CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HISPANO-ARAB AGE OF LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

760–1450

Intellectual Stagnation of Europe during the Period of Moslem

Greatness--High Rank of Scholars in Spain--Attainments

of the Khalifs--Character of Arab Literature--Progress

of Science--The Alexandrian Museum--Its Wonderful

Discoveries--Its Contributions to Learning--Its Influence on

the Career of the Mohammedans--The Arabic Language--Poetry

of the Arabs--Its General Characteristics--Theology and

Jurisprudence--History--Geography--Philosophy--Libraries--

Rationalism--Averroes--Mathematics--Astronomy--Al-Hazen--Gerbert

--Botany--Alchemy--Chemistry--Pharmacy--Albertus Magnus, Robert

Grossetete, and Roger Bacon--Medicine and Surgery--Ignorance of

their Theories and Scientific Application in Mediæval Europe--

Prevalence of Imposture--Fatality of Epidemics--Great Advance of

the Arabs in Medical Knowledge--Hospitals--Treatment of Various

Diseases--The Famous Moslem Practitioners--Contrast between the

Christian and the Mohammedan Systems--Enduring Effects of Arab

Science--Its Example and Benefits the Creative Influence of Modern

Civilization.

While the Christian world was enveloped in darkness, and all learning

save that of worthless metaphysics and polemic theology had been

banished from the minds of men; while England was distracted by

Danish and Norman invasion, and barbarous monks defied the authority

of her kings in the very presence of the throne; while Charlemagne

was desolating the provinces of Germany by sweeping and merciless

proscription; while ecumenical councils were proclaiming the virtues

of celibacy and the sanctity of images; while the populace of Rome

was amused by the scandal of a female pope; during this period of

intellectual stagnation the Moorish princes of Spain and Sicily, alone

among the sovereigns of the West, kept alive the sacred fires of art,

science, and philosophy. The thirst of empire, stimulated by the

fervor of religious enthusiasm, had subjected to the Moslem sceptre a

territory exceeding in extent and opulence the vast and fertile area

which, in its most prosperous age, acknowledged the authority of the

Cæsars. The Arab capitals of Cordova, Cairo, Damascus, and Bagdad did

not yield in magnificence of architecture, in pomp of ceremonial, in

the skilful adaptation of the mechanical arts, in the accumulation of

prodigious wealth, in the opportunities for luxurious indulgence, to

the traditional precedence of imperial Rome. In scientific attainments

no comparison existed between the vague and unprofitable speculations

derived from the schools of Greek and Latin philosophy and the results

obtained from the practical application of principles conducive to

the development of the human reason and the promotion of the welfare

of mankind. In the intellectual as well as in the physical world the

success of the Arabs was unprecedented. During the most splendid

period of the Spanish-Mohammedan empire, ignorance was accounted so

disgraceful that men who had not enjoyed opportunities of education

in early life concealed the fact as far as possible, just as they

would have hidden the commission of a crime. On the other hand, the

learned--trusted by the sovereign, the oracles of the schools, the

depositaries of influence and power--never relaxed their efforts for

the development of their talents and the increase of their knowledge;

and such was their ardor and their perseverance, that they gave rise to

the popular proverb, “There are two creatures that are insatiable,--the

man of money and the man of science.” The thorough instruction imparted

by the Hispano-Arab institutions of learning was highly appreciated by

foreign nations, and students went from the most bigoted communities

of Europe to enter the Universities of Cordova and Seville. In every

branch of polite literature the indefatigable Moslem manifested his

genius and his diligence. His versatile talents and his prolixity are

at once the wonder and the despair of the most patient and studious

reader. One remarkable personage, Ibn-al-Khatib, of Cordova, who died

in the tenth century, is credited with nearly eleven hundred works on

metaphysics, history, and medicine. Ibn-Hasen composed four hundred

and fifty books on philosophy and jurisprudence. Another writer left

behind him eighty thousand pages of closely written manuscript. It

was no unusual circumstance for a dictionary or an encyclopædia to

number fifty volumes. Commentaries on theology, religious tradition,

and law were almost infinite in the extent and diversity of their

topics. The historical productions of the Spanish Arabs were probably

the most minute and voluminous ever published by any people, and their

scrupulous fidelity to truth has been repeatedly established by the

comparison of their descriptions with the architectural monuments which

have descended to us, and by the corroborative evidence of distant and

often hostile writers. The authors are usually deficient, however,

in the application, and often even in the knowledge, of the canons

of historical criticism; their love of the marvellous occasionally

interferes with their judgment, and their descriptions, overloaded with

florid rhetoric, belong rather to the province of the orator than to

that of the accurate and discriminating historian. More than a thousand

chroniclers have illustrated the annals of Moorish Spain. Their style,

at once turgid and obscure, often renders their meaning unintelligible,

while their text is overburdened with puerile anecdotes, Koranic

allusions, and perplexing Oriental metaphors. Generations passed

in another land, under conditions of extraordinary political and

industrial activity, seemed powerless to eradicate or even to

substantially modify the mental characteristics of a race bred amidst

the solitude and dominated by the prejudices and the superstitions

of the Asiatic Desert. The stubborn persistence of these traits is

one of the most singular phases of its life and history. Its polity

and its religious belief were foreign to, and irreconcilable with,

those that prevailed elsewhere in Europe. Its customs, its language,

its literature were all exotic. In works of imagination, the elegant

fictions of the East, fascinating to the highest degree, and better

adapted to the expanding intellect of man than the coarse and barbaric

tales of Gothic origin, soon supplanted the latter, as the light and

keen-edged scimetar had already driven out the clumsy broadsword of

the followers of Roderick. The practical methods of thought founded

upon the system of Aristotle everywhere obtained precedence over

the unsubstantial and visionary theories of the Platonic school. In

public assemblies, where men and women alike competed for the prize

of literary superiority; in social intercourse, where the fair sex

were accorded far more liberty than had ever been vouchsafed to the

matrons and virgins of antiquity, or than is now enjoyed in the harems

of the Orient, were developed and practised those amenities and graces

which, fostered by songs of love and gallantry, eventually, through the

agency of bard and minstrel, were distributed far and wide throughout

the continent of Europe. The desire for learning and the appreciation

of its advantages were so universal as to be considered national

characteristics. The Khalif was the discriminating and generous

patron of genius. His favorite ministers were those whose productions

had raised them to deserved eminence in the world of letters. In

the Moslem system, a competent acquaintance with the principles of

jurisprudence was an essential requisite of every finished education.

The wonderful grasp of the Arab mind, which seemed to adapt itself

with equal facility to the most opposite conditions, was especially

fitted for the exacting requirements of diplomacy,--a calling for

which proficiency in learning has, in later times, come to be regarded

rather as a disqualification than an advantage. The greatest scholars,

therefore, discharged the most important employments, and stood highest

in the precarious favor of the Moslem princes of Europe. Their literary

productions were recompensed with even greater munificence than their

services to the state. They almost constituted a caste, so marked were

their pride and exclusiveness. Untold wealth was lavished upon them.

They took precedence of nobles who traced their ancestry to a period

lost in the mazes of Arabic tradition. Their daughters, occupants of

the imperial harems, not infrequently became the mothers of sovereigns.

Their ostentatious magnificence moved the envy of the most opulent

subjects of the empire. Their residences were not inferior in extent

and splendor to the habitations of royalty. Great retinues of slaves

attended their progress through the streets. Soldiers in uniforms

of silk and gold guarded their palaces, preceded their march, and

protected their persons from the effects of popular violence. The most

lovely women to be procured in the slave-markets of Europe and Asia

filled their seraglios.

The poet, the astronomer, and the historian, raised to posts of high

political responsibility, enjoyed the confidence and the intimate

familiarity of the monarch in whose presence the most distinguished

soldiers trembled. Such was the grateful tribute paid by imperial

power to intellectual pre-eminence. That this extraordinary favor

should not be abused could scarcely have been expected from even the

strongest understandings when subjected to the temptations of flattery

and ambition. The lessons of philosophy were insufficient to correct

the ignoble vices inseparably incident to human nature, and which, in

all ages, have exercised despotic influence over the mind of man. The

insolence and rapacity of these ministers rendered them offensive to

the people; their dangerous aspirations eventually excited the fears

of the sovereign. No class of men was so universally detested. The

ancient chronicles are filled with accounts of their cruelty, their

injustice, and their misfortunes. Some were sacrificed to the jealousy

of their master, others fell victims to the unreasoning fury of the

populace. Few there were who retained, in the midst of greatness,

those virtues and that modesty which should always characterize the

noble pursuit of letters, success in which had raised these statesmen

to places of such consideration and authority. While the Koran, as

interpreted by the more rigid Mussulman theologians, discourages

scientific inquiry and the study of natural philosophy, the Khalifs

of Cordova, in more than one instance, incurred the reproach of

heterodoxy through the indulgence of investigations prohibited by

law to their subjects, and, thus encouraged, the intelligent society

of the capital did not disdain to adopt the noble maxim of the head

of a rival sect. which declares that “the ink of the learned is as

precious as the blood of the martyrs,” while the consistent believer

kept constantly in remembrance the statement of the Prophet that on

the Day of Judgment a rigid account will be required of the literary

opportunities improved or abused by the Faithful. Not only did these

great princes encourage literature by the bestowal of substantial

honors and rewards, but they themselves won in that field laurels

more profitable and enduring than any gained in the most successful

campaign against the infidel. Abd-al-Rahman I. was an astronomer and a

poet of unusual ability. Hischem I. and Al-Hakem I. were among the best

informed scholars and critics of their time. The talents and learning

which rendered illustrious the life and character of Abd-al-Rahman

II., his acquaintance with the sciences of law and natural philosophy,

his patronage of letters, caused him to be compared to Al-Mamum, the

most renowned of the Khalifs of Bagdad. The erudition and acquirements

of Al-Hakem II. were prodigious; the volumes of the immense library

of Cordova were enriched by notes and comments in his own hand, and

such was his zeal that his eyesight was ultimately sacrified to the

assiduity with which he applied himself to every branch of knowledge.

