SUEZ (13), a town of Egypt, stands at the edge of the desert at the head of a gulf of the same name and at the S. end of the Suez Canal, 75 m.  E. of Cairo, with which it is connected by railway; as a trading place, dating back to the times of the Ptolemies, has had a fluctuating prosperity, but since the completion of the canal is growing steadily in importance; is still for the most part an ill-built and ill-kept town; has a large English hospital and ship-stores.

SUEZ CANAL, a great artificial channel cutting the isthmus of Suez, and thus forming a waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; was planned and undertaken by the French engineer Lesseps, through whose untiring efforts a company was formed and the necessary capital raised; occupied 10 years in the construction (1859-69), and cost some 20 million pounds; from Port Said on the Mediterranean to Suez at the head of the Red Sea the length is about 100 m., a portion of which lies through Lakes Menzaleh, Ballah, Timsah, and the Bitter Lakes; as widened and deepened in 1886 it has a minimum depth of 28 ft., and varies from 150 to 300 ft. in width; traffic is facilitated by electric light during the night, and the passage occupies little more than 24 hours; has been neutralised and exempted from blockade, vessels of all nations in peace or war being free to pass through; now the highway to India and the East, shortening the voyage to India by 7600 m.; three-fourths of the ships passing through are English; an annual toll is drawn of close on three million pounds, the net profit of which falls to be divided amongst the shareholders, of whom since 1875 the British Government has been one of the largest.

SUFFOLK (371), eastmost county of England, fronts the North Sea between Norfolk (N.) and Essex (S.); is a pleasant undulating county with pretty woods and eastward-flowing streams (Waveney, Aide, Orwell, Stour, &c.); long tracts of heathland skirt the coast; agriculture is still the staple industry, wheat the principal crop; is famed for its antiquities, architecture, historic associations, and long list of worthies.  Ipswich is the county town.

SUFFREN, BAILLI DE, a celebrated French admiral, who entered the navy a boy of 14 during the wars with England, and rose to be one of his country’s greatest naval heroes, especially distinguishing himself as commander of a squadron in the West Indies, proving himself a master of naval tactics in more or less successful engagements with the English; is regarded by Professor Laughton as “the most illustrious officer that has ever held command in the French navy”; sprang from good Provence stock (1729-1788).

SUFISM, the doctrine of the Sufis, a sect of Mohammedan mystics; imported into Mohammedanism the idea that the soul is the subject of ecstasies of Divine inspiration in virtue of its direct emanation from the Deity, and this in the teeth of the fundamental article of the Mohammedan creed, which exalts God as a being passing all comprehension and ruling it by a law which is equally mysterious, which we have only to obey; this doctrine is associated with the idea that the body is the soul’s prison, and death the return of it to its original home, a doctrine of the dervish fraternity, of which the Madhi is high-priest.