town and former capital of the Tai state of Ayutthaya (Siam) located in central Thailand, about 55 miles (89 km) north of Bangkok. The site of immense temples and other structures that are important both historically and architecturally, Ayutthaya was ...
Sunnite Muslim dynasty, founded by Saladin (Salah ad-Din), that ruled over Egypt and what became upper Iraq, most of Syria, and Yemen in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
area of the Pakistani-administered sector of the Kashmir region, in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. Azad ("Free") Kashmir, established in 1947 after the partition of India, is neither a province nor an agency of Pakistan but has a ...
philosopher whose optimism was rooted in the idea that human experience is imbued with a natural and harmonious balance between joy and sadness and that it is in this balance that meaning can be discovered. He advocated the idea in ...
any of a certain species of Rhododendron, of the family Ericaceae, formerly given the generic name Azalea. Neither the shape of the corolla (ring of petals) nor other characteristics are sufficiently constant to serve as a means of separating these ...
any member of the Babi movement (followers of a 19th-century Iranian prophet, the Bab) who chose to remain faithful to the Bab's teachings and to his chosen successor, Mirza Yahya, given the religious title Sobh-e Azal, after a split in ...
town, eastern Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. It lies along the Tons River, a tributary of the Ghaghara, north of Varanasi (Benares). Founded in 1665 by A'zam Khan, a local chief for whom it is named, the compact town sits ...
Spanish minister and president of the Second Republic whose attempts to fashion a moderately liberal government were halted by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
town and traditional emirate, Bauchi state, northeastern Nigeria, located in the northern extension of the state. The town and emirate are peopled by the Hausa, Fulani, and Beriberi, who are predominantly Muslim. The first prime minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar ...
apocryphal insertion into The Book of Daniel in the Greek (Septuagint) Bible and subsequently included in the Latin (Vulgate) Bible and the Roman Catholic biblical canon.
immunosuppressive drug that is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and to suppress the body's rejection of transplanted organs. By inhibiting several enzymatic pathways required for the synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), azathioprine decreases the number of lymphocytes (a type of ...
town and chateau, Indre-et-Loire departement, Centre region, central France. The town lies along the Indre River a few miles upstream from its confluence with the Loire River, about 15 miles (24 km) southwest of ...
in Jewish legends, a demon or evil spirit to whom, in the ancient rite of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), a scapegoat was sent bearing the sins of the Jewish people. Two male goats were chosen for the ritual, one ...
aristocrat, painter, author, and statesman who was a leader of the movement that advocated an Italian national revival (Risorgimento) by the expulsion of all foreign influences from the then-divided Italian states. His political influence far outweighed his artistic achievements.
in chemistry, a mixture of liquids that has a constant boiling point because the vapour has the same composition as the liquid mixture. The boiling point of an azeotropic mixture may be higher or lower than that of any of ...
geographic region that comprises the extreme northwestern portion of Iran. It is bounded on the north by the Aras River, which separates it from independent Azerbaijan and Armenia; on the east by the Iranian region of Gilan and the Caspian ...
country of eastern Transcaucasia. Occupying an area that fringes the southern flanks of the Caucasus Mountains, it is bounded on the north by Russia, on the east by the Caspian Sea, on the south by Iran, on the west by ...
any member of a Turkic people living chiefly in the Republic of Azerbaijan and in the region of Azerbaijan in northwestern Iran. At the turn of the 21st century there were some 7,500,000 Azerbaijani in the republic and neighbouring areas ...
chief centre of Islamic and Arabic learning in the world, centred on the mosque of that name in the medieval quarter of Cairo, Egypt. It was founded by the Fatimids in AD 970 and was formally organized by 988. The ...
any of a class of chemical compounds containing three nitrogen atoms as a group, represented as (-N3). Azides are considered as derived from hydrazoic acid (HN3), an inorganic salt such as sodium azide (NaN3), or an organic derivative in which ...
tool tradition of Late Paleolithic and Early Mesolithic Europe, especially in France and Spain. The Azilian industry was preceded by the richer and more complex Magdalenian industry and was more or less contemporary with such industries as the Tardenoisian, Maglemosian, ...
