confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence and
poetry of their native tongue. A people continually exposed to the
dangers of the field must esteem the healing powers of medicine, or
rather of surgery; but the starving physicians of Arabia murmured a
complaint that exercise and temperance deprived them of the greatest
part of their practice. After their civil and domestic wars, the
subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from this mental lethargy, found
leisure and felt curiosity for the acquisition of profane science. This
spirit was first encouraged by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his
knowledge of the Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to
the study of astronomy. But when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the
seventh of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather,
and invited the muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors at
Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, collected the
volumes of Grecian science at his command they were translated by the
most skilful interpreters into the Arabic language: his subjects were
exhorted assiduously to peruse these instructive writings; and
the successor of Mahomet assisted with pleasure and modesty at the
assemblies and disputations of the learned. "He was not ignorant," says
Abulpharagius, "that they are the elect of God, his best and most useful
servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational
faculties. The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in
the industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal appetites.
Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless emulation, the
hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a beehive: these fortitudinous
heroes are awed by the superior fierceness of the lions and tigers; and
in their amorous enjoyments they are much inferior to the vigor of the
grossest and most sordid quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the true
luminaries and legislators of a world, which, without their aid, would
again sink in ignorance and barbarism." The zeal and curiosity of
Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas: their
rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain, were the
patrons of the learned, as well as the commanders of the faithful; the
same royal prerogative was claimed by their independent emirs of the
provinces; and their emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of
science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez and Cordova. The vizier of a
sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold to
the foundation of a college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual
revenue of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were
communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand disciples
of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of the mechanic: a
sufficient allowance was provided for the indigent scholars; and the
merit or industry of the professors was repaid with adequate stipends.
In every city the productions of Arabic literature were copied and
collected by the curiosity of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A
private doctor refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because
the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.
The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred thousand
manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were
lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet this
collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that the Ommiades of
Spain had formed a library of six hundred thousand volumes, forty-four
of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova,
with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth
to more than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries
were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian
learning continued about five hundred years, till the great eruption of
the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of
European annals; but since the sun of science has arisen in the West, it
should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and declined.
In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the far greater
part of the innumerable volumes were possessed only of local value or
imaginary merit. The shelves were crowded with orators and poets, whose
style was adapted to the taste and manners of their countrymen; with
general and partial histories, which each revolving generation supplied
with a new harvest of persons and events; with codes and commentaries
of jurisprudence, which derived their authority from the law of the
prophet; with the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox tradition; and
with the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and
moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to the different
estimates of sceptics or believers. The works of speculation or
science may be reduced to the four classes of philosophy, mathematics,
astronomy, and physic. The sages of Greece were translated and
illustrated in the Arabic language, and some treatises, now lost in
the original, have been recovered in the versions of the East, which
possessed and studied the writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and
Apollonius, of Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. Among the ideal systems
which have varied with the fashion of the times, the Arabians adopted
the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible or alike obscure
for the readers of every age. Plato wrote for the Athenians, and his
allegorical genius is too closely blended with the language and religion
of Greece. After the fall of that religion, the Peripatetics, emerging
from their obscurity, prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental
sects, and their founder was long afterwards restored by the Mahometans
of Spain to the Latin schools. The physics, both of the Academy and the
LycÊum, as they are built, not on observation, but on argument, have
retarded the progress of real knowledge. The metaphysics of infinite,
or finite, spirit, have too often been enlisted in the service of
superstition. But the human faculties are fortified by the art and
practice of dialectics; the ten predicaments of Aristotle collect and
methodize our ideas, and his syllogism is the keenest weapon of dispute.
It was dexterously wielded in the schools of the Saracens, but as it is
more effectual for the detection of error than for the investigation
of truth, it is not surprising that new generations of masters and
disciples should still revolve in the same circle of logical argument.