The imperial dignity, great as it appeared at its culmination, during

his reign was the least important of his titles to eminence. In the

golden age of Arabic literature, he stood conspicuous amidst thousands

of distinguished writers, jurists, annalists, biographers. A critical

history of Andalusia which he composed was famous for its accuracy

and for the vast stores of information it contained, and, widely

read, it long remained a monument to the remarkable erudition and

industry of its author. No scholar of his time was his superior in

depth and variety of intellectual attainments. He was the master of

many languages and dialects. He wrote with equal fluency and elegance

on almost every subject. Nothing pleased him so much as the perusal

of a new and valuable work, and the accumulation of books was with

him a passion, which supplanted the duty of proselytism and the lust

of power. His library was so extensive that it overflowed the great

building which had been erected for its reception, and whose treasures,

the masterpieces of every nation--Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Egyptian,

Persian, Hebrew, and Arabic--were the delight of the learned and the

marvel of an illiterate and superstitious age.

Abdallah attained distinction by the plaintive elegies in which he

celebrated the misfortunes of his house; Suleyman was dreaded for the

cutting verses in which he satirized the treachery and hypocrisy of the

city and the court.

The spirit of literary taste and rivalry which had inspired the

accomplished society of the khalifate was not lost with the

dismemberment of the empire. The capital of each principality became

a centre of culture, of learning, of the arts. The rulers of these

petty states, whose population still retained, amidst the turbulent

scenes of civil discord and foreign encroachment, no small measure of

that intelligence and taste which had so eminently distinguished their

fathers, vied with each other in their encouragement of science and in

their patronage of learned men. In this noble emulation, as well as

in their own scholastic acquirements, the Moorish princes maintained

the fame of their ancestors and the traditions of the monarchy. Every

facility was afforded to the professors of experimental science.

Political honors, salaries, pensions, attracted the scholars of distant

countries. Religious intolerance had no place in a society whose

cardinal principle was absolute liberty of thought, and which had long

been accustomed to consider the untrammelled exercise of reason as an

inherent and inalienable right. Al-Moktadir, King of Saragossa, was

renowned for his erudition; his knowledge of philosophy, geometry, and

astronomy was superior to that of any of the wise men of his court.

Al-Modhaffer, King of Badajoz, compiled a great encyclopædia. The

rulers of Almeria, Valencia, and Seville were not less distinguished

for their profound scholarship and the protection they afforded to

letters. The monarchs of the Abbadide dynasty, and especially Motamid

II., were renowned for the harmony and pathos of their verses. The

Almohade sovereign, Abd-al-Mumen, the nominal representative of

the destroying principle of fanaticism, was the admiring patron of

Ibn-Tofail, Ibn-Zohr, and Averroes, three of the greatest writers

who ever embellished by their talents the literature of any age. The

achievements of the Alhamares of Granada in the world of art and

science, and the culture of their court--the last refuge of learning in

mediæval Europe--form the most attractive episode in the annals of the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Encouraged by the example and the patronage of royalty, the mental

development of the masses advanced with gigantic strides. The spirit

of progress, the incentives of a lofty ambition, animated all orders

and conditions of men. So universal was the thirst for knowledge that

even the blind, though hampered by the unkindness of nature, were still

able, in that age of intellectual rivalry, to attain a high rank in

the scale of literary excellence. The rhyming dictionaries, suggestive

memorials of perverted and laborious ingenuity; the impassioned poems,

born of a tropical clime and a sensual religion; the unprecedented and

rapid progress attained in the exact sciences; the voluminous works on

theology and history, and the incredible erudition of their authors,

the numerous universities, the grand libraries, the competitive

examinations, the public contests for literary precedence and royal

favor, attest a degree of enlightenment little to be expected from a

people sprung from a barbarian and idolatrous ancestry, and are all the

more remarkable when contrasted with the degradation of contemporaneous

Europe. Fanaticism and prejudice closed to the inquisitive mind of the

Moslem some of the most important stores of classic wisdom. For, while

the natural philosophers and historians of Athens were studied with

the greatest assiduity, Mohammedan piety rejected with abhorrence the

sublime creations of Grecian poetry on account of the gross fictions

of its mythology, so repugnant to the exalted ideas of the unity and

perfection of God. Nor was the fiery and impassioned nature of the Arab

capable of appreciating the dignity of heroic verse or the measured

cadence and majestic pomp of the Attic drama. It delighted in stirring

lyrics, satirical epigrams, amatory songs, and pathetic elegiac lays.

The marked influence exerted by Arabic poetry on the civilization of

Europe has already been referred to in these pages. Its matter is

frequently overloaded with quaint conceits and obscure allusions,

its lucidity habitually sacrificed to difficult feats of rhyme, its

style disfigured by extravagant metaphor and hyperbole. Love of the

beautiful, the marvellous, the supernatural were the most prominent

characteristics of Arabic writers, and from the effects of these

national propensities even dignified works on scientific subjects were

not entirely free.

Learned and voluminous as were the purely literary productions of the

Hispano-Arab scholars, they were of secondary importance when compared

with the practical achievements of the experimenters in the world

of science. The Saracens introduced into Western Europe the Indian

numerals, the tabulated observations of Babylon, and the discoveries

of the astronomers of the Alexandrian School. These wise investigators

examined the effect of gravity, and narrowly missed ascertaining its

principles; they constructed the pendulum clock and the balance;

they explained with perspicuity and exactness the origin of many

hitherto mysterious physical occurrences which popular ignorance was

accustomed to ascribe to supernatural intervention rather than to the

inexorable and necessary operation of Nature’s laws. They were the

first to demonstrate that the aerolite was a cosmic fragment and not

a missile of Divine wrath, and to subject the substances of which it

was composed to chemical analysis. They formulated a table of specific

gravities, and the densities of bodies as laid down by them is said

by Tyndall not to vary essentially from those accepted at the present

day. They understood the force of capillary attraction; they had

approximated to the true height of the atmosphere, and had noted its

diminished weight at a distance from the earth. As early as the tenth

century they had formed singularly correct ideas of the nature and

causes of many geological phenomena,--such as the varying erosion of

strata by the action of the elements, the presence of fossil remains

on the summits of mountain ranges and the different characteristics

they exhibited according as their origin was terrestrial or aquatic,

the elevation and depression of the surface of the globe extending

through inconceivably protracted periods of time. Both chemistry and

pharmacy were pursued with remarkable success in the laboratories of

Moorish Spain. Medicine and surgery especially engaged the attention

of the ambitious student, who found an enthusiastic and dangerous

competitor for distinction in the Hebrew, whose attainments and skill

not unfrequently placed him at the head of his profession. Dissection

was not unknown, but reverence for the dead preserved the human form

from the scalpel, and the anatomical researches of the Arab surgeon

were, in public at least, limited to animals of the lower orders,

multitudes of which were annually sacrificed to the demands of science.

In that noble pursuit which has for its object the determination of

the motions of the celestial bodies, and the establishment of their

relations with each other and with the universe, the Hispano-Arab, as

in the investigation of other natural phenomena and in the solution of

abstruse philosophical problems, evinced a rare and peculiar aptitude.

In Moorish Spain, as in Chaldea, Babylonia, and ancient Egypt--where

all astronomers were priests--the sanctuary of God was in part devoted

to the study of the most sublime and wonderful of His creations,

the visible heavens. Gnomous, astrolabes, dioptras, solstitial and

equinoctial armils, were placed upon the minarets of the most sacred

temples. The calculations of the observer were completed in the

academical institution which Moslem tradition and practice caused to

be attached to every building consecrated to the worship of Allah. No

profession ranked higher than that of the astronomer. The sovereign

loaded him with wealth and honors. In the mosque he was received with

a consideration not inferior to that exacted by the most revered

expounders of the Mohammedan law. The populace, recognizing in him a

mysterious personage who in secret held communion with other worlds,

and too often confounding him with the astrologer, gave way as he

traversed the streets, and in whispers spoke of him as the heir of the

wisdom of Solomon and as a mortal invested with supernatural powers.

The study of the heavens was greatly promoted by the progress made in

the science of optics, and by the lucid explanation of illusions due

to atmospheric refraction. In this way the twinkling of the stars, the

apparent inequality of the horizontal and vertical diameters of the

planets, and the prolongation of the day after sunset were accounted

for. The invention of the telescope, the comparison of observations

taken at widely distant stations in every portion of the globe, the

perfection of apparatus which measures, weighs, and separates the

component elements of our atmosphere, the intelligent application

of the principles of physics, and the progressive experience of

nine hundred years have not affected the definiteness and scientific

accuracy of these conclusions.

The Spanish Moslems possessed both terrestrial and celestial globes;

some were composed of brass, others of massy silver. Their astronomical

instruments were beautifully made, and were graduated with the greatest

minuteness and precision. They had ten different kinds of quadrants,

one of the most ingenious and complete having been invented by

Al-Zarkal, of Toledo. They made use of clocks moved by water, sand,

and weights. The Arabic armillary spheres and astrolabes preserved in

the museums of Europe are not surpassed by the most laborious efforts

of modern ingenuity in excellence of finish, and in the accuracy of

adjustment which implies the possession by the artisan of a competent

knowledge of the delicate operations for which they were intended. It

must not be forgotten that these instruments, through whose agency such

wonderful results were achieved, will compare favorably in elegance

of construction with the optical appliances of the best equipped

observatory of to-day.

To facilitate the investigations of the natural historian, there were

numerous zoological collections, where the habits and characteristics

of animals and birds of every description could be observed and noted

for the present entertainment and future profit of mankind. The

royal botanical gardens contained an endless variety of plants, both

indigenous and exotic, cultivated for their brilliant foliage, their

grateful fragrance, or their culinary and medicinal virtues.

The portentous development of Arabic intellectual activity presents

one of the most interesting and instructive examples of progress in

the history of the human mind. The Bedouin was a typical barbarian

and freebooter. He had no organized government, and acknowledged

no permanent authority. Without a settled habitation, he despised

all who pursued the avocations of peace. He subsisted by pillage.

