A-Z Browse

  • Jataí (Brazil)
    town, southwestern Goiás estado (“state”), south-central Brazil. It lies at the confluence of the Claro and São Pedro rivers at 2,323 feet (708 m) above sea level. Livestock raising is the principal source of income, and agriculture (especially rice and coffee) is also important. Jataí is linked by highway to Goiânia, the state capital (180 miles [2...
  • Jātaka (Buddhist literature)
    any of the extremely popular stories of former lives of the Buddha, which are preserved in all branches of Buddhism. Some Jātaka tales are scattered in various sections of the Pāli canon of Buddhist writings, including a group of 35 that were collected for didactic purposes. These 35 constitute the last book, the Cariyā Piṭaka ...
  • Jatau (king of Zazzau)
    ...137 miles [220 km] north-northeast) about 1804, Muhamman Makau, sarkin (“king of”) Zazzau, led many of the Hausa nobility to the Koro town of Zuba (6 miles [10 km] south). Abu Ja (Jatau), his brother and successor as sarkin Zazzau, founded Abuja town in 1828, began construction of its wall a year later, and proclaimed himself the first emir of Abuja.......
  • jāti (music)
    From each of the two parent scales were derived seven modal sequences (the mūrchanās described above in The classical period), based on each of the seven notes. The two mūrchanās of a corresponding pair differed from each other only in the tuning of the note pa (A), the crucial distinction in the tunings of the two parent scales. One of each pair wa...
  • jati (Hindu caste)
    caste, in Hindu society. The term is derived from the Sanskrit jāta, “born” or “brought into existence,” and indicates a form of existence determined by birth. In Indian philosophy jati (genus) describes any group of things that have generic characteristics in common. Sociologically, jati has come to be used universally to indicate a caste gr...
  • Jati Savara (people)
    ...Their traditional form of Munda dialect is preserved among those living in the hills, however. The Savara of the hill country are divided into subtribes mainly on the basis of occupation: the Jati Savara are cultivators; the Arsi, weavers of cloth; the Muli, workers in iron; the Kindal, basket makers; and the Kumbi, potters. The traditional social unit is the extended family, including......
  • Jatki language (Indo-Aryan language)
    language belonging to the western group of Indo-Aryan languages and spoken mainly in the western Punjab, Pakistan. One of the most important of its numerous dialects is Multani. Lahnda has a large number of Persian and Arabic loanwords and shares features with Kashmiri and Sindhi. There is little recorded literature in the language. The Muslims use the Persian form of the Arabic script to write La...
  • Jatra (Bengali folk theatre)
    Of the nonreligious forms, the jātrā and the tamāshā are most important. The jātrā, also popular in Orissa and eastern Bihār, originated in Bengal in the 15th century as a result of the bhakti movement, in which devotees of Krishna went singing and dancing in processions and in their frenzied singing sometimes went into.....
  • jatropha (plant)
    (genus Jatropha), member of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), native in both New World and Old World tropics and containing about 175 species of milky-juiced herbs, shrubs, and trees, some useful for their oils or as ornamental plants in tropical gardens....
  • Jatropha berlandieri (plant)
    The peregrina (J. integerrima) from Cuba, about 5 m tall with spadelike leaves sharply lobed at the base, bears crimson flower clusters the year round. J. berlandieri, a perennial 30 cm (12 inches) tall distributed from Texas to Central America, is characterized by long-stalked, purple flowers....
  • Jatropha curcas (plant)
    The barbados nut (J. curcas), with yellow-green flowers and three- to five-lobed leaves on trees 6 m tall from Mexico and Central America, produces seeds from which cooking oil, soap, and a strong purgative are obtained. The seeds themselves are eaten if thoroughly roasted to remove the poison. The lac (a resinous substance) produced by a scale insect that feeds on the leaves is used to......
  • Jatropha integerrima (plant)
    The peregrina (J. integerrima) from Cuba, about 5 m tall with spadelike leaves sharply lobed at the base, bears crimson flower clusters the year round. J. berlandieri, a perennial 30 cm (12 inches) tall distributed from Texas to Central America, is characterized by long-stalked, purple flowers....