The mathematics are distinguished by a peculiar privilege, that, in the
course of ages, they may always advance, and can never recede. But the
ancient geometry, if I am not misinformed, was resumed in the same state
by the Italians of the fifteenth century; and whatever may be the
origin of the name, the science of algebra is ascribed to the Grecian
Diophantus by the modest testimony of the Arabs themselves. They
cultivated with more success the sublime science of astronomy, which
elevates the mind of man to disdain his diminutive planet and momentary
existence. The costly instruments of observation were supplied by the
caliph Almamon, and the land of the ChaldÊans still afforded the same
spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar, and
a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians accurately measured
a degree of the great circle of the earth, and determined at twenty-four
thousand miles the entire circumference of our globe. From the reign
of the Abbassides to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the
stars, without the aid of glasses, were diligently observed; and the
astronomical tables of Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, correct some minute
errors, without daring to renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy, without
advancing a step towards the discovery of the solar system. In the
Eastern courts, the truths of science could be recommended only by
ignorance and folly, and the astronomer would have been disregarded,
had he not debased his wisdom or honesty by the vain predictions of
astrology. But in the science of medicine, the Arabians have been
deservedly applauded. The names of Mesua and Geber, of Razis and
Avicenna, are ranked with the Grecian masters; in the city of Bagdad,
eight hundred and sixty physicians were licensed to exercise their
lucrative profession: in Spain, the life of the Catholic princes was
intrusted to the skill of the Saracens, and the school of Salerno, their
legitimate offspring, revived in Italy and Europe the precepts of the
healing art. The success of each professor must have been influenced by
personal and accidental causes; but we may form a less fanciful estimate
of their general knowledge of anatomy, botany, and chemistry, the
threefold basis of their theory and practice. A superstitious reverence
for the dead confined both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection
of apes and quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known
in the time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of the human frame was
reserved for the microscope and the injections of modern artists. Botany
is an active science, and the discoveries of the torrid zone might
enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two thousand plants. Some
traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the temples and monasteries
of Egypt; much useful experience had been acquired in the practice of
arts and manufactures; but the _science_ of chemistry owes its origin
and improvement to the industry of the Saracens. They first invented
and named the alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the
substances of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and
affinities of alcalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals
into soft and salutary medicines. But the most eager search of Arabian
chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and the elixir of immortal
health: the reason and the fortunes of thousands were evaporated in
the crucibles of alchemy, and the consummation of the great work was
promoted by the worthy aid of mystery, fable, and superstition.
But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of a
familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of antiquity,
the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought. Confident in the riches
of their native tongue, the Arabians disdained the study of any
foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters were chosen among their Christian
subjects; they formed their translations, sometimes on the original
text, more frequently perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of
astronomers and physicians, there is no example of a poet, an orator, or
even an historian, being taught to speak the language of the Saracens.
The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of those
stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the colonies of the
Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and Rome: the heroes of
Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion; and the history of the world
before Mahomet was reduced to a short legend of the patriarchs, the
prophets, and the Persian kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin
schools may have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and
I am not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of
whose language I am ignorant. Yet I _know_ that the classics have much
to teach, and I _believe_ that the Orientals have much to learn; the
temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions of art, the forms
of visible and intellectual beauty, the just delineation of character
and passion, the rhetoric of narrative and argument, the regular fabric
of epic and dramatic poetry. The influence of truth and reason is of a
less ambiguous complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed
the blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious freedom.
Their moral and political writings might have gradually unlocked the
fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal spirit of inquiry
and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect that their
caliph was a tyrant, and their prophet an impostor. The instinct of
superstition was alarmed by the introduction even of the abstract
sciences; and the more rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and
pernicious curiosity of Almamon. To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision
of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe the
invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the sword of the
Saracens became less formidable when their youth was drawn away from the
camp to the college, when the armies of the faithful presumed to read
and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity of the Greeks was jealous
of their studies, and reluctantly imparted the sacred fire to the
Barbarians of the East.
In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks had
stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging their
limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the third caliph
of the new dynasty, who seized, in his turn, the favorable opportunity,
while a woman and a child, Irene and Constantine, were seated on the
Byzantine throne. An army of ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs
was sent from the Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command
of Harun, or Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful. His
encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, informed
Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of her troops
and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their sovereign, her
ministers subscribed an ignominious peace; and the exchange of some
royal gifts could not disguise the annual tribute of seventy thousand
dinars of gold, which was imposed on the Roman empire. The Saracens had
too rashly advanced into the midst of a distant and hostile land: their
retreat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful
markets; and not a Greek had courage to whisper, that their weary forces
might be surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between
a slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this
expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder
brother; the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race, illustrious
in the West, as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar to the most
childish readers, as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His title
to the name of _Al Rashid_ (the _Just_) is sullied by the extirpation of
the generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he could listen to
the complaint of a poor widow who had been pillaged by his troops, and
who dared, in a passage of the Koran, to threaten the inattentive despot
with the judgment of God and posterity. His court was adorned with
luxury and science; but, in a reign of three-and-twenty years, Harun
repeatedly visited his provinces from Chorasan to Egypt; nine times
he performed the pilgrimage of Mecca; eight times he invaded the
territories of the Romans; and as often as they declined the payment of
the tribute, they were taught to feel that a month of depredation was
more costly than a year of submission. But when the unnatural mother
of Constantine was deposed and banished, her successor, Nicephorus,
resolved to obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace. The epistle
of the emperor to the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the game
of chess, which had already spread from Persia to Greece. "The queen (he
spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and herself as a pawn. That
pusillanimous female submitted to pay a tribute, the double of which she
ought to have exacted from the Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits
of your injustice, or abide the determination of the sword." At these
words the ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the
throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his cimeter,
_samsamah_, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder the
feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the edge, or endangering the
temper, of his blade. He then dictated an epistle of tremendous brevity:
"In the name of the most merciful God, Harun al Rashid, commander of the
faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou
son of an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold, my
reply." It was written in characters of blood and fire on the plains of
Phrygia; and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could only be checked
by the arts of deceit and the show of repentance. The triumphant caliph
retired, after the fatigues of the campaign, to his favorite palace of
Racca on the Euphrates: but the distance of five hundred miles, and the
inclemency of the season, encouraged his adversary to violate the peace.
