He acquired a profound knowledge of the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic languages, and became not only a master of all rabbinical learning, but also a distinguished mathematician, astronomer, and physician, and a respectable poet. He travelled extensively in foreign countries—England, France, Italy, Greece, &c.—in search of knowledge, and to converse with learned men. Many of his works were published in foreign cities, where he was resident at the time. These works were very numerous. The latest and fullest catalogue of them will be found in "Fürst's Bibliotheca Judaica" (Leipzig, 1849). His writings on Hebrew grammar were highly valued by his contemporaries, and continued in the hands of all students of Hebrew philology and literature for several centuries. His astronomical and other philosophical writings added considerably, by their original contributions, to the stock of human knowledge; but it was as a commentator on the Old Testament that he was most distinguished. His commentary on the Pentateuch is characterized by Fürst as "the most scientific produced in the middle ages, embracing a preface on the history of Scripture interpretation of distinguished excellence." This work was the author's last and greatest; it was finished in 1167, the probable year of his death. Maimonides, his great contemporary, esteemed his writings so highly for learning, judgment, and elegance, that he recommended his son to make them for some time the exclusive subject of his study. By Jewish scholars he is preferred as a commentator even to Raschi in point of judiciousness and good sense; and in the judgment of Richard Simon, confirmed by De Rossi, he is the most successful of all the rabbinical commentators in the grammatical and literal interpretation of the Scriptures. Though occasionally marked by a bold and free spirit, and discarding in general the use of superstitious fables and legends, Aben Ezra was conservative, on the whole, of the traditions of rabbinic orthodoxy. Many of his commentaries were translated into Latin for the use of Christian divines, and the Hebrew originals were incorporated into the great Rabbinical Bibles of Bomberg and Buxtorf. They are still frequently reprinted for the use of Jewish readers.—P. L.
ABEN-GNEFIT, an Arabian physician of the twelfth century, the author of a now rare treatise entitled "De virtutibus medicinarum et ciborum."
ABEN-HAMYN, a Moor of Granada, the supposed author of an Arabic work, translated into Spanish, upon the civil wars of Spain during the Moorish occupation of that country. Perez de Hita, however, appears to be the real author, and not merely the translator of it. It contains numerous Moorish romances.
ABEN-HUMEYA, the last king of Granada of Spanish origin, was born about 1520; died 1568. The Moors having revolted against Philip II., elected Aben-Humeya king of Granada and Cordova, and placed him in a condition seriously to injure Spain and its monarch Philip II., whom he bitterly hated. Betrayed by his own people, he was put to death by strangulation, but his decease did not extinguish the insurrection of the Moors.—S.
ABEN-MELECH, a learned Jewish rabbi of Spain in the 16th century, who wrote a commentary on the whole Hebrew scriptures, which he proudly called Michlol Jophi—"perfection of grace," and which was published at Constantinople in 1554. In this book Kimchi's exposition is rather slavishly followed.
ABEN-RAGEL, an Arabian astrologer, lived towards the close of the eleventh century. He has left two published works on his favourite science, and several MSS. preserved in the library of the Escurial.
ABERCROMBY, Alexander, a Scottish judge and elegant essay writer, brother of Sir Ralph Abercromby, born 15th October, 1745. He was admitted advocate in 1776, and appointed soon after sheriff-depute of Stirlingshire. In 1780 he resigned that office to become advocate-depute. He was one of the originators of the Mirror, published in 1779 and 1780, and also a contributor to the Lounger, 1785 and 1786,—two Edinburgh periodicals esteemed among the most classical of British works of this order. Appointed in May, 1792, a judge of the Court of Session, he took his seat as Lord Abercromby, and, the following December, was made a Lord of Justiciary. Died 17th November, 1795.—W. A.
ABERCROMBY, David, a Scotch physician, who lived about the middle of the seventeenth century. He was the author of four short medical treatises, collected under the title of "Opuscula Medica," and of various other works enumerated in Watt's "Bibliotheca Britannica."
