mausoleum Large, impressive tomb, especially a stone building with places for entombment of the dead aboveground. The word is derived from Mausolus, whose widow raised a splendid tomb at Halicarnassus (c. 353-350 bc). Probably the most ambitious mausoleum is the Taj Mahal.
Mausolus \m6-'so-l3s\ (d. 353 bc) Satrap (governor) of Caria in South Asia Minor. Nominally under the control of the Persian empire, he took advantage of upheaval in Asia Minor to gain independence. He was influ¬ ential among the Greek cities of Ionia and instigated the revolt of Ath¬ ens’s allies in 357. He endowed his capital, Haucarnassus, with fine buildings. His sister and wife, Artemisia II, finished building his tomb, the Mausoleum. It was designed by the Greek architect Pythius and consid¬ ered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Mauss Vmos\, Marcel (b. May 10,1872, Epinal, Fr.—d. Feb. 10, 1950, Paris) French sociologist and anthropologist. Mauss was the nephew of Emile Durkheim, who contributed much to his intellectual formation and with whom he collaborated in such important works as Suicide (1897) and Primitive Classification (1901-02). His most influential independent work was The Gift (1925), a highly original comparative study of the relation between forms of gif exchange and social structure. He taught at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and College de France and cofounded the University of Paris’s Institut d’Ethnologie. His views on ethnological theory and method influenced Claude L£vi-Strauss, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Edward Evans-Pritchard.
Mawlana See Jalal ad-Din ar-RuMi
mawlid \'mau-lid\ or milad \,me-Tad\ In Islam, the birthday of a holy figure, especially Muhammad. His birthday is fixed by tradition as the 12th day of the month of Rab! c I (actually the day of his death). First celebrated by the Muslim faithful in the 13th century, Muhammad’s birthday was preceded by a month of merrymaking, which ended with animal sacri¬ fices and a torchlight procession. The day of the mawlid included a pub¬ lic sermon and a feast. Though mawlid festivities are considered
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idolatrous by some Islamic fundamentalists, they continue to be widely celebrated throughout the Muslim world and have been extended to popu¬ lar saints and the founders of Sufi brotherhoods.
Mawsil, Al- See Mosul
Maxim, Sir Hiram (Stevens) (b. Feb. 5, 1840, Sangerville, Maine, U.S.—d. Nov. 24, 1916, London, Eng.) U.S.-British inventor. Son of a Maine farmer, he was apprenticed to a carriage maker. He became chief engineer of the U.S. Electric Lighting Co. (1878-81), for which he intro¬ duced carbon filaments for electric lightbulbs. At his lab in London he began working on a fully automatic machine gun; in 1884 he succeeded with a design that used the recoil of the barrel to eject the spent cartridges and reload the chamber. He also developed his own smokeless gunpow¬ der, cordite. Soon every army was equipped with Maxim guns or adap¬ tations. His other inventions included a hair-curling iron, a pneumatic gun, and an airplane (1894). His Maxim Gun Co. was eventually absorbed into Vickers, Ltd. His son Hiram Percy (1869-1936) invented the Maxim silencer for rifles, which he adapted to mufflers and other technologies, and designed the Columbia electric automobile.
Maximian \mak-'sim-e-3n\ in full Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus (b. c. ad 250, Sirmium, Pannonia Inferior—d. c. July 310) Roman emperor with Diocletian (286-305). Assigned the govern¬ ment of the West, he could not suppress revolts in Gaul and Britain; Con- stantius I Chlorus took charge of these, leaving him Italy, Spain, and Africa. Though known as a persecutor of Christians, he probably acted on Diocletian’s orders. He reluctantly abdicated with Diocletian but recanted to support his son Maxentius’s claim as caesar. Forced to abdi¬ cate again, he lived at the court of his son-in-law, Constantine I. After raising a failed revolt against Constantine, he committed suicide.
Maximilian orig. Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph (b. July 6, 1832, Vienna, Austria—d. June 19,
1867, near Queretaro, Mex.) Arch¬ duke of Austria and emperor of Mexico (1864-67). The younger brother of Francis Joseph I of Austria- Hungary, he served in the Austrian navy and as governor-general of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. He accepted the offer of the Mexican throne, naively believing that the Mexicans had voted him their king.
In fact, the offer was a scheme between Mexican conservatives, who wanted to overthrow Pres.
Benito JuArez, and Napoleon III, who wanted to collect a debt from Mexico and had imperialist ambitions there.
Intending to rule with paternal benevolence, Maximilian upheld Juarez’s reforms, to the fury of the conservatives. The end of the American Civil War allowed the U.S. to intervene on Juarez’s behalf; French forces that had been supporting Max¬ imilian left at the request of the U.S., and Juarez’s army retook Mexico City. Refusing to abdicate, Maximilian was defeated and executed.
Maximilian I (b. April 17, 1573, Munich—d. Sept. 27, 1651, Ingol- stadt, Bavaria) Duke of Bavaria (1597-1651) and elector from 1623. Suc¬ ceeding his father as duke, he restored the duchy to solvency, revised the law code, and built an effective army. Opposed to the Protestant cause, he established the Catholic League (1610). In the Thirty Years' War he gave military aid to Austria against the Palatine elector Frederick V and, with military victories by count von Tilly, obtained both territory and the elec¬ torship of Bavaria (1623). Threatened by an independent army under Albrecht W.E. von Wallenstein, he forced the general’s dismissal in 1630. Maximilian later fought unsuccessfully against France and Sweden and made a separate peace to retain the electorship.
Maximilian I orig. Maximilian Joseph (b. May 27, 1756, Mann¬ heim, Palatinate—d. Oct. 13, 1825, Munich) First king of Bavaria (1806- 25). A member of the house of Wittelsbach, in 1799 he inherited its territories as Maximilian IV Joseph, elector of Bavaria. Forced by Austria to enter the war against France, he signed a separate peace in 1801. Dis¬ trustful of Austria, he supported the French war effort (1805-09) through Bavaria’s membership in the Confederation of the Rhine. He received ter¬
ritories by which he crowned himself king of B avaria (1806). After 1813 he allied with Austria to guarantee the integrity of his kingdom and gave up sections of western Austria in return for territories on the western bank of the Rhine. Aided by his chief minister, count von Montgelas (1759-1838), Maximilian made Bavaria into an efficient, liberal state under a new con¬ stitution (1808) and charter (1818) that established a bicameral parliament.
Maximilian I (b. March 22, 1459, Wiener Neustadt, Austria—d. Jan. 12, 1519, Weis) German king and Holy Roman emperor (1493-1519). The eldest son of Emperor Frederick III and a member of the Habsburg dynasty, he gained Burgundy’s lands in the Netherlands by marriage in 1477 but was later forced to give Burgundy to Louis XI (1482). He retook most of the Habsburg lands in Austria from the Hungarians by 1490, and, after being crowned Holy Roman emperor, he drove the Turks from the empire’s southeastern borders. He fought a series of wars against the French, helping to force them out of Italy in 1496 but losing Milan to them in 1515. He lost Switzerland as well but acquired the Tirol peace¬ fully. He acquired Spain for the Habsburgs through his children’s mar¬ riages, gained influence in Hungary and Bohemia, and built an intricate network of European alliances. A popular monarch, he encouraged cul¬ ture and the arts.