Nicephorus was astonished by the bold and rapid march of the commander
of the faithful, who repassed, in the depth of winter, the snows of
Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and war were exhausted; and
the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a field of battle
overspread with forty thousand of his subjects. Yet the emperor was
ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved on victory. One
hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers received pay, and were
inscribed in the military roll; and above three hundred thousand
persons of every denomination marched under the black standard of the
Abbassides. They swept the surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and
Ancyra, and invested the Pontic Heraclea, once a flourishing state, now
a paltry town; at that time capable of sustaining, in her antique walls,
a month's siege against the forces of the East. The ruin was complete,
the spoil was ample; but if Harun had been conversant with Grecian
story, he would have regretted the statue of Hercules, whose attributes,
the club, the bow, the quiver, and the lion's hide, were sculptured in
massy gold. The progress of desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine
to the Isle of Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his
haughty defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left
forever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was marked
with the image and superscription of Harun and his three sons. Yet this
plurality of lords might contribute to remove the dishonor of the Roman
name. After the death of their father, the heirs of the caliph were
involved in civil discord, and the conqueror, the liberal Almamon,
was sufficiently engaged in the restoration of domestic peace and the
introduction of foreign science.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part IV.
Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at
Constantinople, the islands of Crete and Sicily were subdued by the
Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their own writers,
who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos, but it has not been
overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who now begin to cast a
clearer light on the affairs of their own times. A band of Andalusian
volunteers, discontented with the climate or government of Spain,
explored the adventures of the sea; but as they sailed in no more than
ten or twenty galleys, their warfare must be branded with the name of
piracy. As the subjects and sectaries of the _white_ party, they might
lawfully invade the dominions of the _black_ caliphs. A rebellious
faction introduced them into Alexandria; they cut in pieces both friends
and foes, pillaged the churches and the moschs, sold above six thousand
Christian captives, and maintained their station in the capital of
Egypt, till they were oppressed by the forces and the presence of
Almamon himself. From the mouth of the Nile to the Hellespont, the
islands and sea-coasts both of the Greeks and Moslems were exposed to
their depredations; they saw, they envied, they tasted the fertility of
Crete, and soon returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack.
The Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but when
they descended with their plunder to the sea-shore, their vessels were
in flames, and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed himself the author of
the mischief. Their clamors accused his madness or treachery. "Of what
do you complain?" replied the crafty emir. "I have brought you to a land
flowing with milk and honey. Here is your true country; repose from your
toils, and forget the barren place of your nativity." "And our wives and
children?" "Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your
wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of a new
progeny." The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch and rampart,
in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more desirable
position in the eastern parts; and the name of Candax, their fortress
and colony, has been extended to the whole island, under the corrupt and
modern appellation of _Candia_. The hundred cities of the age of
Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only one, most probably
Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance of freedom and the
profession of Christianity. The Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss
of their navy; and the timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the
main. During a hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years,
the princes of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with
fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.
The loss of Sicily was occasioned by an act of superstitious rigor. An
amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister, was sentenced by
the emperor to the amputation of his tongue. Euphemius appealed to the
reason and policy of the Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with
the Imperial purple, a fleet of one hundred ships, and an army of seven
hundred horse and ten thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the
ruins of the ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse
was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her walls,
and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of feeding on
the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were relieved by a
powerful reÎnforcement of their brethren of Andalusia; the largest and
western part of the island was gradually reduced, and the commodious
harbor of Palermo was chosen for the seat of the naval and military
power of the Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith
which she had sworn to Christ and to CÊsar. In the last and fatal siege,
her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which had formerly
resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They stood above twenty days
against the battering-rams and _catapult_, the mines and tortoises of
the besiegers; and the place might have been relieved, if the mariners
of the Imperial fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in
building a church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the
bishop and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast
into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of death
or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint may be read
as the epitaph of his country. From the Roman conquest to this final
calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive Isle of Ortygea, had
insensibly declined. Yet the relics were still precious; the plate of
the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds of silver; the entire spoil
was computed at one million of pieces of gold, (about four hundred
thousand pounds sterling,) and the captives must outnumber the seventeen
thousand Christians, who were transported from the sack of Tauromenium
into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion and language of
the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility of the rising
generation, that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised and clothed on
the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph. The Arabian squadrons
issued from the harbors of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and
fifty towns of Calabria and Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor
could the suburbs of Rome be defended by the name of the CÊsars and
apostles. Had the Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy
and glorious accession to the empire of the prophet. But the caliphs of
Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the Aglabites and Fatimites
usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs of Sicily aspired to
independence; and the design of conquest and dominion was degraded to a
repetition of predatory inroads.