Syria; and for a number of the other
manuscripts we are indebted to the elder Niebuhr. A history of the Druse
nation by the amir Haidar Shehab is quoted by Urquhart.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Adler, "Druze Catechism," in _Museum Cuficum Borgianum_
(1782); Silvestre de Sacy, _Expose de la religion des Druses_ (1838);
Ph. Wolff, _Reise in das gelobte Land_, and _Die Drusen und ihre
Vorlaufer_ (1842); C. H. Churchill, _Ten Years' Residence in Mount
Lebanon_ (3 vols., 1853); G. W. Chasseaud, _The Druzes of the Lebanon_
(1855); E. G. Ray, _Voyage dans le Haouran, execute pendant les annees
1857 et 1858_; C. H. Churchill, _The Druzes and Maronites under the
Turkish Rule from 1840 to 1860_ (London, 1862); H. Guys, _Le Theogonie
des Druses_ (1863), and _La Nation Druse_ (1864); M. von Oppenheim,
_Vom Mittelmeer_, &c. (1899); Gertrude L. Bell, _The Desert and the
Sown_ (1907). (D. G. H.; G. BE.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Sophisticated Druses still sometimes claim connexion with
Rosicrucians, and a special relation to Scottish freemasons.

DRUSIUS (or VAN DEN DRIESCHE), JOHANNES (1550-1616), Protestant divine,
distinguished specially as an Orientalist and exegete, was born at
Oudenarde, in Flanders, on the 28th of June 1550. Being designed for the
church, he studied Greek and Latin at Ghent, and philosophy at Louvain;
but his father having been outlawed for his religion, and deprived of
his estate, retired to England, where the son followed him in 1567. He
found an admirable teacher of Hebrew in Chevalier, the celebrated
Orientalist, with whom he resided for some time at Cambridge. In 1572 he
became professor of Oriental languages at Oxford. Upon the pacification
of Ghent (1576) he returned with his father to their own country, and
was appointed professor of Oriental languages at Leiden in the following
year. In 1585 he removed to Friesland, and was admitted professor of
Hebrew in the university of Franeker, an office which he discharged with
great honour till his death, which happened in February 1616. He
acquired so extended a reputation as a professor that his class was
frequented by students from all the Protestant countries in Europe. His
works prove him to have been well skilled in Hebrew and in Jewish
antiquities; and in 1600 the states-general employed him, at a salary of
400 florins a year, to write notes on the most difficult passages in the
Old Testament; but this work was not published until aft