COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, FREER GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.
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Mahmud ► Maine I 1171
and the New York Philharmonic in 1909-10. Ill with heart disease and mourning his daughter’s death, he wrote the masterly orchestral song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (1908-09) and his ninth symphony. His orchestral songs Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1892-98) and Kindertoten- lieder (1904; Songs on the Deaths of Children) are frequently performed. His emotionally charged and subtly orchestrated music drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music was largely ignored for 50 years after his death, he was later regarded as an impor¬ tant forerunner of 20th-century techniques of composition.
Mahmud \ma-'mud\ of Ghazna (b. 971—d. April 30?, 1030, Ghazna, Ghaznavid empire) Son of the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty, Sebiiktigin. After ascending the throne in 998, he gave nominal allegiance to the caliph of the 'Abbasid dynasty and in return was granted autonomy. He expanded his kingdom through some 17 invasions of the Punjab and northeastern India, carrying with him the banner of Islam. With the trea¬ sures he amassed, he transformed the city of Ghazna into a brilliant cul¬ tural centre. At his court were the scholar al-BlRUNi and the poet Ferdowsi.
mahogany family Family Meliaceae (order Sapindales), composed of 575 species in 51 genera of trees and (rarely) shrubs native to tropical and subtropical regions. Trees of the genus Swietenia and Entandro- phragma, commonly called mahogany, and of the genus Cedrela (espe¬ cially the cigar-box cedar, C. odorata) are economically important timber trees. The China tree {Melia azedarach ), also called chinaberry, bead tree, and Persian lilac, is an ornamental Asian tree with fragrant, lilac-coloured flowers and attractive but poisonous round yellow fruits, often cultivated in tropical and warm temperate areas. Most members of the family have large compound leaves and branched flower clusters. A few have edible fruits.
Mahone \m3-'hon\, William (b. Dec. 1, 1826, Southampton county, Va., U.S.—d. Oct. 8, 1895, Washington, D.C.) U.S. politician and railroad magnate. After graduating from the Virginia Military Institute, he studied engineering while teaching. He joined the Norfolk-Petersburg Railroad as an engineer in 1851 and became the company’s president 10 years later. In the American Civil War he was appointed quartermaster general of the Confederacy but served with the army of northern Virginia, rising to major general. After the war he resumed railroading, becoming president of the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio (later Norfolk & Western) Railroad (1867). He built a political base through railroad patronage but lost con¬ trol of the railroad in the 1870s. Unable to win the Democratic Party nomination for governor (1877), he organized a coalition of African Americans and poor whites to form a political party, the Readjusters (1879), which succeeded in enacting reforms. He served as a Republican in the U.S. Senate (1880-87).
Maiano, Benedetto da See Benedetto da Maiano
Maidstone Town and borough (pop., 2001: 138,959), administrative and historic county of Kent, southeastern England. It is situated on the River Medway southeast of London. Its name is derived from one given it in Domesday Book. A residence of the Norman archbishops of Canter¬ bury until the Reformation, it grew as a market town. Still an agricultural centre, it is located in England’s largest hops-growing area, and brewing is important to its economy. Among many sites of architectural interest is the medieval archbishop’s palace.
mail, chain See chain mail
mail-order business See direct- mail MARKETING
Mailer, Norman (b. Jan. 31,
1923, Long Branch, N.J., U.S.) U.S. novelist. He studied at Harvard Uni¬ versity. He drew on his wartime ser¬ vice in the Pacific for his celebrated novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), which established him as one of the major American writers of the postwar decades. A flamboyant and controversial figure who often enjoyed antagonizing critics and readers, he has since commanded less respect for his fiction—which also includes the novels An Ameri¬
can Dream (1965) and Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967)—than for jour¬ nalistic works that convey actual events with the richness of novels, including The Armies of the Night (1968, Pulitzer Prize); Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968); Of a Fire on the Moon (1970); and The Execu¬ tioner’s Song (1979, Pulitzer Prize), about the execution of a murderer. Mailer was a favourite target of feminists in the 1960s and ’70s.
