and as he was no more successful in making money out of the East India Company, nor in certain commercial schemes which engaged his ingenuity during the next few years, he died in a debtors’ prison, on the 8th of July 1726. While in the King’s Bench he sold to Edmund Curll the bookseller, a fellow-prisoner, who was serving a sentence of five months for publishing obscene books, the manuscript of (or possibly only the materials on which were based) the Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland, which Curll published in 1726 in three parts, the last of which appeared after Ker’s death. For issuing the first part of the Memoirs, which purported to make disclosures damaging to the government, but which Curll in self-justification described as “vindicating the memory of Queen Anne,” the publisher was sentenced to the pillory at Charing Cross; and he added to the third part of the Memoirs the indictment on which he had been convicted.
See the above-mentioned Memoirs (London, 1726–1727), and in particular the “preface” to part i.; George Lockhart, The Lockhart Papers (2 vols., London, 1817); Nathaniel Hooke, Correspondence, edited by W. D. Macray (Roxburghe Club, 2 vols., London, 1870), in which Ker is referred to under several pseudonyms, such as “Wicks,” “Trustie,” “The Cameronian Mealmonger,” &c.
KERAK, a town in eastern Palestine, 10 m. E. of the southern
angle of the Lisan promontory of the Dead Sea, on the top of a
rocky hill about 3000 ft. above sea-level. It stands on a platform
forming an irregular triangle with sides about 3000 ft. in length,
and separated by deep ravines from the ranges around on all
sides but one. The population is estimated at 6000 Moslems
and 1800 Orthodox Greek Christians. Kerak is identified with
the Moabite town of Kir-Hareseth (destroyed by the Hebrew-Edomite
coalition, 2 Kings iii. 25), and denounced by Isaiah
under the name Kir of Moab (xv. 1), Kir-Hareseth (xvi. 7)
or Kir-Heres (xvi. 11): Jeremiah also refers to it by the
last name (xxxix. 31, 36). The modern name, in the form
Χάραξ, appears in 2 Macc. xii. 17. Later, Kerak was the
seat of the archbishop of Petra. The Latin kings of Jerusalem,
recognizing its importance as the key of the E. Jordan
region, fortified it in 1142; from 1183 it was attacked
desperately by Saladin, to whom at last it yielded in 1188.
The Arabian Ayyubite princes fortified the town, as did the
Egyptian Mameluke sultans. The fortifications were repaired
by Bibars in the 13th century. For a long time after the
Turkish occupation of Palestine and Egypt it enjoyed a semi-independence,
but in 1893 a Turkish governor with a strong
garrison was established there, which has greatly contributed
to secure the safety of travellers and the general quiet of the
district. The town is an irregular congeries of flat mud-roofed
houses. In the Christian quarter is the church of St George;
the mosque also is a building of Christian origin. The town is
surrounded by a wall with five towers; entrance now is obtained
through breaches in the wall, but formerly it was accessible
only by means of tunnels cut in the rocky substratum. The
castle, now used as the headquarters of the garrison and closed
to visitors, is a remarkably fine example of a crusaders’ fortress.
(R. A. S. M.)
KERALA, or Chera, the name of one of the three ancient
Dravidian kingdoms of the Tamil country of southern India,
the other two being the Chola and the Pandya. Its original
territory comprised the country now contained in the Malabar
district, with Travancore and Cochin, and later the country
included in the Coimbatore district and a part of Salem. The
boundaries, however, naturally varied much from time to
time. The earliest references to this kingdom appear in the
edicts of Asoka, where it is called Keralaputra (i.e. son of Kerala),
a name which in a slightly corrupt form is known to Pliny and
the author of the Periplus. There is evidence of a lively trade
carried on by sea with the Roman empire in the early centuries
of the Christian era, but of the political history of the Kerala
kingdom nothing is known beyond a list of rajas compiled from
inscriptions, until in the 10th century the struggle began with
the Cholas, by whom it was conquered and held till their overthrow
by the Mahommedans in 1310. These in their turn were
driven out by a Hindu confederation headed by the chiefs of
Vijayanagar, and Kerala was absorbed in the Vijayanagar empire
until its destruction by the Mahommedans in 1565. For about
80 years it seems to have preserved a precarious independence
under the naiks of Madura, but in 1640 was conquered by the
Adil Shah dynasty of Bijapur and in 1652 seized by the king of
Mysore.