His religion was debased, cruel, idolatrous. With the exception of a

few poems and some collections of tales recounting the exploits of

spirits and magicians, he had nothing which could be dignified by the

name of literature. It is true that his language was one of the most

copious and flexible ever devised by man, but its powers had never

been tested and were practically unknown. Even the courage of the

Arab was not exempt from suspicion, and he notoriously preferred the

advantages of ambuscade and surprise to the more hazardous encounter

of the open field. Almost his sole, certainly his most conspicuous,

virtue was hospitality; but every consideration of friendship and

courtesy was forgotten as soon as the guest of the night had quitted

the precincts of his camp. The prevalence of such conditions was, it

must be admitted, eminently unfavorable to the encouragement of science

and letters. The Arab conqueror, therefore, in the prosecution of

his literary career, owed nothing to the usually powerful influence

of national tradition and example. His first important act was the

destruction of the great library of Alexandria, his second the

spoliation of the monuments of the Pharaohs, and the razing--in order

to obtain materials for his own inferior constructions--of the vast

structures of Greek and Roman antiquity which adorned that famous

capital. The thoroughness with which this work was accomplished is

demonstrated by the total absence of any remains of those superb

edifices which were alike the pride of the Macedonian dynasty and the

boast of the age of Augustus and Hadrian. In these acts of violence

he only followed the inherent destructive and predatory instincts of

his race. Contact with civilization and experience of its benefits,

however, soon wrought a change in his nature, a change momentous

in its results and which has no parallel in the annals of human

advancement. A century after the Hegira, the descendant of the vagrant

Bedouin had attained a remarkable predominance in every department of

polite literature and scientific knowledge. The impulse which wrought

this mighty intellectual transformation was imparted by Egypt, and

sprang from the historical and philosophical reminiscences of the

Alexandrian Museum. That renowned institution was the unique and

practical embodiment of the passion for innovation, of the inventive

faculty, of the utilitarian spirit of the ancient world. The doctrines

of the higher antiquity were, as is well known, largely theoretical

and speculative. The occasional appearance of men of genius like

Hippocrates and Aristotle only served to emphasize the worthless

character of the verbose and unprofitable disquisitions of the schools

of Greek philosophy. Anterior to the fourth century before Christ,

science owed little to experiment, and all knowledge of any value was

empirical, or the result of purely accidental discovery. No intelligent

method of investigation existed. No system which had for its object the

physical amelioration of humanity was deemed worthy of attention. Such

practical aims were trifles and beneath the dignity of the wise man

of that age. His time was occupied in attempts to explain the nature

of the soul, to define the supreme good, to discover the original

essence of all created things, to demonstrate the fancied harmony

or dissonance of numbers. In these absurd and fruitless occupations

were wasted intellectual abilities which, properly directed, might

have changed the aspect of nature and the condition of society many

centuries before modern inventive genius was afforded an opportunity to

exhibit its marvellous powers. The shrewd and discerning soldier, who,

in the partition of empire, received as his share the ancient dominion

of Egypt, pursued a diametrically opposite course in the policy he

adopted for the promotion of education and literature. He united the

culture of Macedon and the venerable traditions of the civilization of

Persia with the experience gained in many campaigns. His skeptical and

arbitrary nature had little sympathy with the abject superstitions of

his Egyptian subjects, and still less with the despotic pretensions

of their priesthood. His position as ruler invested him with almost

theocratical authority. Scarcely was he seated upon the throne before

a radical change was resolved upon. The genius of Ptolemy impelled him

to attempt the modification of a system, sanctified by the practice

of immemorial antiquity, in such a way that its outward observance

would not be repugnant to Greek intelligence nor, by the violation of

long-established prejudices, the stability of the newly constituted

government be endangered. To accomplish this end, the worship of

Serapis, the representative of Oriental Pantheism, was introduced.

This strange co-ordination of skepticism and idolatry was productive

of remarkable consequences. The Egyptians admitted with enthusiasm a

new god into their Pantheon. The Ptolemaic dynasty was placed upon a

firm and enduring basis. In the magnificent temple where was enshrined

the image of the divinity, whose nominal worship became of such

importance to future civilization, a grand institution of learning,

totally unlike any that had hitherto imparted instruction to man, was

established. Considerations of practical utility were recognized as the

sole and legitimate objects of its foundation. Observation, experiment,

debate, occupied the leisure of its professors. The principles of

every known science whose application could enure to the benefit

of humanity--medicine, surgery, astronomy, botany, physics--were

expounded in its halls. Its library, subsequently destroyed by Amru,

was the greatest collection of books ever assembled in ancient times.

The fame of this great university soon spread throughout the world.

The number of students who attended its lectures was incredible, not

infrequently reaching the enormous figure of thirteen thousand. Their

ambition was excited by the presence of the sovereign, who often

assisted in the experiments and participated in the discussions.

The most prominent characteristic of this unique educational

institution was the catholic spirit which it manifested towards

the representatives of hostile religious systems. Paganism was the

recognized worship of the state. Its temples were numerous, its

ceremonials of sacrifice, divination, and augury were performed with

every accessory which could be afforded by unlimited wealth and

prodigal munificence. Yet the philosophical doctrines consecrated

by a hoary antiquity, and whose study has given rise to modern

agnosticism, were highly esteemed by the educated classes of Egypt. It

was to facilitate their introduction and acceptance that the scoffing

Greeks had consented with mock solemnity to prostrate themselves

before the altar of Serapis. The Jew, elsewhere despised, readily

found a respectful audience for his monotheistic principles in the

cosmopolitan society of Alexandria, and, what was to him of far greater

moment, an opportunity to reap enormous profits from the commercial

advantages offered by the most flourishing metropolis in the world.

The fabled genealogies of the Olympian deities were perused by Jewish

scholars with the same attention, if not with the same respect, as

the sacred legends of the Hebrew race. The poems of Homer survived

to delight posterity through the editions of the Alexandrian Museum;

the Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint,

published by Ptolemy Philadelphus, is still an authority with erudite

theologians. The spirit of inquiry was the dominating factor of the

Ptolemaic educational and philosophical systems. Every hypothesis was

rejected which could not stand the test of practical experiment and

demonstration. No fact was considered too insignificant to be made

the subject of intelligent and exhaustive scrutiny. The most abstruse

problems of mathematical and physical science, the most obscure and

difficult questions concerning life--its origin, its progress, its

decay--were daily proposed for investigation and solution. The study

of biology was one of the favorite pursuits of the Alexandrian School,

and it is not impossible that topics which in recent years have so

deeply engaged the attention of the learned may have been a subject of

its profound and labored disquisitions. Among these was, perhaps, the

doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest, which was not unfamiliar to

the Greeks, for its adoption is advocated by Plato in his Republic,

and its practical application was long a leading principle of the Code

of Lacedæmon. The rational procedure employed in the study of medicine

and surgery was most favorable to the prosecution of biological and

physiological research. These sciences were established upon the solid

foundation of anatomical demonstration. Autopsies and vivisections

were of daily occurrence. The active participation of the kings in the

operations of the clinic was due, no doubt, to a desire to discover the

secret of longevity, and to justify by their sanction proceedings which

the prejudices of all the races of antiquity branded as desecrations,

actions abhorrent to reverence and decency. Many notable discoveries

were the result of these enlightened methods. The offices of the

internal organs, the ramifications of the venous system, the form and

convolutions of the brain, the phenomena of respiration, digestion,

and procreation, were described in terms remarkable for correctness

and lucidity. It is a singular fact that in the midst of all these

anatomical investigations, many of which were made upon the bodies of

living animals, the peculiar function of the arteries remained unknown.

The Alexandrian academicians supposed that they were intended, in their

normal condition, for the circulation of air, and the vast period of

thirteen centuries was destined to elapse before the genius of Harvey

designated their true place in the human economy. Herophilus explained

the relations of the brain and the nervous system. Erasistratus

established the distinction between the nerves of sensation and

motion. Alexandria abounded in specialists of every kind,--oculists,

lithotomists, surgeons who treated the diseases of women. The practice

of medicine was indirectly aided by a pursuit of a widely divergent

character, the cultivation of alchemy. As, afterwards, under the

Arabs, though not with such marked results, this delusion, through

the discoveries induced by its study, proved of substantial service

to the intelligent physician. The department of the Materia Medica

was enriched by the importation of drugs, and by the cultivation, in

botanical gardens, of foreign plants of great medicinal value. The

school of the Ptolemies was so famous that an attendance upon its

lectures, for however short a period, conferred upon a practitioner

great professional distinction. All of the celebrated medical men of

antiquity, with the single exception of Hippocrates, derived their

information, and were indebted for their success, to the Alexandrian

Museum. The extraordinary impulse imparted to all branches of science

by this splendid institution was not materially checked for centuries.

Before its foundation astronomy had long been stationary, but with

the facilities it afforded a gigantic advance was accomplished. The

heavens were mapped out and the constellations defined. The stars were

catalogued. The motions of the planets were observed and compared, and

the erroneous but plausible system of eccentrics and epicycles invented

to account for the various phases they presented at different times.

The globular form of the earth was demonstrated to the satisfaction

of every intelligent mind. The mechanism and cycles of eclipses,

the precession of the equinoxes, the first and second inequalities

of the moon were explained. Estimates, more or less approximated to

correctness, were made of the dimensions of the globe. Its surface

was delineated, its climates described, hypotheses to account for the

phenomena of its atmospheric changes advanced. Besides those already

referred to, all sciences of a practical tendency--geometry, botany,

natural history--were accorded a place in the course of the Museum;

even the ordinarily prohibited studies of astrology and divination were

not excluded. The names of such mathematicians as Euclid, Archimedes,

and Conon; of such astronomers as Ptolemy and Hipparchus; of such

geographers as Eratosthenes; of such geometers as Apollonius Pergæus;

of such ornithologists as Callimachus; of such poets as Theocritus

and Lycophron, suggest the infinite obligations of posterity to

the noble institution established by Ptolemy Philadelphus at the

mouth of the Nile. From such a source was derived the inspiration

of Arab intellectual progress that preserved and multiplied the

precious literary treasures in which were embodied the wisdom and the

achievements of antiquity. That inspiration was, however, destined

to long remain dormant. A melancholy period of eleven centuries of

bigotry, ferocity, and ignorance separates the Alexandrian Museum from

the University of Cordova.

To the unrivalled capabilities of the Arabic language was principally

due the success of those who employed it in all branches of literature.

