Codes of Maimonides and of Joseph Qaro.

ALPHEGE [AELFHEAH], SAINT (954-1023), archbishop of Canterbury, came of a noble family, but in early life gave up everything for religion. Having assumed the monastic habit in the monastery of Deerhurst, he pased thence to Bath, where he became an anchorite and ultimately abbot, distinguishing himself by his piety and the austerity of his life. In 984 he was appointed through Dunstan's inlluence to the bishopric of Winchester, and in 1006 he succeeded AElfric as archbishop of Canterbury. At the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in 1011 AElfheah was captured and kept in prison for seven months. Refusing to pay a ransom he was barbarously murdered at Greenwich on the 19th of April 1012. He was buried in St Paul's, whence his body was removed by Canute to Canterbury with all the ceremony of a great act of state in 1023.

Lives of St. Alphege in prose (which survives) and in verse were written by command of Lanfranc by the Canterbury monk Osborn (d. c. 1090), who says that his account of the solemn translation to Canterbury in 1023 was received from the dean, (Godric, one of Alphege's own scholars.

ALPHEUS ('Alfeios; mod. Ruphia), the chief river of Peloponnesus. Strictly Ruphia is the modern name for the ancient Ladon, a tributary which rises in N.E. Elis, but the name has been given to the whole river. The Alpheus proper rises near Asea; but its passage thither by subterranean channels from the Tegean plain and its union with the Eurotas are probably mythical (see W. Loring, in Journ. Hell. Studies, xv. p. 67). It consists for the most part of a shallow and rapid stream, occupying but a small part of its broad, stony bed. It empties itself into the Ionian sea. Pliny states that in ancient times it was navigable for six Roman miles from its mouth. Alpheus was recognized in cult and myth as the chief or typical river-god in the Peloponnesus, as was Acholous in northern Greece. His waters were said to pass beneath the sea and rise again in the fountain Arethusa at Syracuse; such is the earlier version from which later mythologists and poets evolved the familiar myth of the loves of Alpheus and Arethusa.

ALPHONSE I., COUNT OF TOULOUSE (1103-1148), son of Count Raymond IV. by his third wife, Elvira of Castile, was born in 1103, in the castle of Mont-Pelerin, Tripoli. He was surnamed Jourdain on account of his being baptized in the river Jordan. His father died when he was two years old and he remained under the guardianship of his cousin, Guillaume Jourdain, count of Cerdagne (d. 1109), until he was five. He was then taken to Europe and his brother Bertrand gave him the countship of Rouergue; in his tenth year, upon Bertrand's death (1112), he succeeded to the countship of Toulouse and marquisate of Provence, but Toulouse was taken from him by William IX., count of Poitiers, in 1114. He recovered a part in 1119, but continued to fight for his possessions until about 1123. When at last successful, he was excommunicated by Pope Calixtus II. for having expelled the monks of Saint-Gilles, who had aided his enemies. He next fought for the sovereignty of Provence against Raymond Berenger I., and not till September 1125 did the war end in an amicable agreement. Under it Jourdain became absolute master of the regions lying between the Pyrenees and the Alps, Auvergne and the sea. His ascendancy was an unmixed good to the country, for during a period of fourteen years art and industry flourished. About 1134 he seized the countship of Narbonne, only restoring it to the Viscountess Ermengarde (d. 1197) in 1143. Louis VII., for some reason which has not appeared, besieged Toulouse in 1141, but without result. Next year Jourdain again incurred the displeasure of the church by siding with the rebels of Montpellier against their lord. A second time he was excommunicated; but in 1146 he took the cross at the meeting of Vezelay called by Louis VII., and in August 1147 embarked for the East. He lingered on the way in Italy and probably in Constantinople; but in 1148 he had arrived at Acre. Among his companions he had made enemies and he was destined to take no share in the crusade he had joined. He was poisoned at Caesarea, either the wife of Louis or the mother of the king of Jerusalem suggesting the draught.

See the documentary Histoire generale de Languedoc by De Vie and Vaissette, vol. iii. (Toulouse, 1872).

ALPHONSE, COUNT OF TOULOUSE AND OF POITIERS (12201271), the son of Louis VIII., king of France, and brother of St Louis, was born on the 11th of November 1220. He joined the county of Toulouse to his appanage of Poitou and Auvergne, on the death, in September 1249, of Raymond VII., whose daughter Jeanne he had married in 1237. He took the cross with his brother, St Louis, in 1248 and in 1270. In 1252, on the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, he was joint regent with Charles of Anjou until the return of Louis IX., and took a great part in the negotiations which led to the treaties of Abbeville and of Paris (1258—1259). His main work was on his own estates. There he repaired the evils of the Albigensian war and made a first attempt at administrative centralization, thus preparing the way for union with the crown. The charter known as "Alphonsine,'' granted to the town of Riom, became the code of public law for Auvergne. Honest and moderate, protecting the middle classes against exactions of the nobles, he exercised a happy influence upon the south, in spite of his naturally despotic character and his continual and pressing need of money. He died without heirs on his return from the 8th crusade, in Italy, probably at Savona, on the 21st of August 1271.

See B. Ledain, Histoire d'Alphonse, frere de S. Louis et du comte de Poltou sous son administration (1241-1271) (Poitou, 1869); E. Bourarie, Saint Louis et Alphonse de Poitiers (Paris, 1870); A. Molinier, Etude sur l'administration de S. Louis et d'Alphonse de Poitiers (Toulouse, 1880); and also his edition of the Correspondance adminiistrative d'Alphonse de Poitiers in the Collection de documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de France (Paris, 1894 and 1895).

ALPHONSO, the common English spelling of Alfonso, Alonso and Alfonso, which are respectively the Galician, the Leonese and the Castilian forms of Ildefonso (Ildefonsus), the name of a saint and archbishop of Toledo in the 7th century. The name has been borne by a number of Portuguese and Spanish kings, who are distinguished collectively below.

Kings of Portugal.

