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MEDINA (lit. the city) (76), called also Medina-en-Nabi, 210 m. N.
of Mecca, the City of the Prophet, as the place in which he found refuge after his ”flight” from Mecca in 632; it was here he from that date lived, where he died, and where his tomb is, in a beautiful and rich mosque called El Haram (i. e. the inviolate), erected on the site of the prophet's house. See HEGIRA.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA, so called by the ancients as lying in the presumed middle of the earth surrounded by Europe, Asia, and Africa; the largest enclosed sea in the world; its communication with the Atlantic is Gibraltar Strait, 9 m. wide; it communicates with the Black Sea through the Dardanelles, and in 1869 a ca.n.a.l through the isthmus of Suez connected it with the Red Sea, 2200 m. long by 100 to 600 m. broad; its S. sh.o.r.es are regular; the N. has many gulfs, and two great inlets, the aegean and Adriatic Seas; the Balearic Isles, Corsica, and Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Cyprus, and Crete, the Ionian Isles, and the Archipelago are the chief islands; the Rhone, Po, and Nile the chief rivers that discharge into it; a ridge between Sicily and Cape Bon divides it into two great basins; it is practically tideless, and salter than the Atlantic; its waters too are warm; northerly winds prevail in the E. with certain regular variations; the surrounding territories are the richest in the world, and the greatest movements in civilisation and art have taken place around it in Africa, Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, and Rome.
MEDIUM, in modern spiritualism a person susceptible to communication with the spirit-world.
MEDJIDIE, an Ottoman order of knighthood inst.i.tuted in 1852 by the Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid, as a reward of merit in civil or military service.
MeDOC, a district in the dep. of the Gironde, on the left of the estuary, in the S. of France, famous for its wines.
MEDUSA, one of the THREE GORGONS (q. v.), is fabled to have been originally a woman of rare beauty, with a magnificent head of hair, but having offended Athena, that G.o.ddess changed her hair into hideous serpents, and gave to her eyes the power of turning any one into stone who looked into them; PERSEUS (q. v.) cut off her head by the help of Athena, who afterwards wore it on the middle of her breastplate or s.h.i.+eld.
MEDWAY, a river in Kent, which rises in Surrey and Suss.e.x, and which after a NE. course of 58 m. falls into an estuary at Sheerness.
MEEANEE, a village in Sind, 6 m. N. of Hyderabad, where Sir Charles Napier defeated an army of the Ameer of Sind in 1843.
MEERSCHAUM (lit. sea-foam), a fine white clay, a hydrate-silicate of magnesia, supposed, as found on the sea-sh.o.r.e in some places, to have been sea-foam petrified.
MEERUT (119), an Indian town in the North-West Provinces, on the Nuddi, 40 m. NE. of Delhi; is capital of a district of the same name, and an Important military station; it is noted as the scene of the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857.
MEGARIS, a small but populous State of ancient Greece, S. of Attica, whose inhabitants were adventurous seafarers, credited with deceitful propensities. The capital, Megara, famous for white marble and fine clay, was the birthplace of Euclid.
MEGATHERIUM, an extinct genus of mammalia allied to the sloth, some 18 or 20 ft. in length and 8 ft. in height, with an elephantine skeleton.
MEHEMET ALI, pasha of Egypt, born in Albania; entered the Turkish army, and rose into favour, so that he was able to seize the pashalic, the Sultan compromising matters by exaction of an annual tribute in acknowledgment of his suzerainty; the Mamelukes, however, proved unruly, and he could not otherwise get rid of them but by luring them into his coils, and slaughtering them wholesale in 1811; he maintained two wars with the Sultan for the possession of Syria, and had Ibrahim Pasha, his son, for lieutenant; compelled to give up the struggle, he inst.i.tuted a series of reforms in Egypt, and prosecuted them with such vigour that the Sultan decreed the pashalic to remain hereditary in his family (1769-1849).
MEISSEN (15), a town of Saxony, on the Upper Elbe, 15 m. NW. of Dresden; has a very fine Gothic cathedral and an old castle. Gellert and Lessing were educated here. There is a large porcelain factory, where Dresden china is made, besides manufactures of iron.
MEISSONIER, JEAN LOUIS ERNEST, French painter, born at Lyons; began as a book ill.u.s.trator of ”Paul and Virginia” amongst other works, practising the while and perfecting his art as a figure painter, in which he achieved signal success, from his ”Chess-player” series to his designs for the decoration of the Pantheon, ”The Apotheosis of France,” in 1889 (1811-1891).
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