  • Jatropha multifida (plant)
    ...from Guatemala and Honduras; it has a short trunk that is swollen at the base, erect red clusters of small flowers borne most of the year, and three- to five-lobed palmate (fanlike) leaves. The coral plant (J. multifida) from South America is outstanding for its huge, deeply cut, 11-lobed leaves on plants, 3 m (10 feet) tall, bearing small, coral-red clusters of flowers....
  • Jatropha podagrica (plant)
    A garden curiosity is tartogo, or gouty jatropha (J. podagrica), from Guatemala and Honduras; it has a short trunk that is swollen at the base, erect red clusters of small flowers borne most of the year, and three- to five-lobed palmate (fanlike) leaves. The coral plant (J. multifida) from South America is outstanding for its huge, deeply cut, 11-lobed leaves on plants, 3 m (10......
  • Jaú (Brazil)
    city, central São Paulo estado (state), Brazil, on the Jaú River, a tributary of the Tietê River, at an elevation of 1,775 feet (541 m) above sea level. It was given town status and made the seat of a municipality in 1866. Sugarcane, feijão (beans), cotton, rice, coffee, and a variety of fruits are grown locally. Jaú processes the...
  • Jaucourt, Louis de (French scholar and editor)
    ...Encyclopédie, the largest encyclopaedia issued at that time, inevitably had many contributors, although the French writer Voltaire said that Diderot’s collaborator, the Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt (aided by secretaries), contributed about three-quarters of the articles in that work. The pattern for future encyclopaedias was established: for any substantial work it would be....
  • Jáudenes, Fermín (Spanish governor of Philippines)
    ...Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, but could not occupy Manila until ground troops arrived three months later. On August 13 Manila fell after a bloodless “battle.” Spanish Governor Fermín Jáudenes had secretly arranged a surrender after a mock show of resistance to salvage his honour. With American troops in possession of the city and Filipino insurgents......
  • Jauf, al- (region, Yemen)
    oasis region, western Yemen. It is bordered by the far-southwest extension of the Rubʿ al-Khali, the great sandy desert of the Arabian Peninsula. The Wadi al-Jawf, an intermittent stream with headwaters in the mountains of the Yemen Highlands, crosses the area; its western and southern branches are small perennial streams....
  • Jaufré Rudel, Seigneur de Blaye (French troubadour)
    second to Guilhem VII, count of Poitiers on the ordinary list of great troubadours, wrote stanzas of simple and pathetic accents. The story of his “far-away love,” possibly the Countess of Tripoli, gave rise to a legend that became popular in literature, notably Edmond Rostand’s play La Princesse lointaine (1895)....
  • jauhar (Indian ritual)
    ...all over India, the earliest dated 510 ce. Women sometimes suffered immolation before their husbands’ expected death in battle, in which case the burning was called jauhar. In the Muslim period (12th–16th century), the Rajputs practiced jauhar, most notably at Chitorgarh, to save women ...
  • Jaumann co-rotational rate (mechanics)
    ...σ22*+ σ33*)/E. Here the stress rates are expressed as the Jaumann co-rotational rates ... is a derivative following the motion of a material point and where the spin Ωij is defined by 2Ωij =......
  • Jaumann, Gustav Andreas Johannes (Polish mathematician)
    ...and centrifugal effects are quite negligible at the scale of molecular interactions). Important contributions on this issue were made by the applied mathematicians Stanisław Zaremba and Gustav Andreas Johannes Jaumann in the first decade of the 1900s; they showed how to make tensorial definitions of stress rate that were invariant to superposed spin and thus were suitable for use in......
  • Jaunde (people)
    a Bantu-speaking people of the hilly area of south-central Cameroon who live in and around the capital city of Yaoundé. The Yaunde and a closely related people, the Eton, comprise the two main subgroups of the Beti, which in turn constitute one of the three major subdivisions of the cluster of peoples in southern Cameroon, mainland Equatorial Guinea, and northern Gabon kn...
  • jaundice (pathology)
    excess accumulation of bile pigments in the bloodstream and bodily tissues that causes a yellow to orange and sometimes even greenish discoloration of the skin, the whites of the eyes, and the mucous membranes. Jaundice is best seen in natural daylight and may not be apparent under artificial lighting. The degree of coloration depends on the concentration of bile pigment (...
  • jaundice, artificial (pathology)
    yellow skin discoloration caused by excess blood carotene; it may follow overeating of such carotenoid-rich foods as carrots, sweet potatoes, or oranges....
