king of Judah, succeeded his father Abijam. He pulled down the altars erected to idols, restored the worship of the true God, and, with the assistance of Benhadad king of Syria, took several towns from the king of Israel. He died 917 years before the Christian era, and was succeeded by Jehoashaphat.

Asa, among naturalists. The writers of the later ages have formed this word afa from the afar of the ancients, and attributed it to a gum very different from that anciently known by the name they have thus corrupted.

The afa of the ancients was an odoriferous and fragrant gum; and the afa of the after-ages had so little title to this epithet, that they distinguished it by one, expressing its being of an offensive or stinking smell. The Arabian writers, according to this distinction, describe two kinds of afa, the one stinking, the other aromatic; and the modern Greeks preserved the name afa, or lasar, to the stinking gum the Latins called by that name, but added a distinctive epithet to express its smell, and called it fcardolafarum. ASA or Assa, in the materia medica, a name given to two very different substances, called *afa-dulcis* and *afa-sicida*.

**ASA Dulcis** is the same with Benzoin.

**ASA-Ferrida** is the concrete juice of a large umbelliferous plant growing in several parts of Asia; the properties of which are described under the article *Ferula*.