That rich and sonorous idiom, isolated for centuries in the Desert,

had been formed and perfected without contamination by extraneous

influences. The peculiarities of its alphabet, the infinite multitude

of its terms, the complexity of its conjugations, and the obscurity of

style which its writers regard as an excellence worthy of assiduous

cultivation, render its mastery by one not native to the soil a task

of almost insuperable difficulty. The perfection of its grammar and

the elegance of its construction imply many centuries of use and much

literary practice for their establishment. Each tribe had contributed

to its copious vocabulary. The number of synonyms by which objects

of common occurrence or habitual usage are designated is enormous.

It contains eighty names for honey, two hundred for a serpent, five

hundred for a lion, one thousand for a sword. It has exerted a

marked and permanent influence on the idioms and the literature of

Europe. Many of our most familiar English terms have come down from

it unaltered. French abounds in words and expressions derived from

the same source. Spanish has been called a corrupt Arabic dialect,

and its richness in proverbs is due to the use of that tongue in the

Peninsula for nine hundred years. The influence of the Sicilian Moslems

on Italian is very apparent. The Romance languages were largely Arabic

and Hebrew. This exuberance gave the poet an immense advantage for the

exercise of his talents. The periodical literary assemblies, popular

in Arabia, had the effect of improving the diction of the competitors,

and contributed greatly to the embellishment of the language in which

their poems were composed. Facility of versification was so common

that its possession was not regarded as an accomplishment, except

where it produced results denoting unusual ability. So many words

have a similar termination in Arabic, that in poems of considerable

length the same rhyme is alternately made use of from beginning to end.

Improvisatorial skill, so highly esteemed by the Moors, was rather

mechanical than the result of poetic inspiration, and was immensely

facilitated by the abundance of terms at the command of the poet,

whose mind was trained to this mental exercise from childhood. Arabic

versification readily adapts itself to every quantity and variation of

numbers required by the practice of the art of poetical composition.

It is lavish in the use of metaphor, simile, antithesis. In elegance

of style, in brilliancy of expression, and in fertility of fancy

it presents examples not inferior to the finest models of classic

antiquity. Its characteristic extravagance was the result of national

taste, a taste often perverted by a passion for the weird and the

supernatural. It delights in the representation of abstractions as

material beings; it bestows life and speech upon the zephyr and the

rose. The play of words in which it abounds, the elaborate and quaint

conceits dependent upon pronunciation and upon phrases susceptible

of varied significance, while they may obscure the diction, are

never suffered to interfere with the harmony. The vivacity of Arabic

poetry is one of its greatest charms. Its imagery is born of the

fiery imagination of the East; its proficiency in the delineation of

human passion is the fruit of centuries of study, reflection, and

jealous rivalry. Perfect familiarity with the poems of the pre-Islamic

Bedouins, regarded as models by every generation of their descendants,

was considered an indispensable qualification of every well-informed

scholar. The Arabs were so deeply impressed by the potent influence

of poetical genius that they assigned it a place among the kabbala

of magical science. Rhymes were introduced into the most solemn

discussions. An impromptu couplet opportunely spoken was often the

surest recommendation to the favor of a prince. Poetic sentiment was

such an essential characteristic of the Arab intellect that even grave

metaphysical and historical treatises were designated by the most

romantic and whimsical titles.

Under the Mohammedan dynasties of Spain the wit and skill of the

successful poet claimed and enjoyed the highest consideration. It

has been aptly remarked that poetry was the central point about

which revolved the intellectual life of the Andalusian Moors. Its

influence upon the invaders was rather augmented than diminished by the

transplantation of the lyrics and satires of the Desert to the soil of

Southern Europe. The universality of its cultivation and the honors and

emoluments which rewarded popularity expanded its productions to an

enormous volume. At the close of the reign of Al-Hakem II., hundreds

of manuscripts were required for the catalogues of the poetical works

which crowded the shelves of the imperial libraries. Verse was employed

alike in the most momentous and the most unimportant transactions

of life, in the congratulation of royalty, in the celebration of

triumphs, in the familiar intercourse of neighbors and friends, in the

frivolities and gossip of the seraglio. Its power over the nature of

the sensitive and impulsive Asiatic cannot be measured. It diminished

the agony of the suffering. It hastened the cure of the convalescent.

Its voice brought temporary oblivion to the dungeon of the captive, its

pictures of paradise lighted the dark pathway to the grave. Rhyming

prose was used in private correspondence by all persons who laid claim

to good breeding. The Hispano-Arab histories are filled with verses.

They were frequently employed to relieve the severity of scientific

works, whose authors were equally celebrated as philosophers and as

poets. Diplomatists inserted couplets and stanzas of more or less

merit and propriety into their state papers. The passport given to the

great scholar Ibn-Khaldun by Mohammed V., King of Granada, was written

in rhyme.

In the classification of subjects, amatory poems, as in all countries

which acknowledge the power of the lyric muse, claim precedence. It is

obviously unfair to judge Hispano-Arab poetry by the accepted rules

of modern criticism. The totally different conditions of society,

the education of an audience whose ideas of literary excellence and

correctness of expression were strongly at variance with ours; the

similes, now obscure, but then full of meaning to the appreciative

listener, the idioms of a copious and extremely complicated language

but imperfectly understood by the most accomplished scholars of our

day, ignorance of the physical environment of the writer, the distance

and vicissitudes of nine centuries, all contribute to render the

formation of an accurate and impartial opinion on the merits of Arab

poetry an arduous, indeed an almost hopeless, task.

The exalted position occupied by women under the Arab domination in

Spain gave them an influence, and invested them with an importance,

elsewhere unknown in the Mohammedan world. This peculiar social

condition had a tendency to restrain the sensual instincts of the

bard, not yet entirely emancipated from the coarse traditions of

the Desert, while at the same time it encouraged the cultivation

of generous and lofty sentiments. Admiration for the qualities and

accomplishments of the mind gradually supplanted the hyperbolical

praise of corporeal perfection, which had hitherto predominated in the

compositions of the Arabian poet. The verses of the later era of the

khalifate allude to the perfections and graces of the sex in terms

of honor and veneration worthy of the noblest paladin of chivalry.

This admiration was intensified by the eminent rank attained by many

women in the literary profession. The female relatives of khalifs and

courtiers vied with each other in the patronage and cultivation of

letters. Ayesha, the daughter of Prince Ahmed, excelled in rhyme and

oratory; her speeches aroused the tumultuous enthusiasm of the grave

philosophers of Cordova; her library was one of the finest and most

complete in the kingdom. Valada, a princess of the Almohades, whose

personal charms were not inferior to her talents, was renowned for

her knowledge of poetry and rhetoric; her conversation was remarkable

for its depth and brilliancy; and, in the academical contests of

the capital which attracted the learned and the eloquent from every

quarter of the Peninsula, she never failed, whether in prose or in

poetical composition, to distance all competitors. Algasania and Safia,

both of Seville, were also distinguished for poetical and oratorical

genius; the latter was unsurpassed for the beauty and perfection of

her calligraphy; the splendid illuminations of her manuscripts were

the despair of the most accomplished artists of the age. The literary

attainments of Miriam, the gifted daughter of Al-Faisuli, were famous

throughout the Peninsula; the caustic wit and satire of her epigrams

were said to have been unrivalled. Umm-al-Saad was famous for her

familiarity with Moslem tradition. Labana, of Cordova, was thoroughly

versed in the exact sciences; her talents were equal to the solution

of the most complex geometrical and algebraic problems, and her vast

acquaintance with general literature obtained for her the important

employment of private secretary to the Khalif Al-Hakem II. Inherited

genius for poetical composition, joined to constant familiarity with

its exercise, the tendency of early education, the influence of

intellectual association and example, the exalted estimation in which

proficiency in it was held, the extraordinary facility afforded by the

Arabic language for the formation of rhyme, the inherent predilection

of the Asiatic for the employment of epigram, hyperbole, and allegory,

called into existence a race of juvenile poets whose number and

abilities seem, in our practical and unimaginative age, absolutely

incredible. In readiness of improvisation and quickness of repartee

these youthful rhymers displayed talents scarcely to be expected of the

most precocious intellect. Some of the rhyming couplets composed by

the children of Moorish Spain which have descended to us, in propriety

of expression and elevation of feeling, in aptness of comparison and

in elegance of style, are not inferior to the classic productions of

educated maturity.

Nor was the taste for and the delight in the arts of extemporaneous

composition confined to the eminent and the learned; all classes

practised it, and it was said that in the district of Silves alone

there was hardly a laborer to be encountered who could not improvise

creditable verses with facility. Volumes devoted to the lives and

productions of the princely and noble poets of Andalusia were

published; the palaces of royalty and the mansions of the great

fairly swarmed with men of genius and poetasters, greedy of wealth

and ambitious of renown. The ancient and venerated models of the

Desert were never lost sight of in the productions of Moslem Europe.

Their striking peculiarities, their lofty sentiments, their obscure

metaphors, their extravagant panegyrics, their fantastic imagery,

were regarded as merits which, while they might provoke, would ever

defy imitation. In Andalusia, however, the enlarged and humanizing

ideas of an advanced civilization, the steady march of material and

intellectual improvement, familiarity with the literary masterpieces

of antiquity and intercourse with foreign nations, modified to some

extent the character of the subjects treated by the Moorish poet,

although his style remained the same. Similes deduced from the nomadic

life of the Bedouin--a life abandoned, centuries before, for the

monotonous occupations of trade and agriculture--still, in the midst

of conditions incompatible with the existence of predatory habits, and

side by side with the tribal hatred whose intensity never diminished,

maintained their universal ascendency. Adroitness in the metrical

art; the gift of combining the infinite resources of the Arabic idiom

in complicated phrases and rhymes which nothing but the enthusiasm

and penetration of the illuminated could understand and unravel; the

introduction of mysterious allegories, remote and obscure analogies,

bold and striking antitheses,--these were the artificial excellences

of Hispano-Arab poetry. The perfect comprehension of its productions

implies an acquaintance with the language practically unattainable by

a foreigner. The original form of Semitic poetry, whether Hebrew or

Arabic, was improvisatorial; it was inspired by passing events; it was

gay or plaintive, didactic or satirical, but never solemn and grandly

impressive, like the sublime flights of the Grecian muse. The Arab

poet was deficient in the dramatic faculty. His versatility, elsewhere

remarkable, was unequal to the composition of an epic. His ignorance

was so profound that he could not even give a correct definition of

tragedy or comedy. To the greatest scholars of Mohammedan Spain, men

who knew Aristotle by heart, and who were capable of the instant

solution of the most difficult equations of Conon and Euclid, the

works of Sophocles, Æschylus, and Euripides were unknown. The mental

constitution of the Arab was thus not adapted to the creation of plays,

a form of literature also discouraged by his traditions; while his

prejudices forbade the study of the classic models which his religion

stigmatized as idolatrous and indecent. Poetical narration was not

unfamiliar to him, but a lengthy historic or allegorical composition,

either in blank verse or rhyme, which required sustained and protracted

action, was both repugnant to his taste and beyond his powers.

