410 EDRED EDUCATION of India. Their prosperity increased under the Persian kings, whose supremacy they peaceably acknowledged, and long survived the fall of Persia. After the time of Alexander the Great the Nabatheans formed an independent king- dom, which was often at war with the Jews. The prince of the latter, John Hyrcanus, an- nexed most of Idurnsea. The Romans absorbed it under Trajan. Herod, who reigned in the time of the emperor Augustus, and the emperor Philip, surnamed the Arab, were Idumseans. The country was overrun by the Arabs in the 7th century, and ceased to form a distinct po- litical division. Besides Petra, the principal inland town was Bozrah, their ancient capital ; and on the sea were the ports of Elath and Eziongeber, both of which were captured by David, and Havara, afterward called Leucecome by the Greeks. The government was a kind of tribal system, each tribe having its chief, subject to the supreme authority of the king. In the inscriptions recently found, persons are designated as scholars, doctors, and poets, re- vealing that they possessed some intellectual and literary culture. The monuments show that the supreme deity was Al or El, with a feminine counterpart under the name of Alath ; other gods were principally the various Baalim, Baal Samim, Yarhi Baal, &c. Religious pilgrim- ages were very frequent, and the most impor- tant were to Wady Feiran, to Mount Serbal, and especially to Tor on the shores of the Red sea. The history and topography of ancient Edom have recently been made subjects of careful in- vestigation, and much important information may be found in Palmer's "Desert of the Exodus 1 ' (2 vols., London, 1872), Tristram's " Land of Moab " (London, 1872), and in " The Ordnance Survey of Sinai, with Notes, Plans, &c." (London, 1872). EDRED, a king of the Anglo-Saxons, son of Edward the Elder, successor of his brother Ed- mund I., ascended the throne in 946, and died Nov. 23, 955. The two sons of Edmund being children, Edred in an assembly of the prelates and thanes was chosen king, and consecrated, in the style of his charters, to the " government of the Anglo-Saxons, Northumbrians, pagans, and Britons." Though afflicted with a linger- ing disease, he marched into Northumbria and quelled the turbulent Danes. In this reign St. Dunstan rose to power, and important ecclesi- astical and monastic reforms were undertaken. His nephew Edwy succeeded him. KDKISI, an Arabian geographer, supposed to be the person mentioned by historians of his nation under the name of Abu Abdallah Mo- hammed ben Mohammed ben Abdallah ben Edris esh-Sherif, who was a descendant of the Mussulman Edriside princes who reigned at Fez before the Fatimites, born in Ceuta in 1099, died in Sicily about 1180. He studied at Cordova, where he distinguished himself by his knowledge of cosmography, geography, philosophy, medicine, and astrology, and by his skill as a poet. After visiting Constanti- nople, Asia Minor, Egypt, Morocco, Andalusia, France, and England, he went to Sicily on the invitation of King Roger II. He made for that prince a terrestrial globe of silver, upon which he inscribed in Arabic characters all that he knew of the various countries of the earth. To explain the globe, he compiled from the reports of travellers a treatise on geography. The globe is lost, but a complete manuscript of the geography was discovered in the royal library at Paris in 1829, of which a French translation by Jaubert appeared in 1836-'40. Several portions and abridgments of the work had been published many years before. Edrisi divides the earth into seven climates or zones, and each of these into elev- en regions ; and in his descriptions he ad- heres strictly to his scheme, without consider- ing whether his divisions resemble those which have been traced by natural features or society. His work represents the state of geographical knowledge among the Arabs in the 12th cen- tury, and although it contains nearly as many errors as there are in Strabo, it was the source from which the western geographers derived their notions prior to the Portuguese discov- eries in the 15th century. EDUATION (Lat. educare, to bring up, to in- struct), the development and cultivation of the various physical, intellectual, and moral facul- ties. In a general sense, it comprehends all the means which contribute to this result in an individual from infancy through manhood the agencies by which the faculties of the mind are drawn out, its powers disciplined, and knowledge acquired; embracing the arrange- ments and contrivances for the better nursing, training, and rearing of children, their physi- cal and mental development, their nourishment, cradles, nurseries, gardens, games, and amuse- ments ; schools of every grade, from the kin- dergarten to the university, including special, technical, and professional schools, together with school architecture and all apparatus, means, and methods of instruction, and insti- tutions for the instruction of every class of society, the blind, deaf and dumb, insane, idiotic, vicious, criminal, &c. ; besides the in- struction afforded through literature, the pul- pit, and educational societies. "Education," says Paley, "in the most extensive sense of the word, may comprehend every preparation that is made in our youth for the sequel of our lives." Without treating the subject in its broadest sense, or in its strictly metaphysical relations, and without dwelling upon the va- rious theories and speculations that have been advanced concerning education by philoso- phers and educators, the aim of this article will be to treat generally of the system and condition of education in the principal coun- tries of the world, as represented by then public schools and other institutions for in- struction. Details and statistics will be found in the articles devoted to the separate coun- tries, states, and institutions of learning, as
