1909, and for climate an article in Rivista coloniale (1906), by A.
Tancredi. A. Allori compiled a Piccolo Dizionario eritreo, italiano-arabo-amarico
(Milan, 1895).
For Afar consult W. Munzinger, “A Journey through the Afar Country” in Journ. Royal Geog. Soc. for 1869; V. Bottego, “Nella Terra dei Danakil,” in Boll. Soc. Geog. Italiana, 1892; Count C. Rossini, “Al Rágali” in L’Espl. Comm. of Milan, 1903–1904; and articles by G. Dainelli and O. Marinelli in the Riv. Geog. Italiana of Florence for 1906–1908, dealing with the volcanic regions.
Bibliographies will be found in G. Fumagalli’s Bibliografia Etiopica (Milan, 1893) and in the Riv. Geog. Italiana for 1907.
ERIVAN, a government of Russia, Transcaucasia, having the
province of Kars on the W., the government of Tiflis on the N.,
that of Elisavetpol on the N. and E., and Persia and Turkish
Armenia on the S. It occupies the top of an immense plateau
(6000–8000 ft.). Continuous chains of mountains are met with
only on its borders, and in the E., but the whole surface is thickly
set with short ridges and isolated mountains of volcanic origin,
of which Alagöz (14,440 ft.) and Ararat (16,925 ft.) are the most
conspicuous and the most important. Both must have been
active in Tertiary times. Lake Gok-cha (540 sq. m.) is encircled
by such volcanoes, and the neighbourhood of Alexandropol is a
“volcanic amphitheatre,” being entirely buried under volcanic
deposits. The same is true of the slopes leading down to the
river Aras; and the valley of the upper Aras is a stony
desert, watered only by irrigation, which is carried on with great
difficulty owing to the character of the soil. The government is
drained by the Aras, which forms the boundary with Persia and
flows with great velocity down its stony bed, the fall being 17-22
ft. per mile in its upper course, and 9 ft. at Ordubad, where it
quits the government, while lower down it again increases to
23 ft. Many of the small lakes, filling volcanic craters, are of
great depth. Timber is very scarce. A variety of useful minerals
exists, but only rock-salt is obtained, at Nakhichevan and Kulp.
The climate is extremely varied, the following being the average
temperatures and mean annual rainfall at Alexandropol (alt.
5078 ft.) and Aralykh (2755 ft.) respectively: year 42°, January
12°, July 65°, mean rainfall 16.2 in.; and year 53°, January 20.5°,
July 79°, rainfall 6.3 in. The population numbered 829,578 in
1897 (only 375,086 women), of whom 82,278 lived in the towns.
An estimate in 1906 gave a total of 909,100. They consist
chiefly of Armenians (441,000), Tatars (40%), Kurds (49,389),
with Russians, Greeks and Tates. Most of the Armenians belong
to the Gregorian (Christian) Church, and only 4020 to the
Armenian Catholic Church. The Tatars are mostly Shiite Mussulmans,
only 27,596 being Sunnites; 7772 belong to the peculiar faith
of the Yezids. While barley only can be grown on the high parts
of the plateau, cotton, mulberry, vines and all sorts of fruit are
cultivated in the valley of the Aras. Cattle-breeding is extensively
carried on; camels also are bred, and leeches are collected
out of the swamps and exported to Persia. Industry is in its
infancy, but cottons, carpets, and felt goods are made in the
villages. A considerable trade is carried on with Persia, but trade
with Asia Minor is declining. The government is divided into
seven districts—Erivan, Alexandropol, Echmiadzin (chief town,
Vagarshapat), Nakhichevan, Novobayazet, Surmali (chief town,
Igdyr), and Sharur-daralagöz (chief town, Norashen). The
principal towns are Erivan (see below), Alexandropol (32,018
inhabitants in 1897), Novobayazet (8507), Nakhichevan (8845),
and Vagarshapat (3400).
ERIVAN, or Irwan, in Persian, Rewan, a town of Russia,
capital of the government of the same name, situated in 40° 14′
N., 44° 38′ E., 234 m. by rail S.S.W. of Tiflis, on the Zanga river,
from which a great number of irrigation canals are drawn.