While love-ditties were the favorite productions of the Hispano-Arab,

the martial lyrics of battle and triumph, sonnets depicting the

pleasures of wine with more than Roman freedom, and the mourful

elegies suggested by the events of a decadent empire, claimed a large

proportion of the efforts of his poetic genius. Among the myriad poets

whose compositions have adorned the Moorish domination in Spain, it is

difficult to attempt to distinguish a few of superior merit; yet the

following may be designated as masters in that art whose possession

was a passport alike to political eminence and popular veneration.

Ibn-Hasn, Ibn-Zeidun, of Cordova, Abbas-Ibn-Ahnaf, were noted for

the sweetness and beauty of their amorous songs; the martial airs

of Ibn-Chafadscha, of Valencia, chanted by the Moslems in the front

of battle, assisted in turning the tide of many a doubtful day; the

bacchanalian verses of Ibn-Said, of Seville, were the delight of the

corrupt and voluptuous Andalusian capital, and were even sung by the

children in the streets; the keen satires of Ibn-Ammar of Silves--the

unhappy memories of whose early life, passed in mendicity, tinctured

his writings with bitterness even when raised by his talents to the

highest posts in the kingdom--spared neither prince nor courtier

in their indiscriminate and playful wit; Abul-Beka, of Ronda,

Ibn-al-Lebburn, of Murviedro, and Ibn-al-Khatib, of Granada, described,

in language of inexpressible beauty and pathos, the national calamities

inflicted by Christian supremacy,--the dissolution of empire, the

desecration of the sanctuary, the dismemberment of families, the exile

of the vanquished, the horrors of servitude.

The ordinary lyrics of the Spanish Moslems were technically known as

the Kasida and the Ghazal, and, in the composition of both, only the

alternate verses were in rhyme. The sonnets of Petrarch are modelled

after this peculiar method of versification, or rather after its

imitations prevalent among the vagrant poets of Southern Europe. It

was principally through the example afforded by the Moorish kingdom of

Sicily that an intellectual impulse was imparted to the founders of

Italian mediæval literature. The Mohammedan princes who governed that

fertile island were generous and enthusiastic patrons of letters. The

Normans, whose enlightened spirit preserved with little modification

the laws and customs of a civilization whose benefits were so

apparent, encouraged with especial favor the labors of the Arab muse.

The compositions of the Sicilian poets embodied principles and were

governed by canons identical with those in vogue beyond the Pyrenees.

In a land abounding in classic associations, the scene of military and

maritime events upon whose issue had depended the destiny of empires;

whose striking natural features had given rise to the most charming

fictions that adorn the productions of antiquity, and where the

architectural monuments of Grecian elegance and grandeur recalled the

magnificence of former ages; the Arab, enveloped in the exclusiveness

of his own personality, fettered by the influence of inherited

tradition, never departed from the beaten track of his ancestors.

Physical environment, unusually so potent in the formation of taste and

the modification of national impulse and individual characteristics,

produced no visible effect upon the mental constitution of the Moorish

poet. Everything else--physiological peculiarities, the general

tendency of thought, the nature of the objects of intellectual inquiry,

opinions of the benefits to be obtained from the prosecution of

scientific pursuits, the occupations of daily life--underwent radical

changes, but the methods of the poet remained to the last invariable.

The persistence of this spirit of immobility is further demonstrated by

the popular ballads of the conquerors to whom the Moslems bequeathed

it. The striking resemblance of the songs of the troubadours to those

of the Arabs indicate plainly the source whence the former derived

their inspiration. Other circumstances, based upon national customs,

go far towards confirming this opinion. The Mohammedan Peninsula

abounded with itinerant rhymers and sonneteers. They travelled from

mansion to mansion, everywhere welcomed with joy and hospitality.

They attended the person of the prince. They formed an indispensable

part of the retinue of every great household. Their poems were

ordinarily improvisations, evoked by the occurrences of the moment or

the suggestions of the locality. Their compensation was gratuitous,

entirely dependent upon the caprice of the patron or the generosity

of the auditory. The privileged character of their profession enabled

them to use a boldness of speech and a freedom of criticism which an

ordinary personage would not have dared to exercise. In their train

often followed the story-teller, the prototype of the jongleur, whose

lineal descendant may still be seen amusing with his coarse buffoonery

the idle crowds of Tangier and Cairo.

The graceful courtesy and deference to the sex, which were the

indispensable attributes of every gallant cavalier, in short, the very

genius of chivalry, originated among the Spanish Mohammedans. The

women of Christian Europe--except in countries influenced by Moslem

culture--from the tenth to the fifteenth century received no such

social consideration and enjoyed no such educational advantages as did

their infidel sisters of the Peninsula. In Southern France and Italy

a tolerant spirit, fostered by a light and pleasing literature, had

invested woman with an eminent, indeed with a despotic, authority.

Elsewhere it was far different. Condemned to unspeakable hardships;

degraded by brutal associations; if of high rank, the mere plaything

of a tyrannical master; if born in an inferior position, classed

with beasts of burden; in every situation of life kept in ignorance;

subject to insult, to oppression, to all the sufferings incident to

a condition of humiliating dependence little removed from servitude,

such was the lot of woman in orthodox Christendom. This state of

moral and physical degradation long prevailed, save where intimate

contact with Arab civilization produced a substantial and permanent

improvement of social and intellectual conditions. The most important

factor of this metamorphosis was the poetry of which the troubadour

was the exponent. This erratic calling drew its members from every

rank of society: it included sovereigns, princesses, nobles, peasants,

beggars. As the rhyming instinct is not innate and almost universal

in Europe as in Asia, the often unlettered troubadour was more highly

considered in Languedoc and Calabria than was the wandering poet among

the hypercritical literary dilettanti of Seville and Granada.

In addition to the presumption afforded by the resemblance of subject,

style, and metre, the fact that only countries contiguous to, or

directly influenced by, Moorish civilization during the Middle Ages

developed a taste for poetry similar to that of the Arabs, furnishes

strong corroborative evidence that the _gai science_, as the

art of improvising verses was called, was of Arabic derivation. The

natural haunt of the troubadour was the romantic, semi-tropical region

washed by the waves of the northwestern Mediterranean. The genius of

his poetry--ardent, extravagant, voluptuous--had nothing in common

with the cold and sluggish spirit of the North. France and Italy were

the only European countries whose boundaries coincided with those

of the Moslems. In both the revival of learning, after centuries of

darkness, first arose. France was the abode of the Huguenot and the

Camisard; the birthplace of Henry IV. and Coligny; the seat of the

Great Schism which rent the Church in twain; the vantage-ground of

the philosophers who precipitated the frightful struggle for civil

and religious freedom in the eighteenth century. Italy was the land

of Galileo, of Bruno, of Savonarola, of the Medici; the home of the

Florentine academicians, whose labors and experiments effected so

much for the advancement of science; the scene of the most extensive

reaction against mediæval ignorance,--a movement inaugurated in the

immediate neighborhood of Rome, and in defiance of the vehement protest

of the Papal See. The greatest names in Italian literature insensibly

acknowledged their obligations to Arabic poetry, by adopting the style

and rhythm of its European imitators, the troubadours. The peerless

Dante himself did not disdain to follow and to advocate the observance

of its rules. The Canzoni of Petrarch present innumerable points of

resemblance to the productions of Moslem Sicily. Ariosto is greatly

indebted to Elmacin. In the melodious and charming songs of Lorenzo,

the same sources of inspiration are discernible, and the same rhyme is

used. In England, the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer bear an unmistakable

relation in form and metre to the mediæval compositions of Southern

France. Nor was this powerful and all-pervading influence confined

to poetry. The tales of Boccaccio have an Oriental cast. The very

manner of their recital recalls the customs of the Desert. They are

reminiscences of the popular calling of the Provençal jongleur and the

Arabic story-teller. In the license of their expressions, in the wit

of their repartee, in the amusing character of the events which they

describe, they may be classed as realistic adaptations of the Thousand

and One Nights. The patronage and example of the Emperor Frederick II.

carried beyond the Alps the cultivation of letters, and with it the

traditions of Sicilian civilization. From this literary transmigration

originated the Minnesingers, German counterparts of the troubadours,

whose elegant verses sensibly modified the innate coarseness of the

Teutonic character, and introduced a spirit of refinement, in pleasing

contrast with the drunken orgies of the banquet and the festival. Their

two principal productions, the Minnesong and the Minnelay, were models

of elegance of diction, beauty of sentiment, and perfection of rhyme.

For more than a century they were the delight of all classes of German

society, nor did any compositions of equal merit succeed them until the

age of Goethe and Schiller. Into Germany were also introduced, by the

influence of the Emperor, a spirit of inquiry, the foundation of all

true knowledge, and the philosophical and heterodox ideas entertained

by the educated Moslems of his Sicilian dominions. The ultimate effect

of this enlightened policy upon the national mind, imperceptible at

the time, but increasing in intensity with the lapse of centuries, was

the defiant course of Luther, which established the right of private

interpretation of the Scriptures and shook the foundations of the

papal throne. The fact that these three countries, which alone were

directly acted upon by the spirit of Arabic learning and the example of

Moorish civilization, were the scene of the revival of letters, when

the rest of Christendom was plunged in the most abject ignorance, is

of profound significance in ascertaining the causes that, promoting

the intellectual advancement of Europe, have culminated in the great

scientific achievements of modern times.