  • jaundice, infectious (pathology)
    acute systemic illness of animals, occasionally communicable to humans, that is characterized by extensive inflammation of the blood vessels. It is caused by a spirochete, or spiral-shaped bacterium, of the genus Leptospira....
  • jaundice of the newborn (pathology)
    Jaundice in the newborn is ordinarily related to an imbalance between the rate of destruction of red blood cells and the metabolism of hemoglobin to bilirubin and the rate of excretion of bilirubin in the bile; there is a resultant temporary elevation of bilirubin level in the blood. Jaundice may, however, be due to septicemia, to several different diseases of the liver, or to obstruction of......
  • Jaunpur (India)
    town, southeastern Uttar Pradesh state, northern India, straddling the Gomati River, northwest of Vārānasi (Benares). Jaunpur probably was originally founded in the 11th century but was washed away by Gomati floods. It was rebuilt in 1359 by Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq, whose fort still stands. The city was the capital of the independent Muslim kingdom of the Sh...
  • jaunting car (carriage)
    two-wheeled, open vehicle, popular in Ireland from the early 19th century. It was unusual in having lengthwise, back-to-back or face-to-face passenger seats. The light, horse-drawn cart carried four passengers (although the earliest versions carried more). It usually had a narrow, forward-facing driver’s seat....
  • jaunty car (carriage)
    two-wheeled, open vehicle, popular in Ireland from the early 19th century. It was unusual in having lengthwise, back-to-back or face-to-face passenger seats. The light, horse-drawn cart carried four passengers (although the earliest versions carried more). It usually had a narrow, forward-facing driver’s seat....
  • Jaurès, Auguste-Marie-Joseph-Jean (French politician)
    French socialist leader, cofounder of the newspaper L’Humanité, and member of the French Chamber of Deputies (1885–89, 1893–98, 1902–14); he achieved the unification of several factions into a single socialist party, the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière. During the war fever of July 1914, he was assassinated by a young fa...
  • Jaurès, Jean (French politician)
    French socialist leader, cofounder of the newspaper L’Humanité, and member of the French Chamber of Deputies (1885–89, 1893–98, 1902–14); he achieved the unification of several factions into a single socialist party, the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière. During the war fever of July 1914, he was assassinated by a young fa...
  • Jauru River (river, South America)
    ...craft—about 150 miles downstream, near Cáceres, Braz., after its confluence with the Sepotuba River—it is 275 feet wide and 20 feet deep. Another 20 miles downstream, where the Jauru River joins it at an elevation of 400 feet, the Paraguay enters the Pantanal, a vast seasonal swamp that covers much of southern Mato Grosso and northwestern Mato Grosso do Sul state. During......
  • Jauss, Hans Robert (German theorist)
    ...such as Marxism and feminism have often entered art criticism more directly, making the critic’s perceptions of social needs more directly applicable to evaluations of art. As the German theorist Hans Robert Jauss wrote, every work of art exists within a social and historical “horizon of expectation.” The aesthetic response elicited by the work often depends upon how much i...
  • Java (island, Indonesia)
    island of Indonesia lying southeast of Malaysia and Sumatra, south of Borneo (Kalimantan), and west of Bali. Java is only the fourth largest island in Indonesia but contains more than half of the nation’s population and dominates it politically and economically. The capital of Java and of the country is Jakarta (formerly Batavia), which is also Indonesi...
  • Java (British ship)
    American naval officer who captured the British frigate Java in the War of 1812....
  • Java (computer programming language)
    In the early 1990s, Java was designed by Sun Microsystems, Inc., as a programming language for the World Wide Web (WWW). Although it resembled C++ in appearance, it was fully object-oriented. In particular, Java dispensed with lower-level features, including the ability to manipulate data addresses, a capability that is neither desirable nor useful in programs for distributed systems. In order......
  • Java almond (plant)
    ...in tropical America. Some contain such large amounts of resin and burn so fiercely that they are known as torchwoods. Canarium strictum (Indian black dammar tree) and C. commune (Java almond) of Indo-Malaysia, a source of Manila elemi, also produce commercially valuable resins. The seed of the latter, which is cultivated in Australia, is edible, as are those of several other......