Portuguese Kings.—ALPHONSO I. (Affonso Henriques), son of Henry of Burgundy, count of Portugal, and Teresa of Castile, was born at Guimaraes in 1094. He succeeded his father in 1112, and was placed under the tutelage of his mother. When he came of age, he was obliged to wrest from her by force that power which her vices and incapacity had rendered disastrous to the state. Being proclaimed sole ruler of Portugal in 1123, he defeated his mother's troops near Guimaraes, making her at the same time his prisoner. He also vanquished Alphonso Raymond of Castile, his mother's ally, and thus freed Portugal from dependence on the crown of Leon. Next turning his arms against the Moors, he obtained, on the 26th July 1139, the famous victory of Ourique, and immediately after was proclaimed king by his soldiers. He assembled the Cortes of the kingdom at Lamego, where he received the crown from the archbishop of Braganza; the assembly also declaring that Portugal was no longer a dependency of Leon. Alphonso continued to distinguish himself by his exploits against the Moors, from whom he wrested Santarem in 1146 and Lisbon in 1147. Some years later he became involved in a war that had broken out among the kings of Spain; and in 1167, being disabled during an engagement near Badajoz by a fall from his horse, he was made prisoner by the soldiers of the king of Leon, and was obliged to surrender as his r:asom almost all the conquests he had made in Galicia. In 1184, in spite of his great age, he had still sufficient energy to relieve his son Sancho, who was besieged in Santarem by the Moors. He died shortly after, in 1185. Alphonso was a man of gigantic stature, being 7 ft. high according to some authors. He is revered as a saint by the Portuguese, both on account of his personal character and as the founder of their kingdom.

ALPHONSO II., "the Fat,'' was born in 1185, and succeeded his father, Sancho I., in 1211. He was engaged in war with the Moors and gained a victory over them at Alcacer do Sal in 1217. He also endeavoured to weaken the power of the clergy and to apply a portion of their enormous revenues to purposes of national utility. Having been excommunicated for this by the pope (Honorius III.), he promised to make amends to the church; but he died in 1223 before doing anything to fulfil his engagement. He framed a code which introduced several beneficial changes into the laws of his kingdom.

ALPHONSO III., son of Alphonso II., was born in 1210, and succeeded his brother, Sancho II., in 1248. Besides making war upon the Moors, he was, like his father, frequently embroiled with the church. In his reign Algarve became part of Portugal. He died in 1279.

ALPHONSO IV. was born in 1290, and in 1325 succeeded his father, Dionis, whose death he had hastened by his intrigues and rebellions. Hostilities with the Castilians and with the Moors occupied many years of his reign, during which he gained some successes; but by consenting to the barbarous murder of Inez de Castro, who was secretly espoused to his son Peter, he has fixed an indelible stain on his character. Enraged at this barbarous act, Peter put himself at the head of an army and devastated the whole of the country between the Douro and the Minho before he was reconciled to his father. Alphonso died almostimmediately after, on the 12th of May 1357.

ALPHONSO w., "Africano,'' was born in 1432, and succeeded his father Edward in 1438. During his minority he was placed under the regency, first of his mother and latterly of his uncle, Dom Pedro. In 1448 he assumed the reins of government and at the same time married Isabella, Dom Pedro's daughter. In the following year, being led by what he afterwards discovered to be false representations, he declared Dom Pedro a rebel and defeated his army in a battle at Alfarrobeira, in which his uncle was slain. In 1458, and with more numerous forces in 1471, he invaded the territories of the Moors in Africa and by his successes there acquired his surname of "the African.'' On his return to Portugal in 1475 his ambition led him into Castile, where two princesses were disputing his succession to the throne. Having been affianced to the Princess Juana, Alphonso caused himself to be proclaimed king of Castile and Leon; but in the following year he was defeated at Toro by Ferdinand, the husband of Isabella of Castile. He went to France to obtain the assistance of Louis XI., but finding himself deceived by the French monarch, he abdicated in favour of his son John. When he returned to Portugal, however, he was compelled by his son to resume the sceptre, which he continued to wield for two years longer. After that he fell into a deep melancholy and retired into a monastery at Cintra, where he died in 1481.

ALPHONSO VI., the second king of the house of Braganza, was born in 1643 and succeeded his father in 1656. In 1667 he was compelled by his wife and brother to abdicate the throne and was banished to the island of Terceira. These acts, which the vices of Alphonso had rendered necessary, were sanctioned by the Cortes in 1668. He died at Cintra in 1675.

Kings of medieval and modern Spain.

Spanish Kings.—From Alphonso I. (739-757) to Alphonso V. (999-1028) the personal history of the Spanish kings of this name is unknown and their very dates are disputed. ALPHONSO I. is said to have married Ormesinda, daughter of Pelavo, who was raised on the shield in Asturias as king of the Goths after the Arab conquest. He is also said to have been the son of Peter. duke of Cantabria. It is not improbable that he was in fact an hereditary chief of the Basques, but no contemporary records exist. His title of"the Catholic'' itself may very well have been the invention of later chronicles. ALPHONSO II. (789-842), his reputed grandson, bears the name of "the Chaste.'' The Arab writers who speak of the Spanish kings of the north-west as the Beni-Altons, appear to recognize them as a royal stock derived from Alphonso I. The events of his reign are in reality unknown. Poets of a later generation invented the story of the secret marriage of his sister Ximena with Sancho, count of Saldana, and the feats of their son Bernardo del Carpio. Bernardo is the hero of a cantar de gesta (chanson de geste) written to please the anarchical spirit of the nobles.

The first faint glimmerings of medieval Spanish history begin with ALPHONSO III. (866—914) surnamed "the Great.'' Of him also nothing is really known except the bare facts of his reign and of his comparative success in consolidating the kingdom known as "of Galicia'' or "of Oviedo'' during the weakness of the Omayyad princes of Cordova. ALPHONSO IV. (924-931) has a faint personality. He resigned the crown to his brother Ramiro and went into a religious house. A certain instability of character is revealed by the fact that he took up arms against Ramiro, having repented of his renunciation of the world. He was defeated, blinded and sent back to die in the cloister of Sahagun. It fell to ALPHONSO V. (999-1028) to begin the work of reorganizing the Christian kingdom of the north-west after a most disastrous period of civil war and Arab inroads. Enough is known of him to justify the belief that he had some of the qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His name, and that of his wife Geloria (Elvira), are associated with the grant of the first franchises of Leon. He was killed by an arrow while besieging the town of Viseu in northern Portugal, then held by the Mahommedans. (For all these kings see the article SPAIN: History.)

