Oxford Reference Browse

(b. 5 February 1934),

baseball player, baseball executive, civil rights advocate, and businessman. Henry

Sani Abacha attended primary and secondary school in his home state of Kano and then joined the army in 1962

Nigerian military officer and military head of state, was born on 20 September 1943 to the Abacha family in the northern state of Kano, Nigeria. Abacha attended the City Senior Primary School in Kano before proceeding to the Provincial Secondary School in Kano (renamed Government College) in ...

Considered to be the first computer, the abacus has been used since ancient times by a number of civilizations for basic arithmetical calculations. It is still used as a reliable reckoner (and one that does not require electricity or batteries) by merchants and businesspeople in parts of Asia and Africa.

Nigerian novelist, poet, dramatist, educator, and political activist, was born Christopher Uchechukwu Andrew Abani, on 27 December 1966, in Afikpo, Nigeria. Abani’s life has been dramatically shaped but not defined by the political violence associated with the Nigerian state. Born in the Igbo heartland of southeast Nigeria to an Igbo father and British mother, Abani was six months old when the Biafran War began. His mother fled to Britain with him and his siblings, an experience that he would later narrate in poetic form in ...

queen of Kush, was the mother of Taharqa (ruled c. 690–664 BCE), the most remarkable king of the period of the Kushite domination in Egypt (the Twenty-Fifth, “Ethiopian,” Dynasty). Her name is also interpreted in specialist literature as Abala, Abale, Abalo, Abiru, and Ibart....

king of one of the five Oromo states of the Gibe region in southwestern Ethiopia during the first half of the nineteenth century. He was the richest prince, whose reign marked the golden age of the Gibe states. He was born in ...

Oromo king of the Gibe region, in southwestern Ethiopia, was crowned in 1878. A year after his accession to power, Abba Jifar invaded the neighboring Oromo state of Gera with around twenty thousand men. This attack on a flimsy pretext was a show of force for the neighboring Oromo leaders, demonstrating his determination to dominate the political landscape of the Gibe region through threat or use of military power, diplomacy, and marriage alliances. He was not destined to dominate the Gibe region as the king of Shewa soon occupied it. Though Abba Jifar could mobilize tens of thousands of men for war, his army suffered from major weaknesses and lack of modern firearms and training....

last king of the kingdom of Jimma in Ethiopia, scholar, was born in Jiren, the political capital and commercial center of southwestern Ethiopia. As a young man Abba Jobir received the best Muslim education under several prominent Muslim scholars who settled in Jimma during the reign of his famous grandfather Abba Jifar II (r. ...

(1652–1707), nobleman, soldier, chief of the Abenaki.

Poet Alden Nowlan vividly sketches Saint-Castin's contradictions: ‘you exile from the Pyrenees,/you baron of France and Navarre,/you squaw man, you Latin poet,/you war chief of Penobscot’. An adolescent soldier in New France and Acadia, Saint-Castin knew the woods and their Native inhabitants intimately. In ...

Algerian politician and public intellectual, was born on 24 October 1899 in the village of Chahna, located six miles south of the Algerian town of Taher. His parents belonged to a peasant family, and his father, Said Ahmed ben Abbas, was a local chief and cattle trader. Abbas had eleven siblings. His father was the state-appointed leader of Chahna from ...

the third and last khedive of Egypt, ruled the country from 1892 to 1914. ʿAbbas was the seventh ruler in Mehmet ʿAli’s dynasty, which was established in the early nineteenth century. ʿAbbas came to the throne at the very young age of eighteen in January ...

Ethiopian intellectual, novelist, playwright, and poet, was born on 1 July 1933 in Gojjam Province, Ethiopia. He was one of the prominent literary figures in modern Ethiopian literature, the author of some twenty-three books between ...

Dublin, created in 1904 as a successor to the Irish Literary theatre founded in Dublin 1899 by littérateurs (including Yeats

Abbots were the spiritual heads of the larger monasteries (abbesses for nuns), with priors in charge of smaller or daughter houses. Until the Reformation some 27 mainly ‘mitred abbots’ attended the House of Lords. Great abbeys like Evesham, Pershore, Buckfast, Selby, or Sherborne had vast estates. The ...

Abbots were the spiritual heads of the larger monasteries (abbesses for nuns), with priors in charge of smaller or daughter

First permanent home of the Irish National Theatre, founded in 1904 by Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and W. B. *...

First permanent home of the Irish National Theatre, founded by Lady *Gregory, Edward Martyn, and W. B.

Bishop of Lichfield (1609), London (1610), and archbishop of Canterbury (1611–33). As a fellow of Balliol (...

Bishop of Lichfield (1609), London (1610), and archbishop of Canterbury (1611–33). Born in Guildford,