museum: History museums: The former National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Paris exemplified a national approach within a museum building. The museum’s closure in 2005, however, suggested changing trends in an era of increased globalization. The Museum of Civilizations from Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem) absorbed some of…

Picasso Museum, museum in Paris dedicated to showcasing the paintings, drawings, engravings, and sculptures of the Spanish-born artist Pablo Picasso. The Picasso Museum opened in Paris in 1985 with a total of 228 paintings, 149 sculptures, and nearly 3,100 drawings and engravings. The artwork was

Rodin Museum, museum in Paris, France, showcasing the sculptures, drawings, and other works of the French artist Auguste Rodin and based in the Hôtel Biron. The Hôtel Biron, covering 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of land in Paris, was completed in 1730 by Jean Aubert. Rodin moved into the Hôtel Biron in

René Magritte: …opened in 2009 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts.

Capitoline Museums, complex of art galleries on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The collection was initially founded in 1471 by Pope Sixtus IV, who donated statuary recovered from ancient ruins. It was augmented by gifts from later popes and, after 1870, by acquisitions from archaeological sites on

Modena: The Palazzo dei Musei houses the municipal collections, including the Este Gallery and Museum (rich in Renaissance paintings) and the Este Library, noted for its collection of illuminated manuscripts. The picture collection was given by Francesco V in 1869; the library, established by the Este family…

Ottoman Empire: Military organization: …yayas; those organized as cavalry, müsellems. Although the new force included some Turkmens who were content to accept salaries in place of booty, most of its men were Christian soldiers from the Balkans who were not required to convert to Islam as long as they obeyed their Ottoman commanders. As…

Zambezi River: Physiography: …eastern channel splits into the Muselo River to the north and the main mouth of the Zambezi to the south. The western channel forms both the Inhamissengo River and the smaller Melambe River. North of the main delta the Chinde River separates from the Zambezi’s main stream to form a…

Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty: …poems in the society’s mouthpiece, Musenalmanach (“Muses’ Almanac”), encompassed a wide variety of forms. Influenced by Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” he introduced an element of social criticism into that form by his comparison of city and village life in Elegie auf einen Dorfkirchhof and Elegie auf…

Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences, national museum (founded 1823) in Buenos Aires. It has zoological, botanical, and geological departments. The museum has about 2,000,000 exhibits and a library of more than 500,000 volumes. Areas of expertise include archaeology, botany, ecology, entomology,

Archaeological Museum of Barcelona, institution in Barcelona, Spain, notable for its collection of prehistoric objects and for its collection of ancient Greek and Roman art and examples illustrating Iberian archaeology. Exhibits include a scale model of a part of the excavation at Ampurias

Ica: …city in 1961, and the Regional Museum of Ica has a collection of textiles and pottery of the Nazca culture (c. 200 bce–600 ce). Ica is connected by road to the port of Pisco 40 miles (64 km) northwest and to Paracas, a national reserve with rich fishing grounds and…

Vatican Museums and Galleries: The Chiaramonti Sculpture Gallery (Museo Chiaramonti), established by Pope Pius VII in the 19th century and designed by the sculptor Antonio Canova, is also devoted to ancient sculpture. It has three parts: the museum, in a gallery designed by Donato Bramante; the New Wing (Braccio Nuovo);…

Jorge Edwards: …during the 1973 military coup; El museo de cera (1981; “Wax Museum”), a political allegory; La mujer imaginaria (1985; “The Imaginary Woman”), about the liberation of an upper-class, middle-aged female artist; El anfitrión (1987; “The Host”), a modern retelling of the Faust story; El origen del mundo (1996; “The Origins…

Cristina Peri Rossi: …de los esfuerzos inútiles (1983; The Museum of Useless Efforts) is another book of stories about estrangement. Her novels included La nave de los locos (1984; The Ship of Fools), La última noche de Dostoievski (1992; Dostoevsky’s Last Night), Desastres íntimos (1997; Intimate Disasters), and El amor es una droga…

Prado Museum, art museum in Madrid, housing the world’s richest and most comprehensive collection of Spanish painting, as well as masterpieces of other schools of European painting, especially Italian and Flemish art. The Prado’s building had its start in 1785 when Charles III commissioned the

National Roman Museum, in Rome, one of the world’s greatest museums of ancient Greco-Roman art. It was founded in 1889 and originally housed in a former monastery, probably designed by Michelangelo in the 16th century, on the site of the Baths of Diocletian. In the 1980s the museum acquired several

