Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/1045

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TIPPOO SAHIB—TIRAH CAMPAIGN
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range, on the Waterford & Limerick line of the Great Southern & Western railway, 3 m. S.E. of Limerick Junction and 1101/4 S.W. of Dublin. It is governed by an urban district council. It is situated in the centre of a fine agricultural district, and its butter market ranks next to that of Cork. Condensed milk is manufactured. The town is of great antiquity, but first acquired importance by the erection of a castle by King John, of which there are no remains. A monastery founded for Augustinians by Henry III. gave a second impulse to its growth. The gatehouse, all that remains of this foundation, is the only building of antiquity in the town. Formerly Tipperary was a corporation from a grant made in 1310 by Edward II. New Tipperary was founded outside the town by Mr William O'Brien in 1890 during the “ Plan of Campaign ” inaugurated to boycott the Smith-Barry estate, in order to accommodate the tenants who vacated their holdings, but the scheme was a failure, and the place was abandoned and sold.


TIPPOO SAHIB (1753–1799), sultan of Mysore, son of Hyder Ali (q.v.), was born in 1753. He was instructed in military tactics by French officers in the employment of his father. In 1767 in the invasion of the Carnatic he commanded a corps of cavalry, and he distinguished himself in the Mahratta War of 1778–79. On the outbreak of the first Mysore War in 1780 he was put at the head of a large body of troops, and defeated Brathwaite on the banks of the Coleroon in February 1782. He succeeded his father in December 1782, and in 1784 concluded peace with the British, and assumed the title of sultan. In 1787–88 he subjugated the Nairs of Malabar, and in 1789 provoked British invasion by ravaging the territories of the raja of Travancore. When the British entered Mysore in 1790, he retaliated by a counter-invasion, but was compelled by Cornwallis’s victory near Seringapatam to cede half his dominions (March 16, 1792). The British laving deemed it necessary to renew hostilities in March 1799, he was shut up in Seringapatam and finally killed during the storm (May 4, 1799). Tippoo was of cruel disposition, and inferior in military talents to his father.

See L. B. Bowring, Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan ("Rulers of India series," 1893).


TIPSTAFF (Mid. Eng. tipped staf), a staff of office mounted with a tip or cap of metal, or with a crown, carried by a constable or sheriff’s officer, the term being hence applied to such an officer. Tipstaffs arc attached to the king’s bench and chancery divisions of the High Court of Justice in England; their duty is to arrest or take into custody any person on an order of committal, if within the precincts of the court, and convey him to the king’s prison at Holloway. The tipstaff for the common law courts was originally appointed by the marshal of the king’s bench, and the tipstaff of the lord chancellor by the marshal of the Fleet prison. Since the abolition of these prisons the tipstaffs have been appointed by the lord chancellor and lord chief justice respectively.


TIPTON, an urban district of Staffordshire, England, in the parliamentary horough of Wednesbury, adjacent to Dudley (1½ m. S.), served by the London & North Western and Great Western railways. Pop. (1901), 30,543. Its streets are interspersed with coal-mines and iron works. Heavy iron goods are the principal products, anchors and cables being a speciality; there are numerous furnaces and rolling mills; also cementworks, brick-works and maltings. The village round which the modern town sprang up is mentioned in Domesday as Tibbington; its ancient church was undermined and collapsed in 1797.


TIRABOSCHI, GIROLAMO (1731–1794), the first historian of Italian literature, was born at Bergamo on the 18th of December 1731. He studied at the Jesuit college at Monza, entered the order, and was appointed in 1755 professor of eloquence in the university of Milan. Here he produced (1766–1768) Vetera humiliatorum monumenta (3 vols.), a history of the extinct order of the Humiliati, which made his literary reputation. Nominated in 1770 librarian to Francis III., duke of Modena, he turned to account the copious materials there accumulated for the composition of his Storia della letteratura italiana. This vast work, in which Italian literature from the time of the Etruscans to the end of the 17th century is traced in detail, occupied eleven years, 1771–1782, and the thirteen quarto volumes embodying it appeared successively at Modena during that period. A second enlarged edition (16 vols.) was issued from 1787 to 1794, and was succeeded by many others, besides abridgments in German, French and English. Tiraboschi died at Modena on the 3rd of June 1794, leaving a high reputation for virtue, learning and piety.

