AZRAEL (3 syl.), the angel of death (called Raphael in the Gospel of Barnabas).—­Al Koran.

AZTECAS, an Indian tribe, which conquered the Hoamen (2 syl.), seized their territory, and established themselves on a southern branch of the Missouri, having Aztlan as their imperial city.  When Madoc conquered the Aztecas in the twelfth century, he restored the Hoamen, and the Aztecas migrated to Mexico.—­Southey, Madoc (1805).

AZUCENA, a gipsy.  Manrico is supposed to be her son, but is in reality the son of Garzia (brother of the conte di Luna).—­Verdi, Il Trovatore (1853).

AZYORUCA (4 syl.), queen of the snakes and dragons.  She resides in Patala, or the infernal regions.—­Hindu Mythology.

  There Azyoruca veiled her awful form
  In those eternal shadows.  There she sat,
  And as the trembling souls who crowd around
  The judgment-seat received the doom of fate,
  Her giant arms, extending from the cloud,
  Drew them within the darkness.

Southey, Curse of Kehama, xxiii 15 (1809).

BAAL, plu.  BAALIM, a general name for all the Syrian gods, as Ashtaroth was for the goddesses.  The general version of the legend of Baal is the same as that of Adonis, Thammuz, Osiris, and the Arabian myth of El Khouder.  All allegorize the Sun, six months above and six months below the equator.  As a title of honor, the word Baal, Bal, Bel, etc., enters into a large number of Phoenician and Carthaginian proper names, as Hanni-bal, Hasdrubal, Bel-shazzar, etc.

  ... [the] general names
  Of Baaelim and Ashtaroth:  those male;
  These female.

Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 422 (1665).

BAB (Lady), a waiting maid on a lady so called, who assumes the airs with the name and address of her mistress.  Her fellow-servants and other servants address her as “lady Bab,” or “Your ladyship.”  She is a fine wench, “but by no means particular in keeping her teeth clean.”  She says she never reads but one “book, which is Shikspur.”  And she calls Lovel and Freeman, two gentlemen of fortune, “downright hottenpots.”—­Rev. J. Townley, High Life Below Stairs (1763).

BABA, chief of the eunuchs in the court of the sultana
Gulbeyaz.—­Byron, Don Juan, v. 82, etc. (1820).

BABA (Ali), who relates the story of the “Forty Thieves” in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.  He discovered the thieves’ cave while hiding in a tree, and heard the magic word “Sesame,” at which the door of the cave opened and shut.

Cassim Baba, brother of Ali Baba, who entered the cave of the forty thieves, but forgot the pass-word, and stood crying “Open Wheat!” “Open Barley!” to the door, which obeyed to no sound but “Open Sesame!”