Madai are the Medes, the Madâ of the Assyrians

We first hear of them in the cuneiform records under the name of Amada, about B. C. 840, when their country was invaded by the A yrian monarch. They were at that time settled in the Kurdish Mountains, considerably to the east of Lake Urumiyeh. Some fifty years later, however, we find them in Media Rhagiana, where they are called no longer Amada but Mada. It was from the latter form of the name that the Greeks took the familiar “Mede." The Medes proper were an Aryan people who claimed relationship to the Aryans of northern India and the Aryan populations of Europe, and one of the tribes belonging to them was that of the Persians, who had established themselves further south, on the eastern shores of the Persian Gulf. But in cla ical times the older inhabitants of the regions into which the Medes migrated were cla ed along with them under the general title of "Medes," so that the name ceased to be distinctive of race. Sayce, Races of the O. T., p. 45, Medford (me (med ford). A city in Middle sex County, Ma achusetts, situated on Mystic River 5 miles northwest of Boston: the seat of Tufts College (non-sectarian). Population (1900), 18,244. Medhurst (med'herst), Walter Henry. Born at London, 1796: died at London, Jan. 24, 1857. An English mi ionary in China and the East Indies, and Sinologist. He translated the Bible into Chinese; edited the "Chinese Repository" (1838-51); and published "A Chinese-English Dictionary" (1842-43), "An English-Chinese Dictionary" (1847-48), "China: its State and Prospects" (1838), etc. Media (me'di-ä). [Gr. Μηδία .]. An ancient country comprising the northwest of the Iranian highland, extending from the Caspian Sea to the Araxes. It was bounded on the northeast by Hyrcania, on the east by Parthia, on the south by Sus i an aPers i a, and nearly corresponded to the modern Persian provinces Azerbaijan, Ardilan, and Irak-Ajemi. Later the southeastern country was called Great Media, and the northwestern, or A trop a tene, Little Media. The Medes (Hebrew and A yrian Madai , Old Persian Mada ) are enumerated in Genesis x. 2 as among the descendants of Japhet; and they, together with the Persians, constituted the most important and powerful Aryan population in western Asia. It is a umed that the country was originally settled by another (perhaps Turanian) tribe, and that the Medes gradually advanced from the northeast to the west and southwest. Media came into contact with As syria at least as early as Ramannirari III. (811-782 в. с.), who mentions Media as a conquered and tributary land. Tig lath Pile ser III. was the first A yrian king who annexed Median territory; and Sargon transplanted Israel it ish war captives to Median cities, and claims in his annals of 712 B. C. to have received tribute from 45 Median chiefs. Sennacherib also received tribute from the Medes. Under Esarhaddon the Medes entered into alliance with the Media Mineans (see Armenia ) and the Cimmerians against As syria, apparently without succe . But from that time the Medes grew more united and more powerful against tyrannical As syria. The Median kings of this period are, accordlking to Hero dot us, Deioces (about 700-647), Phraortes (647to 625), and Cyaxares (625-585). The first Median expedition bra against As syria was undertaken by Phraortes, and, accord2 ing to Hero dot us, ended with the complete defeat of the Medes and the death of Phraortes. Cyaxares repeated the undertaking, and defeated the A yrian army. The attack on the A yrian capital, Nineveh, was delayed for a while hain consequence of the invasion of the Scythians. After these were driven out, the Medes, in alliance with the Babylonians under Nabopola ar, advanced once more against Nineveh, and brought about downfall (608 or nur the A yrian empire, ks proper and Me so pot am i a as far as Haran fell to Media, el which, however, could not develop into a world's empire on account of the rise of the new Babylonian empire under Nabopola ar and Nebuchadnezzar. Even inde pendence of Media was of but short duration, for Astyages 그 (585-549) lost in 549 his crown to Cyrus. After that the fate of Media was bound up in that of Persia. Still it seems to have preserved a kind of independence or particularism while united to Persia. Thus, the Old Testament writings speak of an empire of "the Persians and Medes." Only the Book of Daniel seems to a ume the existence of a Median empire between the last Babylonian king, Nabonidus (Belshazzar), and Cyrus. After the destruction of the Persian empire, Media fell, in the division of Alexander's empire, to Seleucus, the founder of the Syrian monarchy, and later to the Part hi an empire, Since the Mohammedan conquest, the name of Media has given place to that of Irak (Arjaka), also Irak-Ajemi (Persian) to distinguish were, according to the cla ical writers, a warlike people: or Babylonian The in Isa. xiii. they are described as hard and cruel. The religion of the Medes was, according to Strabo (XV. 7, 32), the same as that of the Persians, i . e. dualism. They worshiped, besides the sun-god Mithoras, the moon, Venus, fire, the earth, winds, and water. The oldest capital of Media was Rhagæ, on the site of modern Teheran. Deioces moved the capital to Ecbatana, founded by himself, in the western part of the country, which remained the summer residence of the Persian and kings. To bloed als Bestia agha haling the gocdia which became famous through the great trilingual cuneiform inscription discovered there. Median Wall (mē ́di-an wâl). [L. Mediæ mu rus .] In ancient history, a wall north of Babylon, extending from the Tigris to the Euphrates, built as a defense of Babylonia.