nels,
of which the eastern, known as the Bab Iskender (Alexander's Strait), is 2
m. wide and 16 fathoms deep, while the western, or Dact-el-Mayun, has a
width of about 16 m. and a depth of 170 fathoms. Near the African coast
lies a group of smaller islands known as the "Seven Brothers." There is a
surface current inwards in the eastern channel, but a strong under-current
outwards in the western channel.

BABENBERG, the name of a Franconian family which held the duchy of Austria
before the rise of the house of Habsburg. Its earliest known ancestor was
one Poppo, who early in the 9th century was count in Grapfeld. One of his
sons, Henry, called margrave and duke in Franconia, fell fighting against
the Normans in 886; another, Poppo, was margrave in Thuringia from 880 to
892, when he was deposed by the German king Arnulf. The family had been
favoured by the emperor Charles the Fat, but Arnulf reversed this policy in
favour of the rival family of the Conradines. The leaders of the Babenbergs
were the three sons of Duke Henry, who called themselves after their castle
of Babenberg on the upper Main, round which their possessions centred. The
rivalry between the two families was intensified by their efforts to extend
their authority in the region of the middle Main, and this quarrel, known
as the "Babenberg feud," came to a head at the beginning of the 10th
century during the [v.03 p.0092] troubled reign of the German king, Louis
the Child. Two of the Babenberg brothers were killed, and the survivor
Adalbert was summoned before the imperial court by the regent Hatto I.,
archbishop of Mainz, a partisan of the Conradines. He refused to appear,
held his own for a time in his castle at Theres against the king's forces,
but surrendered in 906, and in spite of a promise of safe-conduct was
beheaded. From this time the Babenbergs lost their influence in Franconia;
but in 976 Leopold, a member of the family who was a count in the Donnegau,
is described as margrave of the East Mark, a district not more than 60 m.
in breadth on the eastern frontier of Bavaria which grew into the duchy of
Austria. Leopold, who probably received the mark as a reward for his
fidelity to the emperor Otto II. during the Bavarian rising in 976,
extended its area at the expense of the Hungarians, and was succeeded in
994 by his son Henry I. Henry, who continued his father's policy, was
followed in 1018 by his brother Adalbert and in 1055 by his nephew Ernest,
w