Tiraboschi wrote besides Biblioteca modenese (6 vols., 1781–1786); Notizie de' pittori, scuttori, incisori, ed archiletti modenesi (1786; Memorie storiche modenesi (5 vols., 1793–1794), and many minor works. He edited the Nuovo giornale dei letterati d’Italia (1773–1790), and left materials for a work of great research entitled Dizionario topografico-storico degli stati estensi (2 vols. 4to, Modena, 1824–1825).


TIRAH, a mountainous tract of country on the Peshawar border of the North-west Province of India. It lies between the Khyber Pass and the Khanki Valley, and is inhabited by the Afridi and Orakzai tribes. It is chiefly notable as the scene of the Tirah Campaign of 1897 (see below). It is a cul-de-sac in the mountains, lying off all the roads to India, and the difficulty of its passes and the fierceness of its inhabitants had hitherto preserved it inviolable from all invaders'. Tirah comprises an area 1 of some six to seven hundred square miles and includes under this general name all the valleys lying round the source of the Bara river. The five chief valleys are Maidan, Rajgul, Waran, Bara and Mastura.

Maidan, the summer home of the Afridis, lies close under the snowbound ridges of the Safed Koh at an elevation of about 6400 ft. It is an oval plain about seven to eight miles long, and three or four wide, and slopes inwards towards the centre of its northern side, where all the drainage gathered from the four corners of the plain is shot into a narrow corkscrew outlet leading to the Bara Valley. Centuries of detritus accumulated in this basin have filled it up with rich alluvial soil and made it one of the most fertile valleys on the frontier. All its alluvial slopes are terraced and revetted and irrigated till every yard is made productive. Here and there dotted about in clusters all over the plain are square-built two storeyed mud and timber houses, standing in the shade of gigantic walnut and mulberry trees. Up on the hillsides surrounding the Maidan basin are wild olives in wide-grown clumps, almost amounting to forest, and occasional pomegranates. Higher still are the blue pines; but below on the shelving plains are nothing but fruit trees. Rajgul Valley lies north of Maidan, from which it is separated by a steep valley and well-wooded spur, eight to nine thousand feet nigh, and west of the Bara Valley, which it joins at Dwatoi. It is ten miles long, four to five miles at its widest, and has an elevation of 5000 ft. It is inhabited by the Kuki Khel Afridis. The Waran Valley is another valley about the same size as Maidan, lying east of it, and separated from it by the Tseri-Kandao Pass. It was the home of the Afridi mullah Sayad Akbar, and is the country of the Aka Khels. After the junction of the Rajgul and Maidan drainage at Dwatoi, the united stream receives the name of Bara, and the valley through which it flows down to its exit in the Peshawar Valley is also known by this name. The elevation of the valley is from 5000 ft. at Dwatoi to 2000 at Kajurai; on the north side it is hemmed in by the Surghar range, which divides it from the Bazar Valley; on the south lies another range dividing it from Maidan and the Waran Valley. The heat of the Bara Valley in summer is said to be excessive, malaria is prevalent, and mosquitoes very troublesome, so the hamlets are deserted and the Afridis migrate to the pleasant heights of Maidan. The Mastura Valley occupies the southern half of Tirah, and is inhabited by the Orakzais. It is one of the prettiest valleys on the frontier, lying at an elevation of 6000 ft. The Orakzais live, for the most part, in the Miranzai Valley, in the winter, and retreat to Mastura, like the Afridis, during the summer months. The chief passes in Tirah are the Sampagna Pass (6500 ft.), separating the Khanki Valley from the Mastura Valley; the Arhanga Pass (6995 ft.), separating Mastura Valley from Maidan ; Saran Sar (8650 ft.), leading from the Zakka Khel portion of Maidan into the Bara Valley; the Tseri Kandao (8575 ft.), separating Maidan from the Waran Valley, and the Sapri Pass (5190 ft.), leading from the east of the Mastura Valley into the Bara Valley in the direction of Mamanai. The whole of Tirah was thoroughly explored and mapped at the time of the Tirah Expedition.


TIRAH CAMPAIGN, an Indian frontier war in 1897–98. The Afridis had for sixteen years received a subsidy from the Indian government for the safeguarding of the Khyber Pass, in addition to which the government had maintained for this