AJODHYA, an ancient city of Oudh, 77 m.  E. of Lucknow, once, on religious grounds, one of the largest and most magnificent cities of India, now in ruins; the modern town is an insignificant place, but has an annual fair, attended by often 600,000 pilgrims.

AK`ABA, a gulf forming the NE. inlet of the Red Sea.

AKAKIA, DOCTOR, a satire of a very biting nature by Voltaire, directed against pretentious pedants of science in the person of Maupertuis, the President of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, which so excited the anger of Frederick the Great, the patron of the Academy, that he ordered it to be burnt by the common hangman, after 30,000 copies of it had been sold in Paris!

AKAKIA, MARTIN, physician of Francis I., born at Chalons-sur-Marne, his real name being Sans-Malice; d. 1551.

AK`BAR, the great Mogul emperor of India, who, after a minority of a few years, assumed the reins of government at the age of eighteen, and in ten or twelve years, such was his power of conquest, had the whole of India north of the Vindhya Mts. subject to his rule.  He was wise in government as well as powerful in war, and one of the most large-minded and largest-hearted rulers recorded in history.  He reigned half a century (1542-1605).

AKENSIDE, MARK, an English physician, who wrote, among other productions and pieces, the “Hymn to the Naiads,” especially a poem entitled the “Pleasures of Imagination,” much quoted from at one time, and suggested by the study of Addison on the Imagination in the Spectator (1721-1770).

AKERS, B. P., an able American sculptor (1825-1861).

AKERMAN` (55), a fortified town in Bessarabia, at the mouth of the
Dniester.

AKIBA, BEN JOSEPH, a famous Jewish rabbi of the 2nd century, a great authority in the matter of Jewish tradition, flayed alive by the Romans for being concerned in a revolt in 135.

AKKAS, a wandering race of negro dwarfs in Central Africa, with large heads and slender necks, who live by hunting.

AKRON (27), a town in Ohio, U.S., seat of manufactures and centre of traffic.

AKSAKOF`, a Russian litterateur and advocate of Panslavism (1823-1886).

AKSU (20), a trading town in E. Turkestan, 250 m.  NE. of Yarkand.

AK`YAB (37), the capital of Aracan, in British Burmah, 90 m.  SE. of Calcutta.

AL RAKIM, the dog that guarded the SEVEN SLEEPERS (q. v.), and that stood by them all through their long sleep.

ALABA`MA (1,513), one of the United States of N. America, traversed by a river of the name, a little larger than England, highly fertile and a great cotton-growing country, and abounding in iron, coal, and marble, bounded on the W. by the Mississippi, on the N. by Tennessee, and the E. by Georgia.

ALABAMA, THE, a vessel built in Birkenhead for the Confederates in the late American Civil War, for the devastation done by which, according to the decision of a court of arbitration, the English Government had to pay heavy damages of three millions of money.