National Museum and Galleries of Capodimonte, art museum in Naples housed in the Palazzo of Capodimonte (begun 1738). (Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art appreciation.) Charles VII, the Bourbon king of Naples and later Charles III of Spain, who set out to purchase the land at Capodimonte

Vatican Museums and Galleries: The Egyptian Museum (Museo Gregoriano Egizio), also founded by Gregory XVI, was opened to the public in 1839. The Pinacoteca, founded by Pope Pius VI in 1797 and housed in its present gallery (commissioned by Pope Pius XI) since 1932, contains 460 paintings arranged chronologically. It…

Vatican Museums and Galleries: The Gregorian Etruscan Museum (Museo Gregoriano Etrusco), founded in 1836 by Pope Gregory XVI and reorganized in 1924, houses a collection of objects from Etruscan excavations and features an interactive reconstruction of the Regolini-Galassi tomb, which contained a splendid array of Etruscan jewelry. The Egyptian Museum…

Guernica: …moved several blocks to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (called the Reina Sofía), Spain’s newly established national museum dedicated to 20th-century art. The move was controversial as it defied Picasso’s expressed desire that the painting hang amid the Prado’s great masterpieces..

The National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of Peru, museum in Lima, Peru, noted for its historical artifacts that showcase Peru’s cultural history. The National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of Peru is the country’s first and largest state museum. The assembly

museum: The spread of the European model: …of natural history in Santiago, Chile (1830), and Montevideo, Uruguay (1837). In Canada the zoological collection of the Pictou Academy in Nova Scotia (founded in 1816) was probably opened to the public by 1822. In South Africa a museum based on the zoological collection of Andrew (later Sir Andrew) Smith…

Italy: Museums and galleries: The permanent collection in the National Museum in Taranto provides one of the most important insights into the history of Magna Graecia, while the archaeological collections in the Roman National Museum in Rome and in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples are considered among the best in the world. The…

Bargello Museum, art museum established in 1865 and housed in the Palazzo del Bargello (or del Podestà), Florence, which dates from the 13th and 14th centuries. Since 2014 the museum has been the leading institution of the Musei del Bargello, which comprises four other Florentine museums: the

Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, in Milan, museum devoted to developments in science since the 15th century, including transport, metallurgy, physics, and navigation. It is housed in the old Olivetan convent of San Vittore, which dates from the early 16th century.

National Roman Museum, in Rome, one of the world’s greatest museums of ancient Greco-Roman art. It was founded in 1889 and originally housed in a former monastery, probably designed by Michelangelo in the 16th century, on the site of the Baths of Diocletian. In the 1980s the museum acquired several

Diego Velázquez: …español; “The Spanish Parnassus”) of El museo pictórico y escala óptica (“The Pictorial Museum and Optical Scale”), published in 1724 by the court painter and art scholar Antonio Palomino. This was based on biographical notes made by Velázquez’s pupil Juan de Alfaro, who was Palomino’s patron. The number of personal…

Vatican Museums and Galleries: The Pio-Clementino Museum (Museo Pio-Clementino or Musei di Scultura) was founded in the 18th century by Pope Clement XIV and enlarged by Pope Pius VI. It exhibits the pontifical collection of ancient sculpture that originated with the collection of Pope Julius II. The Chiaramonti Sculpture Gallery…

Carlos Slim Helú: …(1994) a not-for-profit art museum, Museo Soumaya (named for his wife), in Mexico City. In 2011 the museum moved to a larger building in the city. The new anvil-shaped structure—designed by Fernando Romero, Slim’s son-in-law—featured a facade covered in aluminum hexagons, and the interior offered 183,000 square feet (17,000 square…

museum: Science and technology museums: …Industry in Chicago or the Technological Museum in Mexico City, are of a more technical nature. These museums are often sponsored directly or indirectly by industries, which occasionally found their own museums in order to preserve their heritage and promote their work. Other museums highlight a specific product resulting from…

Torlonia Museum, private archaeological museum in Rome founded in the 18th century by Giovanni Torlonia, who assembled sculptures from Roman collections, most originally found in the city of Rome. The Torlonia Museum closed in the 1970s, and its contents were placed in storage. The museum contained

museum: Specialized personal collections: …less-specialized collector, works such as Museographia, by Casper F. Neickel (pseudonym of Kaspar Friedrich Jenequel), published at Leipzig in 1727, were generally available to aid in classification, care of a collection, and the identification of potential sources from which collections might be developed.