Altitude, 3170 ft. Pop. (1873) 11,938; (1897) 29,033. The old
Persian portion of the town consists mainly of narrow crooked
lanes enclosed by mud walls, which effectually conceal the houses,
and the modern Russian portion is laid out in long ill-paved
streets. On a steep rock, rising about 600 ft. above the river,
stand the ruins of the 16th-century Turkish fortress, containing
part of the palace of the former Persian governors, a handsome
but greatly dilapidated mosque, a modern Greek church and
a cannon foundry. One chamber, called the Hall of the Sardar,
bears witness to former splendour in its decorations. The finest
building in the city is the mosque of Hussein Ali Khan, familiarly
known as the Blue Mosque from the colour of the enamelled tiles
with which it is richly encased. At the mosque of Zal Khan
a passion play is performed yearly illustrative of the assassination
of Hussein, the son of Ali. Erivan is an Armenian episcopal see,
and has a theological seminary. The only manufactures are a
little cotton cloth, leather, earthenware and blacksmiths’ work.
The fruits of the district are noted for their excellence—especially
the grapes, apples, apricots and melons. Armenians, Persians
and Tatars are the principal elements in the population, besides
some Russians and Greeks. The town fell into the power of the
Turks in 1582, was taken by the Persians under Shah Abbas in
1604, besieged by the Turks for four months in 1615, and reconquered
by the Persians under Nadir Shah in the 18th century.
In 1780 it was successfully defended against Heraclius, prince of
Georgia; and in 1804 it resisted the Russians. At length in
1827 Paskevich took the fortress by storm, and in the following
year the town and government were ceded to Russia by the peace
of Turkman-chai. A Tatar poem in celebration of the event has
been preserved by the Austrian poet, Bodenstedt, in his Tausend
und ein Tage im Orient (1850).
ERLANGEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria,
on a fertile plain, at the confluence of the Schwabach and the
Regnitz, 11 m. N.W. of Nuremberg, on the railway from Munich
to Bamberg. Pop. (1905) 23,720. It is divided into an old and
a new town, the latter consisting of wide, straight and well-built
streets. The market place is a fine square. Upon it stand the
town-hall and the former palace of the margraves of Bayreuth,
now the main building of the university. The latter was founded
by the margrave Frederick (d. 1763), who, in 1742, established
a university at Bayreuth, but in 1743 removed it to Erlangen.
A statue of the founder, erected in 1843 by King Louis I. of
Bavaria, stands in the centre of the square and faces the university
buildings. The university has faculties of philosophy, law,
medicine and Protestant theology. Connected with it are a library
of over 200,000 volumes, geological, anatomical and mineralogical
institutions, a hospital, several clinical establishments, laboratories
and a botanical garden. Among the churches of the town
(six Protestant and one Roman Catholic), only the new town
church, with a spire 220 ft. high, is remarkable. The chief
industries of Erlangen are spinning and weaving, and the manufacture
of glass, paper, brushes and gloves. The brewing industry
is also important, the beer of Erlangen being famous throughout
Germany and large quantities being exported.
Erlangen owes the foundation of its prosperity chiefly to the French Protestant refugees who settled here on the revocation of the edict of Nantes and introduced various manufactures. In 1017 the place was transferred from the bishopric of Würzburg to that of Bamberg; in 1361 it was sold to the king of Bohemia. It became a town in 1398 and passed into the hands of the Hohenzollerns, burgraves of Nuremberg, in 1416. There for nearly three centuries it was the property of the margraves of Bayreuth, being ceded with the rest of Bayreuth to Prussia in 1791. In 1810 it came into the possession of Bavaria. Erlangen was for many years the residence of the poet Friedrich Rückert, and of the philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm von Schnelling.
See Stein and Müller, Die Geschichte von Erlangen (1898).
ERLE, SIR WILLIAM (1793–1880), English lawyer and judge,
was born at Fifehead-Magdalen, Dorset, on the 1st of October
1793, and was educated at Winchester and at New College,
Oxford. Having been called to the bar at the Middle Temple
in 1819 he went the western circuit, became counsel to the
Bank of England, sat in parliament from 1837 to 1841 for the
city of Oxford, and, although of opposite politics to Lord Lyndhurst,
was made by him a judge of the common pleas in 1845.
He was transferred to the queen’s bench in the following year,
and in 1859 came back to the common pleas as chief justice upon
the promotion of Sir Alexander Cockburn. He retired in 1866,
receiving the highest eulogiums for the ability and impartiality
with which he had discharged the judicial office. He died at
his estate at Bramshott, Hampshire, on the 28th of January
