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MUCUNA—MUFTĪ
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inevitable. Matters came to a head in 1835, when Count Finckenstein, himself formerly an initiate, denounced the two pastors and accused them of immorality. Diestel wrote two violent tirades against the count, who brought an action for slander and won it. The evidence taken in the case was then laid before the consistory, and proceedings followed which became famous as the “Königsberger Religionsprozess” (1835–1841),[1] ending in sentences of deprivation on both Ebel and Diestel. The charges of actual immorality were dismissed; but there is no doubt that some of their followers established practices akin to those of the Agapemone and the Perfectionists. Some of them migrated to Brazil, where in 1874 at Porto Alegre a company of them came into collision with the military.

See J. I. Mombert, Faith Victorious (London, 1882); Hepworth Dixon, Spiritual Wives (1868); and, more especially, the article on Schönherr, by P. Tschackert, in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd. ed., Leipzig, 1906), xvii. 676.

MUCUNA, a genus of twining plants, belonging to the natural order Leguminosae, and natives of the tropics. M. pruriens is popularly known as cowhage or cowitch, a corruption of the Hindu Kiwach. It is a tall annual climber with large dark purple pea-like flowers, and golden-brown velvety pods recalling those of the sweet pea, the hairs or bristles on which often raise blisters on the skin. It is common in the tropical regions of India, Africa and America, and the hairs on the pod have long been used in medicine as a vermifuge.

MUDANIA (anc. Apamea Myrlea), a town of Asia Minor, on the south coast of the Sea of Marmora, and the port of Brusa. It is connected with Brusa by a railway and a carriage road, and with Constantinople by steamers. Olive oil is produced. Pop., 5900, of which two-thirds are Greeks.

MUDHOL, a native state of India in the southern division of Bombay. Area, 368 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 63,001; revenue, £20,000. It was a Mahratta principality dating from Mahommedan rule before the rise of Sivaji. The family name of the chief is Ghorpade. The town of Mudhol stands on the left bank of the Ghatprabha; pop. (1901), 8359.

MUDIE, CHARLES EDWARD (1818–1890), English publisher and founder of Mudie’s Lending Library, was born at Chelsea on the 18th of October 1818, the son of a secondhand bookseller and newsagent. In 1840 he established a stationery and bookselling business in Bloomsbury, London. He was the first publisher of James Russell Lowell’s poems in England, and of Emerson’s Man Thinking. In 1842 he began to lend books. This department proved so successful that in 1852 he moved his “Select Library” to larger premises in New Oxford Street, London. In 1860 these premises were substantially enlarged, and branches of the business established, and in 1864 “Mudie’s” was converted into a limited company. Mudie himself died on the 28th of October 1890.

MUFF, an article of outdoor apparel, open at either end, for holding the hands in and keeping them warm, generally made of fur, but also of velvet, silk, &c. Muffs are now only used in England by women, but in the 17th and 18th centuries were fashionable for men. In Roman times the place of the glove was taken by long sleeves (manicae) reaching to the hand, and in winter special sleeves of fur were worn (cf. Cic. Phil. ii. 11, 26). In Medieval Latin we find the word muffulae, defined by Du Cange (Gloss., s.v.) as chirothecae pellitae et hibernae. He quotes from a cartulary of the year 817, of the issuing to monks of sheepskin coverings to be used during the winter. These may have been, as the Roman certainly were, separate coverings for each hand, although the cartulary cited also distinguishes the glove for summer from the muffulae for winter wear. The O. Fr. moufle meant a thick glove or mitten, and from this the Du. mof, Walloon mouffe, and thence Eng. “muff,” are probably derived. From the Fr. moufle have come the various uses, verbal and substantival, of “muffle,” viz. to wrap round for protection, for deadening sound &c., and for a chamber or receptacle in a furnace to protect objects from contact with fire while exposed to heat. The slang use of “muff” for a clumsy, awkward person is of late origin. It appears in the middle of the 19th century.