museum: Museology and museography: …the theory’s practical applications—known as museography—fell far short of expectations. Museums suffered from a conflict of purpose, with a resulting lack of clear identity. Further, the apprenticeship method of training for museum work gave little opportunity for the introduction of new ideas. This situation prevailed until other organizations began to…

museum: Museology and museography: Along with the identification of a clear role for museums in society, there gradually developed a body of theory the study of which is known as museology. For many reasons, the development of this theory was not rapid. Museum personnel were nearly…

Cristina Peri Rossi: Her award-winning Los museos abandonados (1969; “Abandoned Museums”) is a series of short stories, but some consider it to be a brief novel. (One of the features of her work is disregard for genre boundaries and conventions.) Peri Rossi’s Diáspora (1976; “Diaspora”) is a book of poetry.

English literature: Continued influence of Spenser: …idealized Elizabethan golden age (The Muses Elizium, 1630). Nostalgia was a dangerous quality under the progressive and absolutist Stuarts; the taste for Spenser involved a respect for values—traditional, patriotic, and Protestant—that were popularly, if erroneously, linked with the Elizabethan past but thought to be disregarded by the new regime.…

Athens: Other notable buildings: …an observatory in 1842; the Hill of the Muses, crowned with the remains of the marble monument to Philopappus, a Syrian who was Roman consul in the 2nd century ce; and the middle hill, the Pnyx (Tightly Crowded Together), the meeting place of the Ecclesia, the assembly of 18,000 citizens…

Alexandrian Museum, ancient centre of classical learning at Alexandria in Egypt. A research institute that was especially noted for its scientific and literary scholarship, the Alexandrian Museum was built near the royal palace about the 3rd century bce possibly by Ptolemy I Soter (reigned

Colin Muset was a French trouvère, a professional vielle player and jongleur, who performed in châteaus of the Upper Marne Valley between Langres and Joinville. Colin was a native of Lorraine; his poetry, skillfully written, praised the pleasures of wine and good living. He also wrote and sometimes

musette, small, elegant bagpipe that was fashionable in French court circles in the 17th and 18th centuries. The bagpipe was bellows-blown, with a cylindrical double-reed chanter beside which the instrument-maker Jean Hotteterre, about 1650, placed a short stopped chanter with six keys giving notes

Lina Bo Bardi: Life and work in Brazil: …help establish and direct the Art Museum of São Paulo (Museu de Arte de São Paulo; MASP), the first museum in Brazil to collect and exhibit modern art. For the first iteration of the institution, which opened in 1947 in part of the building that housed Chateaubriand’s business, Bo Bardi…

National Museum of Fine Arts, museum of art in Rio de Janeiro, formally established in 1937. The original collection was inherited from the National School of Fine Arts (formerly the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts). It comprised art from the personal collection of King John VI of Portugal; paintings

Alexandrian Museum, ancient centre of classical learning at Alexandria in Egypt. A research institute that was especially noted for its scientific and literary scholarship, the Alexandrian Museum was built near the royal palace about the 3rd century bce possibly by Ptolemy I Soter (reigned

museum, institution dedicated to preserving and interpreting the primary tangible evidence of humankind and the environment. In its preserving of this primary evidence, the museum differs markedly from the library, with which it has often been compared, for the items housed in a museum are mainly

Rita Dove: …on the Corner (1980) and Museum (1983), as well as a volume of short stories titled Fifth Sunday (1985), Dove focused her attention on the particulars of family life and personal struggle, addressing the larger social and political dimensions of the Black experience primarily by indirection. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas…

history of publishing: Great Britain: …a London publisher, started the Museum (1746–47), devoted mainly to books, and Ralph Griffiths, a Nonconformist bookseller, founded The Monthly Review (1749–1845), which had the novelist and poet Oliver Goldsmith as a contributor. To oppose the latter on behalf of the Tories and the Church of England, The Critical Review…

museum of modern art: History: These include the Museum Folkwang in Hagen, Germany, founded in 1902 by Karl Ernst Osthaus and moved to Essen in 1922; the Kröller-Müller State Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, (1938), the result of a large donation from Helene Kröller-Müller; the Barnes Foundation Galleries in Merion, Pennsylvania, which housed Albert…