In Moorish Spain great attention was paid to the study of the kindred

subjects of theology and law. The commentaries on the rites of the

various sects into which Islam is divided; the arrangement and review

of the enormous mass of tradition which tends to elucidate or to

confirm the ambiguous texts of the Koran; the digests of the decisions

whose authority is considered unimpeachable, form a stupendous body

of literature chiefly remarkable for the patience, the learning, and

the labor necessarily employed in its compilation. The muftis and the

faquis were the authorities whose office it was to explain perplexing

questions of Mohammedan jurisprudence. In the system of the latter,

a system generally remarkable for its simplicity and efficiency, the

Koran was the guide of every magistrate. The rules were supplemented by

the precepts and suggestions of the Sunnah, a collection of traditions

derived from sources more or less authoritative, and transmitted

through many generations. The conflicting interpretation placed

upon ancient customs sanctified by prescription, and the disputed

authenticity of many of them, gave rise to a swarm of sects whose

rancorous disputes were often terminated by bloodshed. In the Moslem

judicature, the sovereign was the sole fountain of justice. Heir to the

patriarchal customs of the East, he often sat in judgment at the gate

of his palace, heard the complaints of his subjects, composed their

quarrels, reproved their faults, condemned their animosity, and decided

upon their merits all controversies between worthy litigants. Under

him was the kadi, in whom was vested civil and criminal jurisdiction,

whose judgments were rendered and whose sentences--from the scourging

and the cruel mutilations enjoined by the law to the supreme penalty

of decapitation--were executed with a relentless promptitude little

in accordance with modern ideas of criminal procedure. In these

courts there were no opportunities for oratorical display; custom

discouraged such exhibitions; and Arab eloquence, unlike that of other

nations, was most concise and laconic. The doctors of the law and the

commentators on the Koran received greater homage than any other class

of Moslem men of letters. Their occupation invested them with a measure

of the reverence enjoyed by the works to which their labors were

consecrated; it implied the possession of superior knowledge, perhaps

of inspiration; they were ordinarily personages of venerable appearance

and irreproachable character; and upon their opinions, promulgated

with all the authority of age, wisdom, and experience, depended the

administration of justice and the preservation of order throughout the

vast extent of the empire.

The extensive and diversified character of the works of the Arabs is

one of the wonders of literature. This extraordinary fertility attained

a greater development in Spain than in any other portion of the

Mussulman empire. Al-Modhaffer, King of Badajoz, wrote fifty volumes;

Ibn-Hayyan, sixty; Honein, a hundred; Abdallatif and Ahmed-Ibn-Iban,

the same; Ibn-al-Heitsam, two hundred; Abu-Mohammed-Ibn-Han, four

hundred; Ibn-Habib-al-Solami and Abu-Merwan-Abd-al-Melik, each a

thousand.

In the realm of history and biography the genius of the Hispano-Arab

was most prolific. The subjects treated are of great variety, and

are usually expanded into a prodigious number of books. Tedious

and obscure as is much of their narrative, its minuteness of

detail and extraordinary fidelity to truth render the surviving

collections--which, extensive as they are, compose but a fragment

of the historical literature that once existed--invaluable to the

student. The biographical dictionary of Hadji Khalfa contains notices

of twenty thousand works, of which twelve hundred are historical.

The Arabic critical, theological, and geographical cyclopædias were

scarcely less voluminous.

The plan of this work does not contemplate more than a passing allusion

to the principal historical writers whose learning and talents were

conspicuous during the Moorish domination in Spain. Among them may be

mentioned Ibn-al-Afttas, Prince of Badajoz, who composed a valuable

treatise on the political and literary events of the Peninsula;

Ibn-Ahmed-al-Toleytoli, of Toledo, who wrote a General History of

Nations; Al-Khazraji, of Cordova, to whom is attributed a History

of the Khalifs; Al-Ghazzal and Al-Hijari, who published, the one a

rhyming history, the other a topographical description of Andalusia;

Ibn-Bashkuwal, of Cordova, and Mohammed Al-Zuluyide, famous for their

biographical dictionaries; Ibn-al-Khatib, of Granada, whose marvellous

erudition was displayed in the greatest of his works, The Universal

Library, an immense epitome of the literary and historical facts

obtainable in his time. Disquisitions on general topics were not,

however, the favorite employment of Moorish authors; their subtle

minds preferred the narration of important events, the tracing of

remote causes, the solution of obscure historical problems. In the

treatment of special subjects they displayed a wonderful, often a

tedious, prolixity. Each khalif and prince entertained at his court an

historian charged with the description of the principal occurrences of

his reign. Every town had its annalist, every province its chronicler.

There was not an art or a science, not a profession or a calling, whose

origin and influence had not been described, and its distinguished

teachers enumerated, by some eminent writer. Mohammed Abu-Abdallah, of

Granada, compiled an historical dictionary of the sciences; Al-Assaker

is credited with a curious and instructive history of inventors. Even

animals famous for their superior qualities were assigned an honorable

place in the biographical productions of the Spanish Mohammedans.

Abu-al-Monder, of Valencia, and Ibn-Zaid-al-Arabi, of Cordova, composed

memoirs recounting the genealogy, the endurance, the speed, and the

beauty of certain horses conspicuous in a race proverbial for its

excellence. Abd-al-Malik wrote an account of celebrated camels. The

names given to books, even by the grave and pious, partake of the

fanciful and figurative imagery of the Orient, and were suggestive of

the most precious objects admired and coveted by man, such as “The

Silken Vest,” “Strings of Pearls,” “Links of Gems,” “Prairies of Gold.”

From a remote antiquity similar titles had been adopted, for, as has

already been remarked, the earliest of Arabic poems, the Moallakat,

derive their collective appellation, not from having been suspended in

the Kaaba of Mecca, but on account of their figurative resemblance to

the pendants of a necklace.

The Arabic language, regarded by Moslems as the most perfect of all

idioms, received great attention from grammarians. Their works upon

this subject are infinite, exhaustive, perplexing. One treatise,

in a hundred parts, treats solely of genders. Knowledge of this

character was held in the highest estimation. Abu-Ghalib, of Murcia,

refused a thousand dinars of gold from the sultan of that kingdom,

who had solicited, as an honor, the dedication of a work upon grammar

composed by that celebrated scholar, whose labors were devoted to

the instruction of the people, and not to the flattery of power.

Natural history, chronology, numismatics, were treated at great length

by the European Moslems. The menageries and aviaries maintained in

the principal cities afforded unusual advantages to the student of

zoology. Chronological computations were based upon the deductions

of the Alexandrian Museum. The Moorish scholars of Spain and Sicily

made invaluable contributions to the general stock of geographical

knowledge. The measurement of a degree which they effected approximates

very nearly to the one accepted by modern science. Abulfeda enumerates

sixty Arabic geographers who lived before the thirteenth century. Many

of their maps were veritable works of art, in which, upon a ground

of silk, continents, mountains, lakes, and streams, represented in

relief, were embroidered in gold and silver. Their researches were

aided by the historical remains of antiquity, by the accounts of

merchants and mariners, and by the reports of travellers despatched

by their sovereigns to collect information in the remotest corners

of the earth. Ibn-Hamid penetrated to the most inaccessible regions

of Central Asia. Ibn-Djobair visited and described Sicily and the

countries of the Orient. The travels of Ibn-Batutah were prolonged

through twenty-four years. Obeyd-al-Bekri, of Onoba, was the author

of a geographical dictionary, in which were described an immense

number of cities, principalities, and kingdoms. The reputation of

all medieval geographers, however distinguished, was obscured by the

fame of the great Edrisi. A native of Malaga, of royal blood, and a

lineal descendant of Mohammed, he united to pride of birth and the

advantages of fortune all the learning and all the accomplishments to

be acquired in an enlightened age. His relationship to the Prophet

invested him with a dignity and an importance second to none, in the

sight of every devout Mussulman. His education at Cordova was the best

that the ancient capital of the khalifs, still the intellectual centre

of the world, could afford. His mind, improved by travel, was familiar

with many countries whose physical features he afterwards depicted

with such ability. Invited to Palermo by Roger, King of Sicily, he

speedily attained a high rank among the scholars of that brilliant

court. The geography he composed, partly from his own information,

partly from data furnished by the King, who had long made a study of

that science, represented the labor of fifteen years. In vividness

of description, in accuracy of detail, in correct estimation of

distances, it is one of the most remarkable literary productions of

mediæval times. The incomplete work of Ptolemy had for centuries been

the recognized, indeed the only, authority. The configuration of the

earth’s surface, its climates, the locations of continents and seas,

of cities and empires, were facts little known, even to persons of the

best education. In Christian lands the Church sedulously discouraged

all such studies as inimical to Scriptural revelation. Geographical

works had already appeared in Arabic, but they were grossly inaccurate,

and largely based on fable, romance, and tradition. The compilation

of Edrisi marks an era in the history of science. Not only is its

historical information most interesting and valuable, but its

descriptions of many parts of the earth are still authoritative. For

three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration. The

relative position of the lakes which form the Nile, as delineated in

his work, does not differ greatly from that established by Baker and

Stanley more than seven hundred years afterwards, and their number is

the same. The mechanical genius of the author was not inferior to his

erudition. The celestial and terrestrial planisphere of silver which

he constructed for his royal patron was nearly six feet in diameter,

and weighed four hundred and fifty pounds; upon the one side the zodiac

and the constellations, upon the other--divided for convenience into

segments--the bodies of land and water, with the respective situations

of the various countries, were engraved. As a recompense for his skill,

Edrisi received from King Roger the remainder of the precious material,

amounting to two-thirds, a hundred thousand pieces of silver, and a

ship laden with valuable merchandise. Such was the munificence with

which the son of a Norman freebooter, bred to arms and rapine and

ignorant of letters, rewarded the genius of a scholar whose race was

stigmatized by every Christian power in Europe as barbarian and infidel.

In philosophical studies, the European Arab evinced the same curious

and inquiring spirit which characterized his investigations of natural

phenomena. The multiplicity of sects into which the religion of

Mohammed was divided, and the incessant religious controversies which

the disputed texts of the Koran and the conflicting interpretations of

doubtful traditions evolved, were not favorable either to proselytism

or to the maintenance of orthodoxy. The Moslems had their Nominalists

and their Realists, their Mystics and their Epicureans. They understood

the esoteric doctrines of the most renowned schools of antiquity.

They had read and commented upon Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates,

Empedocles, Plato. They were familiar with the atomic theory of

Democritus. They recognized the argumentative ability of the Stoics.

