Part 2

LURISTAN, in the wider sense (as its name implies) the "Land of the Lurs," namely that part of western Persia which is bounded by Turkish territory on the west and extends for about 400 m. N.W.-S.E. from Kermanshah to Fars with a breadth of 100 to 140 m. It is chiefly mountainous, being intersected by numerous ranges running N.W.-S.E. The central range has many summits which are almost within the line of perpetual snow, rising to 13,000 ft. and more, and in it are the sources of Persia's most important rivers, as the Zayendeh-rud, Jarahi, Karun, Diz, Abi, Kerkheh. Between the higher ranges are many fertile plains and low hilly districts, well watered but comparatively little cultivated in consequence of intertribal feuds. The Lurs are thought to be aboriginal Persians with a mixture of Semitic blood. Their language is a dialect of Persian and does not differ materially from Kurdish. Outwardly they are Mussulmans of the Shiah branch, but most of them show little veneration for either Prophet or Koran, and the religion of some of them seems to be a mixture of Ali-Illahism involving a belief in successive incarnations combined with mysterious, ancient, heathen rites. The northern part of Luristan, which was formerly known as Lurikuchik (little Luristan), is inhabited by the Feili Lurs and these are divided into the Pishkuh (cis-montane) Lurs in the east and Pushtkuh (ultra-montane) Lurs in the west adjoining Turkish territory. They number about 350,000. Little Luristan was governed by a race of independent princes of the Khurshidi dynasty, and called atabegs, from 1155 to the beginning of the 17th century when the last atabeg, Shah Verdi Khan, was removed by Shah Abbas I. and the government of the province given to Husain Khan, the chief of a rival tribe, with the title of vali in exchange for that of atabeg. The descendants of Husain Khan have retained the title but now govern only the Pushtkuh Lurs, to whom only the denomination of Feili is at present applied. The southern part of Luristan was formerly known as Lur i Buzurg (great Luristan) and is composed of the Bakhtiari division of the Arabistan province and the districts of the Mamasennis and Kuhgilus which belong to Fars. The Bakhtiaris number about 200,000, the others 40,000. Great Luristan was an independent state under the Fazlevieh atabegs from 1160 until 1424, and its capital was Idaj, now represented by mounds and ruins at Malamir 60 m. S.E. of Shushter.

LUSATIA (Ger. _Lausitz_), a name applied to two neighbouring districts in Germany, Upper and Lower Lusatia, belonging now mainly to Prussia, but partly to Saxony. The name is taken from the Lusitzi, a Slav tribe, who inhabited Lower Lusatia in the 9th and 10th centuries.

In the earliest times Lower Lusatia reached from the Black Elster to the Spree; its inhabitants, the Lusitzi, were conquered by the German king, Henry the Fowler, and by the margrave Gero in the 10th century. Their land was formed into a separate march, which for about three centuries was sometimes attached to, and sometimes independent of, the margraviate of Meissen, its rulers being occasionally called margraves of Lusatia. In 1303 it was purchased by the margrave of Brandenburg, and after other changes it fell in 1368 into the hands of the king of Bohemia, the emperor Charles IV., who already possessed Upper Lusatia. During the Hussite wars its people remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1469 they recognized Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, as their sovereign, but in 1490 they came again under the rule of the Bohemian king.

