MAQQARI, or Makkari [Abu-l-'Abbas Ahmad ibn Mahommed ul-Maqqari] (c. 1591-1632), Arabian historian, was born at Tlemcen in Algeria and studied at Fez and Marrakesh, where he remained engaged in literary work until he made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1618. In the following year he settled in Cairo. In 1620 he visited Jerusalem and Damascus, and during the next six years made the pilgrimage five times. In 1628 he was again in Damascus, where he gave a course of lectures on Bukhari's collection of _Traditions_, spoke much of the glories of Moslem Spain, and received the impulse to write his work on this subject later. In the same year he returned to Cairo, where he spent a year in writing his history. He was just making preparations to settle definitely in Damascus when he died in 1632. Entry: MAQQARI
HELEN, or HELENA (Gr. [Greek: Elenê]),in Greek mythology, daughter of Zeus by Leda (wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta), sister of Castor, Pollux and Clytaemnestra, and wife of Menelaus. Other accounts make her the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis, or of Oceanus and Tethys. She was the most beautiful woman in Greece, and indirectly the cause of the Trojan war. When a child she was carried off from Sparta by Theseus to Attica, but was recovered and taken back by her brothers. When she grew up, the most famous of the princes of Greece sought her hand in marriage, and her father's choice fell upon Menelaus. During her husband's absence she was induced by Paris, son of Priam, with the connivance of Aphrodite, to flee with him to Troy. After the death of Paris she married his brother Deïphobus, whom she is said to have betrayed into the hands of Menelaus at the capture of the city (_Aeneid_, vi. 517 ff.). Menelaus thereupon took her back, and they returned together to Sparta, where they lived happily till their death, and were buried at Therapnae in Laconia. According to another story, Helen survived her husband, and was driven out by her stepsons. She fled to Rhodes, where she was hanged on a tree by her former friend Polyxo, to avenge the loss of her husband Tlepolemus in the Trojan War (Pausanias iii. 19). After death, Helen was said to have married Achilles in his home in the island of Leuke. In another version, Paris, on his voyage to Troy with Helen, was driven ashore on the coast of Egypt, where King Proteus, upon learning the facts of the case, detained the real Helen in Egypt, while a phantom Helen was carried off to Troy. Menelaus on his way home was also driven by stress of winds to Egypt, where he found his wife and took her home (Herodotus ii. 112-120; Euripides, _Helena_). Helen was worshipped as the goddess of beauty at Therapnae in Laconia, where a festival was held in her honour. At Rhodes she was worshipped under the name of Dendritis (the tree goddess), where the inhabitants built a temple in her honour to expiate the crime of Polyxo. The Rhodian story probably contains a reference to the worship connected with her name (cf. Theocritus xviii. 48 [Greek: sebou m', Helenas phyton eimi]). She was the subject of a tragedy by Euripides and an epic by Colluthus. Originally, Helen was perhaps a goddess of light, a moon-goddess, who was gradually transformed into the beautiful heroine round whom the action of the _Iliad_ revolves. Like her brothers, the Dioscuri, she was a patron deity of sailors. Entry: HELEN
The will of the people was acknowledged as the supreme source of authority; and every free Circassian had a right to express his opinion in those assemblies of his tribe in which the questions of peace and war, almost the only subjects which engaged their attention, were brought under deliberation. The princes and nobles, the leaders of the people in war and their rulers in peace, were only the administrators of a power which was delegated to them. As they had no written laws, the administration of justice was regulated solely by custom and tradition, and in those tribes professing Mahommedanism by the precepts of the Koran. The most aged and respected inhabitants of the various _auls_ or villages frequently sat in judgment, and their decisions were received without a murmur by the contending parties. The Circassian princes and nobles were professedly Mahommedans; but in their religious services many of the ceremonies of their former heathen and Christian worship were still preserved. A great part of the people had remained faithful to the worship of their ancient gods--Shible, the god of thunder, of war and of justice; Tleps, the god of fire; and Seosseres, the god of water and of winds. Although the Circassians are said to have possessed minds capable of the highest cultivation, the arts and sciences, with the exception of poetry and music, were completely neglected. They possessed no written language. The wisdom of their sages, the knowledge they had acquired, and the memory of their warlike deeds were preserved in verses, which were repeated from mouth to mouth and descended from father to son. Entry: CIRCASSIA