on the London & North Western railway. Pop. (1901), 4669. It lies in open country near the river Dane, having water communications by the Trent and Mersey canal, and a branch giving access to the Shropshire Union canal. The church of St Michael and All Angels is of various periods and contains numerous monuments. In the streets not a few old buildings remain, making for picturesqueness, and a number of the fine timbered houses in which Cheshire abounds are seen in the immediate neighbourhood. Middlewich shares in the salt industry common to several towns, such as Northwich and Winsford, in this part of the county; there are also chemical works and a manufacture of condensed milk.
MIDHAT PASHA (1822–1884), Turkish statesman, the son
of a civil judge, was born at Constantinople in 1822. His father,
a declared partisan of reform, trained him for an administrative
career, and at the age of twenty-two he was attached as secretary
to Faïk Effendi, whom he accompanied in Syria for three years.
On his return to Constantinople Midhat was appointed chief
director of confidential reports, and after a new financial mission
in Syria was made second secretary of the grand council. His
enemies, however, succeeded in ousting him from this post, and
caused him to be entrusted with the apparently impossible task
of settling the revolt and brigandage rampant in Rumelia. His
measures were drastic and their success was startling and the
government made him an official of the first rank and restored
him to his place in the grand council. In similar vigorous
fashion he restored order in Bulgaria in 1857. In 1860 he was
made vizier and pasha, and entrusted with the government of
Nisch, where his reforms were so beneficial that the sultan
charged him, in conjunction with Fuad Pasha and Ali Pasha, to
prepare the scheme for adapting them to the empire which was
afterwards known as the law of the vilayets. After further
administrative work in his province, he was ordered to organize
the council of state in 1866, and was then made governor of
Bagdad, where his success was as decisive as at Nisch, but
attended with much greater difficulties. In 1871 the anti-reform
influence of the grand vizier, Mahmoud Nedim, seemed to
Midhat a danger to the country, and in a personal interview he
boldly stated his views to the sultan, who was so struck with their
force and entire disinterestedness that he appointed Midhat
grand vizier in place of Mahmoud. Too independent, however,
for the court, Midhat remained in power only three months, and
after a short governorship of Salonica he lived apart from affairs
at Constantinople until 1875.
From this time forward. however, Midhat Pasha’s career resolved itself into a series of strange and almost romantic adventures. While sympathizing with the ideas and aims of the “Young Turkey” party, he was anxious to restrain its impatience, but the sultan’s obduracy led to a coalition between the grand vizier, the war minister and Midhat Pasha, which deposed him in May 1876, and he was murdered in the following month. His nephew Murad V. was in turn deposed in the following August and replaced by his brother, Abdul Hamid II. Midhat Pasha now became grand vizier, reforms were freely promised, and the Ottoman parliament was inaugurated with a great flourish. In the following February, however, Midhat was dismissed and banished for supposed complicity in the murder of Abdul Aziz. He then visited various European capitals, and remained for some time in London, where he carefully studied the procedure in the House of Commons. Again recalled. in 1878, he was appointed governor of Syria, and in August exchanged offices with the governor of Smyrna. But in the following May the sultan again ordered him to be arrested, and although he effected his escape and appealed to the powers, he shortly afterwards saw fit to surrender, claiming a fair hearing. The trial accordingly took place in June, when Midhat and the others were sentenced to death. It was, however, generally regarded as a mockery, and on the intercession of the British government the sentence was commuted to banishment. The remaining three years of his life were consequently spent in exile at Taif in Arabia, where he died, probably by violence, on the 8th of May 1884. To great ability, wide sympathies, and undoubted patriotism he added absolute honesty, that rare quality in a vizier, for he left office as poor as when he entered it. (G. F. B.)
MIDHURST, a market town in the north-western parliamentary
division of Sussex, England, 12 m. N. by E. of Chichester
by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway; served also
by the London & South Western railway. Pop. (1901), 1674.
