Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Igala ... ikebana

Igala: a largely Muslim people of Nigeria, living on the left bank of the Niger River below its junction with the Benue River. Their language belongs to the Kwa subgroup of the Niger-Congo family. Their ruler, the ata, traditionally also governed ...
Igarashi Family: Japanese lacquerware artists who specialized in the maki-e technique, wherein a design is made by sprinkling minute gold, silver, or copper flakes over a lacquer ground. The founder of the Igarashi family, Shinsai, contributed to the art by perfecting two ...
Igarka: city, Krasnoyarsk kray (region), central Russia. It is 60 miles (100 km) north of the Arctic Circle and lies along the Yenisey River, 418 miles (673 km) from the sea, but is accessible to oceangoing vessels. It was founded in ...
Igbira: inhabitants of the areas northeast and southwest of the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers in central Nigeria. Their language is usually classified as a Nupoid variety within the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family.
Igbo: people living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria who speak Igbo, a language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The Igbo may be grouped into the following main cultural divisions: northern (Onitsha), southern (Owerri), western (Ika), eastern (Cross River), ...
Igboid languages: a language cluster that constitutes a subbranch of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. There are nearly 20 million speakers of Igboid languages in southeastern Nigeria. In the early years of the 20th century an attempt to develop ...
Iggy and the Stooges: American band of the late 1960s and early 1970s that helped define punk music. Both with the Stooges and in his subsequent solo career, Iggy Pop had a far-reaching influence on later performers. The principal members were Iggy Pop (original ...
Iglesia ni Kristo: the largest entirely indigenous Christian church in the Philippines. Its members assert that the early Christian church was restored in God's chosen nation, the Filipinos, when Felix Manalo launched this church in 1914. Rapid growth after 1945 produced some 600,000 ...
Iglesias: town and episcopal see, Cagliari provincia, southwestern Sardinia, Italy. It lies west-northwest of Cagliari city. The town's cathedral dates from 1288, and the 15th-century Church of San Francesco is a good example of Franciscan architecture in Sardinia. Iglesias is the ...
Iglesias, Pablo: political leader who played a significant role in the development of Spanish democratic socialism and trade unionism.
igloo: temporary winter home or hunting-ground dwelling of Canadian and Greenland Inuit (Eskimos). The term igloo, or iglu, from Eskimo igdlu ("house"), is related to Iglulik, a town, and Iglulirmiut, an Inuit people, both on an island of the same name. ...
Ignarro, Louis J.: American pharmacologist who, along with Robert F. Furchgott and Ferid Murad, was co-awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that nitric oxide (NO) acts as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. This work uncovered ...
Ignatius of Antioch, Saint: bishop of Antioch, Syria, known mainly from seven highly regarded letters that he wrote during a trip to Rome, as a prisoner condemned to be executed for his beliefs. He was apparently eager to counteract the teachings of two groups-the ...
Ignatow, David: American poet whose works address social as well as personal issues in meditative, vernacular free verse.
Ignatyev, Nikolay Pavlovich, Graf: pan-Slavist diplomat and statesman who played a major role in the administration of Russia's foreign policy in Asia under Tsar Alexander II (reigned 1855-81).
igneous rock: any of various crystalline or glassy rocks formed by the cooling and solidification of molten earth material. Igneous rocks comprise one of the three principal classes of rocks, the others being metamorphic and sedimentary.
ignimbrite: rock composed of compacted volcanic ejecta (see tuff).
ignition system: in a gasoline engine, means employed for producing an electric spark to ignite the fuel-air mixture; the burning of this mixture in the cylinders produces the motive force.
ignitron: electron tube functioning as a rectifier to convert alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC). Each conduction cycle is started by an external voltage applied to the igniter, a small electrode touching the tube's cathode, which is a pool of ...
Igor: grand prince of Kiev and presumably the son of Rurik, prince of Novgorod, who is considered the founder of the dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus and, later, Muscovy until 1598. Igor, successor to the great warrior and diplomat Oleg (reigned ...
Igor Svyatoslavich: prince of the Russian lands of Novgorod-Seversky (modern Novhorod-Siverskyy, Ukraine) after 1178 and of Chernigovsky (1198-1202; modern Chernihiv, Ukraine), who led an unsuccessful campaign against the Cumans (Polovtsy) in 1185.
Igor's Campaign, The Song of: masterpiece of Old Russian literature, an account of the unsuccessful campaign in 1185 of Prince Igor of Novgorod-Seversky against the Polovtsy (Kipchak, or Cumans). As in the great French epic The Song of Roland, Igor's heroic pride draws him into ...
Igorot: any of various ethnic groups in the mountains of northern Luzon, Philippines, all of whom keep, or have kept until recently, their traditional religion and way of life. Some live in the tropical forests of the foothills, but most live ...
Iguacu Falls: series of cataracts on the Iguacu River, 14 miles (23 km) above its confluence with the Alto (Upper) Parana River, at the Argentina-Brazil border. The falls resemble an elongated horseshoe that extends for 1.7 miles (2.7 km)-nearly three times wider ...
Iguacu River: river flowing through Santa Catarina and Parana states in southern Brazil. The Iguacu is formed by headstreams rising in the Serra do Mar near Curitiba. It winds generally westward through the uplands for about 820 miles (1,320 km) before joining ...
Iguala: city, north-central Guerrero estado ("state"), south-central Mexico. It was settled in 1750 and was named in honour of Agustin de Iturbide's Iguala Plan, proclaiming Mexico an independent monarchy (Feb. 24, 1821). Iguala lies along the Cocula River and is an ...