  • Java Bytecode (computer programming language)
    ...Microsystems, Inc., introduced Java, yet another object-oriented language. Applications written in Java are not translated into a particular machine language but into an intermediate language called Java Bytecode, which may be executed on any computer (such as those using UNIX, Macintosh, or Windows operating systems) with a Java interpretation program known as a Java virtual machine. (See......
  • Java cotton (fiber)
    seed-hair fibre obtained from the fruit of the kapok tree or the kapok tree itself. The kapok is a gigantic tree of the tropical forest canopy and emergent layer. Common throughout the tropics, the kapok is native to the New World and to Africa and was transported to Asia, where it is cultivated for its fibre, or floss. The kapok’s huge buttressed trunk tapers upward to a...
  • java jute (plant)
    (Hibiscus sabdariffa), plant of the hibiscus, or mallow, family (Malvaceae), and its fibre, one of the bast fibre group. Roselle is probably native to West Africa and includes H. sabdariffa variety altissima, grown for fibre, and H. sabdariffa variety sabdariffa, cultivated for the edible external portion of its flower (calyx...
  • Java kapok (fiber)
    seed-hair fibre obtained from the fruit of the kapok tree or the kapok tree itself. The kapok is a gigantic tree of the tropical forest canopy and emergent layer. Common throughout the tropics, the kapok is native to the New World and to Africa and was transported to Asia, where it is cultivated for its fibre, or floss. The kapok’s huge buttressed trunk tapers upward to a...
  • Java man (extinct hominid)
    extinct hominin (member of the human lineage) known from fossil remains found on the island of Java, Indonesia. A skullcap and thighbone discovered by the Dutch anatomist and geologist Eugène Dubois in the early 1890s were the first known fossils of the species Homo erectus....
  • Java Sea (sea, Pacific Ocean)
    portion of the western Pacific Ocean between the islands of Java and Borneo. It is bordered by Borneo (Kalimantan) on the north, the southern end of Makassar Strait on the northeast, Celebes and the Flores and Bali seas on the east, Java on the south, the Sunda Straits to the Indian Ocean on the southwest, Sumatra on the west, and the islands of Bangka and Belitung (bordering th...
  • Java Sea, Battle of the (World War II)
    The sea was the scene of a battle of World War II between the Allies and the Japanese. Fought on Feb. 27, 1942, the encounter resulted in a serious defeat for Allied naval forces; they lost five ships in the battle, and the next day Japanese forces were able to begin their invasion of the island of Java....
  • Java shrew-mouse (rodent)
    ...are covered with flat, channeled spines nestled in soft underfur (juveniles are not spiny). At the other extreme are the shrew-mice from Sumatra (M. crociduroides) and Java (M. vulcani), whose soft, short, and dense coat appears woolly or velvety. All the other species have a soft or slightly coarse, moderately thick coat with short or.....
  • Java sparrow (bird)
    (species Padda oryzivora), bird of the mannikin group in the family Estrildidae (order Passeriformes), one of the best-known cage birds. It is an attractive pet that chirps and trills. Native to Java and Bali, it has become established in the wild elsewhere in Asia. Also called paddy bird, it may form large flocks that damage grain. It is 14 cm (5.5 inches) long and mostly gray, with pinki...
  • Java Trench (Indian Ocean)
    deep submarine depression in the eastern Indian Ocean that extends some 2,000 miles (3,200 km) in a northwest-southeast arc along the southwestern and southern Indonesian archipelago. It is located about 190 miles (305 km) off the southwestern coasts of the islands of Sumatra and Java, stretching eastward south of the western Lesser Sunda Is...
  • Java Virtual Machine (computer program)
    ...software written in Java would not have to be rewritten for each computer operating system. If it ran on a UNIX computer, it should also run on a Windows machine or a Macintosh through the use of a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). JVMs were shipped with UNIX, Windows, Macintosh, and other systems as well as with Internet browsers such as Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Ex...
  • Java War (Indonesian history)
    ...examination of the present. Neither effort was successful, though not for want of trying. The idea of opposing Dutch rule, furthermore, was not abandoned entirely, and it was only the devastating Java War (1825–30) that finally tamed the Javanese elite and, oddly enough, left the Dutch to determine the final shape of Javanese culture until the mid-20th century....