With ALPHONSO VI. (1065-1109) we come to a sovereign of strong personal character. Much romance has gathered round his name. In the cantar de gesta of the Cid he plays the part attributed by medieval poets to the greatest kings, to Charlemagne himself. He is alternately the oppressor and the victim of heroic and self-willed nobles—the idealized types of the patrons for whom the jongleurs and troubadours sang. (For the events of his reign see the article SPAIN: History.) He is the hero of a cantar de gesta which, like all but a very few of the early Spanish songs, like the cantar of Bernardo del Carpio and the Infantes of Lara, exists now only in the fragments incorporated in the chronicle of Alphonso the Wise or in ballad form. His flight from the monastery of Sahagnn, where his brother Sancho endeavoured to imprison him. his chivalrous friendship for his host Almamun of Toledo, caballero aunique moni, a gentleman although a Moor, the passionate loyalty of his vassal Peranzules and his brotherly love for his sister Urraca of Zamora, may owe something to the poet who took him for hero. They are the answer to the poet of the nobles who represented the king as having submitted to take a degrading oath at the hands of Ruy Diaz of Bivar (the Cid), in the church of Santa Gadea at Burgos, and as having then persecuted the brave nian who defied him. When every allowance is made, Alphonso Vl. stands out as a strong man fighting for his own hand, which in his case was the hand of the king whose interest was law and order and who was the leader of the nation in the reconquest On the Arabs he impressed himself as an enemy very fierce and astute, but as a keeper of his word. A story of Mahommedan origin, which is probably no more historical than the oath of Santa Gadea, tells of how he allowed himself to be tricked by Ibn Ammar, the favourite of Al Motamid, the king of Seville. They played chess for an extremely beautiful table and set of men, belonging to Ibn Ammar. Table and men were to go to the king if he won. If Ibn Ammar gained he was to name the stake. The latter did win and demanded that the Christian king should spare Seville. Alphonso kept his word. Whatever truth may lie behind the romantic tales of Christian and Mahommedan, we know that Alphonso represented in a remarkable way the two great influences then shaping the character and civilization of Spain. At the instigation, it is said, of his second wife. Constance of Burgundy, he brought the Cistercians into Spain, established them in Sahagun, chose a French Cistercian, Bernard, as the first archbishop of Toledo after the reconquest in 1085, married his daughters, legitimate and illegitimate, to French princes, and in every way forwarded the spread of French influence—then the greatest civilizing force in Europe. He also drew Spain nearer to the papacy, and it was his decision which established the Roman ritual in place of the old missal of Saint Isidore—the so-called Mozarabic. On the other hand he was very open to Arabic influence. He protected the Mahommedans among his subjects and struck coins with inscriptions in Arabic letters. After the death of Constance he perhaps married and he certainly lived with Zaida, said to have been a daughter of "Benabet'' (Al Alotamid), Mahommedan king of Seville. Zaida, who became a Christian under the name of Maria or Isabel, bore him the only son among his many children, Sancho, whom Alphonso designed to be his successor, but who was slain at the battle of Ucles in 1108. Women play a great part in Alphonso's life.

[ALPHOASO I., king of Aragon, "the Battler,'' who married Urraca, daughter of Alphonso VI. (1104-1134), is sometimes counted the VIIth in the line of the kings of Leon and Castile. A passionate fighting-man (he fought twenty-nine battles against Christian or Moor), he was married to Urraca, widow of Raymond of Burgundy, a very dissolute and passionate woman. The marriage had been arranged by Alphonso VI. in 1106 to unite the two chief Christian states against the Almoravides, and to supply them with a capable military leader. But Urraca was tenacious of her right as proprietary queen and had not learnt chastity in the polygamous household of her father. Husband and wife quarrelled with the brutality of the age and came to open war. Alphonso had the support of one section of the nobles who found their account in the confusion. Being a much better soldier than any of his opponents he gained victories at Sepalveda and Fuente de la Culebra, but his only trustworthy supporters were his Aragonese, who were not numerous enough to keep down Castile and Leon. The marriage of Alphonso and Urraca was declared null by the pope, as they were third cousins. The king quarrelled with the church, and particularly the Cistercians, almost as violently as with his wife. As he beat her, so he drove Archbishop Bernard into exile and expelled the monks of Sahagun. He was finally compelled to give way in Castile and Leon to his stepson Alphonso, son of Urraca and her first husband. The intervention of Pope Calixtus II. brought about an arrangement between the old man and the young. Alphonso the Battler won his great successes in the middle Ebro, where he expelled the Moors from Saragossa; in the great raid of 1125, when he carried away a large part of the subject Christians from Granada, and in the south-west of France, where he had rights as king of Navarre. Three years before his death he made a will leaving his kingdom to the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Knights of the Sepulchre, which his subjects refused to carry out. He was a fierce, violent man, a soldier and nothing else, whose piety was wholly militant. Though he died in 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Moors at Braga, he has a great place in the reconquest.]

ALPHONSO VII., "the Emperor'' (1126-1157), is a dignified and somewhat enigmatical figure. A vague tradition had always assigned the title of emperor to the sovereign who held Leon as the most direct representative of the Visigoth kings, who were themselves the representatives of the Roman empire. But though given in charters, and claimed by Alphonso VI. and the Battler, the title had been little more than a flourish of rhetoric. Alphonso VII. was crowned emperor in 1155 after the death of the Battler. The weakness of Aragon enabled him to make his superiority effective. He appears to have striven for the formation of a national unity, which Spain had never possessed since the fall of the V'isigoth kingdom. The elements he had to deal with could not be welded together. Alphonso was at once a patron of the church, and a protector if not a favourer of the Mahommedans, who formed a large part of his subjects. His reign ended in an unsuccessful campaign against the rising power of the Almohades. Though he was not actually defeated, his death in the pass of Muradel in the Sierra Morena, while on his way back to Toledo, occurred in circumstances which showed that no man could be what he claimed to be—-"king of the men of the two religions.'' His personal character does not stand out with the emphasis of those of Alphonso VI. or the Battler. Yet he was a great king, the type and to some extent the victim of the confusions of his age—Christian in creed and ambition, but more than half oriental in his household.

ALPHONSO VIII. (1158-1214), king of Castile only, and grandson of Alphonso VII., is a great name in Spanish history, for he led the coalition of Christian princes and foreign crusaders who broke the power of the Almohades at the battle of the Navas de Tolosa in 1212. The events of his reign are dealt with under SPAIN. His personal history is that of many medieval kings. He succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, Sancho, at the age of a year and a half. Though proclaimed king, he was regarded as a mere name by the unruly nobles to whom a minority was convenient. The devotion of a squire of his household, who carried him on the pommel of his saddle to the stronghold of San Esteban de Gormaz, saved him from falling into the hands of the contending factions of Castro and Lara, or of his uncle Ferdinand of Leon, who claimed the regency. The loyalty of the town of Avila protected his youth. He was barely fifteen when he came forth to do a man's work by restoring his kingdom to order. It was only by a surprise that he recovered his capital Toledo from the hands of the Laras. His marriage with Leonora of Aquitaine, daughter of Henry II. of England, brought him under the influence of the greatest governing intellect of his time. Alphonso VIII. was the founder of the first Spanish university, the studium generale of Palencia, which, however, did not survive him.