Iguala Plan: (Feb. 24, 1821), appeal issued by Agustin de Iturbide, a creole landowner and a former officer in the Spanish army who had assumed leadership of the Mexican independence movement in 1820. His plan called for an independent Mexico ruled by ...
iguana: any of about 13 species of the lizard family Iguanidae. While the name iguanid encompasses all members of this family, iguana usually refers only to the larger species. The best-known species is the common, ...
iguanid: any of about 700 species of lizards in more than 50 genera that constitute the family Iguanidae. Iguanids are found throughout the Americas from southern Canada to the tip of South America. The only exceptions are one genus (Brachylophus) in ...
Iguanodon: large herbivorous dinosaurs found as fossils from the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous periods (159 million to 99 million years ago) in a wide area of Europe, North Africa, North America, Australia, and Asia; a few have been found from ...
Iguvine Tables: a set of seven inscribed bronze tables found in 1444 at Iguvium (modern Gubbio, Italy), an Umbrian town. The tables are written in the Umbrian language, four and part of a fifth using the Umbrian script, the rest Latin characters. ...
Ihara Saikaku: poet and novelist, one of the most brilliant figures of the 17th-century revival of Japanese literature. He enchanted readers with racy accounts of the amorous and financial affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde.
Ihimaera, Witi: Maori author whose novels and short stories explore the clash between Maori and Pakeha (white, European-derived) cultural values in his native New Zealand.
ihram: sacred state into which a Muslim must enter in order to perform the hajj (major pilgrimage) or the 'umrah (minor pilgrimage). At the beginning of a pilgrimage, the Muslim stops at a designated station to perform certain ritual cleansing ceremonies; ...
Ii Naosuke: Japanese feudal lord and statesman who was responsible for Japan's signing the first treaty of commerce with the United States (1858), opening the country to Western influence, and for the last attempt at reasserting the traditional political role of the ...
Iio Sogi: Buddhist monk and greatest master of renga (linked verse), the supreme Japanese poet of his age.
iiwi: (species Vestiaria coccinea), Hawaiian songbird, one of the commoner members of the Hawaiian honeycreeper family, Drepanididae, order Passeriformes. A nectar-feeder, named for its squeaky call ("ee-ee-vee"), it is 15 cm (6 inches) long, with a red body, black wings with ...
Iizuka: city, Fukuoka ken (prefecture), Kyushu, Japan, on the upper Onga River. The city developed as a mining centre with the opening of the Chikuho Coalfield and a railway from Wakamatsu in the 1890s. The mines were gradually closed after World ...
Ijebu-Ode: town, Ogun state, southwestern Nigeria. It is situated along the highway between Shagamu and Benin City. Ijebu-Ode was by the 16th century established as the chief town of the Ijebu people (a subdivision of the Yoruba). As the seat of ...
ijma': (Arabic: "agreeing upon," or "consensus"), the universal and infallible agreement of the Muslim community, especially of Muslim scholars on any Islamic principle, at any time. The consensus-based on the Hadith (sayings of Muhammad), "My people will never agree in an ...
IJmuiden: port of Amsterdam and part of the gemeente (commune) of Velsen, Noord-Holland provincie, western Netherlands. The port is situated at the western end of the North Sea (Noordzee) Canal, which was opened in 1876. IJmuiden is also an industrial centre ...
Ijo: people of the forests of the Niger River delta in Nigeria comprising a large number of formerly autonomous groups. They speak languages of the Ijoid branch of the Niger-Congo language family.
Ijoid languages: the smallest branch of the Niger-Congo language family. It consists of a language cluster, Ijo (Ijaw), comprising seven other language clusters with a total of approximately two million speakers, and Defaka (Afakani), a solitary language spoken by very few. All ...
ijolite: intrusive igneous rock that is composed essentially of nepheline and an alkali pyroxene, usually aegirinaugite. It is the plutonic equivalent of the volcanic nephelinites and nepheline dolerites. Typically, the pyroxene is well-crystallized and is surrounded by the nepheline. Accessory minerals ...
IJssel River: river of The Netherlands, an important distributary of the Rhine River. It leaves the Lower Rhine (Neder Rijn) just southeast of Arnhem and flows northeastward for 70 miles (113 km) to enter the IJsselmeer (a lake formed from the old ...
IJsselmeer: shallow freshwater lake, northern and central Netherlands. It was formed from the southern part of the former Zuiderzee by the building of a dam (Afsluitdijk; completed 1932) separating the IJsselmeer from both the Waddenzee (the northern part of the former ...
IJsselmeer Polders: group of four polders, central Netherlands, that were reclaimed from the IJsselmeer, a lake that used to be part of the former Zuiderzee. The polders are located in the lake's southern part and along its eastern shore (except for Wieringermeer ...
ijtihad: in Islamic law, the independent or original interpretation of problems not precisely covered by the Qur'an, Hadith (traditions concerning the Prophet's life and utterances), and ijma' (scholarly consensus). In the early Muslim community every adequately qualified jurist had the right ...
Ikare: town, Ondo state, southwestern Nigeria. It lies in the Yoruba Hills, at the intersection of roads from Owo, Okene, Kabba, and Ado-Ekiti. An agricultural trade centre (yams, cassava, corn [maize], okra, pumpkins, rice) for the local Yoruba people, it is ...
Ike Taiga: painter of the mid-Tokugawa period (1603-1867) who, together with Yosa Buson, established the bunjin-ga, or literati, style of painting, which survives to this day in Japan. (The style had originated in China and was first called Nan-ga, or the Southern ...
ikebana: traditionally, the classical art of Japanese flower arranging; the meaning of the term was later extended to encompass all the various styles of Japanese floral art. Ikebana was introduced in Japan in the 6th century by Chinese Buddhist missionaries who ...