ABERCROMBY, James, Baron Dunfermline, son of Sir Ralph, was born 7th November, 1776. He entered parliament in 1832 as member for Edinburgh, and was speaker of the House of Commons under Lord Melbourne. On resigning that office in 1839, he was raised to the peerage. Died 1858.
ABERCROMBIE, John, an eminent horticulturist, the son of a respectable gardener near Edinburgh. He studied the art of horticulture under his father, and was sent to London at the age of eighteen. He was employed in the gardens at Hampton Court, St. James', and Kensington, and acquired celebrity as a landscape gardener. He published several valuable works, such as a "Dictionary of Gardening and Botany;" "The Gardener's Companion and Calendar;" "The Hothouse and Forcing Gardener," &c. He died in 1806, at the age of eighty.—J. H. B.
ABERCROMBIE, John, M.D., the most eminent Scotch physician of his time, and author of various religious and philosophical works, was the son of a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, at Aberdeen, where he was born 12th October, 1780. He studied medicine at the university of Edinburgh, taking his degree of M.D. in 1803, and soon obtained an extensive and lucrative practice in the Scottish metropolis as a physician. On the death of Dr. Gregory in 1821, he was appointed physician to the king for Scotland. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Edinburgh, and a vice-president of the Royal Society of that city. In 1834, the university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of M.D., and the following year he was chosen lord rector of Marischal college in his native city. In 1837 he was confirmed in the appointment of first physician to the queen in Scotland. On commencing practice, he had made his name widely known in the profession by his contributions to the "Medical and Surgical Journal," and in 1828 he published "Pathological and Practical Researches on the Diseases of the Brain and Spinal Cord." In the following year he issued a similar treatise on "The Abdominal Organs." He is, however, better known in England by his productions on the philosophy of human nature, in which he shows himself to be a thinker of no mean order. In his "Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth," which appeared in 1830, he supports the general mental theory propounded by Reid and Stewart. The most interesting portions of the volume are those which bear on his professional pursuits, such as dreaming, insanity, idiocy, spectral illusions, and cases of somnambulism. In 1833 he published a work of a similar nature, entitled "The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings," which is but limited in its range, being confined to one or two phases of what he terms the "intuitive articles of moral belief." He published also several tracts on religious subjects, a treatise on the cholera, and "Observations on the Moral Condition of th Lower Orders in Edinburgh," 1834, 8vo. Dr. Abercrombie was held in great and deserved estimation by his contemporaries, in a measure beyond what might be imagined by readers of his writings. His active beneficence, guided by uncommon sagacity, prudence, earnestness, and Christian zeal, although never obtrusive, was recognized as his distinguishing characteristic. He was much beloved, as well as greatly honoured. Dr. Abercrombie died suddenly at Edinburgh, 14th November, 1844.—J. C.
ABERCROMBIE, Patrick, physician and historical writer, was born at Forfar in 1656, and graduated at the university of St. Andrew's in 1685. Having embraced the Roman catholic religion, he was appointed physician to James VII., but lost that office at the Revolution. In 1707 he published a translation of a rare French work, entitled "The Campaigns in Scotland in 1548 and 1549," 8vo, reprinted in the original for the Bannatyne Club in 1829. His best known work is the compilation entitled "The Martial Achievements of the Scots Nation," 1711-1715, 2 vols. folio. He also wrote the "Memoirs of the Family of Abercrombie." He died in poor circumstances in 1716; some authorities say 1726.—W. A.
ABERCROMBY, Sir Ralph, a distinguished British general, the eldest son of George Abercromby of Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, was born 7th October, 1734. He entered the army in 1756, and gradually rose till he became major-general in September, 1787. He first served in the Seven Years' war, and in 1792, 1793, and 1794 was employed with the local rank of l ieutenant-general in Flanders and Holland, against the revolutionary armies of France. He was wounded at Nimeguen, and, throughout that disastrous campaign, his military knowledge,
