Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Zamboanga City ... Zariadres

Zamboanga City: city and port, western Mindanao, Philippines. It is a busy port strategically located on the southwestern tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula, on Basilan Strait and sheltered by Basilan Island. The immediate coastal lowlands are narrow, with low, rugged hills located ...
Zamboanga Peninsula: long, semicircular peninsula of western Mindanao, Philippines, extending southwesterly toward the Sulu Archipelago and Borneo. It has an area of roughly 5,600 square miles (14,500 square km). It is bordered on the north and west by the Sulu Sea and ...
Zamenhof, L.L.: Polish physician and oculist who created the most important of the international artificial languages-Esperanto.
Zamia: a genus of 30 or more species of cycads (family Cycadaceae), small, stocky, fern-like plants native to tropical and subtropical America. They have a turniplike, mostly underground stem that in some species reaches 3 m (10 feet) or more in ...
zamindar: in India, a holder or occupier (dar) of land (zamin). The root words were Persian, and the resulting name was widely used wherever Persian influence was spread by the Mughals or other Indian Muslim dynasties. The meanings attached to it ...
Zamora: city, northwestern Michoacan state, west-central Mexico. It lies at an elevation of 5,141 feet (1,567 m) above sea level in the Zamora valley, formed by the Duero River. It was founded in 1540 as an outpost to guard against Indians. ...
Zamora: capital of Zamora province, in the autonomous community (region) of Castile-Leon, northwestern Spain. It lies along the northern bank of the Duero (Portuguese Douro) River, northwest of Madrid. The city occupies a rocky height overlooking the Duero, a little below ...
Zamora: town, southeastern Ecuador. Amid the forested jungles east of the main Andean ranges, the town lies at the southeastern foot of the Andean Cordillera de Zamora, just south of the Zamora River. The Roman Catholic Church has established a vicar ...
Zamora: province, Castile-Leon autonomous community and historic region, northwestern Spain. It was formed in 1833 from part of the historic province of Leon and is bounded by Portugal and Orense (west), by Leon (north), by Valladolid (east), and by Salamanca (south). ...
Zamosc: city, Lubelskie wojewodztwo (province), eastern Poland. One of the few large communities in the Lublin Uplands, it was founded on the estates of Polish chancellor Jan Zamoyski (1542-1605) that lay on the trade route between the Black ...
Zamoyski Family: great Polish family whose members influenced Polish politics and history for almost 400 years.
Zamoyski, Jan: Polish advisor to King Sigismund II Augustus and Stephen Bathory and later an opponent of Sigismund III Vasa. He was a major force in the royal politics of Poland throughout his life.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny Ivanovich: Russian novelist, playwright, and satirist, one of the most brilliant and cultured minds of the post-revolutionary period, and creator of a peculiarly modern genre-the anti-Utopian novel. His influence as an experimental stylist and as an exponent of the cosmopolitan-humanist traditions ...
Zanardelli, Giuseppe: Italian prime minister from 1901 to 1903 and an associate of the early-20th-century liberal leader Giovanni Giolitti; Zanardelli was a champion of parliamentary rights and followed a conciliatory policy toward labour in a time of great unrest.
Zand Dynasty: (1750-79), Iranian dynasty that ruled southern Iran.
Zande: a people of central Africa who speak a language of the Adamawa-Ubangi branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Extending across the Nile-Congo drainage divide, they live partly in The Sudan, partly in Congo (Kinshasa), and partly in the Central African ...
Zane, Betty: American frontier heroine whose legend of valour in the face of attack by American Indians provided the subject of literary chronicle and fiction.
Zanesville: city, Muskingum county, east central Ohio, U.S., at the juncture of the Muskingum and Licking rivers (there spanned by the "Y" Bridge [1902]), 52 miles (84 km) east of Columbus. The town was founded (1797) by Ebenezer Zane on land ...
Zangi: Iraqi ruler who founded the Zangid dynasty and led the first important counterattacks against the crusader kingdoms in the Middle East.
Zangid Dynasty: Muslim Turkish dynasty that was founded by Zangi (q.v.) and which ruled northern Iraq (al-Jazirah) and Syria in the period 1127-1222. After Zangi's death in 1146, his sons divided the state between them, Syria falling to Nureddin (Nur ad-Din Mahmud; ...
Zangwill, Israel: novelist, playwright, and Zionist leader, one of the earliest English interpreters of Jewish immigrant life.
Zanj rebellion: (AD 869-883), a black-slave revolt against the 'Abbasid caliphal empire. A number of Basran landowners had brought several thousand East African blacks (Zanj) into southern Iraq to drain the salt marshes east of Basra. The landowners subjected the Zanj, who ...
Zanjan: geographic region of northwestern Iran. It lies west of Tehran and is bordered on the northwest by Azerbaijan and on the southwest by Kordestan. The region constitutes one of the uplands that frame central Iran and has an average elevation ...
Zanjan: city, northwestern Iran. It lies in an open valley about halfway along the Tehran-Tabriz railway line. It is the principal city of the Zanjan region. It was ravaged by Mongols in the 13th century. Once the seat of a lively ...
zanni: stock servant character in the Italian improvisational theatre known as the commedia dell'arte. Zanni were valet buffoons, clowns, and knavish jacks-of-all-trades. All possessed common sense, intelligence, pride, and a love of practical jokes and intrigue; they were, ...