Rembrandt House Museum, museum in Amsterdam dedicated to the life and work of Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. The Rembrandt House Museum is located in the house where Rembrandt lived from 1639 to 1658. The building was constructed in 1606–07, and Rembrandt purchased it in 1639. Financial troubles

Museum of Art in Lima (MALI), art museum in Lima, Peru, that features the art of Peru from the ancient to the contemporary. (Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art appreciation.) The Museum of Art in Lima maintains one of Peru’s broadest art collections, featuring work from pre-Columbian times

Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), museum in New York, N.Y., dedicated to the collection and exhibition of contemporary works and objects made from clay, glass, wood, metal, and fibre. It emphasizes craft, art, and design but is also concerned with the broader subjects of architecture, fashion,

Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), art museum in Chicago devoted to the display of new and experimental art across all media. One of the largest multidisciplinary contemporary art museums in the world, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) houses a permanent collection of more than 2,750 works. The

Museum of Decorative Arts, museum in Berlin housing an important collection of applied arts and crafts. The museum, among the oldest of its kind in Germany, displays both historical and contemporary pieces. It is part of the National Museums of Berlin (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). The museum was

Alice Hoffman: In 2014 Hoffman published The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a tale centring on an early 20th-century New York City boardwalk curiosity show. The Marriage of Opposites (2015) imagines the life of painter Camille Pissarro’s mother, a Creole Jew living on the island of St. Thomas who, following the death…

Orhan Pamuk: Masumiyet müzesi (2008; The Museum of Innocence) investigates the relationship between an older man and his second cousin. Thwarted in his attempts to marry her, the man begins to collect objects that she has touched. Pamuk replicated the titular museum in reality, using a house in Istanbul to…

Museum of Islamic Art, museum in Cairo, one of the largest in the world dedicated to Islamic art and artifacts. The museum was founded in 1881, and its collection spans from the 7th-century Umayyad dynasty to the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. In 1903 the museum moved to its current building in Bāb

Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, museum in Buenos Aires dedicated to Latin American art from the early 20th century through the present day. The Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires was established as a progressive institution and cultural centre that would promote the artistic

Museum of London, museum dedicated to recording and representing the history of the London region from prehistoric times to the present day. It is the largest urban-history museum in the world. Situated at the junction of London Wall and Aldersgate Street in the Barbican district of the City of

museum of modern art, an institution devoted to the collection, display, interpretation, and preservation of “avant-garde” or “progressive” art of the late 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. (Read Glenn Lowry’s Britannica essay on “Art Museums & Their Digital Future.”) Museums of modern art, as they

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, in Wellington, museum of art, science, and the natural history of New Zealand, created in 1992 when the National Art Gallery and the National Museum merged under a parliamentary act. The name Te Papa Tongarewa translates to “our container of treasured things

Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), museum dedicated to educating the public about the history of film and television arts and about the impact those media have on popular culture. Established in 1988 in Astoria, New York, the museum is a rebuilt portion of what was once Paramount Pictures’ Astoria

Pancho Villa House, mansion of 50 rooms in Chihuahua, Mexico, where revolutionary leader Pancho Villa lived with his wife María Luz Corral de Villa in the early 20th century. At that time it was known as the Quinta Luz, and it opened as the Museum of the Revolution in 1982. The house was built on

Cristina Peri Rossi: …de los esfuerzos inútiles (1983; The Museum of Useless Efforts) is another book of stories about estrangement. Her novels included La nave de los locos (1984; The Ship of Fools), La última noche de Dostoievski (1992; Dostoevsky’s Last Night), Desastres íntimos (1997; Intimate Disasters), and El amor es una droga…

virtual museum: …also be found in the Museum Online Resource Review, which provides keyword searching as well as lists of various kinds, and by the Guide to Museums and Cultural Resources.