ALPHONSO IX. (1188—1230) of Leon, first cousin of Alphonso VIII. of Castile, and numbered next to him as being a junior member of the family (see the article SPAIN for the division of the kingdom and the relationship), is said by Ibn Khaldun to have been called the "Baboso'' or Slobberer, because he was subject to fits of rage during which he foamed at the mouth. Though he took a part in the work of the reconquest, this king is chiefly remembered by the difficulties into which his successive marriages led him with the pope. He was first married to his cousin Teresa of Portugal, who bore him two daughters, and a son who died young. The marriage was declared null by the pope, to whom Alphonso paid no attention till he was presumably tired of his wife. It cannot have been his conscience which constrained him to leave Teresa, for his next step was to marry Berengaria of Castile, who was his second cousin. For this act of contumacy the king and kingdom were placed under interdict. The pope was, however, compelled to modify his measures by the threat that if the people could not obtain the services of religion they would not support the clergy, and that heresy would spread. The king was left under interdict personally, but to that he showed himself indifferent, and he had the support of his clergy. Berengaria left him after the birth of five children, and the king then returned to Teresa, to whose daughters he left his kingdom by will.

ALPHONSO X., El Sabio, or the learned (1252-1284), is perhaps the most interesting, though he was far from being the most capable, of the Spanish kings of the middle ages. (His merits as a writer are dealt with in the article SPAIN: Literature). His scientific fame is based mainly on his encouragement of astronomy. It may be pointed out, however, that the story which represents him as boasting of his ability to make a better world than this is of late authority. If he said so, he was speaking of the Ptolemaic cosmogony as known to him through the Arabs, and his vaunt was a humorous proof of his scientific instinct. As a ruler he showed legislative capacity, and a very commendable wish to provide his kingdoms with a code of laws and a consistent judicial system. The Fuero Real was undoubtedly his work, and he began the code called the Slete Partidas, which, however, was only promulgated by his great-grandson. Unhappily for himself and for Spain, he wanted the singleness of purpose required by a ruler who would devote himself to organization, and also the combination of firmness with temper needed for dealing with his nobles. His descent from the Hohenstaufen through his mother, a daughter of the emperor Philip, gave him claims to represent the Swabian line. The choice of the German electors, after the death of Conrad IV. in 1254, misled him into wildechemes which never took effect but caused immense expense. To obtain money he debased the coinage, and then endeavoured to prevent a rise in prices by an arbitrary tariff. The little trade of his dominions was ruined, and the burghers and peasants were deeply offended. His nobles, whom he tried to cow by sporadic acts of violence, rebelled against him. His second son, Sancho, enforced his claim to be heir, in preference to the children of Ferdinand de la Cerda, the elder brother who died in Alphonso's life. Son and nobles alike supported the Moors, when he tried to unite the nation in a crusade; and when he allied himself with the rulers of Morocco they denounced him as an enemy of the faith. A reaction in his favour was beginning in his later days, but he died defeated and deserted at Seville, leaving a will by which he endeavoured to exclude Sancho and a heritage of civil war.

ALPHONSO XI. (1312-1350) is variously known among Spanish kings as the Avenger or the Implacable, and as "he of the Rio Salado.'' The first two names he earned by the ferocity with which he repressed the disorder of the nobles after a long minority; the third by his victory over the last formidable African invasion of Spain in 1340. The chronicler who records his death prays that "God may be merciful to him, for he was a very great king.'' The mercy was needed. Alphonso XI. never went to the insane lengths of his son Peter the Cruel, but he could be abundantly sultanesque in his methods. He killed for reasons of state without form of trial, while his open neglect of his wife, Maria of Portugal, and his ostentatious passion for Leonora de Guzman, who bore him a large family of sons, set Peter an example which he did not fail to better. It may be that his early death, during the great plague of 1350, at the siege of Gibraltar, only averted a desperate struggle with his legitimate son, though it was a misfortune in that it removed a ruler of eminent capacity, who understood his subjects well enough not to go too far.

[Four other kings of Aragon, besides the Battler, bore the name of Alphonso. All these princes held territory in the south-east of France, and had a close connexion with Italy. ALPHONSO II. of Aragon (i162—1106) was the son of Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, and of Petronilla, niece of Alphonso the Battler, and daughter of Ramiro surnamed the Monk. He succeeded to the county of Barcelona in 1162 on the death of his father, at the age of eleven, and in 1164 his mother renounced her rights in Aragon in his favour. Though christened Ramon (Raymond), the favourite name of his line, he reigned as Alphonso out of a wish to please his Aragonese subjects, to whom the memory of the Battler was dear. As king of Aragon he took a share in the work of the reconquest, by helping his cousin Alohonso VIII. of Castile to conquer Cuenca, and to suppress one Pero Ruiz de Azagra, who was endeavouring to carve out a kingdom for himself in the debatable land between Christian and Mahommedan. But his double position as ruler both north and south of the eastern Pyrenees distracted his policy. In character and interests he was rather Provencal than Spanish, a favourer of the troubadours, no enemy of the Albigensian heretics, and himself a poet in the southern French dialect. ALPHONSO III. of Aragon (12851291), the insignificant son of the notable Peter III., succeeded to the Spanish and Provencal possessions of his father, but his short reign did not give him time even to marry. His inability to resist the demands of his nobles left a heritage of trouble in Aragon. By recognising their right to rebel in the articles called the Union he helped to make anarchy permanent. ALPHONSO IV. of Aragon (1327-1336) was a weak man whose reign was insignificant. ALPHONSO V. of Aragon (1416-1458), surnamed the Magnanimous, who represented the old line of the counts of Barcelona only through women, and was on his father's side descended from the Castilian house of Trastamara, is one of the most conspicuous figures of the early Renaissance. No man of his time had a larger share of the quality called by the Italians of the day "virtue.'' By hereditary right king of Sicily, by the will of Joanna II. and his own sword king of Naples, he fought and triumphed amid the exuberant development of individuality which accompanied the revival of learning and the birth of the modern world. When a prisoner in the hands of Filipo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, in 1435, Alphonso persuaded his ferocious and crafty captor to let him go by making it plain that it was the interest of Milan not to prevent the victory of the Aragonese party in Naples. Like a true prince of the Renaissance he favoured men of letters whom he trusted to preserve his reputation to posterity. His devotion to the classics was exceptional even in that time. He halted his army in pious respect before the birthplace of a Latin writer, carried Livy or Caesar on his campaigns with him, and his panegyrist Panormita did not think it an incredible lie to say that the king was cured of an illness by having a few pages of Quintus Curtius read to him. The classics had not refined his taste, for he was amused by setting the wandering scholars, who swarmed to his court, to abuse one another in the indescribably filthy Latin scolding matches which were then the fashion. Alphonso founded nothing, and after his conquest of Naples in 1442 ruled by his mercenary soldiers, and no less mercenary men of letters. His Spanish possessions were ruled for him by his brotherjohn. He left his conquest of Naples to his bastard son Ferdinand; his inherited lands, Sicily and Sardinia, going to his brother John who survived him.]