synthetic textile fibre composed of protein material derived from natural sources. It is produced, like other synthetic fibres, by converting the raw material to a solution that is extruded through the holes of a device called a spinneret and then ...
any organic chemical compound in which the azo group (&singlehorzbond;N&doublehorzbond;N&singlehorzbond;) is part of the molecular structure. The atomic groups attached to the nitrogen atoms may be of any organic class, but the commercially important azo compounds, those that make up ...
any of a large class of synthetic organic dyes that contain nitrogen as the azo group &singlehorzbond;N&doublehorzbond;N&singlehorzbond; as part of their molecular structures; more than half the commercial dyes belong to this class. Depending on other chemical features, these dyes ...
city, south-central Ecuador. It lies in a high Andean valley northeast of Cuenca. Its economy is based on agricultural trade, and grains and fruit are cultivated in the surrounding area. Important local industries include flour milling, Panama hat making, and ...
archipelago composed of nine major islands, in the North Atlantic Ocean; they lie roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of Portugal and are a part of that country. The islands are divided into three widely separated groups: the eastern group, ...
novelist, essayist, and the foremost Spanish literary critic of his day. He was one of a group of writers who were engaged at the turn of the 20th century in a concerted attempt to revitalize Spanish life and letters. Azorin ...
town, Rostov oblast (province), southwestern Russia. It lies on the left bank of the Don River, 4 miles (7 km) east of the Sea of Azov. The Greek colony of Tanais, the first known major city in the region, was ...
hilly region, Zaporizhzhya and Donetsk oblasti (provinces), southeastern Ukraine. Part of the Ukrainian Crystalline Shield, the Azov Upland is an area of denuded mountains, extending from the Dnieper River for 100 miles (160 km) to the Donets Ridge and sloping ...
inland sea situated off the southern shores of Ukraine and Russia. It forms a northern extension of the Black Sea, to which it is linked on the south by the Kerch Strait. The Sea of Azov is about 210 miles ...
Nahuatl-speaking people who in the 15th and early 16th centuries ruled a large empire in what is now central and southern Mexico. The Aztec are so called from Aztlan ("White Land"), an allusion to their origins, probably in northern Mexico. ...
dating system based on the Mayan calendar and used in the Valley of Mexico before the destruction of the Aztec empire. Like the Mayan calendar, the Aztec calendar consisted of a ritual cycle of 260 days and a 365-day civil ...
archaeological site in northwestern New Mexico, U.S., on the Animas River, just north of the city of Aztec. The national monument was established in 1923 and has an area of 0.5 square mile (1.3 square km). The site, mistakenly called ...
a major grouping (phylum or superstock) of American Indian languages that includes the large Uto-Aztecan language family and the small Kiowa-Tanoan language family of New Mexico and Oklahoma. The Uto-Aztecan languages are widely spoken in Mexico, northern Guatemala, and, by ...
city, southwestern Dominican Republic. Founded in 1504 on the Caribbean coast, the original town was destroyed by an earthquake; the town was reestablished 3 miles (5 km) inland at its present site at the foot of the Ocoa Mountains. It ...
(1574-1600), in Japanese history, age of political unification under the daimyo Oda Nobunaga and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who finally brought all provinces under the control of the central government. In contrast to the restraint of the preceding Muromachi, or ...
physical region in southwestern Panama, protruding south into the Pacific Ocean between the Gulf of Panama to the east and the Gulf of Montijo to the west. It measures 60 miles (100 km) from east to west and 55 miles ...
(from Arabic az-zulayj, "little stone"), Spanish and later principally Portuguese tiles produced from the 14th century onward. At first the term was used to denote only North African mosaics, but it became the accepted word for an entirely decorated tile ...
basic copper carbonate [Cu3(OH)2(CO3)2]. It is ordinarily found with malachite in the oxidized zone of copper lodes. Notable deposits are Tsumeb, Namibia; Chessy, Fr.; and Bisbee, Ariz., U.S. Azurite was used as a blue pigment in ancient Eastern wall painting ...
a leader of the Bolognese school of jurists and one of the few to write systematic summaries (summae) rather than textual glosses of Roman law as codified under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (6th century AD). His ...
