ISLA, JOSE FRANCISCO DE, a Spanish Jesuit, celebrated as a preacher and a humorist and satirist of the stamp of Cervantes; his principal work “Friar Gerund,” a satire on the charlatanism and bombast of the popular preaching friars of the day, as Don Quixote was on the false chivalry; the friars he satirised were too strong for him, and he was expelled from Spain, retired to Italy, and died at Bologna in extreme poverty (1703-1781).

ISLAM or ISLAMISM, the religion of Mahomet, “that we must submit to God; that our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He do to us, for this world and the other; this is the soul of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity; Christianity also commands us, before all, to be resigned to God.  This is yet the highest wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our earth.”  See “Heroes and Hero-Worship.”

ISLAND OF SAINTS, a name given to Ireland in the Middle Ages.

ISLANDS OF THE BLESSED, fabled islands of the far west of the ocean, where the favoured of the gods after death are conceived to dwell in everlasting blessedness.

ISLAY (7), a large mountainous Island 13 m.  W. of Kintyre, Scotland; much of it is cultivated; dairy produce, cattle, and sheep are exported; there are lead, copper, and manganese mines, marble quarries, and salmon fisheries; the distilleries produce 400,000 gallons of whisky annually.

ISLINGTON (319), a district of London, 21/2 m.  N. of St. Paul’s; contains the division of Holloway, Highbury, Barnsbury, and part of Kingsland.

ISMAIL PASHA, khedive of Egypt from 1863, who was obliged by the Powers to abdicate in 1879.

ISMAILIA, a small town on Suez Canal; was the head-quarters of the work during the construction of the Canal.

ISMAILIS, one of the Mohammedan sects which support the claim of the house of Ali, Mahomet’s cousin, to supremacy among the faithful; originating about A.D. 770, they rose to importance in the 10th century under Abdallah, a Persian, who introduced Zoroastrian ideas into their creed and prophesied the appearance of a Madhi or Messiah who should be greater than the Prophet himself; becoming latterly extremely rationalistic the sect lost its influence in the 13th century, and its representatives in Syria and Persia are now comparatively obscure; in Turkey and Egypt, however, several Madhis have arisen, of whom the last, Mohammed Ahmed, b. 1843, gained possession of the Soudan, defeated the Egyptian army in 1883, two years later captured Khartoum, but died at Omdurman shortly afterwards.

ISMENE, the sister of Antigone, who requested, as her accomplice, to be promoted to be sharer in her fate.

ISOCRATES, an Athenian rhetorician, of a school that was an offshoot of the SOPHISTS (q. v.), and the whole merit of whose oratory depended upon style or literary finish and display; he is said to have starved himself to death after the battle of Cheronea at the age of 98 because he could not brook to outlive the humiliation of Greece by Philip of Macedon and the destruction of its freedom (436-338 B.C.).