See V. A. Smith, Early Hist. of India, chap. xvi. (2nd ed., Oxford, 1908).
KERASUND (anc. Choerades, Pharnacia, Cerasus), a town
on the N. coast of Asia Minor, in the Trebizond vilayet, and the
port—an exposed roadstead—of Kara-Hissar Sharki, with which
it is connected by a carriage road. Pop. just under 10,000,
Moslems being in a slight minority. The town is situated on a
rocky promontory, crowned by a Byzantine fortress, and has a
growing trade. It exports filberts (for which product it is the
centre), walnuts, hides and timber. Cerasus was the place from
which the wild cherry was introduced into Italy by Lucullus and
so to Europe (hence Fr. cerise, “cherry”).
KÉRATRY, AUGUSTE HILARION, Comte de (1769–1859),
French writer and politician, was born at Rennes on the 28th of
December 1769. Coming to Paris in 1790, he associated himself
with Bernardin de St Pierre. After being twice imprisoned
during the Terror he retired to Brittany, where he devoted himself
to literature till 1814. In 1818 he returned to Paris as
deputy for Finistère, and sat in the Chamber till 1824, becoming
one of the recognized liberal leaders. He was re-elected in
1827, took an active part in the establishment of the July
monarchy, was appointed a councillor of state (1830), and in
1837 was made a peer of France. After the coup d’état of 1851
he retired from public life. Among his publications were
Contes et Idylles (1791); Lysus et Cydippe, a poem (1801);
Inductions morales et physiologiques (1817); Documents pour
servir à l’histoire de France (1820); Du Beau dans les arts
d’imitation (1822); Le Dernier des Beaumanoir (1824). His
last work, Clarisse (1854), a novel, was written when he was
eighty-five. He died at Port-Marly on the 7th of November 1859.
His son, comte Emile de Kératry (1832– ), became deputy for Finistère in 1869, and strongly supported the war with Germany in 1870. He was in Paris during part of the siege, but escaped in a balloon, and joined Gambetta. In 1871 Thiers appointed him to the prefecture, first of the Haute-Garonne, and subsequently of the Bouches-du-Rhône, but he resigned in the following year. He is the author of La Contre-guérilla française au Mexique (1868); L’Élévation et la chute de l’empereur Maximilien (1867); Le Quatre-septembre et le gouvernement de la défense nationale (1872); Mourad V. (1878), and some volumes of memories.
KERBELA, or Meshed-Ḥosain, a town of Asiatic Turkey,
the capital of a sanjak of the Bagdad vilayet, situated on the
extreme western edge of the alluvial river plain, about 60 m.
S.S.W. of Bagdad and 20 m. W. of the Euphrates, from which
a canal extends almost to the town. The surrounding territory
is fertile and well cultivated, especially in fruit gardens and palm-groves.
The newer parts of the city are built with broad streets
and sidewalks, presenting an almost European appearance.
The inner town, surrounded by a dilapidated brick wall, at the
gates of which octroi duties are still levied, is a dirty Oriental
city, with the usual narrow streets. Kerbela owes its existence
to the fact that Ḥosain, a son of ‘Ali, the fourth caliph, was slain
here by the soldiers of Yazid, the rival aspirant to the caliphate,
on the 10th of October A.D. 680 (see Caliphate, sec. B, § 2). The
most important feature of the town is the great shrine of Ḥosain,
containing the tomb of the martyr, with its golden dome and
triple minarets, two of which are glided. Kerbela is a place
of pilgrimage of the Shi’ite Moslems, and is only less sacred to
them than Meshed ‘Ali and Mecca. Some 200,000 pilgrims from
the Shi’ite portions of Islam are said to journey annually to
Kerbela, many of them carrying the bones of their relatives to
be buried in its sacred soil, or bringing their sick and aged to
die there in the odour of sanctity. The mullahs, who fix the
burial fees, derive an enormous revenue from the faithful.
Formerly Kerbela was a self-governing hierarchy and constituted
an inviolable sanctuary for criminals; but in 1843 the Turkish
