Haro
THE CRY OF, an old form of appeal in Normandy and the Channel Islands, equivalent to a demand a either for protection against bodily harm or for assistance to arrest an adversary.
The word was anciently understood to be an appeal to Rolf, Rollo, or Rou, the first Duke of Normandy; a better deri vation seems to be from the Old High German hera or hara, here, making haro simply a cry for aid.
HAROLD I., surnamed HAREFOOT, Danish king of England, succeeded his father Canute in 1035 as king of the provinces N. of the Thames, and became king of all England in 1037. His coun- HAROLD I. trymen, the Danes, maintained him upon the throne against the efforts of Earl Godwin in favor of Hardicanute; and Harold latterly gained the earl over.
After a reign of four years Harold died in 1040.
HAROLD II., King of England; born about 1022, was the second son of Godwin, Earl of Kent. On the death of Edward the Confessor, Jan. 5, 1066, he stepped without opposition into the vavacant throne, without attending to claim of Edgar Atheling or the asserted bequest of Edward in favor of the Duke of Normandy. The latter immediately called upon him to resign the crown, and upon his refusal prepared for invasion. He also instigated Harold's brother, Tostig, to infest the N. coasts of England in conjunction with the King of Norway. The united fleets of these chiefs sailed up the Humber and landed a numerous body of men; but at Stamford Bridge, in Yorkshire, were totally routed by Harold, whose brother Tostig fell in the battle. Immediately after he heard of the landing of the Duke of Normandy at Pevensey, in Sussex. Hastening thither with all the troops he could muster, a general engagement ensued at Senlac near Hastings, Oct. 14, 1066, in which Harold was slain, and the crown of England passed to William.
HAROLD I., surnamed HAARFAGEP (Fair-haired), the first king of all Norway. He was the son of Halfdan the Black, the most powerful of the jarls or petty kings of southeastern Norway.
According to the popular story, he loved a high born maiden named Gyda, but she declared she would not be his wife till he was sole king of Norway; he in his turn thereupon took an oath that he would neither cut nor comb his hair till he had accomplished her bidding. After a severe struggle of some years' duration (863-872) he subdued, first the chiefs between Throndhjem and the Sogne Fjord, and finally the kings of the S. W., whom he defeated in a naval battle near Stavanger. The conquered districts he placed under the rule of his own jarls, or such as were devoted to his service. This led many of the old nobles to emigrate to the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and to Iceland, whence they conducted a series of piratical expeditions against Norway, till at length Harold was constrained to sail W. and chastise them in their own seas. In his old age Harold divided his territories among his sons, and died at Throndhjem, which he had made his capital, in 930, leaving the supreme power to his son Eric, surnamed Bloody-Axe.
HAROLD III.
HAROLD III., surnamed HAARDRAADE, or HARDRADA (stern in council), a king of Norway. He was one of the most famous of the old Viking chiefs, and a descendant of Harold I. While still a boy he was present at the battle of Stikklestad (1030), in which his brother, St. Olaf, King of Norway, was slain.
Harold himself sought an asylum at the court of his relative, Yaroslaff, Prince of Novgorod. Thence, going on to Constantinople, he became captain of the Varangians or Scandinavian bodyguard of the Greek emperors, and in command of them defeated the Saracens in several battles in Sicily and Italy. On his return to Constantinople he drew upon himself the vengeance of the Empress whose proffered love he rejected, and with difficulty made good his escape to Russia, where he married the daughter of Duke Yaroslaff. But he did not remain in Russia. He returned about 1045 to Norway , where his nephew, Magnus (the son of St. Olaf), agreed to divide the supreme power with him, in exchange for a share of his treasures.
The death of Magnus in 1047 left Harold sole old sole king of Norway, and Svend King of Denmark; but with Svend Harold waged unrelenting war till 1064. This king changed the capital of Norway from way from Throndhjem to Opslo, now a suburb of Christiania. Two years later he landed in England, to aid Tostig against his brother Harold, King of England, but was slain in battle at Stamford Bridge, where also the flower of his warriors fell.
HAROUN (här-ön') surnamed AL-RAS- CHID (more properly Harún er Rashid the the orthodox), the most renowned of the He succeeded his elder brother, El Hádi, in the caliphate, in the year 786. He owed his peaceful accession to the sagacity of the Yahya, whom he at once made his grand vizier. To him and his four sons he left the entire administration of his extensive kingdom, and the prosperity of the country proved that ity of the country proved that his confidence was not misplaced. Meantime Haroun gave himself up to the pleasures of life, and made his court at Bagdad a brilliant center of all the wit, learning and art of the Moslem world. Toward the end of his reign a strange and deeply rooted hatred toward the Barmecides filled his mind, and in 803 he caused the vizier, his four sons, and all their descendants, save one, to be executed, not even excepting his favorite Jaafer (Giafar), who had been his constant companion in his famous but apocryphal nocturnal rambles through the streets of Bagdad. But the retribution of heaven HARPER'S FERRY quickly followed; his affairs fell into irconfusion; treason and rebellion showed themselves in every corner of the empire; and, when it was too late, cruelty. To quell a formidable rising Haroun repented bitterly his ferocious in Khorassan, in the N. E. of the empire, Haroun marched in person against the rebels, but an attack of apoplexy obliged him to remain behind, in Tûs, where he soon afterward died, in the month of March, 809. Haroun the Magnificent is the hero of many of the stories in the "Arabian Nights."