ISOXAZOLES, monazole chemical compounds corresponding to
furfurane, in which the ≡CH group adjacent to the oxygen
atom is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and therefore they contain
the ring system 
They may be prepared
by the elimination of water from the monoximes of β-diketones,
β-ketone aldehydes or oxymethylene ketones (L. Claisen, Ber.,
1891, 24, p. 3906), the general reaction proceeding according to
the equation
W. Dunstan and T. S. Dymond (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1891, 49, p. 410) have also prepared isoxazoles by the action of alkalis on nitroparaffins, but have not been able to obtain the parent substance. Those isoxazoles in which the carbon atom adjacent to nitrogen is substituted are stable compounds, but if this is not the case, rearrangement of the molecule takes place and nitriles are formed. The isoxazoles are feebly basic.
The isoxazolones are the keto derivatives of the as yet unknown dihydroisoxazole, and are compounds of strongly acid nature, decomposing the carbonates of the alkaline earth metals and forming salts with metals and with ammonia. Their constitution is not yet definitely fixed and they may be regarded as derived from one of the three types
By the action of nitrous acid on the oxime of o-aminobenzophenone
as α-phenyl indoxazene, 
is obtained; this is a derivative
of benzisoxazole.
ISRAEL (Hebrew for “God strives” or “rules”; see Gen.
xxxii. 28; and the allusion in Hosea xii. 4), the national designation
of the Jews. Israel was a name borne by their ancestor
Jacob the father of the twelve tribes. For some centuries the
term was applied to the northern kingdom, as distinct from
Judah, although the feeling of national unity extended it so as
to include both. It emphasizes more particularly the position
of the Hebrews as a religious community, bound together by
common aims and by their covenant-relation with the national
God, Yahweh.
See further Jacob, Hebrew Language, Hebrew Religion, Jews: History and Palestine.
ISRAELI, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON (9th–10th centuries), Jewish
physician and philosopher. A contemporary of Seadiah (q.v.),
he was born and passed his life in North Africa. He died c. 950.
At Kairawan, Israeli was court physician; he wrote several
medical works in Arabic, and these were afterwards translated
into Latin. Similarly his philosophical writings were
translated, but his chief renown was in the circle of Moslem
authors.
ISRAËLS, JOSEF (1824– ), Dutch painter, was born at
Groningen, of Hebrew parents, on the 27th of January 1824.
His father intended him to be a man of business, and it was only
after a determined struggle that he was allowed to enter on an
artistic career. However, the attempts he made under the guidance
of two second-rate painters in his native town—Buÿs and
van Wicheren—while still working under his father as a stockbroker’s clerk, led to his being sent to Amsterdam, where he
became a pupil of Jan Kruseman and attended the drawing
class at the academy. He then spent two years in Paris, working
in Picot’s studio, and returned to Amsterdam. There he remained
till 1870, when he moved to The Hague for good. Israëls is
justly regarded as one of the greatest of Dutch painters. He
has often been compared to J. F. Millet. As artists, even more
than as painters in the strict sense of the word, they both, in
fact, saw in the life of the poor and humble a motive for expressing with peculiar intensity their wide human sympathy; but Millet was the poet of placid rural life, while in almost all Israëls’ pictures we find some piercing note of woe. Duranty said
of them that “they were painted with gloom and suffering.” He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the
romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he
went to recruit his strength at the fishing-town of Zandvoort
near Haarlem, and there he was struck by the daily tragedy of
life. Thenceforth he was possessed by a new vein of artistic
expression, sincerely realistic, full of emotion and pity. Among
his more important subsequent works are “The Zandvoort
Fisherman” (in the Amsterdam gallery), “The Silent House”
(which gained a gold medal at the Brussels Salon, 1858) and
“Village Poor” (a prize at Manchester). In 1862 he achieved
great success in London with his “Shipwrecked,” purchased by
Mr Young, and “The Cradle,” two pictures of which the
Athenaeum spoke as “the most touching pictures of the exhibition.”
We may also mention among his maturer works “The
Widower” (in the Mesdag collection), “When we grow Old”
and “Alone in the World” (Amsterdam gallery), “An Interior”
(Dordrecht gallery), “A Frugal Meal” (Glasgow museum),
“Toilers of the Sea,” “A Speechless Dialogue,” “Between the
Fields and the Seashore,” “The Bric-à-brac Seller” (which
gained medals of honour at the great Paris Exhibition of 1900).
“David Singing before Saul,” one of his latest works, seems to
hint at a return on the part of the venerable artist to the
Rembrandtesque note of his youth. As a water-colour painter
and etcher he produced a vast number of works, which, like his
oil paintings, are full of deep feeling. They are generally treated
in broad masses of light and shade, which give prominence to
the principal subject without any neglect of detail.
See Jan Veth, Mannen of Beteckenis: Jozef Israëls; Chesneau, Peintres français et étrangers; Ph. Zilcken, Peintres hollandais modernes (1893); Dumas, Illustrated Biographies of Modern Artists (1882–1884); J. de Meester, in Max Rooses’ Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century (1898); Jozef Israëls, Spain: the Story of a Journey (1900).
ISSACHAR (a Hebrew name meaning apparently “there is
a hire,” or “reward”), Jacob’s ninth “son,” his fifth by Leah;
also the name of a tribe of Israel. Slightly differing explanations
of the reference in the name are given in Gen. xxx. 16 (J) and
v. 18 (E).[1] The territory of the tribe (Joshua xix. 17-23) lay to
the south of that allotted to Zebulun, Naphtali, Asher and Dan,
and included the whole of the great plain of Esdraelon, and the
hills to the east of it, the boundary in that direction extending
from Tabor to the Jordan, apparently along the deep gorge of
Wadi el Bīreh. In the rich territory of Issachar, traversed by
the great commercial highway from the Mediterranean and
Egypt to Bethshean and the Jordan, were several important
towns which remained in the hands of the Canaanites for some
time (Judges i. 27), separating the tribe from Manasseh. Although
Issachar is mentioned as having taken some part in the war
of freedom under Deborah (Judges v. 15), it is impossible to
misunderstand the reference to its tributary condition in the
blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 14 seq.), or the fact that the name
of this tribe is omitted from the list given in Judges i. of those
who bestirred themselves against the earlier inhabitants of the
country. In the “blessing upon Zebulun and Issachar” in
Deut. xxxiii. 18 seq., reference is made to its agricultural life
in terms suggesting that along with its younger, but more
successful “brother,” it was the guardian of a sacred mountain
(Carmel, Tabor?) visited periodically for sacrificial feasts.
ISSEDONES, an ancient people of Central Asia at the end of
the trade route leading north-east from Scythia (q.v.), described
by Herodotus (iv. 26). The position of their country is fixed
as the Tarym basin by the more precise indications of Ptolemy,
who tells how a Syrian merchant penetrated as far as Issedon.
They had their wives in common and were accustomed to slay
the old people, eat their flesh and make cups of their skulls.
Such usages survived among Tibetan tribes and make it
likely that the Issedones were of Tibetan race. Some of the
Issedones seem to have invaded the country of the Massagetae
to the west, and similar customs are assigned to a
section of these.
(E. H. M.)
- ↑ On the origin of the name, see the article by H. W. Hogg, Ency. Bib. col. 2290; E. Meyer, Israeliten, p. 536 seq.
