the plain of Kossova, his old adversary, Huniades, who fled into Hungary. In this memorable battle 40,000 Turks and 17,000 Christians perished. Three years after, Amurath expired suddenly on an island near Adrianople.
Amurath III., born in 1545, succeeded his father, Selim II., in 1574. On the day of his accession to power he caused his five brothers to be strangled—a cowardly crime, which fitly inaugurated a reign of disaster and disgrace. Some successes against the Austrians distinguished the commencement of this reign. Herbaert, baron of Auersperg, governor of the Carniole, was defeated and slain by the Turkish governors of Pakariz and Huina. The capricious temper of the sultan threatened a rupture also with France and Venice. The ambassador of the former was compelled to exchange his creed for that of the Porte, and the Venetian dragoman, on some trivial pretext, was dismissed from the divan. In the year 1578, however, several of the great powers of Europe—Venice, France, Spain, and Switzerland—opportunely proposed to establish friendly relations with the Porte, and Amurath, who had meditated for some time the conquest of Persia, eagerly accepted the terms of alliance. The war with Persia lasted till 1590, and secured to the Turks Kurdjistan, Georgia, and several other provinces Thrice within three years, from 1589, the janizaries surrounded the palace of the sultan, and compelled with threats whatever redress or additional licence they wanted. Everywhere throughout the empire disorders sprung up, which were attempted to be repressed, if at all, only by the local authorities, who could expect no assistance from a sovereign tyrannized over by his own guards. To divert the attention of his subjects from the ruin which impended over the empire, he engaged in a war with Hungary, in which Hassan Pacha, governor of Bosnia, attempting to take Sissek, was drowned with the greater part of his army. Sinan, the successor of Osman, gained some victories over the Austrians, but his triumphs were of short duration. Eight thousand Ottomans perished at Bucharest and at Giurgevo, the valiant pacha having been treacherously deserted by the princes of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. Shortly after this reverse, Amurath, superstitiously affected by a dream of one of his favourites, renounced the society of his court, and at the end of three days, on January 16th, 1595, was found dead in his chamber.
Amurath IV., born in 1611, succeeded his uncle Mustapha in 1623. The early part of his reign was disturbed by revolts of the janizaries, and by insurrections in various provinces of the empire, which the young sultan repressed as they arose, with a cruelty that horrified even the ministers of his vengeance. When roused to anger, his atrocities knew no limit, and all offences were alike capital. He prohibited the use of wine and tobacco on pain of death, and as he seldom remitted an offence, many suffered the extreme penalty of the law for these common indulgences. One incorrigible smoker the savage sultan is said to have forgiven, for the easy assurance with which he faced detection. He had roofed over part of a trench, and in this subterranean retreat was enjoying his solitary pipe, when Amurath, on his rounds in quest of transgressors, announced himself—only, however, to be thus addressed, "Hence, son of a slave; thine edict has no force underground." The sultan's own tastes were much less severe than his statutes. He abandoned himself, shortly after his accession, to the wildest excesses, and, in particular, indulged his passion for wine to a degree that undermined his health, and rendered him a prey to maladies which eventually cut short his horrible career. He died in 1640, at the age of twenty-nine years. The one event of his reign worth recording was the capture of Bagdad, which fell into the hands of the Turks on the 24th December, 1638.—J. S., G.
* AMUSSAT, Jean Zulema, a French surgeon of distinction, born in 1796, sous-prosecteur to the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and member of the Academy. M. Amussat has written some important anatomical treatises; one of which, "Torsion des artères," was crowned by the Institute in 1829; an honour awarded also to his "Recherche sur l'introduction de l'air dans les veines," ten years subsequently. The work which procured him his admission into the Academy is entitled "Recherches sur l'appareil biliare," Paris, 1824, in which he demonstrates the existence of a spiral valvule in the neck of the biliary vesicle. M. Amussat is also the inventor or improver of a variety of surgical and anatomical instruments.—A. M.
