LITMIR.BIZ

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imbibed the Arab admiration of the horse; they learned to pride themselves on skilful riding. Hunting and falconry became their fashionable pastimes; they tried to emulate that Arab skill which had produced the celebrated breed of Andalusian horses. It was a scene of grandeur and gallantry; the pastimes were tilts and tournaments. The refined society of Cordova prided itself in its politeness. A gay contagion spread from the beautiful Moorish miscreants to their sisters beyond the mountains; the south of France was full of the witcheries of female fascinations, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Light literature spreads into Sicily and Italy. Even in Italy and Sicily the love-song became the favourite composition; and out of these genial but not orthodox beginnings the polite literature of modern Europe arose. The pleasant epidemic spread by degrees along every hillside and valley. In monasteries, voices that had vowed celibacy might be heard carolling stanzas of which St. Jerome would hardly have approved; there was many a juicy abbot, who could troll forth in jocund strains, like those of the merry sinners of Malaga and Xeres, the charms of women and wine, though one was forbidden to the Moslem and one to the monk. The sedate greybeards of Cordova had already applied to the supreme judge to have the songs of the Spanish Jew, Abraham Ibn Sahal, prohibited; for there was not a youth, nor woman, nor child in the city who could not repeat them by heart. Their immoral tendency was a public scandal. The light gaiety of Spain was reflected in the coarser habits of the northern countries. It was an archdeacon of Oxford who some time afterward sang,

      "Mihi sit propositum in tabernâ mori,

      Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,

      Ut dicant, cum venerint angelorum chori;

      'Deus sit propitius huic potatori,'" etc.

      Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste for learning and for elegant amenities found their way into Spain from all adjoining countries; a practice in subsequent years still more indulged in, when it became illustrated by the brilliant success of Gerbert, who, as we have seen, passed from the Infidel University of Cordova to the papacy of Rome.

      The Arabian school system. The khalifs of the West carried out the precepts of Ali, the fourth successor of Mohammed, in the patronage of literature. They established libraries in all their chief towns; it is said that not fewer than seventy were in existence. To every mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of the poor were taught to read and write, and instructed in the precepts of the Koran. For those in easier circumstances there were academies, usually arranged in twenty-five or thirty apartments, each calculated for accommodating four students; the academy being presided over by a rector. In Cordova, Granada, and other great cities, there were universities frequently under the superintendence of Jews; the Mohammedan maxim being that the real learning of a man is of more public importance than any particular religious opinions he may entertain. In this they followed the example of the Asiatic khalif, Haroun al Raschid, who actually conferred the superintendence of his schools on John Masué, a Nestorian Christian. The Mohammedan liberality was in striking contrast with the intolerance of Europe. Indeed, it may be doubted whether at this time any European nation is sufficiently advanced to follow such an example. In the universities some of the professors of polite literature gave lectures on Arabic classical works; others taught rhetoric or composition, or mathematics, or astronomy. From these institutions many of the practices observed in our colleges were derived. They held Commencements, at which poems were read and orations delivered in presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these schools of general learning, professional ones, particularly for medicine.

       Cultivation of grammar, rhetoric, composition. With a pride perhaps not altogether inexcusable, the Arabians boasted of their language as being the most perfect spoken by man. Mohammed himself, when challenged to produce a miracle in proof of the authenticity of his mission, uniformly pointed to the composition of the Koran, its unapproachable excellence vindicating its inspiration. The orthodox Moslems – the Moslems are those who are submissively resigned to the Divine will – are wont to assert that every page of that book is indeed a conspicuous miracle. It is not then surprising that, in the Arabian schools, great attention was paid to the study of language, and that so many celebrated grammarians were produced. By these scholars, dictionaries, similar to those now in use, were composed; their copiousness is indicated by the circumstance that one of them consisted of sixty volumes, the definition of each word being illustrated or sustained by quotations from Arab authors of acknowledged repute. They had also lexicons of Greek, Latin, Hebrew; and cyclopedias such as the Historical Dictionary of Sciences of Mohammed Ibn Abdallah, of Granada. In their highest civilization and luxury they did not forget the amusements of their forefathers – listening to the tale-teller, who never failed to obtain an audience in the midst of Arab tents. Around the evening fires in Spain the wandering literati exercised their wonderful powers of Oriental invention, edifying the eager listeners by such narrations as those that have descended to us in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. The more sober and higher efforts of the educated were, of course, directed to pulpit eloquence, in conformity with the example of all the great Oriental khalifs, and sanctified by the practice of the Prophet himself. Defects of their literature. Their poetical productions embraced all the modern minor forms – satires, odes, elegies, etc.; but they never produced any work in the higher walks of poesy, no epic, no tragedy. Perhaps this was due to their false fashion of valuing the mechanical execution of a work. They were the authors and introducers of rhyme; and such was the luxuriance and abundance of their language, that, in some of their longest poems, the same rhyme is said to have been used alternately from the beginning to the end. Where such mechanical triumphs were popularly prized, it may be supposed that the conception and spirit would be indifferent. Even among the Spanish women there were not a few who, like Velada, Ayesha, Labana, Algasania, achieved reputation in these compositions; and some of them were daughters of khalifs. And this is the more interesting to us, since it was from the Provençal poetry, the direct descendant of these efforts, that European literature arose. Sonnets and romances at last displaced the grimly-orthodox productions of the wearisome and ignorant fathers of the Church.

      If fiction was prized among the Spanish Arabs, history was held in not less esteem. Every khalif had his own historian. The instincts of the race are perpetually peeping out; not only were there historians of the Commanders of the Faithful, but also of celebrated horses and illustrious camels. In connexion with history, statistics were cultivated; this having been, it may be said, a necessary study, from the first enforced on the Saracen officers in their assessment of tribute on conquered misbelievers, and subsequently continued as an object of taste. Their taste for practical science. It was, doubtless, a similar necessity, arising from their position, that stamped such a remarkably practical aspect on the science of the Arabs generally. Many of their learned men were travellers and voyagers, constantly moving about for the acquisition or diffusion of knowledge, their acquirements being a passport to them wherever they went, and a sufficient introduction to any of the African or Asiatic courts. They were thus continually brought in contact with men of affairs, soldiers of fortune, statesmen, and became imbued with much of their practical spirit; and hence the singularly romantic character which the biographies of many of these men display, wonderful turns of prosperity, violent deaths. The scope of their literary labours offers a subject well worthy of meditation; it contrasts with the contemporary ignorance of Europe. Some wrote on chronology; some on numismatics; some, now that military eloquence had become objectless, wrote on pulpit oratory; some on agriculture and its allied branches, as the art of irrigation. Not one of the purely mathematical, or mixed, or practical sciences was omitted. Their continued inclination to the study of medicine. Out of a list too long for detailed quotation, I may recall a few names. Assamh, who wrote on topography and statistics, a brave soldier, who was killed in the invasion of France, A.D. 720; Avicenna, the great physician and philosopher, who died A.D. 1037; Averroes, of Cordova, the chief commentator on Aristotle, A.D. 1198. It was his intention to unite the doctrines of Aristotle with those of the Koran. To him is imputed the discovery of spots upon the sun. The leading idea of his philosophy was the numerical unity of the souls of mankind, though parted among millions of living individuals. He died at Morocco. Abu Othman wrote on zoology; Alberuni, on gems – he had travelled to India to procure information; Rhazes, Al Abbas, and Al Beithar, on botany – the latter had been in all parts of the world for the purpose of obtaining specimens. Ebn Zoar, better

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