MÜFFLING, FRIEDRICH KARL FERDINAND, Freiherr von, called WEISS (1775–1851), Prussian general field marshal, was born on the 12th of June 1775, and entered the Prussian army in 1790. In 1799 he contributed to a military dictionary edited by Lieutenant W. von Leipziger, and in the winter of 1802–1803, being then a subaltern, he was appointed to the newly-formed general staff as “quartermaster-lieutenant.” He had already done survey work, and was now charged with survey duties under the astronomer F. X. von Zach (1754–1832). In 1805, when in view of a war with France the army was placed on a war footing, Müffling was promoted captain and assigned to the general staffs, successively, of General von Wartensleben, Prince Hohenlohe and Blücher. In 1806 he served under Hohenlohe, the duke of Saxe-Weimar, and Blücher, and was included in the capitulation of the latter’s corps at Rattkau, after which he entered the civil service of the duke of Weimar. He rejoined the army on the outbreak of the War of Liberation in 1813, and was placed on the headquarters staff of the army of Silesia. His business qualities and common sense were greatly valued, though the temperamental differences between Müffling and Gneisenau often led to friction, especially as the former was in a measure the representative of the antiquated “topographical” school of strategists, to whom (rightly in the main) the disaster of Jena was attributed. In the interval between the first occupation of Paris and the Hundred Days, Müffling served as chief of the staff to the Russian general Barclay de Tolly and to General Kleist von Nollendorf. He was Prussian commissioner at the duke of Wellington’s headquarters in the Waterloo campaign, and was involved in the various controversies which centred round the events of the 16th of June 1815. After the final fall of Napoleon he served on the staff of the army of occupation in France and was for some months military governor of Paris. He spent a part of his time on the Rhine in survey work, and was employed by Frederick William III. in various diplomatic missions. In 1821 he became chief of the general staff at Berlin, and though he has been accused of indulging his taste for topographical work at the expense of training for war, his work was not wasted, for he gave an excellent organization to the general staff, and executed elaborate and useful surveys. In 1829 he visited Constantinople and St Petersburg in connexion with negotiations for peace between Russia and Turkey. He took a prominent part in the military and civil history of Prussia, and from 1838–1847 was governor of Berlin. Failing health compelled his retirement in the latter year, and he died on the 16th of January 1851, at his estate of Ringhofen near Berlin.

Under the initials of C(arl) von W(eiss), he wrote various important works on military art and history: Operationsplan der preuss-sächs. Armee 1806 (Weimar, 1807); marginalia on the archduke Charles’s Grundsätze der höheren Kriegskunst für die Generäle der oesterr. Armee, and on Rühle von Lilienstern’s Bericht über die Vorgänge bei der Hohenloheschen Armee 1806; Die preussisch-russische Kampagne bis zum Waffenstillstande 1813 (Berlin, 1813); Geschichte der Armeen unter Wellington und Blücher 1815 (Stuttgart, 1817); Zur Kriegsgesch. der Jahre 1813–1814: die Feldzüge der schlesischen Armee von der Beendigung des Waffenstillstandes bis zur Eroberung von Paris (Berlin, 1824); Betrachtungen über die grossen Operationen und Schlachten 1813–1815 (Berlin, 1825); Napoleons Strategie 1813 (Berlin, 1827) ; and an essay on the Roman roads on the lower Rhine (Berlin, 1834). Müffling was also the inventor of a system of hachuring for maps. His reminiscences, Aus meinem Leben, were published at Berlin in 1851.


MUFTĪ,[2] a consulting canon-lawyer in Islām, who, upon application, gives fatwās (fetvas) or legal opinions on points of canon law (see Mahommedan Law). These are asked and given in strictly impersonal form, but the cadi, or judge, then applies them to the case and decides in accordance with them. In theory, any learned man whose opinion is respected and whose advice is sought can give fatwās. But generally in a Muslim state there are muftīs specifically appointed by the government, one for each school of canon law in each place. Each of these renders opinions in accordance with the law-books of his school;

  1. The contemptuous designation Muckern dates from this time.
  2. The use of the word for plain or civilian clothes worn instead of uniform is originally Anglo-Indian. It may have been suggested by the loose flowing robes of the stage “muftī,” and thus implied any easy dress worn by an officer when out of uniform.