surprised by the French. Though some maintain that he was not at his best as a leader in battle, as a strategist he was very successful, and he displayed great organizing capacity. The French authorities were compelled to allow him to levy customs dues on all goods imported into Spain, except contraband of war, which he would not allow to pass without fighting. The money thus obtained was used to pay his bands a regular salary. He was able to avoid levying excessive contributions on the country and to maintain discipline among his men, whom he had brought to a respectable state of efficiency in 1812. Mina claimed that he immobilized 26,000 French troops which would but for him have served with Marmont in the Salamanca campaign. In the campaign of 1813 and 1814 he served with distinction under the duke of Wellington. After the restoration of Ferdinand he fell into disfavour. On the 25th and 26th of September he attempted to bring about a rising at Pamplona in favour of the Liberal party, but failed, and went into exile. His political opinions were democratic and radical, and as a yeoman he disliked the hidalgos (nobles). The revolution of 1820 brought him back, and he served the Liberal party in Galicia, Leon and Catalonia. In the last district he made the only vigorous resistance to the French intervention in favour of Ferdinand VII. On the 1st of November 1823 he was compelled to capitulate, and the French allowed him to escape to England by sea. In 1830 he took part in an unsuccessful rising against Ferdinand. On the death of the king he was recalled to Spain, and the government of the regent Christina gave him the command against the Carlists in 1835, though they feared his Radicalism. By this time, years, exposure and wounds had undermined his health. He was also opposed to Thomas Zumalacarregui (q.v.), an old officer of his in the War of Independence, and an even greater master of irregular mountain warfare. His health compelled him to resign in April 1835, and his later command in Catalonia was only memorable for the part he took in forcing the regent to grant a constitution in August 1836. He died at Barcelona on the 24th of December 1836; Mina was a brave and honest man, who would have conducted the war against the French in 1810–12 with humanity if they had allowed him, but as they made a practice of shooting those of his men whom they took, he was compelled to retaliate. He finally forced the French to agree to an exchange of prisoners.
Authorities.—In 1825 Mina published A Short Extract from the Life of General Mina, in Spanish and English, in London. Mention is made of him in all histories of the affairs of Spain during the first third of the 19th century. His full Memoirs were published by his widow at Madrid in 1851–1852. (D. H.)
MINARET (from the Arabic manārat; manar or minar is
Arabic for a lighthouse, a tower on which nar, fire, is lit), a lofty, turret peculiar to Mahommedan architecture. The form is derived from that of the Pharos, the great lighthouse of Alexandria, in the top storey of which the Mahommedan conquerors in the 7th century placed a small praying chamber. The lighthouse
form is perpetuated in the minarets which are found
attached to all Mahommedan mosques, and probably had
considerable influence on the evolution of the Christian church tower (see an exhaustive study in Hermann Thiersch, Pharos Antike, Islam und Occident, 1909). The minaret is always square from the base to the height of the wall of the mosque to which it is
attached, and Very often octangular above. The upper portion is
divided into two or three stages, the wall of the upper storey being
slightly set back behind the one below, so as to admit of a narrow
balcony, from which the azan, or call to prayer, is chanted by the
muazzin (muezzin, moeḍḍin), In order to give greater width to
the balcony it is corbelled out with stalactitic vaulting. The
balconies are surrounded with stone balustrades, and the upper
storeys are richly decorated; the top storey being surmounted
with a small bulbous dome. The earliest minaret known is that
which was built by the caliph Walid (A.D. 705) in the mosque of
Damascus, the next in date being the minaret of the mosque of
Tulun, at Cairo (A.D. 879), with an external spiral flight of steps
like the observatory towers in Assyrian architecture. This minaret
as also the example of El Hakim (996), is raised on great
square towers. The more remarkable of the other Cairene minarets
are those of Imam esh-Shafi (1218), Muristan al Kalaun (1280),
Hassan (1354), Barkuk (A.D. 1382) and Kait Bey (A.D. 1468).