ALPHONSO XII. (1857-1885), king of modern Spain, son of Isabella II. and Maria Fernando Francisco de Assisi, eldest son of the duke of Cadiz, was born on the 28th of November 1857. When Queen Isabella and her husband were forced to leave Spain by the revolution of 1868 he accompanied them to Paris, and from thence he was sent to the Theresianum at Vienna to continue his studies. On the 25th of June 1870 he was recalled to Paris, where his mother abdicated in his favour, in the presence of a number of Spanish nobles who had followed the fortunes of the exiled queen. He assumed the title of Alphonso XII.; for although no king of united Spain had previously borne the name, the Spanish monarchy was regarded as continuous with the more ancient monarchy, represented by the eleven kings of Leon and Castile already referred to. Shortly afterwards he proceeded to Sandhurst to continue his military studies, and while there he issued, on the 1st of December 1874, in reply to a birthday greeting from his followers, a manifesto proclaiming himself the sole representative of the Spanish monarchy. At the end of the year, when Marshal Serrano left Madrid to take command of the northern army, General Martinez Campos, who had long been working more or less openly for the king, carried off some battalions of the central army to Sagunto, rallied to his own flag the troops sent against him, and entered Valencia in the king's name. Thereupon the president of the council resigned, and the power was transferred to the king's plenipotentiary and adviser, Canovas del Castillo. In the course of a few days the king arrived at Madrid, passing through Barcelona and Valencia, and was received everywhere with acclamation (1875). In 1876 a vigorous campaign against the Carlists, in which the young king took part, resulted in the defeat of Don Carlos and his abandonment of the struggle. Early in 1878 Alphonso married his cousin, Princess Maria de las Mercedes, daughter of the duc de Montpensier, but she died within six months of her marriage. Towards the end of the same year a young workman of Tarragona, Oliva Marcousi, fired at the king in Madrid. On the 29th of November 1879 he married a princess of Austria, Maria Christina, daughter of the Archduke Charles Ferdinand. During the honeymoon a pastrycook named Otero fired at the young sovereigns as they were driving in Madrid. The children of this marriage were Maria de las Mercedes, titular queen from the death of her father until the birth of her brother, born on the 11th of September 1880, married on the 14th of February 1901 to Prince Carlos of Bourbon, died on the 17th of October 1904; Maria Teresa, born on the 12th of November 1882, married to Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria on the 12th of January 1906; and Alphonso (see below). In 1881 the king refused to sanction the law by which the ministers were to remain in office for a fixed term of eighteen months, and upon the consequent resignation of Canovas del Castillo, he summoned Sagasta, the Liberal leader, to form a cabinet. Alphonso died of phthisis on the 24th of November 1885. Coming to the throne at such an early age, he had served no apprenticeship in the art of ruling, but he possessed great natural tact and a sound judgment ripened by the trials of exile. Benevolent and sympathetic in disposition, he won the affection of his people by fearlessly visiting the districts ravaged by cholera or devastated by earthquake in 1885. His capacity for dealing with men was considerable, and he never allowed himself to become the instrument of any particular party. In his short reign, peace was established both at home and abroad, the finances were well regulated, and the various administrative services were placed on a basis that afterwards enabled Spain to pass through the disastrous war with the United States without even the threat of a revolution.

ALPHONSO XIII. (1886- ), king of Spain, son of Alphonso XII., was born, after his father's death, on the 17th of May 1886. His mother, Queen Maria Christina, was appointed regent during his minority (see SPAIN: History.) In 1902, on attaining his 16th year, the king assumed control of the government. On the 31st of May 1906 he married Princess Victoria Eugenie Julia Ena Maria Christina of Battenberg, niece of Edward VII. of England. As the king and queen were returning from the wedding they narrowly escaped assassination in a bomb explosion, which killed and injured many bystanders and members of the royal procession. An heir to the throne was born on the 10th of May 1907, and received the name of Alphonso.

AUTHORITIES—The lives of all the early kings of Spain will be found in the general histories (see the article SPAIN: Authorities), of which the most trustworthy is the Anales de la Corona de Aragon, by Geronimo Zurita (Saragossa, 1610). See also the Chronicles of the Kings of Castile in the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles de Riva deneyra Madrid, 1846-1880, vols. 66, 68, 70). (D.H.) ALPHONSUS A SANCTA MARIA, or ALPHONSO DE CARTAGENA (1396-1456), Spanish historian, was born at Carthagena, and succeeded his father, Paulus, as bishop of Burgos. In 1431 he was deputed by John II., king of Castile, to attend the council of Basel, in which he made himself conspicuous by his learning. He was the author of several works, the principal of which is entitled Rerum Hispanorum Romanorum imperatorum, summorum pontificum, nec non regum Francorum anacephaleosis. This is a history of Spain from the earliest times down to 1456, and was printed at Granada in 1545, and also in the Rerum Hispanicarum Scriptores aliquot, by R. Bel (Frankfort, 1579). Alphonsus died on the 12th of July 1456.