The district now known as Upper Lusatia was occupied by a Slav tribe, the Milzeni, who like the Lusitzi, were subdued by Henry the Fowler early in the 10th century. For about three centuries it was called Baudissin (Bautzen), from the name of its principal fortress. In the 11th and 12th centuries it was connected at different periods with Meissen, Poland and Bohemia. Towards 1160 the emperor Frederick I. granted it to Ladislas, king of Bohemia, and under this ruler and his immediate successors it was largely colonized by German immigrants. In 1253 it passed to the margrave of Brandenburg, and about the same time it was divided into an eastern and a western part, Baudissin proper and Görlitz. In 1319 the former was restored to Bohemia, which also recovered Görlitz in 1329. During the 14th century the nobles and the townsmen began to take part in the government, and about this time Upper Lusatia was known as the district of the six towns (_Sechsstädtelandes_), these being Bautzen, Görlitz, Zittau, Löbau, Lauban and Kamenz. From 1377 to 1396 Görlitz was a separate duchy ruled by John, a son of the emperor Charles IV., and, like Lower Lusatia, Upper Lusatia owned the authority of Matthias Corvinus from 1469 to 1490, both districts passing a little later with the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia to the German king, Ferdinand I. The "six towns" were severely punished for their share in the war of the league of Schmalkalden, and about this time the reformed teaching made very rapid progress in Lusatia, the majority of the inhabitants becoming Protestants. The name of Lusatia hitherto confined to Lower Lusatia, was soon applied to both districts, the adjectives Upper and Lower being used to distinguish them. In 1620, early in the Thirty Years' War, the two Lusatias were conquered by the elector of Saxony, John George I., who was allowed to keep them as the price of his assistance to the emperor Ferdinand I. In 1635 by the treaty of Prague they were definitely transferred from Bohemia to Saxony, although the emperor as king of Bohemia retained a certain supremacy for the purpose of guarding the rights and privileges of the Roman Catholics. They suffered much during the wars of the 18th century. By the peace of Vienna (1815) the whole of Lower Lusatia and part of Upper Lusatia were transferred from Saxony to Prussia.

The area of the part of Upper Lusatia retained by Saxony was slightly increased in 1845; it is now about 960 sq. m. In 1900 Lower Lusatia contained 461,973 inhabitants, of whom 34,837 were Wends; the portion of Upper Lusatia belonging to Prussia had 305,080 inhabitants, of whom 24,361 were Wends. There were 405,173 inhabitants, including 28,234 Wends, in Saxon Upper Lusatia. Laws relating to this district, after passing through the Saxon parliament must be submitted to the Lusatian diet at Bautzen. The chief towns of Upper Lusatia are Bautzen, Zittau, Löbau, Kamenz, Görlitz, Rothenburg, Hoyerswerda and Lauban; in Lower Lusatia they are Guben, Kottbus, Forst, Lübben and Spremberg. The principal rivers are the Spree with its tributaries, the Black Elster and the Neisse. Upper Lusatia is generally mountainous and picturesque, Lower Lusatia is flat and sandy. The chief industries are linen weaving, cloth making and coal mining.

For the history of Lusatia see the collections, _Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum antiqui et recentiores_, edited by C. G. Hoffmann (4 vols., Leipzig and Bautzen, 1719); and _Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum_ (4 vols., Görlitz, 1839-1870). See also W. Lippert, _Wettiner und Wittelsbacher sowie die Niederlausitz im 14 Jahrhundert_ (Dresden, 1894); T. Scheltz, _Gesamtgeschichte der Ober- und Niederlausitz_, Band i. (Halle, 1847), Band ii. (Görlitz, 1882); J. G. Worbs, _Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Markgraftums Niederlausitz_ (Lübben 1897); and J. A. E. Köhler, _Die Geschichte der Oberlausitz_ (Görlitz, 1867).

LUSHAI HILLS, a mountainous district of Eastern Bengal and Assam, south of Cachar, on the border between Assam and Burma. Area, 7227 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 82,434. The hills are for the most part covered with dense bamboo jungle and rank undergrowth; but in the eastern portion, owing probably to a smaller rainfall, open grass-covered slopes are found, with groves of oak and pine interspersed with rhododendrons. These hills are inhabited by the Lushais and cognate tribes, but the population is extremely scanty. From the earliest known times the original inhabitants were Kukis, and the Lushais were not heard of until 1840, when they invaded the district from the north. Their first attack upon British territory took place in November 1849, and after that date they proved one of the most troublesome tribes on the north-east frontier of India; but operations in 1890 resulted in the complete pacification of the northern Lushai villages, and in 1892 the eastern Lushais were reduced to order. The management of the South Lushai hill country was transferred from Bengal to Assam in 1898. To obtain more efficient control over the country the district has been divided into eighteen circles, each in charge of an interpreter, through whom all orders are transmitted to the chiefs. The Welsh Presbyterian Mission began work at Aijal in 1897, and the people have shown unexpected readiness to accept education. According to the census of 1901 the total number of Lushais in Assam was 63,452.

