MOESTLIN, Michael. See Maestlin.
* MOFFAT, Robert, an eminent missionary, was born at Ormiston, near Edinburgh, 21st December, 1795. His father, who was a common labourer when his son was born, not long afterwards got a situation in the customs, and was for a season employed at Portsoy in Banffshire and then at Carronshore. He finally settled at Inverkeithing in 1811, and joined the Secession Church under the pastoral care of the well-known Ebenezer Brown. The young man Robert was reared as a gardener, and wrought at his occupation in various parts of the country. On his removal to High Leigh in England, his mother made him promise to read a chapter of the Bible every night, and what may have been begun as a filial task soon came to be welcomed as a delightful privilege. Solemn thoughts had taken possession of him, and he felt a strong impulse toward the mission field, though that impulse, consecrated by faith and prayer, could not be immediately gratified. On leaving High Leigh he went to work in a nursery at Duckingfield under the care of a Mr. Smith, whose daughter he afterwards married. Here in the vicinity of Manchester, and under the ministry of Mr. Roby, his plans and aspirations were realized. His application to the London Missionary Society being accepted, he was in 1816 sent out to South Africa. The designation service was held in Surrey chapel; Williams being set apart at the same meeting for the South Seas. The first scene of Moffat's labours was on the Orange river where the dreaded Africaner was chief, but the lion soon became the lamb through the power of the gospel. Mr. Moffat's subsequent labours have been in the Bechuana country, and remarkable success has attended them. He came to Britain in 1840, and charmed many a meeting in England and Scotland with details of his missionary life—his journeys—his romantic adventures among different tribes—the danger he had encountered, and the remarkable deliverances which he had enjoyed. When in this country he published a volume, called "Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa," a volume as full of exciting interest as any tale of fiction. He also carried through the press a translation of the New Testament and the Psalms in the Bechuana language. This brave, shrewd, and self-devoted servant then returned to South Africa, where he still carries on the work of evangelization in all its means and methods—enlightening, educating, civilizing, and blessing these ends of the earth. The travels of his son-in-law, Dr. Livingston, in the neighbouring regions, produced a few years ago a great sensation.—J. E.
MOHAMMED. See Mahomet, Mahmoud, and Mehemet.
MOHAMMED II., Emperor of India, one of the founders of the Gaurian dynasty, was born about 1150, and was the brother of Alla, himself the brother of Souri, descended from the ancient rulers of Gaur, a mountainous district south-east of Khorassan. In the declining years of the Ghaznevide dynasty, Souri, the governor of Gaur under the Ghaznevides, asserting his independence at the head of an army of Affghans, drove them from Ghizni, but was in turn defeated and slain. Alia retrieved his brother's failure, and his other brother Mohammed pursuing his victories further, marched into India as far as Lahore, conquered the representative of the Ghaznevides, Khosroo, and in the year 1184 transferred the sceptre from the house of Ghizni to that of Gaur. Returning to Ghizni, he made after a year another conquering expedition into Hindostan, where on his departure his lieutenant, Koottub, captured Delhi. In still another expedition (1193) Mohammed captured Benares, where he destroyed the Indian idols, and Hindostan to the confines of Bengal submitted to his sway. He was assassinated in his tent in 1206 by two Gickers, of a savage people inhabiting the country near the sources of the Indus, and whom after revolting, he had subdued. His conquest paved the way for the empire of Delhi.—F. E.
MOHAMMED XI., better known as Shah Jehan, i.e. King of the World, Emperor of India, was born in January, 1572, at Lahore. He was one of the sons of Jehangir (q.v.), against whom he revolted, and after whose death he ascended the throne of the Moguls in 1628. Among the chief events of his reign were the subjugation of the Deccan, and the expulsion of the Portuguese from their settlement at Hoogley. Shah Jehan, though a voluptuary, exacted a strict administration of the law, and improved still further the system of revenue-collection ameliorated by the great Akbar. The story of the successful rebellion of his son, which terminated his reign, has been already told.—(See Aurungzebe.) Shah Jehan died in the seventh year of the reign of his son and successor, Aurungzebe, 1658.—F. E.
