a small fortified town of Morocco, province of Fez, with about 1000 inhabitants. The battery mounts about 20 guns.

in Antiquity, a weight, consisting of 12 ounces, being the same with libra, or the Roman pound. The word is derived from the Greek ἀσ, which, in the Doric dialect, is used for ἀσ, one, q. d. an entire thing: or, according to others, from ἀσ, because made of brass.

It was also the name of a Roman coin, which was of different weight and material in different ages of the commonwealth. Under Numa Pompilius, according to Eusebius, the Roman money was either of wood, leather, or shells. In the time of Tullus Hostilius it was of brass, and called as libra, libella, or pondus, because actually weighing a pound or 12 ounces. The first Punic war, 420 years later, having exhausted the treasury, the as was reduced to two ounces. In the second Punic war, it was again reduced to half its weight, viz., to one ounce. And lastly, by the Papirian law it was still further reduced to the diminutive weight of half an ounce; and it is generally thought that it continued the same during the commonwealth, and even to the reign of Vespasian. The as, therefore, was of four different weights in the commonwealth. Its original stamp was that of a sheep, ox, or sow; but from the time of the emperors it had on one side a Janus with two faces, and on the reverse the rostrum or prow of a ship.

As also denoted any integer or whole; whence the English word ace. Thus as signified the whole inheritance; whence heres ex asse, the heir to the whole estate.