The Akarnanians formed "a link of transition" between the ancient Greeks and their barbarous or non-Hellenic neighbours in the Epirus and beyond. "They occupied the territory between the river Acheloûs, the Ionian sea and the Ambrakian gulf: they were Greeks and admitted as such to contend at the Pan-Hellenic games, yet they were also closely connected with the Amphilochi and Agræi, who were not Greeks. In manners, sentiments and intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and half-Epirotic,—like the Ætolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. Even down to the time of Thucydides, these nations were subdivided into numerous petty communities, lived in unfortified villages, were frequently in the habit of plundering each other, and never permitted themselves to be unarmed. … Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, the Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among themselves. … The Akarnanians appear to have produced many prophets. They traced up their mythical ancestry, as well as that of their neighbours the Amphilochians, to the most renowned prophetic family among the Grecian heroes,—Amphiaraus, with his sons Alkmæôn and Ampilochus: Akarnan, the eponymous hero of the nation, and other eponymous heroes of the separate towns, were supposed to be the sons of Alkmæôn. They are spoken of, together with the Ætolians, as mere rude shepherds, by the lyric poet Alkman, and so they seem to have continued with little alteration until the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when we hear of them, for the first time, as allies of Athens and as bitter enemies of the Corinthian colonies on their coast. The contact of those colonies, however, and the large spread of Akarnanian accessible coast, could not fail to produce some effect in socializing and improving the people. And it is probable that this effect would have been more sensibly felt, had not the Akarnanians been kept back by the fatal neighbourhood of the Ætolians, with whom they were in perpetual feud,—a people the most unprincipled and unimprovable of all who bore the Hellenic name, and whose habitual faithlessness stood in marked contrast with the rectitude and steadfastness of the Akarnanian character." _G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 24._ AKBAR (called The Great), Moghul Emperor or Padischah of India, A. D. 1556-1605. AKHALZIKH, Siege and capture of (1828). See TURKS: A. D. 1826-1829. AKKAD. AKKADIANS. See BABYLONIA, PRIMITIVE. AKKARON. See PHILISTINES. AKROKERAUNIAN PROMONTORY. See KORKYRA. ALABAMA: The Aboriginal Inhabitants. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: APALACHES: MUSKHOGEE FAMILY; CHEROKEES. ALABAMA: A. D. 1539-1542. Traversed by Hernando de Soto. See FLORIDA: A. D. 1528-1542. ALABAMA: A. D. 1629. Embraced in the Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath.