BA`AL (meaning Lord), PL.  BAALIM, the principal male divinity of the Canaanites and Phoenicians, identified with the sun as the great quickening and life-sustaining power in nature, the god who presided over the labours of the husbandman and granted the increase; his crowning attribute, strength; worshipped on hill-tops with sacrifices, incense, and dancing.  Baal-worship, being that of the Canaanites, was for a time mixed up with the worship of Jehovah in Israel, and at one time threatened to swamp it, but under the zealous preaching of the prophets it was eventually stamped out.

BAAL`BEK (i. e.  City of Baal, or the Sun), an ancient city of Syria, 35 m.  NW. of Damascus; called by the Greeks, Heliopolis; once a place of great size, wealth, and splendour; now in ruins, the most conspicuous of which is the Great Temple to Baal, one of the most magnificent ruins of the East, covering an area of four acres.

BAALISM, the name given to the worship of natural causes, tending to the obscuration and denial of the worship of God as Spirit.

BABA, ALI, the character in the “Arabian Nights” who discovers and enters the den of the Forty Thieves by the magic password “SESAME” (q. v.), a word which he accidentally overheard.

BABA, CAPE, in Asia Minor, the most western point in Asia, in Anatolia, with a town of the name.

BABBAGE, CHARLES, a mathematician, born in Devonshire; studied at Cambridge, and professor there; spent much time and money over the invention of a calculating machine; wrote on “The Economy of Manufactures and Machinery,” and an autobiography entitled “Passages from the Life of a Philosopher”; in his later years was famous for his hostility to street organ-grinders (1791-1871).

BABBINGTON, ANTONY, an English Catholic gentleman; conspired against Elizabeth on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, confessed his guilt, and was executed at Tyburn in 1586.

BAB-EL-MANDEB (i. e. the Gate of Tears), a strait between Asia and Africa forming the entrance to the Red Sea, so called from the strong currents which rush through it, and often cause wreckage to vessels attempting to pass it.

BABER, the founder of the Mogul empire in Hindustan, a descendant of Tamerlane; thrice invaded India, and became at length master of it in 1526; left memoirs; his dynasty lasted for three centuries.

BABES IN THE WOOD, Irish banditti who infested the Wicklow Mountains in the 18th century, and were guilty of the greatest atrocities.  See CHILDREN.

BABIS, a modern Persian sect founded in 1843, their doctrines a mixture of pantheistic with Gnostic and Buddhist beliefs; adverse to polygamy, concubinage, and divorce; insisted on the emancipation of women; have suffered from persecution, but are increasing in numbers.

BABOEUF, FRANCOIS NOEL, a violent revolutionary in France, self-styled Gracchus; headed an insurrection against the Directory, “which died in the birth, stifled by the soldiery”; convicted of conspiracy, was guillotined, after attempting to commit suicide (1764-1797).