(b. 1850) he rapidly acquired a leading position on the diamond fields, and became closely allied with the ideals of Cecil Rhodes (q.v.). In 1889 Rhodes and Beit effected the amalgamation of various interests in the De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited. It was largely owing to the capital and enterprise of Beit that the deep-level mining in the Witwatersrand district of the Transvaal was started, and he had a large share in the principal company, the Rand Mines Limited. The firm of Wernher, Beit & Co. gradually transferred the centre of their financial operations to London, where they became the leading house in the dealings in South African mines. The rapid progress made in developing the diamond and gold output made Beit a man of enormous wealth, and he utilized it lavishly in pursuit of Rhodes’s South African policy. He was one of the original directors of the British South Africa company, and was included with Rhodes in the censure passed by the House of Commons Commission of Inquiry on the Jameson Raid (1896). He was subsequently one of Rhodes’s trustees. Personally of a modest, gentle, generous and retiring disposition, and strongly imbued with Rhodes’s ideas of British imperialism, he was one of the South African millionaires of German birth against whom the anti-imperialist section in England were never tired of employing their sarcastic invective. But though shrinking from ostentation in any form, his purse was continually opened for public objects, notably his support of the Imperial Light Horse and Imperial Yeomanry in the South African War of 1899–1902, and his endowment of the professorship of colonial history at Oxford (1905). He gave £100,000 to establish a university in his native city of Hamburg and £200,000 for a university in Johannesburg. He built a fine house in Park Lane, London, but was never prominent in social life. He died, unmarried, on the 16th of July 1906.
BEJA (or Bīja), the name under which is comprised a widespread family of tribes, usually classed as Hamitic. They may, however, represent very early Semitic immigrants (see Hamitic Races). When first recorded the Beja occupied the whole region between the Nile and the Red Sea from the border of Upper Egypt to the foot of the Abyssinian plateau. They were known to the ancient Egyptians, upon whose monuments they are represented. They are the Blemmyes of Strabo (xvii. 53), and have also been identified with the Macrobii of Herodotus, “tallest and finest of men” (iii. 17). It has been suggested, though on insufficient grounds, that the Beja, rather than the Abyssinians, are the “Ethiopians” of Herodotus, the civilized people who built the city of Meroë and its pyramids. During the Roman period the Beja were much what they are to-day, nomadic and aggressive, and were constantly at war. In 216 A.H. (A.D. 832) the Moslem governor of Assuan made a treaty with the Beja chief, by which the latter undertook to guard the road to Aidhab and pay an annual tribute of one hundred camels. This is the earliest record of a government engagement with the northern section of the Beja, now the Abābda. Ibn Batuta, early in the 14th century, mentions a king of Beja, El Hadrabi, who received two-thirds of the revenue of Aidhab, the other third going to the king of Egypt. The Beja territory contained gold and emerald mines. The tribesmen were the usual escort for pilgrims to Mecca from Kus to Aidhab. According to Leo Africanus, at the close of the 14th or very early in the 15th century their rich town of Zibid (Aidhab?) on the Red Sea was destroyed. This seems to have broken up the tribal cohesion. Leo Africanus describes the Beja as “most base, miserable and living only on milk and camels’ flesh.” In the middle ages the Beja, partially at any rate, were Christians. The kingdom of Meroö was succeeded by that of “Aloa,” the capital of which, Soba, was on the Blue Nile, about 13 m. above Khartum. The country was conquered by the Funj (q.v.), a negroid people who subsequently became Mahommedan and compelled the Beja to adopt that religion. Until the invasion of the Egyptians, under Ismail, son of Mehemet Ali (1820), the Funj remained in possession.
All the Beja are now Mahommedans, but generally only so in name, though some of the tribes enthusiastically fought for Mahdiism (1883–99). As a race the Beja are remarkable for physical beauty, with a colour more red than black, and of a distinctly Caucasic type of face. The chiefs are, as a rule, of much fairer complexion than the tribesmen. In spite of their claim to Arab origin, the tribes have preserved many negro customs in the matter of costume and scarring the body. Their hair-dressing is very characteristic. The hair, worn thick as a protection against the sun, is parted in a circle round the head on a level with the eyes, above which the hair, saturated with mutton fat or butter, is trained straight up like a mop, with separate tufts at sides and back. Most of the tribes are nomadic shepherds, driving their cattle from pasture to pasture; some few are occupied in agriculture.
They are polygynous, but, unlike the Arabs, great independence is granted their women. Among most of the Beja peoples the wife can return to her mother’s tent whenever she likes, and after a birth of a child she can repudiate the husband, who must make a present to be re-accepted. Cases are said to have occurred where the woman has thus obtained all her husband’s possessions. The whole social position of the Beja women points, indeed, to an earlier matriarchal system. Among some of the tribes the custom of the “fourth day free” is observed, by which the women are only considered married for so many days a week, forming what liaisons they please on the odd day. The chief Beja tribes are the Abābda, Bishārïn, Hadendoa, Beni-Amer, Amarar, Shukuria, Hallenga and Hamran.
BEJA (probably the ancient Pax Julia), the capital of an administrative district formerly included in the province of Alemtejo, Portugal; situated 95 m. S.S.E. of Lisbon by the Lisbon-Faro railway, and at the head of a branch line to Pias e Orada (3855), 26 m. E. Pop. (1900) 8885. Beja is an episcopal city, built on an isolated hill, and partly enclosed by walls of Roman origin; on the south it has a fine Roman gateway. Its cathedral is modern, but the citadel, with its beautiful Gothic tower of white marble, was founded by King Diniz (1279–1325). The city is surrounded by far-reaching plains, known as the Campo de Beja, and devoted partly to the cultivation of grain and fruit, partly to the breeding of cattle and pigs; copper, iron and manganese are also mined to a small extent, and Beja is the central market for all these products. Cloth, pottery and olive oil are manufactured in the city.
The administrative district of Beja, the largest and most thinly-populated district in Portugal, coincides with the southern part of Alemtejo (q.v.); pop. (1900) 163,612; area, 3958 sq. m.; 41·3 inhabitants per sq. m.
BEJAN (Fr. béjaune, from bec jaune, “yellow beak,” in allusion to unfledged birds; the equivalent to Ger. Gelbschnabel, Fr. blanc-bec, a greenhorn), a term for freshmen, or undergraduates of the first year, in the Scottish universities. The phrase was introduced from the French universities, where the levying of bejaunium “footing-money” had been prohibited by the statutes of the university of Orleans in 1365 and by those of Toulouse in 1401. In 1493 the election of an Abbas Bejanorum (Abbot of the Freshmen) was forbidden in the university of Paris. In the German and Austrian universities the freshman was called beanus. In Germany the freshman was anciently called a Pennal (from Med. Lat. pennale, a box for pens), in allusion to the fact that the newly-arrived student had to carry such for the older pupils. Afterwards Fuchs (fox) was substituted for Pennal, and then Goldfuchs because he is supposed still to have a few gold coins from home.
BÉJART, the name of several French actors, children of Marie Hérve and Joseph Béjart (d. 1643), the holder of a small government post. The family—there were eleven children— was very poor and lived in the Marais, then the theatrical quarter of Paris. One of the sons, Joseph Béjart (c. 1617–1659), was a strolling player and later a member of Molière’s first company (l’Illustre Théâtre), accompanied him in his theatrical wanderings, and was with him when he returned permanently to Paris, dying soon after. He created the parts of Lélie in L’Étourdie, and Eraste in Le Dépit amoureux. His brother Louis Béjart (c. 1630–1678) was also in Molière’s company during the last years of its travels. He created many parts in his