  • Javacheff, Christo (Bulgarian artist)
    On June 25, 1995, when the last panel of silver fabric fell into place, the biggest artwork of the year was completed in Berlin by site artists Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude. But this was a veiling, not an unveiling; "Wrapped Reichstag" covered the 101-year-old German parliament building with 100,000 sq m (1,076,000 sq ft) of fabric held in place by nearly 16 km (10 mi) of blue rope. In a n...
  • Javādi Hills (hills, India)
    range of hills, one of the larger of the Eastern Ghāts, northern Tamil Nādu state, southeastern India. About 50 miles (80 km) wide and 20 miles (32 km) long, they are bisected into eastern and western sections by the Cheyyār and Agaram rivers, tributaries of the Pālār. They consist of bluish gray granites, with peaks averaging 3,600–3,8...
  • Javakhishvili, Mikheil (Georgian writer)
    Invasion by the Soviet Red Army in February 1921 sobered Georgian writers. In the 1920s and ’30s the prose writer Mikheil Javakhishvili—who, having been sentenced to death by Soviet authorities but later released, went on to become a great writer—produced inventive and captivating prose that often tells the story of a sympathetic doomed rogue, as in the novels Kvachi......
  • jāvali (music)
    ...the classical South Indian dance. The varṇam, a completely composed piece, serves mainly as a warming up and is performed at the beginning of a concert. Pada and jāvali are two kinds of love songs using the poetic imagery characteristic of the romantic-devotional movement mentioned earlier. Tillānā has a text composed mostly of......
  • Javan, Ali (physicist)
    ...carefully how it absorbed and emitted light and calculated that it should work as a laser. On May 16, 1960, he produced red pulses from a ruby rod about the size of a fingertip. In December 1960 Ali Javan, William Bennett, Jr., and Donald Herriott at Bell Labs built the first gas laser, which generated a continuous infrared beam from a mixture of helium and neon. In 1962 Robert N. Hall and......
  • Javan ferret badger (mammal species)
    ...or pahmi, consist of four species: Chinese (M. moschata), Burmese (M. personata), Everett’s (M. everetti), and Javan (M. orientalis). They live in grasslands and forests from northeast India to central China and Southeast Asia where they consume mostly insects, worms, small...
  • Javan rhinoceros (mammal)
    Only 25 to 60 Javan, or lesser one-horned, rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros sondaicus) remain alive, although the animals once thrived throughout the islands of Java, Borneo, and Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and other areas of Southeast Asia. The hide of the Javan rhinoceros is characterized by large plates of hard tissue joined by thinner, more flexible layers of skin. The male has......
  • Javan tiger (cat subspecies)
    ...500 each, and the Indo-Chinese population is estimated at about 1,500. Three subspecies have gone extinct within the past century: the Caspian (P. tigris virgata) of central Asia, the Javan (P. tigris sondaica), and the Bali (P. tigris balica) tigers. Because the tiger is so closely related to the lion, they can be crossbred in captivity. The......
  • Javanese (people)
    largest ethnic group on the island of Java, Indonesia. Their language, spoken by more than 71 million people, belongs to the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family, as do those of neighbouring but different groups such as the Sundanese of southwest Java and the Madurese of northeast Java. The Javanese are Muslim, though Hindu traditions of an earlier era are still evident and r...
  • Javanese language
    member of the Western, or Indonesian, branch of the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) language family, spoken as a native language by more than 68 million persons living primarily on the island of Java. The largest of the Austronesian languages in number of speakers, Javanese has several regional dialects and a number of clearly distinct status styles. Of the latter the greatest...
  • Javanese literature
    Malaysia and Indonesia together have about 300 different languages and dialects, but they have a single common linguistic ancestor. Before the coming of Islam to the region in the 14th century, Javanese had been the language of culture; afterward, during the Islamic period, Malay became the most important language—and still more so under later Dutch colonial rule so that, logically, it......
  • Javanese peacock (bird)
    ...peacock, and the female is a peahen; both are peafowl. Two species of peafowl are the blue, or Indian, peacock (Pavo cristatus), of India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon), and the green, or Javanese, peacock (P. muticus), from Burma to Java. The Congo peacock (Afropavo congensis) was discovered in 1936 after a search that began in 1913 with the finding of a......
  • Javanese rod puppet (theatre)
    puppeteer who developed the artistic potentialities of the Javanese rod puppet for western puppet theatre....