ALPINI, PROSPERO (PROSPER ALPINUS), 1553-1617, Italian physician and botanist, was born at Marostica, in the republic of Venice, on the 23rd of November 1553. In his youth he served for a time in the Milanese army, but in 1574 he went to study medicine at Padua. After taking his doctor's degree in 1578, he settled as a physician in Campo San Pietro, a small town in the Paduan territory. But his tastes were botanical, and to extend his knowledge of exotic plants he travelled to Egypt in 1580 as physician to George Emo or Hemi, the Venetian consul in Cairo. In Egypt he spent three years, and from a practice in the management of date-trees, which he observed in that country, he seems to have deduced the doctrine of the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the foundation of the Linnaean system. He says that "the female date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers.'' On his return, he resided for some time at Genoa as physician to Andrea Doria, and in 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at Padua, where he died on the 6th of February 1617. He was succeeded in the botanical chair by his son Alpino Alpini (d. 1637). His best-known work is De Plantis Aegypti liber (Venice, 1592). His De Medicina Egyptiorum (Venice, 1591) is said to contain the first account of the coffee plant published in Europe. The genus Alpinia, belonging to the order Zingiberaceae, was named after him by Linnaeus.

ALPS, the collective name for one of the great mountain systems of Europe.

1. Position and Name.—-The continent of Europe is no more than a great poninsula extending westwards from the much vaster continent of Asia, while it is itself broken up by two inland seas into several smaher peninsulas—the Mediterranean forming the Iberian, the Italian and the Greek peninsulas, while the Baltic forms that of Scandinavia and the much smaller one of Denmark. Save the last-named, all these peninsulas of Europe are essentially mountain ranges. But in height and importance the ranges that rise therein are much surpassed by a great mountain-chain, stretching from south-eastern France to the borders of Hungary, as well as between the plains of northern Italy and of southern Germany. This chain is collectively known as the Alps, and is the most important physical feature of the European continent. The Alps, however, do not present so continuous a barrier as the Himalayas, the Andes or even the Pyrenees. They are formed of numerous ranges, divided by comparatively deep valleys, which, with many local exceptions, tend towards parallelism with the general direction of the whole mass. This, between the Dauphine and the borders of Hungary, forms a broad band convex towards the north, while most of the valleys lie between the directions west to east and south-west to north-east. But in many parts deep transverse valleys intersect the prevailing direction of the ridges, and facilitate the passage of man, plants and animals, as well as of currents of air which mitigate the contrast that would otherwise be found between the climates of the opposite slopes.

The derivation of the name Alps is still very uncertain, some writers connecting it with a Celtic root alb, said to mean height, while others suggest the Latin adjective albus (white), referring to the colour of the snowy peaks. But in all parts of the great chain itself, the term Alp (or Alm in the Eastern Alps) is exclusively applied to the high mountain pastures (see ALP), and not to the peaks and ridges of the chain.

2. Limits.—-These will depend on the meaning we attach to the word Alps as referring to the great mountain-chain of central Europe. If we merely desire to distinguish it from certain minor ranges (e.g. the Cevenues, the Jura, the hills of central Germany, the Carpathians, the Apennines), which are really independent ranges rather than offshoots of the main chain, the best limits are on the west (strictly speaking south), the Col d'Altare or di Cadibona (1624 ft.), leading from Turin to Savona and Genoa, and on the east the line of the railway over the Semmering Pass (3215 ft.) from Vienna to Marburg in the Mul valley, and on by Laibach to Trieste. But if we confine the meaning of the term Alps to those parts of the chain that are what is commonly called "Alpine,', where the height is sufficient to support a considerable mass of perpetual snow, our boundaries to the west and to the east must be placed at spots other than those mentioned above. To the west the limit will then be the Col de Tenda (6145 ft.), leading from Cuneo (Coni) to Ventimigha, while on the east our line will be the route over the Radstadter Tauern (5702 ft.) and the Katschberg (5384 ft.) from Salzburg to Villach in Carinthia, and thence by Klagenfurt to Marburg and so past Laibach in Carniola on to Trieste; from Villach the direct route to Trieste would be over the Predil Pass (3813 ft.) or the Pontebba or Saifnitz Pass (2615 ft.), more to the west, but in either case this would exclude the Terglou (9400 ft.), the highest summit of the entire South-Eastern Alps, as well as its lower neighbours.

On the northern side the Alps (in whichever sense we take this term) are definitely bounded by the course of the Rhine from Basel to the Lake of Constance, the plain of Bavaria, and the low region of foot-hills that extend from Salzburg to the neighbourhood of Vienna. One result of this limit, marked out by Nature herself, is that the waters which flow down the northern slope of the Alps find their way either into the North Sea through the Rhine, or into the Black Sea by means of the Danube, not a 1lrop reaching the Baltic Sea. On the southern side the mountains extending from near Turin to near Trieste subside into the great plain of Piedmont, Lombardy and Venetia. But what properly forms the western bit of the Alps runs, from near Turin to the Col de Tenda, in a southerly direction, then bending eastwards to the Col d'Altare that divides it from the Apennines.

It should be borne in mind that the limits adopted above refer purely to the topographical aspect of the Alps as they exist at the present day. Naturalists will of course prefer other limits according as they are geologists, botanists or zoologists.

3. Climate.—-It is well known that as we rise from the sea-level into the upper regions of the atmosphere the temperature decreases. The effect of mountain-chains on prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of heat, often accompanied by the precipitation of moisture in the form of snow or rain. The position of the Alps about the centre of the European continent has profoundly modified the climate of all the surrounding regions. The accumulation of vast masses of snow, which have gradually been converted into permanent glaciers, maintains a gradation of very different climates within the narrow space that intervenes between the foot of the mountains and their upper ridges; it cools the breezes that are wafted to the plains on either side, but its most important function is to regulate the water-supply of thatlarge region which is traversed by the streams of the Alps. Nearly all the moisture that is precipitated during six or seven months is stoled upin the form of snow, and is gradually diffused in the course of the succeeding summer; even in the hottest and driest seasons the reserves accumulated during a long preceding period of years in the form of glaciers are available to maintain the regular flow of the greater streams. Nor is this all; the lakes that fill several of the main valleys on the southern side of the Alps are somewhat above the level of the plains of Lombardy and Venetia, and afford an inexhaustible supply of water, which, from a remote period, has been used for that system of irrigation to which they owe their proverbial fertility. Six regions or zones, which are best distinguished by their characteristic vegetation, are found in the Alps. It is an error to suppose that these are indicated by absolute height above the sea-level. Local conditions of exposure to the sun, protection from cold winds, or the reverse, are of primary importance in determinin8 the climate and the corresponding vegetation.

Olive region.

The great plain of Upper Italy has a winter climate colder than that of the British Islands. The olive and the characteristic shrubs of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean do not thrive in the open air, but the former valuable tree ripens its fruit in sheltered places at the foot of the mountains, and penetrates along the deeper valleys and the shores of the Italian lakes. The evergreen oak is wild on the rocks about the Lake of Garda, and lemons are cultivated on a large scale, with partial protection in winter. The olive has been known to survive severe cold when of short duration, but it cannot be cultivated with success where frosts are prolonged, or where the mean winter temperature falls below 42 deg. F.; and to produce fruit it requires a heat of at least 75 deg. F. during the day, continued through four or five months of the summer and autumn.