See Colonel T. H. Lewin, _Wild Races of N.E. India_ (1870); _Lushai Hills Gazetteer_ (Calcutta, 1906).

LUSIGNAN, the name of a family which sprang from Poitou[1] and distinguished itself by its connexion with the kingdom of Jerusalem, and still more by its long tenure of the kingdom of Cyprus (1192-1475). A Hugh de Lusignan appears in the ill-fated crusade of 1100-1101; another Hugh, the Brown, came as a pilgrim to the Holy Land in 1164, and was taken prisoner by Nureddin. In the last quarter of the 12th century the two brothers Amalric and Guy, sons of Hugh the Brown, played a considerable part in the history of the Latin East. About 1180 Amalric was constable of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and he is said to have brought his handsome brother Guy to the notice of Sibylla, the widowed heiress of the kingdom. Guy and Sibylla were married in 1180; and Guy thus became heir presumptive of the kingdom, if the young Baldwin V., Sibylla's son by her first marriage to William of Montferrat, should die without issue. He acted as regent in 1183, but he showed some incapacity in the struggle with Saladin, and was deprived of all right of succession. In 1186, however, on the death of Baldwin V., he succeeded in obtaining the crown, in spite of the opposition of Raymund of Tripoli. Next year he suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of Hittin, and was taken prisoner by Saladin. Released on parole in 1188, he at once broke his parole, and began the siege of Acre. Difficulties, however, had arisen with Conrad of Montferrat; and when Guy lost his wife Sibylla in 1190, and Conrad married Isabella, her sister, now heiress of the kingdom, these difficulties culminated in Conrad's laying claim to the crown. Guy found his cause espoused in 1191 by the overlord of his house, Richard I. of England; but Conrad's superior ability, and the support of the French crusaders, ultimately carried the day, and in 1192 Richard himself abandoned the pretensions of Guy, and recognized Conrad as king. Though Conrad was almost immediately assassinated, the crown did not return to Guy, but went to Henry of Champagne, who married the widowed Isabella. Guy found some satisfaction for his loss in buying from the Templars the island of Cyprus, and there he reigned for the last two years of his life (1192-1194). He is judged harshly by contemporary writers, as _simplex_ and _insufficiens_; but Dodu (in his _Histoire des institutions du royaume de Jerusalem_) suggests that Guy was depreciated because the kingdom had been lost in his reign, in much the same way as Godfrey of Bouillon was exalted because Jerusalem had just been won at his accession. Guy was a brave if not a particularly able knight; and his instant attack on Acre after his release by Saladin shows that he had the _sentiment de ses devoirs_.

He was succeeded in Cyprus by his brother Amalric, who acquired the title of king of Cyprus from the emperor Henry VI., and became king of Jerusalem in 1197 by his marriage to Isabella, after the death of Henry of Champagne (see AMALRIC II.). Amalric was the founder of a dynasty of kings of Cyprus, which lasted till 1475, while after 1269 his descendants regularly enjoyed the title of kings of Jerusalem. The scions of the house of Lusignan proved themselves the most sincere of crusaders. They possessed in Cyprus a kingdom, in which they had vindicated for themselves a stronger hold over their feudatories than the kings of Jerusalem had ever enjoyed, and in which trading centres like Famagusta flourished vigorously; and they used the resources of their kingdom, in conjunction with the Hospitallers of Rhodes, to check the progress of the Mahommedans.

Among the most famous members of the house who ruled in Cyprus three may be mentioned. The first is Hugh III. (the Great), who was king from 1267 to 1285: to him, apparently, St Thomas dedicated his _De Regimine Principum_; and it is in his reign that the kingdom of Jerusalem becomes permanently connected with that of Cyprus. The second is Hugh IV. (1324-1359), to whom Boccaccio dedicated one of his works, and who set on foot an alliance with the pope, Venice and the Hospitallers, which resulted in the capture of Smyrna (1344). The last is Peter I., Hugh's second son and successor, who reigned from 1359 to 1369, when he was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy of the barons. Peter and his chancellor de Mezières represent the last flicker of the crusading spirit (see CRUSADES).