  • Javanese War of Succession, Third (Indonesian history)
    In his dealings with Indonesians van Imhoff was tactless. He intervened in a quarrel between the ruler of the Mataram kingdom of Java and his brother, thus touching off the Third Javanese War of Succession (1749–57), which left Mataram split into two kingdoms. In Bantam, another kingdom of Java, van Imhoff lent his support to the unpopular faction of a dynastic dispute, bringing on a......
  • Javanthropus (extinct hominid)
    prehistoric human known from 11 fossil skulls (without facial skeletons) and 2 leg-bone fragments that were recovered from terraces of the Solo River at Ngandong, Java, in 1931–32. Cranial capacity (1,150–1,300 cubic centimetres) overlaps that of modern man (average 1,350 cu cm). The skulls are flattened in profile, with thick bones and heavy browridges forming a ...
  • Javari, Rio (river, South America)
    river that rises on the border between Amazonas state, Brazil, and Loreto department, Peru. It flows northeast for 540 miles (870 km) to join the Amazon River near the Brazilian outpost of Benjamin Constant. The river follows a winding course through unbroken tropical rain forest in which there are only a few very small riverbank clearings. It is navigable for launches almost to...
  • Javari River (river, South America)
    river that rises on the border between Amazonas state, Brazil, and Loreto department, Peru. It flows northeast for 540 miles (870 km) to join the Amazon River near the Brazilian outpost of Benjamin Constant. The river follows a winding course through unbroken tropical rain forest in which there are only a few very small riverbank clearings. It is navigable for launches almost to...
  • JavaScript (programming language)
    Another approach is to use a language designed for Web scripts to be executed by the browser. JavaScript is one such language, designed by the Netscape Communications Corp., which may be used with both Netscape’s and Microsoft’s browsers. JavaScript is a simple language, quite different from Java. A JavaScript program may be embedded in a Web page with the HTML tag <script......
  • Javed Miandad (Pakistani cricketer)
    Another approach is to use a language designed for Web scripts to be executed by the browser. JavaScript is one such language, designed by the Netscape Communications Corp., which may be used with both Netscape’s and Microsoft’s browsers. JavaScript is a simple language, quite different from Java. A JavaScript program may be embedded in a Web page with the HTML tag <script.......
  • javelin (mammal)
    any of the three species of piglike mammal found in the southern deserts of the United States southward through the Amazon Basin to Patagonian South America (see Patagonia). Closely resembling the wild pig (see boar), the peccary has dark, coarse hair and a large head with a circular snout. The ears are small, as is the tail, which is generally not visible. It...
  • javelin (spear)
    Javelins, or throwing spears, were shorter and lighter than spears designed for shock combat and had smaller heads. The distinction between javelin and spear was slow to develop, but by classical times the heavy spear was clearly distinguished from the javelin, and specialized javelin troops were commonly used for skirmishing. A throwing string was sometimes looped around the shaft and tied to......
  • javelin throw (athletics)
    athletics (track-and-field) sport of throwing a spear for distance, included in the ancient Greek Olympic Games as one of five events of the pentathlon competition....
  • javelina (mammal)
    any of the three species of piglike mammal found in the southern deserts of the United States southward through the Amazon Basin to Patagonian South America (see Patagonia). Closely resembling the wild pig (see boar), the peccary has dark, coarse hair and a large head with a circular snout. The ears are small, as is the tail, which is generally not visible. It...
  • Jāvīd-nāmeh (poem by Iqbāl)
    ...translator into English, wrote: “Iqbāl displayed here an altogether extraordinary talent for the most delicate and delightful of all Persian styles, the ghazal,” or love poem. Jāvīd-nāmeh (1932; “The Song of Eternity”) is considered Iqbāl’s masterpiece. Its theme, reminiscent of Dante’s Divine Comedy, is ...
  • Javier, San Francisco (Christian missionary)
    the greatest Roman Catholic missionary of modern times, who was instrumental in the establishment of Christianity in India, the Malay Archipelago, and Japan. In Paris in 1534 he pronounced vows as one of the first seven members of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, under the leadership of Ignatius of Loyola....