Vine region.

The vine is far more tolerant of cold than the olive, but to produce tolerable wine it demands, at the season of ripening, a degree of heat not much less than that needed by the more delicate tree. These conditions are satisfied in the deeper valleys of the Alps, even in the interior of the chain, and up to a considerable height on slopes exposed to the sun. The protection afforded by winter snow enables the plant to resist severe and prolonged frosts, such as would be fatal in more exposed situations. Many wild plants characteristic of the warmer parts of middle Europe are seen to flourish along with the vine. A mean summer temperature of at least 68 deg. F. is considered necessary to produce tolerable wine, but in ordinary seasons this is much exceeded in many of the great valleys of the Alps.

Mountain region, or region of deciduous trees.

Many writers take the growth of grain as the characteristic of the mountain region; but so many varieties of all the common species are in cultivation, and these have such different climatal requirements, that they do not afford a factory criterion. A more natural limit is afforded by the presence of the chief deciduous trees—-oak, beech, ash and sycamore. These do not reach exactly to the same elevation, nor are they often found growing together; but their upper limit corresponds accurately enough to the change from a temperate to a colder climate that is further proved by a change in the wild herbaceous vegetation. This limit usually lies about 4000 ft. above the sea on the north side of the Alps, but on the southern slopes it often rises to 5000 ft., sometimes even to 5500 ft. It must not be supposed that this region is always marked by the presence of the characteristic trees. The interference of man has in many districts almost extirpated them, and, excepting the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, a considerable wood of deciduous trees is scarcely anywhere to be found. In many districts where such woods once existed, their place has been occupied by the Scottish pine and spruce, which suffer less from the ravages of goats, the worst enemies of tree vegetation. The mean annual temperature of this region differs little from that of the British Islands; but the climatal conditions are widely different. Here snow usually lies for several months, till it gives place to a spring and summer considerably warmer than the average of British seasons.

Subalpine region, or region of coniferous trees.

The Subalpine is the region which mainly determines the manner of life of the population of the Alps. On a rough estimate we may reckon that, of the space lying between the summits of the Alps and the low country on either side, one-quarter is available for cultivation, of which about one-half may be vineyards and corn-fields, while the remainder produces forage and grass. About another quarter is utterly barren, consisting of snow-fields, glaciers, bare rock, lakes and the beds of streams. There remains about one-half, which is divided between forest and pasture, and it is the produce of this half which mainly supports the relatively large population. For a quarter of the year the flocks and herds are fed on the upper pastures; but the true limit of the wealth of a district is the number of animals that can be supported during the long winter, and while one part of the population is engaged in tending the beasts and in making cheese and butter, the remainder is busy cutting hay and storing up winter food for the cattle. The larger villages are mostly in the mountain region, but in many parts of the Alps the villages stand in the subalpine region at heights varying from 4000 ft. to 5500 ft. above the sea, more rarely extending to about 6000 ft. The most characteristic feature of this region is the prevalence of coniferous trees, which, where they have not been artificially kept down, form vast forests that cover a large part of the surface. These play a most important part in the natural economy of the country. They protect the valleys from destructive avalanches, and, retaining the superficial soil by their roots, they mitigate the destructive effects of heavy rains. In valleys where they have been rashly cut away, and the waters pour down the slopes unchecked, every tiny rivulet becomes a raging torrent, that carries off the grassy slopes and devastates the floor of the valley, covering the soil with gravel and debris. In the pine forests of the Alps the prevailing species are the common spruce and the silver fir; on siliceous soil the larch flourishes, and surpasses every other European species in height. The Scottish pine is chiefly found at a lower level and rarely forms forests. The Siberian fir is found scattered at intervals throughout the Alps but is not common. The mughus, creeping pine, or Krummholz of the Germans, is common in the Eastern Alps, and sometimes forms on the higher mountains a distinct zone above the level of its congeners. In the Northern Alps the pine forests rarely surpass the limit of 6000 ft. above the sea, but on the south side they commonly attain 7000 ft., while the larch, Siberian fir and mughus often extend above that elevation.

Alpine region.

Throughout the Teutonic region of the Alps the word Alp is used specifically for the upper pastures where cattle are fed in summer, but this region is held to include the whole space between the uppermost limit of trees and the first appearance of permanent masses of snow. It is here that the characteristic vegetation of the Alps is developed in its full beauty and variety. Shrubs are not wanting. Three species of rhododendron vie with each other in the brilliancy of their masses of red or pink flowers; the common juniper rises higher still, along with three species of bilberry; and several dwarf willows attain nearly to the utmost limit of vegetation. The upper limit of this region coincides with the so-called limit of perpetual snow.

Glacial region.

On the higher parts of lofty mountains more snow falls in each year than is melted on the spot. A portion of this is carried away by the wind before it is consolidated; a larger portion accumulates in hollows and depressions of the surface, and is gradually converted into glacier-ice, which descends by a slow secular motion into the deeper valleys, where it goes to swell perennial streams. As on a mountain the snow does not lie in beds of uniform thickness, and some parts are more exposed to the sun and warm winds than others, we commonly find beds of snow alternating with exposed slopes covered with brilliant vegetation; and to the observer near at hand there is no appearance in the least corresponding to the term limit of perpetual snow, though the case is otherwise when a high mountain-chain is viewed from a distance. Similar conditions are repeated at many different points, so that the level at which large snow-beds show themselves along its flanks is approximately horizontal. But this holds good only so far as the conditions are similar. On the opposite sides of the same chain the exposure to the sun or to warm winds may cause a wide difference in the level of permanent snow; but in some cases the increased fall of snow on the side exposed to moist winds may more than compensate the increased influence of the sun's rays. Still, even with these reservations, the so-called line of perpetual snow is not fixed. The occurrence of favourable meteorological conditions during several successive seasons may and does increase the extent of the snow-fields, and lower the limit of seemingly permanent snow; while an opposite state of things may cause the limit to rise higher on the flanks of the mountains. Hence all attempts to fix accurately the level of pernetual snow in the Alps are fallacious, and can at the best approach only to local accuracy for a particular district. In some parts of the Alps the limit may be set at about 8000 ft. above the sea, while in others it cannot be placed much below 9500 ft. As very little snow can rest on rocks that lie at an angle exceeding 60 deg. , and this is soon removed by the wind, some steep masses of rock remain bare even near the summits of the highest peaks, but as almost every spot offering the least hold for vegetation is covered with snow, few flowering plants are seen above 11,000 ft. There is reason to think, however, that it is the want of soil rather than climatal conditions that checks the upward extension of the alpine flora. Increased direct effect of solar radiation compensates for the cold of the nights, and in the few spots where plants have been found in flower up to a height of 12,000 ft., nothing has indicated that the processes of vegetation were arrested by the severe cold which they must sometimes endure. The climate of the glacial region has often been compared to that of the polar regions, but they are widely different. Here, intense solar radiation by day, which raises the surface when dry to a temperature approaching 80 deg. F., alternates with severe frost by night. There, a sun which never sets sends feeble rays that maintain a low equable temperature, rarely rising more than a few degrees above the freezing-point. Hence the upper region of the Alps sustains a far more varied and brilliant vegetation.

