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Aksum
Ancient kingdom, N Ethiopia. At its apogee (3rd-6th cent. AD), Aksum merchants traded as far as Alexandria and beyond the Nile River. The modern town of Aksum (pop. 1989 est.: 22,000), once the kingdom's capital, is a religious center best known for its antiquities. It has long been regarded as a holy city for the Ethiopian Orthodox church; according to tradition, King Menilek I, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant there from Jerusalem. Aksum's antiquities have made it a tourist center.


Baku
City (pop., 1995 est.: 1,740,000), capital of Azerbaijan. Located on the W shore of the Caspian Sea at the sea's best harbor, Baku has long been inhabited. By the 11th cent. AD, it was in the possession of the Shirvan shahs, who made it their capital in the 12th cent. In 1723 Peter the Great took Baku, but returned it to Persia in 1735; Russia captured the town finally in 1806. It was the capital of the Bolshevik government in 1917, and became the capital of the new Soviet republic of Azerbaijan in 1920. The basis of Baku's economy is petroleum.


bakufu
(Japanese: "tent government") Military rule of the country by a hereditary shogun, as opposed to rule by the imperial court and the emperor. Japanese history has seen three periods of bakufu government: Minamoto Yoritomo established the Kamakura bakufu (Kamakura shogunate) at the end of the 12th cent., Ashikaga Takauji established the Muromachi bakufu (Ashikaga shogunate) in the early 14th cent., and Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Edo bakufu (Tokugawa shogunate) at the beginning of the 17th cent. The Edo bakufu was the most successful, a time of peace and prosperity that lasted over 250 years. See also daimyo, Hojo family, jito.


Bakunin
Russian anarchist and political writer. He traveled in Western Europe and was active in the Revolutions of 1848. After attending the Slav congress in Prague, he wrote the manifesto An Appeal to Slavs (1848). Arrested for revolutionary intrigues in Germany (1849), he was sent to Russia and exiled to Siberia. He escaped in 1861 and returned to Western Europe, where he continued his militant anarchist teachings. At the First International (1872) he engaged in a famous quarrel with K. Marx, which split the European revolutionary movement.


Baum
U.S. writer of children's books. Born in Chittenango, N.Y., he achieved commercial success with his first book, Father Goose (1899), and followed it the next year with the even more popular Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote 13 more Oz books, which acquired a huge readership. The series was continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson after his death.


calumet
One of the central ceremonial objects of many Amer. Indian groups. It was considered a microcosm, its parts and its decorative colors and motifs being believed to correspond to the essential parts of the universe. It was smoked in personal prayer ...

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