  • Javins v. First Nat’l Realty Co. (law case)
    ...of these codes was sporadic. Faced with this situation and with considerable legislative inertia, American courts came to read the provisions of the housing code into the lease. JavinsFirst Nat’l Realty Co. (1970), for example, requires that every residential lease have within it an unwaivable warranty of habitability, requiring th...
  • Javor (mountain, Germany)
    ...that compose the highlands is intricate and confused. The main group, the Šumava in the Czech Republic and Hinterer Wald in Germany, averages 3,500 feet (1,100 m) and rises to the summits of Grosser Arber (Javor; 4,777 feet [1,456 m]) on the Bavarian (western) side and Plechý (Plöckenstein; 4,521 feet [1,378 m]) on the Czech (eastern) side. The Šumava is the source f...
  • Javorníky (mountains, Europe)
    mountain range on the western fringe of the Carpathian Mountains that forms the northern segment of the boundary between Moravia (Czech Republic) and Slovakia. The ridge of the Javorníky peaks—the highest, at 3,514 feet (1,071 metres), is Velký Javorník, overlooking the village of Velké Karlovice—divides the Bečva-Oder river syste...
  • Javouhey, Anne-Marie (French missionary)
    ...was abolished only after the startling exposé by Albert Londres (1884–1932). Another aspect of French Guiana, however, was the pioneering community at Mana (1827–46) founded by Anne-Marie Javouhey, mother-superior of the community of St. Joseph of Cluny, who, with Father Francis Libermann, established one of the earliest educational systems for the freed black slaves and......
  • jaw (anatomy)
    either of a pair of bones that form the framework of the mouth of vertebrate animals, usually containing teeth and including a movable lower jaw (mandible) and fixed upper jaw (maxilla). Jaws function by moving in opposition to each other and are used for biting, chewing, and the handling of food....
  • Jawa (island, Indonesia)
    island of Indonesia lying southeast of Malaysia and Sumatra, south of Borneo (Kalimantan), and west of Bali. Java is only the fourth largest island in Indonesia but contains more than half of the nation’s population and dominates it politically and economically. The capital of Java and of the country is Jakarta (formerly Batavia), which is also Indonesi...
  • Jawa Barat (province, Indonesia)
    propinsi (province), western Java, Indonesia. It is bounded by Jawa Tengah (Central Java) province to the east, the Indian Ocean to the south, the Java Sea to the north, and the metropolitan capital district of Jakarta Raya to the northwest. The provincial capital of Jawa Barat is Bandung. In 2000 the ...
  • Jawa Dam (ancient dam, Jordan)
    The oldest known dam in the world is a masonry and earthen embankment at Jawa in the Black Desert of modern Jordan. The Jawa Dam was built in the 4th millennium bc to hold back the waters of a small stream and allow increased irrigation production on arable land downstream. Evidence exists of another masonry-faced earthen dam built about 2700 bc at Sadd el-Kafara, about...
  • Jawa, Laut (sea, Pacific Ocean)
    portion of the western Pacific Ocean between the islands of Java and Borneo. It is bordered by Borneo (Kalimantan) on the north, the southern end of Makassar Strait on the northeast, Celebes and the Flores and Bali seas on the east, Java on the south, the Sunda Straits to the Indian Ocean on the southwest, Sumatra on the west, and the islands of Bangka and Belitung (bordering th...
  • Jawa Tengah (province, Indonesia)
    provinsi (province), central Java, Indonesia. It is bounded by Jawa Barat (West Java) province on the west, the Java Sea on the north, Jawa Timur (East Java) province on the east, the Indian Ocean on the south, and Yogyakarta daerah istimewa (special district) on the southeast. Jawa Tengah province includes the Karimun...
  • Jawa Timur (province, Indonesia)
    provinsi (province), eastern Java, Indonesia. It is bounded by the province of Jawa Tengah (Central Java) on the west, the Java Sea on the north, the Indian Ocean on the south, and the Bali Strait on the east. It includes the Madura, Kangean, Sapudi, Raas, Sepanjang, Bawean, and Masalembo-Besar islands in the Java Sea....
  • jawab (Islamic architecture)
    ...although the chief architect was probably Ustad Ahmad Lahawri, an Indian of Persian descent. The five principal elements of the complex—main gateway, garden, mosque, jawab (literally “answer”; a building mirroring the mosque), and mausoleum (including its four minarets)—were conceived and designed as a unified entity according to ...