It is pleasantly situated on slightly rising ground near the river
Rother. The church of St Mary Magdalen and St Denis is a large
Perpendicular building. The town retains several picturesque
old houses, and in the vicinity, by the river, are the ruins of
the 16th century mansion of Cowdray, burnt down in 1793. A
grammar-school was founded at Midhurst in 1672 and attained
some eminence. After being closed for many years it was reopened
in 1880. In 1906 a magnificent sanatorium for consumptives
was opened about 4 m. from Midhurst; it bears the name of
King Edward VII., who laid its foundation stone and opened it.
The name of Midhurst (Middeherst, Mudhurst) first occurs in the reign of Henry I. when Savaric Fitz-Cana held it of the honour of Arundel, then presumably in the king’s hands. The charter of Henry I., although no longer extant, is quoted in later confirmation charters of Richard I., Henry III., Edward III. and Richard II. Franco de Bohun inherited Midhurst from his uncle Savaric Fitz-Savaric, and the De Bohuns held the lordship until 1499 when Sir David Owen obtained it through his marriage with the daughter of the last male heir. He sold it to Sir William Fitz-William, from whom it passed to Sir Anthony Browne and descended to the viscounts Montague. Midhurst is definitely called a borough in the reign of Edward I., but the borough-court and market were probably in existence much earlier. It was governed by a bailiff, elected annually, until the office lapsed, probably early in the 19th century. In an act of 1883 it is mentioned as one of the towns which had long ceased to be municipal. No charter of incorporation is known. Midhurst returned two members to parliament from 1300–1301 till 1832, and from that date one member until 1885 when it was disfranchised. In the reign of Henry VI. a market was held by the burgesses every Thursday, and a fair on Whit-Tuesday, by grant from Sir John Bohun. In 1888 the fair-days were the 6th of April, the 9th of May and the 29th of October. The market-day was Thursday. Pleasure-fairs are still held on the 6th of April and the 29th of October, but there is no market.
MIDIAN (properly Madyān, so Sept.), in the Bible, one of the
peoples of North Arabia whom the Hebrews recognized as distant
kinsmen, representing them as sons of Abraham’s wife Ketūrah
(“incense”). Thus the sons of Keturah are the “incense-men,”
not indeed inhabitants of the far south incense-land, but presumably
the tribes whose caravans brought the incense to Palestine
and the Mediterranean ports. So the Midianites appear in connexion
with the gold and incense trade from Yemen (Isa. lx. 6),
and with the trade between Egypt and Syria (Gen. xxxvii. 28, 36).
They appear also as warriors invading Canaan from the eastern
desert, and ravaging the land as similar tribes have done
in all ages when Palestine lacked a strong government (see
Gideon). Again, they are described as peaceful shepherds, and
the pastures of the Midianites, or of the branch of Midian to which
Moses’s father-in-law (Jethro or Reuel, or Hobab) belonged, lay
near Mount Horeb (Exod. iii. 1). The Kenites who had friendly
relations with Israel and are represented in Judg. i. 16, iv. 11,
as the kin of Moses’s father-in-law, appear to have been but one
fraction of Midian which took
a separate course from their early relations to Israel.[1] Balaam, according to one version of the story, was a Midianite (Num. xxii. seq.) and his association with Moab has been connected with the statement in Gen. xxxvi. 35, that the Edomite king Hadad defeated Midian in the land of Moab; (see Balaam, Edom).
- ↑ The admixture of Midianite elements in Judah and the other border tribes of Israel is confirmed by a comparison of the names of the Midianite clans in Gen. xxv. 4 with the Hebrew genealogies (1 Chron. ii. 46, Ephah; iv. 17, Epher; Gen. xlvi. 9, Hanoch). Epher is also associated with ʽOfr near Ḥanākiya (Hanoch), three days north from Medina, also with Apparu a Bedouin locality mentioned by Assur-bani-pal. Ephah is probably the Ḥayapa transported by Sargon to Beth-Omri (Samaria).
