nished Europe with one of the most serviceable strains of that useful animal, and many Arabian words have been adopted into our language, e.g. alcohol, elixir, algebra, alembic, zenith, nadir, etc.

66

Under the caliphs, Moslem Spain became the richest, most populous, and most enlightened country in Europe. The palaces, the mosques, bridges, aqueducts, and private dwellings reached a luxury and beauty of which a shadow still remains in the great mosque of Cordova. New industries, particularly silk weaving, flourished exceedingly, 13,000 looms existing in Cordova alone. Agriculture, aided by perfect systems of irrigation for the first time in Europe, was carried to a high degree of perfection, many fruits, trees and vegetables hitherto unknown being introduced from the East. Mining and metallurgy, glass making, enamelling, and damascening kept whole populations busy and prosperous. From Malaga, Seville, and Almeria went ships to all parts of the Mediterranean loaded with the rich produce of Spanish Moslem taste and industry, and of the natural and cultivated wealth of the land. Caravans bore to farthest India and darkest Africa the precious tissues, the marvels of metal work, the enamels, and precious stones of Spain. All the luxury, culture, and beauty that the Orient could provide in return, found its way to the Moslem cities of the Peninsula. The schools and libraries of Spain were famous throughout the world; science and learning were cultivated and taught as they never had been before. Jew and Moslem, in the friendly rivalry of letters, made their country illustrious for all time by the productions of their study. . . . The schools of Cordova, Toledo, Seville, and Saragossa attained a celebrity which subsequently attracted to them students from all parts of the world. At first the principal subjects of study were literary, such as rhetoric, poetry, history, philosophy, and the like, for the fatalism of the faith of Islam to some extent retarded the adoption of scientific studies. To these, however, the Spanish Jews opened the way, and when the barriers were broken down, the Arabs themselves entered with avidity into the domain of science. Cordova then became the centre of scientific investigation. Medicine and surgery especially were pursued with intense diligence and success, and veterinary surgery may be said to have there first crystallized into a science. Botany and pharmacy also had their famous professors, and astronomy was studied and

taught as it had never been before; algebra and arithmetic were applied to practical uses, the mariner's compass was invented, and science as applied to the arts and manufactures made the products of Moslem Spain - the fine leather, the arms, the fabrics, and the metal work - esteemed throughout the world. . . . Canals and water wheels for irrigation carried marvellous fertility throughout the south of Spain, where the one thing previously wanting to make the land a paradise was water. Rice, sugar, cotton, and the silkworm were all introduced and cultivated with prodigious success; the silks, brocades, velvets, and pottery of Valencia, the beautiful damascened steel of Seville, Toledo, Murcia, and Granada, the stamped embossed leather of Cordova, and the fine cloths of Seville brought prosperity to Moslem and Mozarab alike under the rule of the Omeyyad caliphs, while the systematic working of the silver mines of Jaen, the corals on the Andalusian coasts, and the pearls of Catalonia supplied the material for the lavish splendor which the rich Arabs affected in their attire and adornment.

The Moors of Andalusia and Valencia acclimatized and cultivated a large number of semitropical fruits and plants hitherto little known in Europe, and studied arboriculture and horticulture not only practically but scientifically. The famous work on the subject by Abu Zacaria Al-Awan was the foundation of such books, and of the application of science to gardening. It was mainly derived from Chaldean, Greek, and Carthaginian manuscripts now lost. Curiously, Spain had produced under the Romans a famous book on agriculture by Columella; but for scientific knowledge it cannot be compared to the Treatise on Agriculture by Abu Zacaria. . . . From the earliest times the wool of Spain had been the finest in the world. . .. Vast herds of stunted, ill-looking, but splendidly fleeced sheep belonged to the nobles and ecclesiastical lords, and quite early in the period of reconquest, when these classes were all-powerful, a confederacy of sheep owners was formed, which by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had developed into a corporation of immense wealth. This was called the Mesta. . . The fleeces were extremely fine, often weighing 12 pounds per animal, and the wool was sought after throughout the world, especially by Flemish and French cloth workers. Even in the ninth century Spanish wool was famous in Persia and in the East; and as early as the time of the Phoenicians it was considered the finest in the world. — Hume.

The tenth century was the golden age of Moorish science in Spain. Another hundred years and it had gone down forever. Its permanent importance, even in conserving the work of the ancients, has been questioned, and a recent writer cleverly compares the whole western movement of the Arabians to the sands of their deserts, now fierce and pitiless when driven by some force such as the wind, -now sinking into inert, helpless, infertile heaps when left to themselves.