  • Jawāb-e shikwah (poem by Iqbāl)
    Three significant poems from this period, Shikwah (“The Complaint”), Jawāb-e shikwah (“The Answer to the Complaint”), and Khizr-e rāh (“Khizr, the Guide”), were published later in 1924 in the Urdu collection Bāng-e darā (“The Call of the Bell”). In those works Iqbāl gave intense e...
  • Jawahar Tunnel (tunnel, India)
    ...it necessary to transform a longer and more difficult cart road through Banihal Pass into an all-weather highway in order to link Jammu with the Vale of Kashmir; included was the construction of the Jawahar Tunnel, which at the time of its completion in 1959 was one of the longest in Asia. This road, however, is often made impassable by severe weather, which causes shortages of essential......
  • Jawahiri, Muhammad Mahdi al- (Iraqi poet)
    Iraqi poet considered one of the Arab world’s all-time finest poets and said to be the last neoclassic Arab bard (b. July 26, 1899?--d. July 27, 1997)....
  • Jawara, Sir Dawda Kairaba (president of The Gambia)
    politician and veterinarian who was The Gambia’s prime minister from 1962 to 1970 and its president from 1970 until he was overthrown in 1994....
  • jawbone (music)
    Scrapers are highly popular. The notched gourd with natural handle, called guiro, is another African American instrument. Notched turtle carapaces are scraped in the Caribbean. The jawbone of a horse, mule, or donkey, with its teeth left in, is played throughout the Americas; its use among coastal Peruvians of African descent goes back to the 18th century. In the United States it has been used......
  • Jawf, Al- (Saudi Arabia)
    town and oasis, northern Saudi Arabia. It lies at the northern edge of an-Nafūd desert near the source of the Wadi as-Sirḥān. Formerly considered a part of the Jabal Shammar region, the oasis now lies within the northern reaches of the Hejaz. The town is strategically located on an ancient caravan route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, and...
  • Jawf, Al- (region, Yemen)
    oasis region, western Yemen. It is bordered by the far-southwest extension of the Rubʿ al-Khali, the great sandy desert of the Arabian Peninsula. The Wadi al-Jawf, an intermittent stream with headwaters in the mountains of the Yemen Highlands, crosses the area; its western and southern branches are small perennial streams....
  • Jawf, Wadi al- (river, Yemen)
    oasis region, western Yemen. It is bordered by the far-southwest extension of the Rubʿ al-Khali, the great sandy desert of the Arabian Peninsula. The Wadi al-Jawf, an intermittent stream with headwaters in the mountains of the Yemen Highlands, crosses the area; its western and southern branches are small perennial streams....
  • Jawhar (Fāṭimid general)
    ...His authority was acknowledged over the greater part of the region now comprising Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and he soon took the island of Sicily. In the years 958–959 he sent his general Jawhar westward to reduce Fès and other places where the authority of the Fāṭimid caliph had been repudiated; after a successful expedition Jawhar advanced to the Atlantic....
  • Jawizān ibn Sahl (Islamic religious leader)
    ...descendant of Abū Muslim. Other sources, emphasizing the belief in transmigration of souls current among the Khorram-dīnān, maintain that Bābak claimed to possess the soul of Jawizān ibn Sahl, a former leader of the Khorram-dīnān. In 816 Bābak, believing that he had a divinely inspired mission to right all the wrongs of the temporal world,...
  • Jawl, Al- (region, Saudi Arabia)
    ...scarps are formed by cuestas (low ridges with steep faces on one side and gentle slopes on the other) of limestone reaching to highlands of the Hadhramaut in the south, where the plateau of Al-Jawl (Jol) is located. The Ṭuwayq Mountains are the most prominent of these cuestas....
  • Jawlān, Al (region, Middle East)
    hilly area overlooking the upper Jordan River valley on the west. The area was part of extreme southwestern Syria until 1967, when it came under Israeli military occupation, and in December 1981 Israel unilaterally annexed the part of the Golan it held. The area’s name is from the biblical city of refuge Golan in Bashan (Deuteronomy 4:43; Joshua 20:8)....
  • Jawlensky, Alexey von (Russian painter)
    Russian painter noted for his Expressionistic portraits and the mystical tone of his late paintings of abstract faces....

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