Maillol \ma-'yol\, Aristide (b. Dec. 8, 1861, Banyuls-sur-Mer, France—d. Sept. 27, 1944, near Banyuls-sur-Mer) French sculptor, painter, and printmaker. He was a painter and tapestry designer until he was almost 40, when eyestrain persuaded him to turn to sculpture. He rejected the highly emotional style of Auguste Rodin and attempted to pre¬ serve and purify the Classical sculpture of Greece and Rome. Most of his works depict the mature female form and are characterized by emotional restraint, clear composition, and serene surfaces. After 1910 he was inter¬ nationally famous and never lacked commissions. He resumed painting later in life and produced excellent woodcut illustrations for fine editions of Latin poets, but he remained preeminently a sculptor.
Maimon Vml-monV Salomon orig. Salomon ben Joshua (b. c.
1754, Nieswiez, grand duchy of Lithuania—d. Nov. 22, 1800, Nieder- Siegersdorf, Silesia) Polish Jewish philosopher. As a young man, he pur¬ sued Hebrew and rabbinic studies, adopting the name Maimon out of admiration for Moses Maimonides. His unorthodox commentaries on Mai- monides earned him the enmity of other Jews, and he left Poland at age 25 to wander through Europe as a scholar and tutor. A skeptic who empha¬ sized the limits of pure thought, he is best known for his Search for the Transcendental Philosophy (1790), a major critique of Kantian philoso¬ phy. His other writings include Philosophical Dictionary (1791) and Criti¬ cal Investigations of the Human Spirit (1797).
Maimonides \ml-'ma-n3- 1 dez\, Moses orig. Moses ben Maimon
(b. March 30, 1135, Cordoba—d. Dec. 13, 1204, Egypt) Jewish philoso¬ pher, jurist, and physician. He was obliged to practice his faith secretly after a revolutionary and fanatical Islamic sect, the Almohads, captured Cordoba. To gain religious freedom, he settled in Egypt (1165), where he won fame for his medical skill and became court physician to the sultan Saladin. Maimonides’ s first major work, begun at age 23 and completed 10 years later, was an Arabic commentary on the Mishna. His other writ¬ ings included a monumental code of Jewish law called the Mishne Torah (in Hebrew) and a classic work of religious philosophy, The Guide of the Perplexed (in Arabic), which was influenced by the teachings of Aristo¬ tle and called for a more rational approach to Judaism. It also sought to reconcile science, philosophy, and religion. He is considered the greatest intellectual figure of medieval Judaism.
Main River \'mln\ River, central Germany. Rising in northern Bavaria, and flowing west, it passes through Frankfurt before emptying into the Rhine River; it is 326 mi (524 km) long. It forms part of the Main-Danube Canal, which links the Rhine and Danube rivers to create a 2,200-mi (3,500-km) waterway from the North Sea to the Black Sea.
Maine Vmen\ Historical region, northwestern France. A hereditary countship in the 10th century, it briefly fell under English rule and then was united with Anjou in 1126. With Anjou and Normandy, it fell to France early in the 13th century. After alternating between English and French rule, it reverted to the French crown in 1481 and was made a duchy under Louis XIV.
Maine State (pop., 2000: 1,274,923), northeastern U.S. One of the New England states, it lies on the Atlantic Ocean and is bordered by Canada and the U.S. state of New Hampshire. It covers 33,128 sq mi (85,801 sq km); its capital is Augusta. The Appalachian Mountains cross the state, rising to 5,268 ft (1,606 m) at Mount Katahdin; Maine’s upland region has many lakes and valleys, and its Atlantic coast is rocky and scenic. Algonquian Indians were the earliest known inhabitants of the area. Euro¬ pean settlers found the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes living along the river valleys and coasts. The French included Maine as part of the province of Acadia in 1603, and Britain included it in territory granted to the Plymouth Co. in 1606. During the 17th century Britain established scattered settlements, but the area was a constant battleground until the British conquered the French in eastern Canada in 1763. Maine was gov¬ erned as a district of Massachusetts from 1652 until it was admitted as the 23rd state of the Union under the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Its Cana¬ dian boundary was established in 1842. The American Civil War and the Industrial Revolution diverted workers and capital from Maine in the 19th century. In the 20th century it saw slow but steady economic gains, espe-