latter may be obtained from S. de Sacy’s edition of six of the maqāmas
with French translation and notes in his Chrestomathie arabe, vol. iii.
(2nd ed., Paris, 1827). A specimen of the letters is translated into
German in A. von Kremer’s Culturgeschichte des Orients, ii. 470 sqq.
(Vienna, 1877). (G. W. T.)
HAMAH, the Hamath of the Bible, a Hittite royal city, situated in the narrow valley of the Orontes, 110 English miles N. (by E.) of Damascus. It finds a place in the northern boundaries of Israel under David, Solomon and Jeroboam II. (2 Sam. viii. 9; 1 Kings viii. 65; 2 Kings xiv. 25). The Orontes flows winding past the city and is spanned by four bridges. On the south-east the houses rise 150 ft. above the river, and there are four other hills, that of the Kalah or castle being to the north 100 ft. high. Twenty-four minarets rise from the various mosques. The houses are principally of mud, and the town stands amid poplar gardens with a fertile plain to the west. The castle is ruined, the streets are narrow and dirty, but the bazaars are good, and the trade with the Bedouins considerable. The numerous water-wheels (naūrah,) of enormous dimension, raising water from the Orontes are the most remarkable features of the view. Silk, woollen and cotton goods are manufactured. The population is about 40,000.
In the year 854 B.C. Hamath was taken by Shalmaneser II., king of Assyria, who defeated a large army of allied Hamathites, Syrians and Israelites at Karkor and slew 14,000 of them. In 738 B.C. Tiglath Pileser III. reduced the city to tribute, and another rebellion was crushed by Sargon in 720 B.C. The downfall of so ancient a state made a great impression at Jerusalem (Isa. x. 9). According to 2 Kings xvii. 24, 30, some of its people were transported to the land of N. Israel, where they made images of Ashima or Eshmun (probably Ishtar). After the Macedonian conquest of Syria Hamath was called Epiphania by the Greeks in honour of Antiochus IV., Epiphanes, and in the early Byzantine period it was known by both its Hebrew and its Greek name. In A.D. 639 the town surrendered to Abu ’Obeida, one of Omar’s generals, and the church was turned into a mosque. In A.D. 1108 Tancred captured the city and massacred the Ism’aileh defenders. In 1115 it was retaken by the Moslems, and in 1178 was occupied by Saladin. Abulfeda, prince of Hamah in the early part of the 14th century, is well known as an authority on Arab geography.
HAMANN, JOHANN GEORG (1730–1788), German writer on
philosophical and theological subjects, was born at Königsberg
in Prussia on the 27th of August 1730. His parents were of
humble rank and small means. The education he received was
comprehensive but unsystematic, and the want of definiteness
in this early training doubtless tended to aggravate the peculiar
instability of character which troubled Hamann’s after life.
In 1746 be began theological studies, but speedily deserted
them and turned his attention to law. That too was taken up
in a desultory fashion and quickly relinquished. Hamann seems
at this time to have thought that any strenuous devotion to
“bread-and-butter” studies was lowering, and accordingly
gave himself entirely to reading, criticism and philological
inquiries. Such studies, however, were pursued without any
definite aim or systematic arrangement, and consequently were
productive of nothing. In 1752, constrained to secure some
position in the world, he accepted a tutorship in a family resident
in Livonia, but only retained it a few months. A similar situation
in Courland he also resigned after about a year. In both cases
apparently the rupture might be traced to the curious and
unsatisfactory character of Hamann himself. After leaving his
second post he was received into the house of a merchant at
Riga named Johann Christoph Behrens, who contracted a great
friendship for him and selected him as his companion for a tour
through Danzig, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam and London.
Hamann, however, was quite unfitted for business, and when
left in London, gave himself up entirely to his fancies, and was
quickly reduced to a state of extreme poverty and want. It was
at this period of his life, when his inner troubles of spirit harmonized
with the unhappy external conditions of his lot, that
he began an earnest and prolonged study of the Bible; and from
this time dates the tone of extreme pietism which is characteristic
of his writings, and which undoubtedly alienated many of his
friends. He returned to Riga, and was well received by the
Behrens family, in whose house he resided for some time. A
quarrel, the precise nature of which is not very clear though the
occasion is evident, led to an entire separation from these friends.