Of the same type are the two minarets added to the mosque of
Damascus in the 15th century. In Persia the minarets are generally
circular, with a single balcony at the top, corbelled out and
covered over. In India, at Ghazni, there are no balconies, and
the upper part of the tower tapers upwards; the same is noticeable
at Delhi, where the minaret of Kutab is divided into six
storeys with balconies at. each level. In the well-known tomb of
the Taj Mahal the four minarets are all built in white marble, in
three storeys with balconies to each storey, and surmounted
by open lanterns. The minarets of Constantinople are very
lofty and wire-drawn, but contrast well with the domes of the
mosques, which are of slight elevation as compared with those at Cairo.
MINAS [MINOÏDES] (c. 1790–1860), Greek scholar, was a native of Macedonia. During the Greek War of Independence he migrated to Paris, where he tried to enlist the sympathies of Europe on behalf of his countrymen and to promote the study of ancient and modern Greek. But his chief claim to recognition consists in his discovery of two important MSS. (amongst others) in the monastery of Mt Athos during his exploration of the libraries of Turkey and Asia, at the instance of M. Villemain, minister of public instruction in France. One of these contained the last part of a treatise on the Refutation of all Heresies, now generally admitted to be the work of Hippolytus (q.v.), the other the greater portion of the Fables of Babrius.
MINAS GERAES (i.e. “general mines”), popularly Minas, an inland state of Brazil, bounded N. by Goyaz and Bahia, E. by Bahia, Espirito Santo and Rio de Janeiro, S. by Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and W. by São Paulo, Matto Grosso and Goyaz. It is very irregular in outline and covers an area of 221,861 sq. m. upon the great Brazilian plateau. Among the Brazilian states it is fifth in size and first in population—3,184,099 in 1890, and 3,594,471 in 1900.
The surface of Minas Geraes is broken by mountain ranges and deeply eroded river courses, the latter forming fertile valleys shut in by partly barren uplands, or campos. The reckless destruction of forests along the watercourses also adds to the barren aspect of the country. The principal mountain ranges are the. Serra da Mantiqueira on its southern frontier and its N. extension, the S. do Espinhaço, which runs parallel to the Serra do Mar, or coast-range, and separates the inland or campo region from a lower forested zone between the two ranges. Most of the wooded district south of the Mantiqueira belongs to the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but east of the Espinhaço it belongs to Minas Geraes and extends eastward to the Serra das Aymores, on the frontier of Espirito Santo. This zone has an abundant rainfall, dense forests and a fertile soil. It is drained by the Doce, Mucury, Jequitinhonha and Pardo, which have their sources on the eastern slopes of the Espinhaço and cut their way through the Aymores to the sea. The tributaries of the Rio Doce cover the slopes of the Serra do Espinhaço for a distance north and south of about 200 m. The southern part of this region is well populated, and is covered with coffee and sugar plantations. On the western frontier a northern extension of the great central chain of Goyaz forms the water-parting between the drainage basins of the São Francisco and Tocantins, and is known at different points as the Serra do Paranan, Serra de São Domingos and Serra das Divisöes. South-east of this chain, between the headwaters of the Paraná and São Francisco, are the Serra da Canastra and Serra da Matta da Corde, an irregular chain of moderate elevation running north and south. The highest elevations in the state, so far as known, are Itatiaya (8898 ft.) in the Serra da Mantiqueira, and Caraça (6414 ft.), near Ouro Preto, in the Serra do Espinhaço. The hydrography of the campo region of Minas Geraes is extremely complicated. The Mantiqueira-Espinhago chain shuts out the streams flowing directly east to the Atlantic, and the boundary ranges on the west shut out the streams that flow into the Tocantins, though their sources are on the actual threshold of the state. Between these two mountain chains the head streams of the Paraná and São Francisco are intermingled—the one flowing inland and
