In the year 1258 Bagdad was stormed and conquered by a Tartar general.
It is true that most of the ravaging Tartars finally adopted the
religion of the conquered, and so the region continued to obey in
religious matters a Mohammedan caliph; but the rule of the Arabs, which
had been long undermined by Persian influences, ended definitely with
the fall of Bagdad. From the time of that disaster we must look to
other lands for the continuation of a semi-Arabic literature.
Chief of the secondary developments from the Arabian stock was the
remarkable and justly celebrated civilization of the Moors in Spain.
The fame of medieval Arabic scholarship was carried to its climax by
these first Mohammedan invaders of Europe. In the first wild onrush
of Arabian conquest most of Spain was captured in the year A.D. 712,
captured by an army having leaders of pure Arab blood, but with
followers mainly of the semi-Arabic, or Moorish, people of North
Africa. In the year 756 this Moorish kingdom in Spain broke completely
from the Arabian Caliph and set up a priest-king of its own, a caliph
whose capital was at Cordova in Spain, and whose connection with the
older Arab world was only one of race and religion and not of empire.
Our Hebraic volume has already spoken of the remarkable Hebrew writers
and philosophers who flourished within the shelter of this Cordova
caliphate. The Arabs themselves were not less able than their Hebrew
servitors.
Here then, under the sunny skies of Southern Spain, far, far indeed
from the first centers of Semitic civilization, was the last brilliant
blossoming of distinctively Semitic thought. We have in our previous
volumes traced the growth of Semitic thought and of the Semitic
religious progress from their earliest home by the Euphrates river,
where the Babylonian and the desert Arab warred in unrecognized
brotherhood of race. Now we are ready to glance briefly at them in
Spain, the last strong kingdom they were to possess, and the last
literature of note which the Semites, except as scattered members of
other communities, were to give the world.
Among the Arabic writers of Spain the most noted is the scientist and
philosopher, Averroes (1126-1198). To Mohammedans he is the religious
thinker, who strove to harmonize their faith with the advancing science
of a later day, and who opposed his practical, rational spirit to the
mysticism of Al Ghazali. To the European world he is the celebrated
commentator on that greatest of philosophers, Aristotle. As the voice
of Aristotle, Averroes thus became the leading teacher and philosopher
of his day; he is the link which connects our present thought and
science with the first splendor of independent inquiry under the
Greeks. The name of Aristotle, the chief scientific teacher of all the
world, is thus united forever with that of the great Arab teacher,
Averroes.
Moorish literature was also a shrine of poetry and romance, though
most of these lighter writings have only been preserved to us through
the Spanish tongue. Our own Washington Irving found in these Moorish
tales an inspiration for his genius, and has turned many of them into
English. Others will be found included in our volume.