An Arab renaissance as early as the eighth century had revived something of classic knowledge. The poetry and philosophy of Greece were studied, and the taste for learning was cultivated with the enthusiasm which the Arabs infused into all their undertakings. Every one knows the fascinating account of these things in the pages of Gibbon. How the tide of progress flowed from Samarcand and Bokhara to Fez and Cordova. How a vizir consecrated 200,000 pieces of gold to the foundation of a college. How the transport of a doctor's books required four hundred camels. How a single library in Spain contained 600,000 volumes, while seventy public libraries were opened in Andalusia alone. How the Arabian schools of Spain and Italy were resorted to by scholars from every country in Europe. . . .

Here was a state of luxury and learning which contrasted strongly enough with the barbarism of the age. But under all this show where was the substantial basis? How much of all this was real? Arab architecture, in so far as it was Arab, and not built for them by the Greeks, was a concoction of whim and fantasy. In those nervous hands every strong and simple feature was distorted into endless complications, and, as always happens, lost in stability what it gained in eccentricity. Their learning was of the same character. Though they disputed interminably on the rival merits of the Greek philosophers, they were content to receive all their knowledge of them through indifferent translations. When the real revival of learning came, and a genuine Renaissance set in, the six or seven centuries of Arab civilization were simply ignored and passed over.

The Arab mind seems to turn by a sort of instinct to the occult, the mystical, the fantastic. It is always sighing for new worlds to conquer before it has made good the ground it stands on. It has the curious gift of turning everything it touches from substance to shadow.

Astronomy changes into astrology, and the main business of the science becomes the casting of horoscopes. The study of medicine changes into the composition of philtres and talismans and the reciting of incantations. Chemistry changes into a search for the secret of the transmutation of metals and the elixir of immortal health. In short, the tendency always was to shift the appeal from the intellect and reason to the fancy and imagination; and their zeal, instead of being devoted to laying firm foundations, evaporated in vague aspirations after the unintelligible or the unobtainable. . . .

...

And the consequence is that not only has the Arab left us little or nothing, but his whole history seems already more legendary than real. Other civilizations abide our question. Not the Greek and Roman only, but the remote Assyrian and Egyptian, are definite and real in comparison with the Arabian. This seems of another texture. It is such stuff as dreams are made of.

Those so-called conquests of his [the Arab's] were really the taking advantage of a unique opportunity for destroying and pulling down. The collapse of the Western Empire, and weakness and paralysis of the Eastern, afforded the Arab a fine field for the display of his peculiar prowess. He took to the lumber and débris of these crumbling empires as fire takes to rotten wood. But if in the void that separates ancient civilisation from modern the Arab appears to advantage, there no sooner entered on the scene nations of solid character and creative genius than he retired before them, and yielded to their advance.

March Phillips.

The Golden Age of Moorish learning in the tenth century came and went, leaving behind it singularly few permanent results. Owing to the racial and religious hatreds of the time the Christian conquerors of the Moslems, like their Roman prototypes in the first few centuries after Christ, had small respect for Greek-and less for Mohammedan — learning. Hence, doubtless, it came about that to-day in Cordova, for example, almost no traces remain of that Arabian learning of which it was once the celebrated seat. Even the site of its illustrious university has faded from memory and only its great mosque (of which the heart is occupied by a Christian church) remains to bear visible witness to Mohammedan Cordova. The same is true of other once famous centres

of Spanish Mohammedan-Greek learning. Toledo still possesses some of its Arabian walls and gateways, and Seville its lovely Giralda "the first astronomical observatory in Europe"-and its Tower of Gold; but it is only in the Alhambra of Granada that any adequate vision can be had of Mohammedan life and influence in Spain. Here the quiet, the seclusion, the rich ornamentation, and the music of abundant running waters, still communicate an impression of wealth, taste, and power, and suggest possibilities of uninterrupted study and an intellectual life. Elsewhere, evidences of the Mohammedan love of inquiry, of libraries, of decoration, and even of fruits and gardens, have been almost wholly blotted out.

REFERENCES FOR READING

BALL. Chapter IX.

BERRY. Chapter III.

DRAPER.

History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. Vol. II.

DREYER. Chapter XI.

HUME, M. History of the Spanish People.

MARCH PHILLIPS. In the Desert.

GIBBON. Decline and Fall.