VIZIER 242 VliADIMIB II. VIZIER, the title of a high political officer in the Turkish empire and other Mohammedan states. The title is given in Turkey to the heads of the various ministerial departments into which the divan or ministerial council is divided, and to all pashas of three tails. The prime minister, or president of the di- van, is styled the grand vizier, vizier- azam, or sadr-azam. In India vizier was the title of the highest officer at the Mogul court at Delhi; and nawab-vizier ultimately became the hereditary title in the dynasty ruling at Oude. VLADIKAVKAZ, capital of the former Russian province of Terek, in north- ern Caucasia, at the foot of the main Caucasus chain, and at the opening of the valley of the Terek. It is the ter- minus in this direction of the Russian railway system, and is on the only car- riage road through the Dariel Pass to Tiflis and the S. of the mountains. There is a fortress here, and considerable trade. The inhabitants are Cossacks, Armenians, and a motley representa- tion of various Asiatic races. Pop. about 80,000. VLADIMIR, a province of Russia, surrounded by Jaroslav, Kostroma, Nijni Novgorod, Riazan, Moscow, and Tver; area, 18,862 square miles. The surface consists of level and undulating plains, and the soil is fertile. About 32 per cent, is covered with pine forests. The whole province is drained by the system of the Oka, which flows for 82 miles through Vladimir, and receives from the left the Kliasma, with its navi- gable tributary, the Tesa. The largest lake is Plechejevo, which receives the Trubesh, and sends the Great Nerl to the Volga. The principal crops raised are buckwheat, rye, oats, potatoes, pulse, flax, cherries, and onions. In industrial activity, Vladimir ranked next to Mos- cow and Petrograd before the World War. Its manufactures included paper, crystal, glass, chemicals, brandy, cotton, linen, and woolen fabrics, and metal wares, chiefly knives, chisels, locks, gim- lets and reaping hooks. The forests yielded timber, pitch, and tar. A special industry of Vladimir was the manufac- ture of icons. Pop. about 1,800,000. VLADIMIR, the capital of the prov- ince of Vladimir, is on the Kliasma, 110 miles E. N. E. of Moscow by rail, has 28 churches, two monasteries, handsome government buildings, etc., and manufac- tures of icons. Pop. about 45,000. VLADIMIR I., a Czar of Russia, com- monly called Vladimir the Great, or Saint Vladimir; son of the Grand-Duke Sviatoplav by a woman of low condition. and great-grandson of Rurik. His father assigned to him the government of Nov- gorod, dividing the rest of the empire between his two legitimate sons, Jaro- palk and Oleg. In 977 Jaropalk quar- relled with Oleg and killed him, and Vladimir would probably have met the same fate had he not fled to the Varan- gians. Two years later he returned with an army, overcame Jaropalk, and re- mained sole master of the empire, hav- ing his capital at Kiev. He then set himself both to extend and consolidate his dominions, which were little better than a collection of tributary states, scarcely subject to any real control. He enlarged his boundaries from the Black Sea to the Baltic, and appears to have had an intention of welding his empire into a homogeneous mass through the agency of a common religion, in which he tried to combine the Slavonian and the Finnish superstitions. In 988, how- ever, an event occurred which altered his schemes entirely. He had already five wives and almost 1,000 concubines, but while besieging the Christian city of Cherson, in the Crimea, he conceived tl.e idea of demanding the hajid of Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperors Constantine and Basilios. Through the agency of this princess, known in his- tory as Anna Romanovna, he was con- verted to Christianity. His subjects, who had already been prepared for Christianity by intercourse with the Greeks, followed his example. The Scriptures had already been translated into Slavonic by Cyrillus and Methodius, and Russia soon became a Christian country. Vladimir was then as enthu- siastic in his Christian virtues as he had formerly been in his heathen vices. He died in Beresyx in 1015 at a great age, and divided his empire among his 12 sons. The Russian Church canonized him, and gave him a rank equal to that of the Apostles, and the famous "Vladi- mir order" was founded in his honor by the Empress Catherine II. in 1782. VLADIMIR II., called Monomachus. after his maternal grandfather, the Em- peror Constantine Monomachus, was born in 1052, and succeeded to the em- pire in 1113, in opposition to the ordi- nary Slavonic rules of inheritance. Though not free from some of the bar- barisms of his age, he did much for Rus- sia by the establishment and enforce- ment of just laws, and the consolidation of the internal affairs of the empire. He was married to Gida, daughter of King Harold of England, and his granddaugh- ters married the kings of Norway and Denmark, so that the famous Valdemar of Denmark, probably so named in his
