in Heraldry, is a mastiff dog with short ears.

AL ARAP, in the Mahometan Theology, the partition wall that separates heaven from hell. The word is plural, and is derived from the Arabic verb arafa, to distinguish; in the singular it is written al araf. It gives the denomination to the seventh chapter of the Koran, wherein mention is made of this wall. Mahomet seems to have borrowed this idea either from the great gulf of separation mentioned in the New Testament, or from the Jewish writers, who also speak of a thin wall dividing heaven from hell. Mahometan writers differ extremely as to the persons who are to be found on Al Araf. Some take it for a sort of limbus for the patriarchs, prophets, &c.; others place here those whose good and evil works so exactly balance each other that they deserve neither reward nor punishment; others imagine this intermediate space to be possessed by those who, going to war without their parents' leave, and suffering martyrdom there, are excluded paradise for their disobedience, yet escape hell because they are martyrs.

ALARIC I., a celebrated general of the Visigoths, sprung from one of the noblest families of that people, and afterwards elected their king. He is first noticed in history as the leader of the Gothic auxiliaries of Theodosius the Great, A.D. 394. After the death of that emperor, the Goths revolted from his son, and Alaric entered Greece at the head of 200,000 men. His march was arrested by the Thessalians on the river Peneus, but he forced his way into Greece, and returned into Epirus laden with spoil. Five years afterwards he marched through Pannonia into Italy, where he was defeated by Stilicho in the bloody battle of Pollentia. Driven out of Italy, he obtained from Honorius the prefecture of Illyricum. On the murder of Stilicho, Alaric, A.D. 400, again invaded Italy, and sat down before the walls of Rome; but he accepted a ransom and raised the siege. After a fruitless negotiation with the feeble Honorius, he raised a competitor to the purple, whom he soon degraded, and obtained possession of Rome by the treachery of the slaves and domestics of the Romans. The imperial city was given up to be plundered by his followers, and though ecclesiastical writers have celebrated the piety and clemency of Alaric, it cannot be denied that the unfortunate inhabitants sustained the greatest outrages from this ruthless barbarian. This memorable event took place on the 24th August 410. The rest of Italy was also ravaged, and the conqueror intended to pass into Sicily, when death put an end to his career at Cosenza in 411. The inhuman rites attending his funeral have been forcibly described by Gibbon.—See Zosimus; Claudian; Jornandes; Gibbon; and the article Roman History.

ALARIC II., eighth king of the Visigoths in Spain, succeeded his father Evaric in 484. He was careful to maintain the peace which his father had concluded with the Franks; but the ambitious Clovis, eager to possess himself of the rich Gothic provinces in Gaul, took arms against him, and in a battle near Poitiers, gained a complete victory, slaying Alaric with his own hand, A.D. 507. With Amalaric his son ended the Gothic dynasty in France.

During the reign of Alaric, and under his authority, was compiled the digest of laws known as the Breviarium Alaricianum, or Code of Alaric.