of the pagan cults in maintaining itself against Christianity, with which it had not a little in common, both in doctrine and in emblems. But the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in A.D. 397 was a fatal blow to the prestige of the Graeco-Egyptian divinities. The worship of Isis, however, survived in Italy into the 5th century. At Philae her temple was frequented by the barbarous Nobatae and Blemmyes until the middle of the 6th century, when the last remaining shrine of Isis was finally closed.
See G. Lafaye, art. “Isis” in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités (1900); id. Hist. du culte des divinités d’Alexandrie hors de l’Égypte (1883); Meyer and Drexler, art. “Isis” in Röscher’s Lexicon der griech. und röm. Mythologie (1891–1892) (very elaborate); E. A. W. Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, vol. ii. ch. xiii.; Ad. Rusch, De Serapide et Iside in Graecia cultis (dissertation) (Berlin, 1906). (The author especially collects the evidence from Greek inscriptions earlier than the Roman conquest; he contends that the mysteries of Isis were not equated with the Eleusinian mysteries.) (F. Ll. G.)
ISKELIB, the chief town of a Caza (governed by a kaimakam) in the vilayet of Angora in Asia Minor, altitude 2460 ft., near the left bank of the Kizil Irmak (anc. Halys), 100 m. in an air-line N.E. of Angora and 60 S.E. of Kastamūni (to which vilayet it belonged till 1894). Pop. 10,600 (Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, 1894). It lies several miles off the road, now abandoned by wheeled traffic, between Changra and Amasia in a picturesque cul de sac amongst wooded hills, at the foot of a limestone rock crowned by the ruins of an ancient fortress now filled with houses (photograph in Anderson, Studia Pontica, p. 4). Its ancient name is uncertain. Near the town (on S.) are saline springs, whence salt is extracted.
ISLA, JOSÉ FRANCISCO DE (1703–1781), Spanish satirist, was born at Villavidanes (León) on the 24th of March 1703. He joined the Jesuits in 1719, was banished from Spain with his brethren in 1767, and settled at Bologna, where he died on the 2nd of November 1781. His earliest publication, a Carta de un residente en Roma (1725), is a panegyric of trifling interest, and La Juventud triunfante (1727) was written in collaboration with Luis de Lovada. Isla’s gifts were first shown in his Triunfo del amor y de la lealtad: Dia Grande de Navarra, a satirical description of the ceremonies at Pamplona in honour of Ferdinand VI.’s accession; its sly humour so far escaped the victims that they thanked the writer for his appreciation of their local efforts, but the true significance of the work was discovered shortly afterwards, and the protests were so violent that Isla was transferred by his superiors to another district. He gained a great reputation as an effective preacher, and his posthumous Sermones morales (1792–1793) justify his fame in this respect. But his position in the history of Spanish literature is due to his Historia del famoso predicador fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes (1758), a novel which wittily caricatures the bombastic eloquence of pulpit orators in Spain. Owing to the protests of the Dominicans and other regulars, the book was prohibited in 1760, but the second part was issued surreptitiously in 1768. He translated Gil Blas, adopting more or less seriously Voltaire’s unfounded suggestion that Le Sage plagiarized from Espinel’s Marcos de Obregón, and other Spanish books; the text appeared in 1783, and in 1828 was greatly modified by Evaristo Peña y Martín, whose arrangement is still widely read.
See Policarpo Mingote y Tarrazona, Varones ilustres de la provincia de León (León, 1880), pp. 185–215; Bernard Gaudeau, Les Prêcheurs burlesques en Espagne au XVIII e siècle (Paris, 1891); V. Cian, L’ Immigrazione dei Gesuiti spagnuoli letterati in Italia (Torino, 1895). (J. F.-K.)
ISLAM, an Arabic word meaning “pious submission to the will of God,” the name of the religion of the orthodox Mahommedans, and hence used, generically, for the whole body of Mahommedan peoples. Salama, from which the word is derived appears in salaam, “peace be with you,” the greeting of the East, and in Moslem, and means to be “free” or “secure.” (See Mahommedan Religion, &c.)