MOHAMMED XIII., Emperor of India, known in Anglo-Indian history as Ferokh-siar, or Ferokhser, ascended the throne of Delhi in 1713, after unsuccessfully revolting against and strangling his uncle Jehandar Shah, the son and successor of Shah Aulum. He was a weak and debauched prince, and after a reign of little more than six years was dethroned by a successful conspiracy, and it is suspected assassinated. The most important event of his reign was the success of the embassy sent to his court in 1715 by the English East India Company. Luckily for the mission, it was accompanied by an English physician who cured the emperor of a painful disease, and who when asked to name his reward, claimed privileges for the company which might otherwise have been impossible of attainment. Among these was the exemption from the payment of duties, and from 1717, when the patents were granted by Ferokhser, dates the foundation of the company's power in Bengal.—F. E.
MOHAMMED XIV., commonly called Mohammed Shah, Emperor of India, cousin of the preceding, was a grandson of Aurengzebe by his youngest son Akbar. He began to reign in his seventeenth year, in 1720, and proved a weak and voluptuous prince. During his reign the Mahrattas and the Rohillas rose into importance, the former extending their ravages to the gates of Delhi. But its greatest event was the invasion of India by Nadir Shah (q.v.) who, exasperated by the ill-treatment of an envoy, marched upon and occupied Delhi, where after the famous massacre of its inhabitants, and the pillage which realized fabulous results, he dictated a disastrous peace and restored Mohammed to a degraded throne. A gleam of victory illuminated the last days of Mohammed's feeble reign in the discomfiture at Sirhind of the invading Affghan Ahmed Abdalla, the founder of the Douranee dynasty in Affghanistan. Mohammed did not long survive the news, dying at Delhi in April, 1748. After his death the power of the Moguls rapidly declined, and the disorganization of their empire soon reached its acme.—F. E.
* MOHL, Hugo von, a German botanist, distinguished for his researches in vegetable physiology. His writings and contributions to journals and Transactions of societies are very numerous. He has written on the structure of palms, cycadeæ, coniferæ, and tree ferns; on the anatomy and physiology of plants; on the germination of spores; on plant cells; on the stem of Tamus elephantipes; on the symmetry of plants, the functions of leaves, the anatomy of chlorophyll; on the effects of soil on plants; and on micrography. Mold is a doctor of philosophy, medicine, and surgery, knight of the order of the Wurtemburg crown, ordinary professor of botany in the university of Tübingen, and member of the Imperial Academy Naturæ Curiosorum.—J. H. B.
* MOHL, Julius von, an eminent German orientalist, was born at Stuttgart, 28th October, 1800. After a most careful education he studied theology at Tübingen, but soon abandoned it for oriental languages, in which he was instructed by Sylvestre de Sacy and Rémusat at Paris. In 1826 he was appointed to an extraordinary professorship at Tübingen, but soon after obtained leave of absence in order to pursue his studies at London and Oxford. In 1832 he resigned his chair and settled at Paris, where he was commissioned by the French government to edit the Shahnahmé of Firdusi for the Collection Orientale. As a member of the Asiatic Society he took so prominent a place that he was not only admitted into the Académie des Inscriptions, but in 1845 was nominated professor of Persic in the collège de France, and some years later superintendent of oriental printing in the imperial printing-office. It was at his instance and according to his plan that the celebrated excavations at Nineveh were undertaken by M. Botta, whose letters on the discoveries at Khorsabad were published by Mohl. He has also written "Fragments relatifs à la religion de Zoroastre" (along with Olshausen), and edited Confucii Chi-King, sive liber carminum, and Y-King, antiquissimus Sinarum liber; Stuttgart, 1834-39.—K. E.
MOINE. See Lemoine.
MOIR, David Macbeth, a Scottish poet and physician, was born at Musselburgh in 1798. He was educated at the grammar-school of his native town and at the university of Edinburgh. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed for four years to a surgeon in Musselburgh. Five years later he obtained his surgeon's diploma, and entered into partnership with a respectable medical practitioner in his native town, where he spent the remainder of his useful and honourable life. At an early age Moir showed a fondness for literary pursuits, and some of his pieces, both in prose and verse, appeared in the local magazines in