With the productions of the Alexandrian School--through whose medium

was derived their knowledge of the dogmas of the Portico and the

Academy--they were thoroughly conversant. The prolonged and attentive

consideration of these vain and unprofitable opinions did not, however,

commend itself to the ingenious and practical mind of the Arab. He

indulged in no abstract speculations concerning the origin, nature, and

destiny of man. He wasted no time in attempts to decide the vexed and

frivolous question of the supreme good. He regarded with boundless

favor the works of Aristotle, a predilection destined with years to

develop into an undiscerning admiration akin to idolatry. To the

influence of this sage of the ancients, the educated Moorish population

of Spain was peculiarly susceptible. The doctrines of Al-Ghazzali,

of Bagdad, who lived in the eleventh century, had also obtained

general acceptance. His teachings involved the absolute separation of

philosophy from superstition. He believed in a higher sphere than that

of human reason, where was exhibited the manifestation of the Divine

Essence pervading all space, all matter, a form of the Pantheism of

India.

The Peninsula had for centuries experienced the ascendency of different

races of men, the successive predominance and decay of many forms of

religious belief. The transmission of national peculiarities; the

survival of various, often hostile, political and social opinions;

the comparison of a series of creeds, each claiming divine origin and

inspiration, yet each, in its turn, supplanted by a more powerful

adversary, had disposed the minds of men to investigation and reason.

It was only among the intellectual, however, that such a disposition

prevailed. With no class of fanatics did intolerance exist in greater

intensity than among the orthodox masses of Mohammedan Spain. Their

antipathy to all who questioned the revelation of the Koran or

the authenticity of accepted tradition was irreconcilable. In the

unreasoning fury engendered by prejudice, they forgot the marvels of

the civilization that surrounded them; the encouragement that their

greatest princes had extended to learning; the statement of the

Prophet that the first thing created by God was Intelligence. While

they loved the material pomp which thinly disguised the forms of

despotism, while they cringed before the pride of rank and opulence,

they found the quiet and unassuming pre-eminence derived from

superior wisdom and a profound acquaintance with letters intolerable.

These narrow ideas, so prejudicial to mental development, were

diligently fostered by the doctors of the law, who discerned, in

the general diffusion of philosophical opinions, a serious menace

to their importance and dignity. Natural philosophy was the object

of their especial abhorrence. A system which professed to account

for the familiar phenomena daily manifested on the earth and in the

heavens by the operation of natural causes and inexorable necessity,

and which absolutely dispensed with divine revelation, might well

awaken the suspicion and alarm of a class whose worldly interests

absolutely depended upon the suppression of knowledge and the

maintenance of orthodoxy. The populace, as usual, sided with their

teachers. As a result the philosopher was an object of aversion,

often of horror, to the conscientious Mohammedan. In the eyes of the

irrational zealot the pursuit of science was a certain indication

of a bargain with the devil. No rank, however exalted, was proof

against this odious imputation. The greatest of the Ommeyade and

Abbaside khalifs, whose highest title to fame was the encouragement

of letters, were stigmatized as wizards and magicians. The union of

the powers of Church and State in a single individual, and the number

and importance of the institutions for the diffusion of knowledge,

alone prevented the extinction of learning by popular violence. The

majority of the Hispano-Arab princes were men of unusual intellectual

attainments,--historians, poets, chemists, philosophers. The patronage

they afforded to science had a deterrent effect on those who longed

for the restoration of purity of doctrine, which had disappeared, as

it invariably does, before the progressive march of civilization.

Emulating the examples of the khalifs, the governors of provinces

vied with their royal masters in the propagation of knowledge. They

founded schools and academies. They offered prizes for new and useful

discoveries. At their invitation, the greatest scholars in their

jurisdiction assembled once a year at the seat of government, for

public discussion of subjects of interest to the learned professions,

or of such as could, through the medium of practical inventions, be

made to enure to the benefit of the community.

The high estimation in which letters were held was indicated by the

honors paid to writers and the consideration attaching to the office

of public librarian. In the catalogues were inscribed not only the

title of the work, but the name, the parentage, the dates of the birth

and of the decease of the author; and, not infrequently, interesting

biographical notices were appended to the already ample record. In the

provinces, the custody of the assembled manuscripts was entrusted to a

noble of distinction; but at the capital the charge of the magnificent

library of Al-Hakem was considered an employment worthy of royalty

itself, and was committed to Abd-al-Aziz, a brother of the Khalif. The

general supervision of all educational institutions was exercised by

Al-Mondhir, another brother of Al-Hakem, who, in the absence of the

sovereign, presided over the contests of the famous literary institute

in which were exhibited the talents and the learning of the aspiring

scholars of the empire.

The indefatigable energy of the Arabs exhausted every source of

knowledge. Not only did they translate the masterpieces of Greek and

Roman literature, but they familiarized themselves with Persian,

Chaldaic, Hebrew, Chinese, Hindu, and Sanscrit works. Honein translated

the Septuagint into Arabic. Abulfeda was the first to direct attention

to the so-called inconsistencies of the Pentateuch and the pronounced

materialistic character pervading it; to its want of coherence; to

its apparent solecisms; to state that it contains no mention of a

future life, of heaven or hell, of the immortality of the soul; and

to suggest that its legends indicate a Persian rather than a Jewish

derivation. Averroes had mastered and embraced the philosophical

ideas of India; he believed in the Universal Intellect; the popular

religious fictions which evoke the hopes and fears of the vulgar he

treated with contempt. The precocity and vast intellectual powers of

the great scholars of Islam are almost beyond belief. Avicenna, at

sixteen, had attained to such eminence that learned and experienced

physicians came from remote countries to enjoy the benefit of his

wisdom; at twenty-two he was Grand Vizier. Abul-Hamid-al-Isfaraini was

accustomed to lecture every day on a new topic to a class of seven

hundred students of jurisprudence. Yezid-Ibn-Harun, of Bagdad, knew by

heart thirty thousand traditions. All were pantheists or agnostics. The

generally irreverent spirit of the age is disclosed by the epigram of

Abu-Ala-Temouki, “The world is divided into two classes of people,--one

with wit and no religion, the other with religion and little wit.”

The instruction imparted by the provincial academies of the empire

and by the University of Cordova--the centre of the intellectual

activity of Europe--was essentially infidel in character and tendency.

The influence of these institutions upon the public mind was immense

and far-reaching. Thousands of students attended their lectures.

Their professors were the first scholars of the age, whose genius and

abilities were not limited to the duties of their calling, but who at

times administered with equal dexterity and success the most important

judicial and diplomatic employments. Education was in a measure

compulsory, and, to obtain additional force for the mandates of the

law, the sanction of religion was enlisted, and the school became

an indispensable appendage to the mosque. The various institutions

appertaining to the academic system of the Peninsula which culminated

in the University were graded much as are those of modern times. In

Cordova were eight hundred public schools frequented alike by Moslems,

Christians, and Jews, where instruction was imparted by lectures.

The natural quickness which distinguished the intellectual faculties

of the Arab, and his phenomenally retentive memory, enabled him to

achieve results of incalculable value to the development of his

civilization. This marvellous progress was promoted by every incentive

which could arouse the energies of the aspiring or the covetous,--by

the expected favor of the monarch, by the prospect of exalted and

honorable dignities, by the certainty of magnificent rewards, by the

hope of social distinction, by the ambition of literary fame. There

was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings

of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent

peasant, and the universities of Granada, Seville, and Cordova were

held in the highest estimation by the scholars of Asia, Africa, and

Europe. In the various departments of these great institutions were

taught, in addition to the doctrines of the Koran and the principles

of Mohammedan law, the classics, the exact sciences, medicine, music,

poetry, and art. In the superintendence of academies and colleges, the

profession of Islamism was not considered an indispensable prerequisite

by a liberal and enlightened public sentiment; scholarly acquirements

and devotion to learning were the accepted criterions of fitness for

the direction of youth; and both Jews and Christians attained to

acknowledged distinction as professors in the great University of

the capital. In the ninth century, in the department of theology

alone, four thousand students were enrolled, and the total number in

attendance at the University reached almost eleven thousand. Nor were

these priceless educational privileges restricted to one people or to

the votaries of a single faith. The doors of the college were open to

students of every nationality, and the Andalusian Moor received the

rudiments of knowledge at the same time and under the same conditions

as the literary pilgrims from Asia Minor and Egypt, from Germany,

France, and Britain. A remarkable correspondence exists between the

procedure established by those institutions and the methods of the

present day. They had their collegiate courses, their prizes for

proficiency in scholarship, their oratorical and poetical contests,

their commencements, their degrees. In the department of medicine,

a severe and prolonged examination, conducted by the most eminent

physicians of the capital, was exacted of all candidates desirous

of practising their profession, and such as were unable to stand

the test were formally pronounced incompetent. Great and invaluable

contributions to the fund of historical and scientific information were

made by the members of the various academies and schools. They composed

voluminous treatises on surgery and medicine. They bestowed upon the

stars the Arabic names which still cover the map of the heavens. Above

the lofty station of the muezzin, as he called the devout to prayer,

were projected against the sky the implements of science to whose uses

religion did not refuse the shelter of her temples,--the gnomon, the

astrolabe, the pendulum clock, and the armillary sphere.

The trading expeditions of the adventurous Arab had long before

familiarized him with the relative positions, areas, and natural

productions of the principal countries of the globe. But the princes

of the Western Khalifate, not satisfied with the results accidentally

obtained, frequently despatched to the most distant regions

accomplished scholars with the object of making new contributions to

art, literature, and geography. In consequence of these extensive

voyages, no science was better understood by the Moorish teachers than

that treating of the earth’s surface; and its practical application

was demonstrated by means of accurate representations of its principal

features carved in relief upon globes of copper and silver.

In the cultivation of the two sciences, geography was considered as

dependent on history, and was often treated in connection with it and

in a subordinate capacity. The Chaldean shepherds had already, upon the

plains of Asia Minor, by the measurement of a degree of a great circle,

determined the form and dimensions of the earth; their observations

had been confirmed by the experiments of the Khalif Al-Mamun; and

these important data were carried into Spain with many other treasures

of Oriental wisdom. The earth was whimsically divided into seven

zones or climates, to correspond with the seven planets and the seven

metals known to the Arabs, that number having with them, as with other

branches of the Semitic race, a peculiar and mystic significance. With

the Arab, however, the study of the earth was rather topographical

than geometric; his measurements were confined to the estimated

distances between important points; and his figures were approximately

calculated according to the popular but unreliable conception of the

length of a day’s journey, which was usually twenty-five miles on land

and a hundred miles by sea. The geographer, in his description of the

provinces of a country, devoted much space to the location of springs,

wells, and rivulets, a consideration of more importance in the mind of

the traveller whose antecedents were to be traced to the pathless and

arid wastes of Arabia than were even the woody shores and unruffled

harbors of an hospitable coast to the eye of the shipwrecked mariner.