Before the extinction of the line in 1475, it had succeeded in putting a branch on the throne of Armenia. Five short-lived kings of the house ruled in Armenia after 1342, "Latin exiles," as Stubbs says, "in the midst of several strange populations all alike hostile." The kingdom of Armenia fell before the sultan of Egypt, who took prisoner its last king Leo V. in 1375, though the kings of Cyprus afterwards continued to bear the title; the kingdom of Cyprus itself continued to exist under the house of Lusignan for 100 years longer. The mother of the last king, James III. (who died when he was two years old), was a Venetian lady, Catarina Cornaro. She had been made a daughter of the republic at the time of her marriage to the king of Cyprus; and on the death of her child the republic first acted as guardian for its daughter, and then, in 1489, obtained from her the cession of the island.

See J. M. J. L. de Mas-Latrie, _Histoire de l'île de Chypre sous les princes de la maison de Lusignan_ (Paris, 1852-1853); W. Stubbs, _Lectures on Medieval and Modern History_ (3rd ed., Oxford, 1900).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A branch of the line continued in Poitou during the 13th century, and ruled in LaMarche till 1303. Hugh de la Marche, whose betrothed wife, Isabella of Angoulême, King John of England seized (thus bringing upon himself the loss of the greater part of his French possessions), was a nephew of Guy of Lusignan. He ultimately married Isabella, after the death of John, and had by her a number of sons, half-brothers of Henry III. of England, who came over to England, amongst other foreign favourites, during his reign.

LUSSIN, a small island in the Adriatic Sea, in the Gulf of Quarnero, forming together with the adjacent islands of Veglia and Cherso an administrative district in the Austrian crownland of Istria. Pop. (1900) 11,615. The island is 24 m. in length, is of an average breadth of 1.64 m., being little more than 300 yds. wide at its narrowest point, and has an area of 29 sq. m. The chief town and principal harbour is Lussinpiccolo (pop. 7207), which is the most important trading centre in the Quarnero group. The town has become a favourite winter resort, its climate resembling that of Nice. To the south-east of it is Lussingrande (pop. 2349), with an old Venetian palace and a shipbuilding wharf. The island was first peopled at the end of the 14th century. Its inhabitants are renowned seamen.