Thomas Struth: …began a series he called Museum Photographs. It consisted of images of museum and gallery visitors in the act of viewing art. The first group of these photographs, created 1989–90, was not staged. Struth simply waited and observed patiently, sometimes returning to the museum for several days in a row,…

Kizhi Island: …is best known for its Museum Site of History and Architecture (opened 1960), where early wooden barns, houses, a windmill, and several churches were collected and restored as part of an open-air museum. The Preobranzhenskaya (Transfiguration) Church (1714), 121 feet (37 m) in height, with its three tiers and 22…

Victoria: Cultural life: Museum Victoria oversees several cultural and scientific institutions in the state capital, including the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne’s Carlton Gardens, built in the late 1800s to host major international exhibitions, Museum Melbourne, emphasizing the history of Victoria, the Migration Museum, which documents international migration…

art market: The 17th century: …encyclopaedic: the development of the gallery as a specialized viewing or display area encouraged collectors to concentrate on paintings and sculptures rather than the acquisition of an omnium gatherum of works of art and natural curiosities.

museum: Other European collections: …site, now known as the Museuminsel. Another development in Germany was the erection of the Alte Pinakothek (1836) at Munich to display the painting collections of the dukes of Wittelsbach. This building was designed to exacting standards by Leo von Klenze, who was also responsible for the New Hermitage, one…

Yoweri Museveni is a politician who became president of Uganda in 1986. Museveni was born to cattle farmers and attended missionary schools. While studying political science and economics at the University of Dar es Salaam (B.A., 1970) in Tanzania, he became chairman of a leftist student group

Yoweri Museveni is a politician who became president of Uganda in 1986. Museveni was born to cattle farmers and attended missionary schools. While studying political science and economics at the University of Dar es Salaam (B.A., 1970) in Tanzania, he became chairman of a leftist student group

Israel Museum, museum in Jerusalem opened in 1965 and consisting of the Bezalel National Art Museum, the Samuel Bronfman Biblical and Archaeological Museum, a Youth Wing, the Shrine of the Book, and The Billy Rose Art Garden. The Shrine of the Book houses the Dead Sea Scrolls in a building whose

Musgrave Ranges, series of granite hills, northwestern South Australia, running parallel to the Northern Territory border for 130 miles (210 km). Their bare rock surfaces rise to numerous peaks exceeding 3,500 feet (1,100 m), including Mount Woodroffe (4,708 feet [1,435 m]), the state’s highest

Story Musgrave is a U.S. astronaut and physician who made six flights into space. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, Musgrave earned an impressive list of academic credentials, including bachelor’s or master’s degrees in mathematics, operations analysis, chemistry, literature, and physiology,

fiscal federalism: …by the German-born American economist Richard Musgrave in 1959. Fiscal federalism deals with the division of governmental functions and financial relations among levels of government.

Samuel Musgrave was an English classical scholar and physician. Educated at the University of Oxford (B.A., 1754; M.A., 1756), Musgrave was elected to a Radcliffe traveling fellowship and spent many years abroad, chiefly in the Netherlands and France. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1760

Story Musgrave is a U.S. astronaut and physician who made six flights into space. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, Musgrave earned an impressive list of academic credentials, including bachelor’s or master’s degrees in mathematics, operations analysis, chemistry, literature, and physiology,

Susan Musgrave is an American-born Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist who is one of Canada’s most prominent writers, nominated multiple times for Governor General’s Literary Awards. Musgrave left school at 14 and had poems published in The Malahat Review at 16. Her first book of poems, Songs of

Thea Musgrave is a Scottish composer best known for her dramatic concerti, operas, choral works, and chamber music. Musgrave studied for three years at the University of Edinburgh, taking premedical courses; she also took music courses at the university and eventually received a Bachelor of Music

Met Gala: Anna Wintour era: West, Lenny Kravitz and Kacey Musgraves, and Lizzo. Four celebrities are selected each year to serve along with Wintour as hosts.

softball, a variant of baseball and a popular participant sport, particularly in the United States. It is generally agreed that softball developed from a game called indoor baseball, first played in Chicago in 1887. It became known in the United States by various names, such as kitten ball, mush

Spain: The caliphate of Córdoba: …the prime minister, Jaʿfar al-Muṣḥafī, who before long was liquidated by al-Manṣūr. The latter succeeded in eliminating all temporal power of the caliph, whom he dominated, and acquired complete power for himself.

mushāhadah, in Sufi (Muslim mystic) terminology, the vision of God obtained by the illuminated heart of the seeker of truth. Through mushāhadah, the Sufi acquires yaqīn (real certainty), which cannot be achieved by the intellect or transmitted to those who do not travel the Sufi path. The Sufi has

Mushanokōji Saneatsu was a Japanese writer and painter noted for a lifelong philosophy of humanistic optimism. The eighth child of an aristocratic family, Mushanokōji went to the Peers School and entered Tokyo Imperial University (now University of Tokyo) in 1906. He left without graduating to join