Zanthoxylum: the prickly ash genus of the rue family (Rutaceae), comprising about 200 species of aromatic trees and shrubs native to the middle latitudes of North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. There are both deciduous and evergreen species. They ...
Zanuck, Darryl F.: Hollywood producer and movie executive for more than 40 years and an innovator of many trends in film.
Zanzibar: island in the Indian Ocean 22 miles (35 km) off the coast of east-central Africa. In 1964 Zanzibar, together with Pemba Island (q.v.) and some other smaller islands, joined with Tanganyika on the mainland to form the United Republic of ...
Zanzibar: city and port of the island of Zanzibar, Tanzania. The island's principal port and commercial centre, it is on the western side of the island behind a well-protected natural deepwater harbour. In 1824 Sultan Sa'id ibn Sultan of Oman established ...
Zanzibar Treaty: (July 1, 1890), arrangement between Great Britain and Germany that defined their respective spheres of influence in eastern Africa and established German control of Helgoland, a North Sea island held by the British since 1814. The treaty was symptomatic of ...
Zapadni Slovensko: kraj (region), southwestern Slovakia. It is bordered on the northwest by the Czech Republic, on the southwest by Austria, on the southeast by Hungary, and on the northeast by Stredni Slovensko kraj. Plains formed by the Morava (March), Danube (Dunaj), ...
Zapadocesky: kraj (region), western Czech Republic. It is bordered by Germany on the north and west and by Severocesky, Stredocesky, and Jihocesky kraje on the east. It is surrounded by mountains on its external boundaries and contains a series of hilly ...
Zapata, Emiliano: Mexican revolutionary, champion of agrarianism, who fought in guerrilla actions during and after the Mexican Revolution (1910-20).
Zapata, Luis: Mexican novelist who rose to popularity in the 1970s with books about the youth subculture of Mexico City. His novels examine the connection between daily life and the popular culture of radio, television, and film.
Zapatero, Jose Luis Rodriguez: Spanish politician, who became prime minister of Spain in 2004.
Zapolska, Gabriela: Polish novelist and playwright of the Naturalist school.
Zapopan: city, north-central Jalisco estado ("state"), west-central Mexico. It is in the temperate Guadalajara Valley, at an elevation of 5,243 feet (1,598 m) above sea level, 4.5 miles (7 km) northwest of Guadalajara, the state capital. It is a commercial and ...
Zaporizhzhya: oblast (province), southeastern Ukraine. It encompasses the northwestern shore of the Sea of Azov and stretches inland across the coastal plain, the Azov Upland, and the Dnieper Plain to the Dnieper River to include a very small part of that ...
Zaporizhzhya: city and administrative centre of Zaporizhzhya oblast (province), southeastern Ukraine, on the Dnieper River just below its former rapids. In 1770 the fortress of Aleksandrovsk was established to ensure government control over the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, whose headquarters were on nearby ...
Zapotec: Middle American Indian population living in eastern and southern Oaxaca in southern Mexico.
Zapotocky, Antonin: political leader, cofounder of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and the native Czech leader who probably contributed most to the successful Communist coup of 1948.
Zappa, Frank: American composer, guitarist, and satirist of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.
Zaqaziq, az-: city and capital of ash-Sharqiyah muhafazah (governorate), Egypt, on the Nile River delta north-northeast of Cairo. The city dates from the 1820s, when cotton cultivation spread to the eastern delta. Located at the junction of two irrigation canals (Tur'at as-Suways ...
Zara, Siege of: (1202), a major episode of the Fourth Crusade; the first attack on a Christian city by a crusading army, it foreshadowed the same army's assault on Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, in 1203-04. Zara (modern Zadar, Croatia), a vassal city of ...
Zaragoza: capital of Zaragoza provincia (province), in central Aragon comunidad autonoma (autonomous community), northeastern Spain, lying on the south bank of the Ebro River (there bridged). Toward the end of the 1st century BC, the ...
Zaragoza: provincia, in the comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community") of Aragon, northeastern Spain. Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, it formed the old kingdom of Aragon. It extends north and south of the middle course of the Ebro River; it ...
Zaramo: a people who reside in the area surrounding Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, and comprise the major ethnic component in the city. The Zaramo are considered to be part of the cluster of Swahili peoples on the coast of East Africa who ...
Zarate: city, northeastern Buenos Aires provincia (province), eastern Argentina. It is located on the Parana de las Palmas River, a channel of the lower Parana River delta emptying into the Rio de la Plata estuary northwest of Buenos ...
Zaria: historic kingdom, traditional emirate, and local government council in Kaduna State, northern Nigeria, with its headquarters at Zaria (q.v.) city. The kingdom is traditionally said to date from the 11th century, when King Gunguma founded it as one of the ...
Zaria: city, Kaduna State, north-central Nigeria, on the Kubanni River (a tributary of the Kaduna). Headquarters of the Zaria Local Government Council and the traditional Zaria emirate, it is served by road and rail and by an airport just to the ...
Zariadres: one of the satraps (governors) of the Seleucid king Antiochus III, who is credited, with Artaxias (q.v.), as a founder of ancient Armenia.