LUSTRATION, a term that includes all the methods of purification and expiation among the Greeks and Romans. Among the Greeks there are two ideas clearly distinguishable--that human nature must purify itself ([Greek: katharsis]) from guilt before it is fit to enter into communion with God or even to associate with men, and that guilt must be expiated voluntarily ([Greek: hilasmos]) by certain processes which God has revealed, in order to avoid the punishment that must otherwise overtake it. It is not possible to make such a distinction among the Latin terms _lustratio_, _piacula_, _piamenta_, _caerimoniae_, and even among the Greeks it is not consistently observed. Guilt and impurity arose in various ways; among the Greeks, besides the general idea that man is always in need of purification, the species of guilt most insisted on by religion are incurred by murder, by touching a dead body, by sexual intercourse, and by seeing a prodigy or sign of the divine will. The last three spring from the idea that man had been without preparation and improperly brought into communication with God, and was therefore guilty. The first, which involves a really moral idea of guilt, is far more important than the others in Hellenic religion. Among the Romans we hear more of the last species of impurity; in general the idea takes the form that after some great disaster the people become convinced that guilt has been incurred and must be expiated. The methods of purification consist in ceremonies performed with water, fire, air or earth, or with a branch of a sacred tree, especially of the laurel, and also in sacrifice and other ceremonial. Before entering a temple the worshipper dipped his hand in the vase of holy water ([Greek: perirrhanterion], _aqua lustralis_) which stood at the door; before a sacrifice bathing was common; salt-water was more efficacious than fresh, and the celebrants of the Eleusinian mysteries bathed in the sea ([Greek: halade, mystai]); the water was more efficacious if a firebrand from the altar were plunged in it. The torch, fire and sulphur ([Greek: to theion]) were also powerful purifying agents. Purification by air was most frequent in the Dionysiac mysteries; puppets suspended and swinging in the air (_oscilla_) formed one way of using the lustrative power of the air. Rubbing with sand and salt was another method. The sacrifice chiefly used for purification by the Greeks was a pig; among the Romans it was always, except in the Lupercalia, a pig, a sheep and a bull (_suovetaurilia_). In Athens a purificatory sacrifice and prayer was held before every meeting of the ecclesia; the Maimacteria,[1] in honour of Zeus Maimactes (the god of wrath), was an annual festival of purification, and at the Thargelia two men (or a woman and a man) were sacrificed on the seashore, their bodies burned and the ashes thrown into the sea, to avert the wrath of Apollo. On extraordinary occasions lustrations were performed for a whole city. So Athens was purified by Epimenides after the Cylonian massacre, and Delos in the Peloponnesian War (426 B.C.) to stop the plague and appease the wrath of Apollo. In Rome, besides such annual ceremonies as the _Ambarvalia_, _Lupercalia_, _Cerialia_, _Paganalia_, &c., there was a lustration of the fleet before it sailed, and of the army before it marched. Part of the ceremonial always consisted in leading or carrying the victims round the impure persons or things. After any disaster the _lustratio classium_ or _exercitus_ was often again performed, so as to make certain that the gods got all their due. The _Amburbium_, a solemn procession of the people round the boundaries of Rome, was a similar ceremonial performed for the whole city on occasions of great danger or calamity; the _Ambilustrium_ (so called from the sacrificial victims being carried round the people assembled on the Campus Martius) was the purificatory ceremony which took place after the regular quinquennial census (_lustrum_) of the Roman people.

See C. F. Hermann, _Griechische Altertümer_, ii.; G. F. Schömann, _ib._ ii.; P. Stengel, _Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer_ (1898); Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. p. 200 (1885); P. E. von Lasaulx, _Die Sühnopfer der Griechen und Römer_ (1841); J. Donaldson, "On the Expiatory and Substitutionary Sacrifices of the Greeks," in _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, xxvii., 1876; and the articles by A. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquités_, and by W. Warde Fowler in Smith's _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_ (3rd ed., 1891).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Maimacteria does not actually occur in ancient authorities as the name of a festival.

LUTE (Arabic _al'ud_, "the wood"; Fr. _luth_; Ital. _liuto_; Span. _laud_; Ger. _Laute_; Dut. _luit_), an ancient stringed musical instrument, derived in form as well as name from the Arabs. The complete family consisted of the pandura, tanbur or mandoline as treble, the lute as alto or tenor, the barbiton or theorbo as bass, and the chitarrone as double bass. The Arab instrument, with convex sound-body, pointing to the resonance board or membrane having been originally placed upon a gourd, was strung with silk and played with a plectrum of shell or quill. It was adopted by the Arabs from Persia. Instruments with vaulted backs are all undoubtedly of Eastern origin; the distinct type, resembling the longitudinal section of a pear, is more specially traced in ancient India, Persia and the countries influenced by their civilization. This type of instrument includes many families which became known during the middle ages of western Europe, being introduced into southern Europe and Spain by the Moors, into southern Russia by the Persians of the Sassanian period, into Greece from the confines of the Byzantine Empire. As long as the strings were plucked by fingers or plectrum the large pear-shaped instrument may be identified as the archetype of the lute. When the bow, obtained from Persia, was applied to the instrument by the Arabs, a fresh family was formed, which was afterwards known in Europe as rebab and later rebec. The largest member of the ancient lute family--the bass lute or theorbo--has been identified with the barbiton.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Post-Mycenaean terra-cotta figure, with ancient lute (1000 B.C.) from the cemetery at Goshen.]