Mushanokōji Saneatsu was a Japanese writer and painter noted for a lifelong philosophy of humanistic optimism. The eighth child of an aristocratic family, Mushanokōji went to the Peers School and entered Tokyo Imperial University (now University of Tokyo) in 1906. He left without graduating to join

Pervez Musharraf was a Pakistani military officer who took power in a coup in 1999. He served as president of Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. Musharraf moved with his family from New Delhi to Karachi in 1947, when Pakistan was separated from India. The son of a career diplomat, he lived in Turkey

Saʿdī was a Persian poet, one of the greatest figures in classical Persian literature. He lost his father, Muṣliḥ al-Dīn, in early childhood; later he was sent to study in Baghdad at the renowned Neẓāmīyeh College, where he acquired the traditional learning of Islam. The unsettled conditions

Pakistan: The arts of Pakistan: …and public poetry recitations, called mushāʿirahs, are organized like musical concerts. Sir Muhammad Iqbal, one of the major forces behind the establishment of Pakistan (though he died a decade before the country’s founding), was a noted poet in Persian and Urdu. Pashto, Urdu, and Sindhi poets are regional and national…

Muḥammad ibn Falāḥ: …theologian who founded the extremist Mushaʿshaʿ sect of Shīʿism.

Bagratid Dynasty: In 961 Mushegh, the brother of Ashot III, founded the Bagratid kingdom of Kars. By the 11th century, the combined invasions of the Seljuk Turks and Byzantine conquests in the west destroyed what remained of the Bagratids and the Armenian kingdom.

Armenia: The Mamikonians and Bagratids: An unsuccessful revolt led by Mushegh Mamikonian (771–772) resulted in the virtual extinction of the Mamikonians as a political force in Armenia and in the emergence of the Bagratunis and Artsrunis as the leading noble families. (See Bagratid dynasty.) The Arabs’ choice in 806 of Ashot Bagratuni the Carnivorous to…

Robert Forester Mushet was a British steelmaker. He was the son of the ironmaster David Mushet. Robert’s discovery in 1868 that adding tungsten to steel greatly increases its hardness even after air cooling produced the first commercial steel alloy, a material that formed the basis for the

Sennacherib: Early career and the Babylonian campaigns: Another Chaldean leader, Mushezib-Marduk, now seized Babylon and, by opening the temple treasuries, bought massive military support from Elam. In 691 the Assyrian and Elamite armies met at Halule on the Diyālā, where Sennacherib, though claiming a victory, suffered losses that left him temporarily impotent. In 689 he…

Islamic arts: Popular literature: …type of low-class theologian, called Nasreddin Hoca in Turkish, Juḥā in Arabic, and Mushfiqī in Tajik. Anecdotes about this character, which embody the mixture of silliness and shrewdness displayed by this “type,” have amused generations of Muslims.

Alien Tort Claims Act: In 1996, in Mushikiwabo v. Barayagwiza, a U.S. district court awarded $105 million to five Rwandan citizens for the torture and execution of their relatives by government forces and Hutu militias during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Also in 1996 a group of human rights activists sued the…

Mushin, town, Lagos state, southwestern Nigeria. Mushin is a suburb of Lagos city, and its inhabitants are mostly Yoruba people. Continuing expansion from 1950 led to problems of overcrowding, inadequate housing, and poor sanitation. Mushin is the site of a large industrial estate. Commercial

haikai, a comic renga, or Japanese linked-verse form. The haikai was developed as early as the 16th century as a diversion from the composition of the more serious renga

Muztagata Range, mountain range in the westernmost part of the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, northwestern China. As a far western part of the Kunlun Mountains, it extends some 200 miles (320 km) along a north-northwest and south-southeast axis parallel to the eastern edge of the Pamirs range

Phrygia: … of peoples (identified as “Mushki” in Assyrian records) that dominated the entire Anatolian peninsula. This early civilization borrowed heavily from the Hittites, whom they had replaced, and established a system of roads later utilized by the Persians. About 730 the Assyrians detached the eastern part of the confederation, and…

Phrygia: … of peoples (identified as “Mushki” in Assyrian records) that dominated the entire Anatolian peninsula. This early civilization borrowed heavily from the Hittites, whom they had replaced, and established a system of roads later utilized by the Persians. About 730 the Assyrians detached the eastern part of the confederation, and…