Nor must the libraries be omitted from this list of those factors of

progress which so signally contributed to public enlightenment and to

the formation of national character. There was no city of importance

without at least one of these treasure-houses of literature. Their

shelves were open to every applicant. Catalogues facilitated the

examination of the collections and the classification of the various

subjects. Many of the volumes were enriched with illuminations of

wonderful beauty; the more precious were bound in embossed leather

and fragrant woods; some were inlaid with gold and silver. Here were

to be found all the learning of the past and all the discoveries of

the present age,--the philosophy of Athens, the astronomy of Babylon,

the science of Alexandria, the results of prolonged observation and

experiment on the towers and in the laboratories of Cordova and

Seville. Here also were mysterious treatises of Indian lore, whose

origin ascended beyond the records of history, whose doctrines, perused

for centuries in a dead language, had travelled through the medium

of Greek and Arabic versions from the Indus to the Guadalquivir, and

were ultimately destined to form the basis of the pantheistic ideas

popular among educated persons at the present day. These opinions had,

long anterior to the invasion of Tarik, provoked the curiosity and

engaged the attention of studious Mohammedans. Under the khalifate,

and subsequently, they were taught in the schools of the Peninsula,

figured in elaborate disquisitions of philosophers, formed the subject

of learned discussion in lyceums and literary assemblies. Their

vital principles were founded upon the eternity of matter, the unity

of intellect, the final absorption of the spirit of the individual

into the Soul of the World. They accounted for the succession of

natural phenomena by laws resulting from inevitable necessity. They

refused to acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural, and

renounced the time-honored and popular idea of incessant providential

interventions. They ridiculed the apparitions of angels and demons

as phantasms evoked by the credulity and fears of the ignorant. The

tenets and ceremonial of religion were regarded as the convenient

pretexts and apparatus of imposture. The origin of life was explained

by the development of the germ through its latent force. The law

of progressive evolution was considered susceptible of universal

application, as embracing animal, vegetable, even mineral, forms. The

theory of Lord Monboddo, promulgated in the eighteenth century and

elaborated with such ingenuity by Darwin in our own time, was, it is

evident, far from being original with either; for Moorish philosophers

had, ages before, elucidated its leading principles. Thus, in the end,

they even went to the extent of including in its operations every

description of matter,--a course of thought evidently suggested by

advanced Hindu conceptions and confirmed by the fancied analogy between

the transmutation of metals and the transmigration of souls, doctrines

also imported from the extreme Orient. These ideas, so antagonistic

to the dogmas of religion, while long entertained in secret, had

been first publicly advocated by Solomon-ben-Gabirol, the Jewish

philosopher of Malaga, during the eleventh century. The Moorish school

of rationalism soon included many distinguished names. The development

of the mental faculties of humanity was declared to be a manifestation

of the incessant activity of the omnipotent, intellectual principle

that pervaded all Nature. The supreme object of human existence was the

mastery of the sensations by the purer and nobler parts of the soul.

From these speculations, generally accepted, the opinions of many

of the Hispano-Arab philosophers in time exhibited wide and radical

divergence. Some, it is true, adhered to Peripatetic Pantheism in

its integrity. Others oscillated between the extremes of mysticism

and materialism. Against all, without exception, the doctors and the

populace displayed a mortal hatred, whose influence even royal favor

was not always able to withstand. Those who had risen to political

eminence were compelled to relinquish their employments. Many were

driven into exile. The intensity of popular odium forced those who

still pursued their studies into obscurity, sometimes into penury.

Consciousness of a defective title to the crown often impelled a prince

to resort to the ignoble expedient of persecuting science for the sake

of obtaining popularity. It was thus that Al-Mansur, the greatest of

Moorish conquerors, himself an enthusiast for and an adept in the

very studies he professed to condemn, as a political measure for

the consolidation of his power discouraged literature and oppressed

philosophy.

In spite of the extraordinary literary privileges within their

grasp, the masses of Moorish Spain--largely dominated by African

influence--never advanced beyond the primary stage of learning. It is

true that they appreciated, in a measure, the benefits accruing from

the employment of scientific methods in their various occupations of a

mechanical or agricultural character. But this reluctant acknowledgment

of the advantages of science extended no further. The invincible

prejudices of the Semitic race clung to them through all the phases

of their civilization. They never discarded the opinions born of

a pastoral life, of all the most conducive to the perpetuation of

ignorance. Their antipathy to innovation was only exceeded by the

aversion they entertained towards all who questioned the authenticity

of their religious belief. Greek philosophy they regarded with

undisguised detestation. For their countrymen who devoted themselves to

its study they evinced an abhorrence greater even than that with which

they regarded apostasy.

The most famous of the natural philosophers of Mohammedan Spain, whose

transcendent ability has caused him to be considered the exemplar of

all, was Ibn-Roschid, popularly known as Averroes. His life embraced

the greater portion of the twelfth century; his voluminous works on

theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and medicine denote an important

epoch in Arabic literature; and his influence, which preponderated

over that of any writer of his age, has survived the overthrow of

his government, the dispersion of his people, the abandonment of his

language, and the manifold catastrophes of more than seven hundred

years. His industry was indefatigable. It is said that during the

greater part of his life there were but two nights which he did not

pass in study,--the night of his marriage and that of the death of

his father. The genius he displayed in other professions has been

overshadowed by the reputation he acquired as a philosopher. He

occupied the responsible position of first physician to the Almohade

Emir, Yakub-Al-Mansur-Billah. He administered for a time the office

of Grand Kadi of Cordova. His immense erudition was the wonder of

Europe. His commentaries on Aristotle were more highly esteemed by his

disciples and admirers than were even the originals, the masterpieces

of the great founder of the Peripatetics. His popularity with the

Jews was so great that manuscripts of his works are more numerous in

Hebrew than any other book except the Pentateuch. By his Mussulman

contemporaries he was believed to have concluded a compact with

Satan; to Christian theologians his name has ever been a synonym of

evil. The audacity of his opinions was indeed calculated to provoke

ecclesiastical indignation. He diligently inculcated the Indian dogma

of Emanation and Absorption. He treated all revelations as impostures.

Religions he pronounced convenient instruments of statecraft, admirable

contrivances for the preservation of order and the encouragement of

morality. The three then predominant in the world he held in equal

contempt,--the Christian he declared was impossible; the Jewish he

characterized as a creed adapted only to children; the Mohammedan as a

doctrine for swine. He indulged in sarcasms highly derogatory to the

sanctity of the Eucharist. His popularity among the clerical profession

was not enhanced by the saying attributed to him: “The tyrant is he who

governs for himself and not for the people, and the worst of tyrannies

is that of the priest.”

The power of public opinion, stimulated by the efforts of orthodox

Mussulmans, procured the disgrace of Averroes. He was deprived of

his judicial office. The honorable post of court physician was taken

from him. He was compelled to seek refuge in Africa; his property was

confiscated; and, in age and infirmity, he was exposed to the insults

of the fanatical rabble, who spat in his face as he sat helpless at the

door of the mosque of Fez. With his death in 1198 disappeared from the

Peninsula every outward trace of the doctrines of which he had been

both the champion and the representative. Posterity, on account of the

variety and excellence of his intellectual gifts, the extent of his

erudition, and the boldness with which he asserted his opinions, has

seen fit to dissociate him from the other learned men of his epoch,

his instructors, his collaborators, his disciples. There were many

other philosophers, however, such as Solomon-ben-Gabirol, Ibn-Badja,

Ibn-Tofail, Ibn-Zohr, who were his equals in learning and scarcely

inferior to him in natural courage and in argumentative ingenuity and

eloquence.

The apparent extinction of his theories, obnoxious alike to muftis

and populace, was illusory. Introduced with other branches of Moslem

science by the Jews, through the convenient channels of France and

Italy, they eventually permeated the intellectual life of Europe. The

Universities of Paris and Padua, the literary centres of the age, were

from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century foci of infidelity. The

impiety of propositions openly promulgated by the faculties of those

two great institutions would to-day shock any one except the most

daring agnostic. The seed thus sown bore abundant fruit. All Italy

became tainted with heresy. The Lateran Council, summoned to place

the official stamp of ecclesiastical condemnation upon the prohibited

doctrines, was unable to check their progress. The Jews carried

these ideas everywhere; scholastics adopted them; they were even

disseminated by members of the monastic orders. Alexander de Hales, of

the Franciscans, was one of their ardent advocates. Robert Grossetête,

Bishop of Lincoln, second in attainments and reputation only to his

great contemporary Roger Bacon, believed in the Universal Intellect.

It was Savonarola who wrote, “Ille ingenio divinus homo Averroes

philosophus.” From the propagation of these theories was derived the

idea of the mythical book, entitled De Tribus Impostoribus, an alleged

satire aimed at Moses, Christ, and Mohammed, variously attributed to

a score of authors; supposed to be filled with blasphemy; whose very

title was a powerful weapon in the hands of the clergy, yet whose

publication was apocryphal, and whose contents were necessarily purely

imaginary.

The general acceptance and perpetuation of the opinions of Averroes,

denounced from every pulpit, persecuted by the secular authority and

anathematized by councils, is a striking proof of the universal decline

of ecclesiastical power. The most popular poetical compositions bore

the impress of the prevailing spirit of incredulity and pantheism,

which indeed pervaded, to a greater or less extent, every class of

literature. It was in vain that those most deeply concerned vehemently

protested against the alarming growth of this detested heresy. No rank

of the clerical order was exempt from its effects; it was whispered

that its insidious influence had even penetrated the sacred precincts

of the Vatican. That influence was transmitted unimpaired to posterity,

and modern science is largely indebted for its inquisitive and

impartial spirit to the doctrines of the great Arabian philosopher of

the twelfth century.