4. Main Chain.—-In the case of every mountain system geographers are disposed to regard, as a general rule, the watershed (or boundary dividing the waters flowing towards opposite slopes of the range) as marking the main chain, and this usage is justified in that the highest peaks often rise on or very near the watershed. Yet, as a matter of fact, several important mountain groups are situated on one or other side of the watershed of the Alps, and form almost independent ranges, being only connected with the main chain by a kind of peninsula: such are the Dauphine Alps, the Eastern and Western Graians, the entire Bernese Oberland, the Todi, Albula and Silvretta groups, the Ortler and Adamello ranges, and the Dolomites of south Tirol, not to speak of the lower Alps of the Vorarlberg, Bavaria and Salzburg. Of course each of these semi-detached ranges has a watershed of its own, like the lateral ridges that branch off from the main watershed. Thus there are lofty ranges parallel to that which forms the main watershed. The Alps, therefore, are not composed of a single range (as shown on the old maps) but of a great "divide,'' flanked on either side by other important ranges, which, however, do not comprise such lofty peaks as the main watershed. In the following remarks we propose to follow the main watershed from one end of the Alps to the other.

Starting from the Col d'Altare or di Cadibona (west of Savona), the main chain extends first south-west, then north-west to the Col de Tenda, though nowhere rising much beyond the zone of coniferous trees. Beyond the Col de Tenda the direction is first roughly west, then north-west to the Rocher des Trois Eveques (9390 ft.), just south of the Mont Enchastraye (9695 ft.), several peaks of about 10,000 ft. rising on the watershed, though the highest of all, the Punta dell' Argentera(10,794 ft.) stands a little way to its north. From the Rocher des Trois Eveques the watershed runs due north for a long distance, though of the two loftiest peaks of this region One, the Aiguille de Chambeyron (11,155 ft.), is just to the west, and the other, the Monte Viso (12,609 ft.), is just to the east of the watershed. From the head of the Val Pellice the main chain runs north-west, and diminishes much in average height till it reaches the Mont Thabor (10,440 ft.), which forms the apex of a salient angle which the main chain here presents towards.the west. Hence the main watershed extends eastwards, culminating in the Aiguille de Scolette (11,500 ft.), but makes a great curve to the north-west and back to the south-east before rising in the Rochemelon (11,605 ft.), which may be considered as a re-entering angle in the great rampart by which Italy is guarded from its neighbours. Thence the direction taken is north as far as the eastern summit (11,693 ft.) of the Levanna, the watershed rising in a series of snowy peaks, though the loftiest point of the region, the Pointe de Charbonel (12,336 ft.), stands a little to the west. Gnce more the chain bends to the north-west, rising in several lofty peaks (the highest is the Aiguille de la Grande Sassiere, 12,323 ft.), before attaining the considerable depression of the Little St Bernard Pass. Thence for a short way the direction is north to the Col de la Soigne, and then north-east along the crest of the Mont Blanc chain, which culminates in the peak of Mont Blanc (15,782 ft.), the loftiest in the Alps. A number of high peaks crown our watershed before it attains the Mont Dolent (12,543 ft.). Thence after a short dip to the south-east, our chain takes near the Great St Bernard Pass the generally eastern direction that it maintains till it reaches Monte Rosa,whence it bends northwards, making one small dip to the east as far as the Simplon Pass. It is in the portion of the watershed between the Great St Bernard and the Simplon that the main chain maintains a greater average height than in any other part. But, though it rises in a number of lofty peaks, such as the Mont Velan ( 12,353 ft. ), the Matterhorn (14,782 ft.), the Lyskamm (14,889 ft.), the Nord End of Monte Rosa (15,132 ft.), and the Weissmies (13,226ft.), yet manyof the highest points of the region, such as the Grand Combin (14,164 ft.), the Dent Blanche (14,318 ft.), the Weisshorn (14,804 ft.), the true summit or Dufourspitze (15,217 ft.) of Monte Rosa itself, and the Dom (14,942 ft.), all rise on its northern slope and not on the main watershed. On the other hand the chain between the Great St Bernard and the Simplon sinks at barely half a dozen points below a level of 10,000 ft. The Simplon Pass corresponds to what may be called a dislocation of the main chain. Thence to the St Gotthard the divide runs north-east, all the higher summits (including the Monte Leone, 11,684 ft., and the Pizzo Rotondo, 10,489 ft.) rising on it, a curious contrast to the long stretch just described. From the St Gotthard to the Maloja the watershed between the basins of the Rhine and Po runs in an easterly direction as a whole, though making two great dips towards the south, first to near the Vogelberg (10,565 ft.) and again to near the Pizzo Gailegione (10,201 ft.), so that it presents a broken and irregular appearance. But all the loftiest peaks rise on it: Scopi (10,499 ft.), Piz Medel (10,509 ft.), the Rheinwaldhorn (11,I49 ft.), the Tambohorn (10,749 ft.) and Piz Timun (10,502 ft.).

From the Maloja Pass the main watershed dips to the south-east for a short distance, and then runs eastwards and nearly over the highest summit of the Bernina group, the Piz Bernina (13,304 ft.), to the Bernina Pass. Thence to the Reschen Scheideck Pass the main chain is ill-defined, though on it rises the Corno di Campo (10,844 ft.), beyond which it runs slightly north-east past the sources of the Adda and the Fraele Pass, sinks to form the depression of the Ofen Pass, soon hends north and rises once more in the Piz Sesvenna (10,568 ft.).