AMY, a French writer, about whom we have little precise information. He was advocate in the parliament of Aix, and died in 1760. His works are pronounced in the "Nouvelle Biographie Universelle" to be very remarkable. They are these: "Observations expérimentales sur les eaux des rivières de Seine, de Marne," &c., 1749, 12mo; "Nouvelles fontaines domestiques," 1750, 12mo; "Nouvelles fontaines filtrantes," 1752-1754, 12mo; "Reflexions sur les vaisseaux de cuivre, de plomb, et d'étain," 1751, 12mo.—A. M.
AMYAND, Claudius, an English army surgeon, born in 1740, and in 1761 admitted a member of the Royal Society. There are some of his papers in the Philosophical Transactions, treating of certain rare and curious surgical cases.—A. M.
AMYCLÆUS (Αμυκλαῖς), a Corinthian brass-caster, mentioned by Pausanias, lived five centuries before the Christian era, and who, in concurrence with Diyllus, executed a group representing the dispute between Hercules and Apollo.—A. M.
AMYN-AHMED, El Razy, a Persian geographer, whose compilation on the countries of the East, called "Heft Iclym," or the seven climates, completed in 1594, has not yet been edited in Europe. A copy of it exists in the Bibliothèque Imperial of Paris.—A. M.
AMYN MOHAMMED AL AMYN BEN HAROUN, eldest son of the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, was born at Bagdad in a.d. 786, and in 809 succeeded his father, whom he does not seem to have resembled. Haroun Al Raschid had given his two other sons, Mamùn and Motassem, the provinces of Khorasan and Mesopotamia respectively. Amyn, however, deposed his brothers from their governorships, and summoned Mamùn to court. He refused to obey, and in the war which ensued, Thaher, Mamùn's general, defeated the troops of Amyn, who, besieged in his own capital, was only saved from ruin by the revolt of Mamun's soldiery for want of pay. This relief, however, was only temporary, and Thaher at length possessed himself of Bagdad, and put Amyn to death, after he had vainly attempted to escape by voluntarily delivering himself up to Harthamah, Thaher's colleague in command, a.d. 813.—A. M.
AMYNTAS. Three kings of Macedon bore this name:—
Amyntas I. was reigning at the time the Pisistratids were expelled from Athens in 510 b.c., and offered Hippias an asylum within his realm. In 507 b.c. he entertained at his court the ambassadors of Darius, sent to demand of the Greeks earth and water in token of submission. These Persians pushed their demands on the hospitality of the Macedonian king so far, as to insist on possessing his wives and daughters. Alexander, son of Amyntas, under pretence of introducing them to the Macedonian ladies, put the deputies into the hands of a number of young men disguised in female clothing, who quickly dispatched them. Upon this Megabyzus, the Persian general, sent one of his officers, named Bubares, to inflict vengeance; but the affair seems to have been amicably settled, as Bubares accepted the hand of Gygea, daughter of Amyntas. The reign of this monarch terminated about 500 b.c.
Amyntas II., son of Philip, the brother of Perdiccas II., and grandson of the Alexander mentioned in preceding article, reigned from 393 b.c. to 369 b.c. Driven from his throne by the Illyrians, he re-established himself by the aid of the Thessalians, and with the further aid of the Spartans reunited to his dominions the town of Olynthus. Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, was the youngest son of Amyntas II. by his wife Eurydice; and the physician Nicomachus, father of Aristotle, lived at the court of the same prince.
Amyntas III., son of Perdiccas III., and grandson of the preceding, was still a minor at the death of his father in 360 b.c., and never in reality acceded to the throne, as his uncle Philip, who had been made regent, and whose daughter Cynane, half-sister of Alexander the Great, Amyntas married, usurped the sovereignty. He was put to death for being concerned in a conspiracy against Alexander the Great in the first year of the reign of that monarch, 336 b.c.—A. M.
AMYNTAS, a Macedonian who fled his country at the commencement of the reign of Alexander the Great, and placing himself under the protection of the Persians, received the command of the Greek mercenaries at the battle of Issus, 333 b.c.; after which he went to Egypt with a body of Greeks, and excited a revolt there against Mazaces, the Persian governor. He met with considerable success at first, but was finally defeated and slain about 330 b.c.—A. M.