In 1759 Hamann returned to Königsberg, and lived for several
years with his father, filling occasional posts in Königsberg and
Mitau. In 1767 he obtained a situation as translator in the
excise office, and ten years later a post as storekeeper in a
mercantile house. During this period of comparative rest
Hamann was able to indulge in the long correspondence with
learned friends which seems to have been his greatest pleasure.
In 1784 the failure of some commercial speculations greatly
reduced his means, and about the same time he was dismissed
with a small pension from his situation. The kindness of friends,
however, supplied provision for his children, and enabled him
to carry out the long-cherished wish of visiting some of his
philosophical allies. He spent some time with Jacobi at Pempelfort
and with Buchholz at Walbergen. At the latter place he was
seized with illness, and died on the 21st of June 1788.
Hamann’s works resemble his life and character. They are entirely unsystematic so far as matter is concerned, chaotic and disjointed in style. To a reader not acquainted with the peculiar nature of the man, which led him to regard what commended itself to him as therefore objectively true, they must be, moreover, entirely unintelligible and, from their peculiar, pietistic tone and scriptural jargon, probably offensive. A place in the history of philosophy can be yielded to Hamann only because he expresses in uncouth, barbarous fashion an idea to which other writers have given more effective shape. The fundamental thought is with him the unsatisfactoriness of abstraction or one-sidedness. The Aufklärung, with its rational theology, was to him the type of abstraction. Even Epicureanism, which might appear concrete, was by him rightly designated abstract. Quite naturally, then, Hamann is led to object strongly to much of the Kantian philosophy. The separation of sense and understanding is for him unjustifiable, and only paralleled by the extraordinary blunder of severing matter and form. Concreteness, therefore, is the one demand which Hamann expresses, and as representing his own thought he used to refer to Giordano Bruno’s conception (previously held by Nicolaus Curanus) of the identity of contraries. The demand, however, remains but a demand. Nothing that Hamann has given can be regarded as in the slightest degree a response to it. His hatred of system, incapacity for abstract thinking, and intense personality rendered it impossible for him to do more than utter the disjointed, oracular, obscure dicta which gained for him among his friends the name of “Magus of the North.” Two results only appear throughout his writings—first, the accentuation of belief; and secondly, the transference of many philosophical difficulties to language. Belief is, according to Hamann, the groundwork of knowledge, and he accepts in all sincerity Hume’s analysis of experience as being most helpful in constructing a theological view. In language, which he appears to regard as somehow acquired, he finds a solution for the problems of reason which Kant had discussed in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. On the application of these thoughts to the Christian theology one need not enter.
None of Hamann’s writings is of great bulk; most are mere pamphlets of some thirty or forty pages. A complete collection has been published by F. Roth (Schriften, 8vo, 1821–1842), and by C. H. Gildemeister (Leben und Schriften, 6 vols., 1851–1873). See also M. Petri, Hamanns Schriften u. Briefe, (4 vols., 1872–1873); J. Poel, Hamann, der Magus im Norden, sein Leben u. Mitteilungen aus seinen Schriften (2 vols., 1874–1876); J. Claassen, Hamanns Leben und Werke (1885). Also H. Weber, Neue Hamanniana (1905). A very comprehensive essay on Hamann is to be found in Hegel’s Vermischte Schriften, ii. (Werke, Bd. xvii.). On Hamann’s influence on German literature, see J. Minor, J. G. Hamann in seiner Bedeutung für die Sturm- und Drang-Periode (1881).
HAMAR, or Storehammer (Great Hamar), a town of Norway
in Hedemarken amt (county), 78 m. by rail N. of Christiania.
Pop. (1900), 6003. It is pleasantly situated between two bays
of the great Lake Mjösen, and is the junction of the railways to
Trondhjem (N.) and to Otta in Gudbrandsdal (N.W.). The
existing town was laid out in 1849, and made a bishop’s see in
1864. Near the same site there stood an older town, which,
together with a bishop’s see, was founded in 1152 by the Englishman
Nicholas Breakspeare (afterwards Pope Adrian IV.); but
both town and cathedral were destroyed by the Swedes in 1567.
Remains of the latter include a nave-arcade with rounded arches.
The town is a centre for the local agricultural and timber trade.