ISLAMABAD, a town of India in the state of Kashmir, on the north bank of the Jhelum. Pop. (1901) 9390. The town crowns the summit of a long low ridge, extending from the mountains eastward. It is the second town in Kashmir, and was originally the capital of the valley, but is now decaying. It contains an old summer palace, overshadowed by plane trees, with numerous springs, and a fine mosque and shrine. Below the town is a reservoir containing a spring of clear water called the Anant Nag, slightly sulphurous, from which volumes of gas continually arise; the water swarms with sacred fish. There are manufactures of Kashmir shawls, also of chintzes, cotton and woollen goods.
ISLAND (O.E. ieg = isle, + land[1]), in physical geography, a term generally definable as a piece of land surrounded by water. Islands may be divided into two main classes, continental and oceanic. The former are such as would result from the submergence of a coastal range, or a coastal highland, until the mountain bases were cut off from the mainland while their summits remained above water. The island may have been formed by the sea cutting through the landward end of a peninsula, or by the eating back of a bay or estuary until a portion of the mainland is detached and becomes surrounded by water. In all cases where the continental islands occur, they are connected with the mainland by a continental shelf, and their structure is essentially that of the mainland. The islands off the west coast of Scotland and the Isles of Man and Wight have this relation to Britain, while Britain and Ireland have a similar relation to the continent of Europe. The north-east coast of Australia furnishes similar examples, but in addition to these in that locality there are true oceanic islands near the mainland, formed by the growth of the Great Barrier coral reef. Oceanic islands are due to various causes. It is a question whether the numberless islands of the Malay Archipelago should be regarded as continental or oceanic, but there is no doubt that the South Sea islands scattered over a portion of the Pacific belong to the oceanic group. The ocean floor is by no means a level plain, but rises and falls in mounds, eminences and basins towards the surface. When this configuration is emphasized in any particular oceanic area, so that a peak rises above the surface, an oceanic island is produced. Submarine volcanic activity may also raise material above sea-level, or the buckling of the ocean-bed by earth movements may have a similar result. Coral islands (see Atoll) are oceanic islands, and are frequently clustered upon plateaux where the sea is of no great depth, or appear singly as the crown of some isolated peak that rises from deep water.
Island life contains many features of peculiar interest. The sea forms a barrier to some forms of life but acts as a carrier to other colonizing forms that frequently develop new features in their isolated surroundings where the struggle for existence is greater or less than before. When a sea barrier has existed for a very long time there is a marked difference between the fauna and flora even of adjacent islands. In Bali and Borneo, for example, the flora and fauna are Asiatic, while in Lombok and Celebes they are Australian, though the Bali Straits are very narrow. In Java and Sumatra, though belonging to the same group, there are marked developments of bird life, the peacock being found in Java and the Argus pheasant in Sumatra, having become too specialized to migrate. The Cocos, Keeling Islands and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean have been colonized by few animal forms, chiefly sea-birds and insects, while they are clothed with abundant vegetation, the seeds of which have been carried by currents and by other means, but the variety of plants is by no means so great as on the mainland. Island life, therefore, is a sure indication of the origin of the island, which may be one of the remnants of a shattered or dissected continent, or may have arisen independently from the sea and become afterwards colonized by drift.
The word “island” is sometimes used for a piece of land cut off by the tide or surrounded by marsh (e.g. Hayling Island).
- ↑ The O.E. ieg, ig, still appearing in local names, e.g. Anglesey, Battersea, is cognate with Norw. öy, Icel. ey, and the first part of Ger. Eiland, &c.; it is referred to the original Teut. ahwia, a place in water, ahwa, water, cf. Lat. aqua; the same word is seen in English “eyot,” “ait,” an islet in a river. The spelling “island,” accepted before 1700, is due to a false connexion with “isle,” Fr. île, Lat. insula.
