The Legacy of Islam - 1931

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THE
LEGACY OF ISLAM
THE
LEGACY, OF ISLAM
Edited by the late
SIR THOMAS ARNOLD

C.I.E., F.B.A., LittJD.'
and
ALFRED GUILLAUME
M.A. Oxon., Principal of Culhani College
Formerly Professor of Oriental Languages
in the University of Durham
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
I93 1
OXFORD UNIVERSffY
AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI

HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE
UNIVERSITY
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE
The Legacy of Islam is a companion volume to The Legacy oj
Greece, The Legacy of Rome, The Legacy of the Middle Ages, and
The Legacy of Israel. It seeks to give an account of those
elements in the culture of Europe which are derived from the
Islamic world. Broadly speaking, the Legacies of Greece and
Rome are the legacies of two homogeneous and original cul-
tures, each emanating from a definite geographical centre. The
Legacy of the Middle Ages is the legacy of an epoch in the develop-

ment of western European The Iêgacy of Israel is
civilization.
'the contribution that has sum of human thought
come to the
from Judaism and from the Jewish view of the world'. The
Legacy of Islam is to be understood in a different sense from
any of these. It is a provocative title, the meaning of which is
only fully explained by the book itself. The nearest parallel is
the Legacy of Israel. But whereas it is from the religion of the
Jews that the complexion of the Legacy of Israel is derived,

in the Legacy of Islam we do not treat of the Legacy of the
religion ofMuhammad qua religion: the reader will learn* from

this book that there is little that is peculiarly Islamic in the
contributions which Occidental and Oriental Muslims have
made to European culture. On the contrary, the legacy has
proved least valuablewhere religion has exerted the strongest

influence, as in Muslim Law. But Islam is the fundamental
fact which made the Legacy possible. It was under the pro-
tection and patronage of the Islamic Empire that the arts and
sciences which this book describes flourished.
Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, and the language of Arabia
lies behind all that has been written in this book. Islamic and
Arabic have often been used as interchangeable terms, and

Language and Religion in the great days of the Muslim Cali-
phate were inseparable. Arabic is the Greek of the Sdhiitic
vi
Preface
world, and it was a fortunate thing for Islam that its message
was delivered at a time when Arabic was potentially at its
zenith. Aramaic was a poverty-stricken tongue compared with
Arabic, and not even classical Hebrew at its best could rival
Arabic in its astonishing elasticity. From its own inner resources
it could evolve by autogenous processes the mot juste which new
artsand new sciences demanded for their intellectual expression.
A
fundamental characteristic of the Semitic languages is to
have only three consonants to the verb. There are exceptions
to this rule in the various languages, but such exceptions are
comparatively rare. It follows almost inevitably that compound

words to express complex ideas arc practically unknown in
Arabic. Consequently, it is the more interesting and remarkable
that a language which is so circumscribed should be able to cope
with all the lore of the Greek world and so seldom give rise to a
suspicion that any strain is being put upon its resources.

Arabic is fitted to express relations with more conciseness
than the Aryan languages because of the extraordinary flexi-
bility of the verb and noun. Thus, the ideas: break, shatter,
try to break, cause to break, allow to be broken, break one
another, ask some one to break, pretend to break, are among
many variations of the fundamental verbal theme which can,
or could, be expressed by vowel changes and consonantal
augments without the aid of the supplementary verbs and

pronouns which we have to employ in English. The noun,
too, has an appropriate form for many diverse things, such as
the time and place of an action, bodily defects, diseases, instru-
ments, colours, trades, and so on. One example must suffice.
Let us take the root d-w-r, which, in its simplest form, means
to turn or revolve (intransitive).
dawwara, to turn a thing round, ddwara, to walk about with

some one.
'adara, to make go round, and tadawwara \ to be round in
so, to control. istaddra
J shape.
Preface vii
dawr, turning (noun). dawrab, one turning.

dawardn, circulation. duwdr, vertigo.
dawwdr, pedlar or vagrant. dawwdrah, mariner's compass.
maddr, axis. muddrab, round water-skin.
mudir, controller.
None of these forms is fortuitous, but is predetermined by the
structural genius of the Arabic language.
It will be realized that with such manifold nuances at the
disposal of every verb and noun the Arabic language could

readily be adapted to express the scientific terminology of the
classical world. The Arabs were an observant race. If analytical
reasoning was not indigenous to their language they compen-

sated for the lack of it by having a specific name for every
different type of thing. A
camel of so many years of age, the
mother of so many foals, a good trotting beast, a milch camel,
and so on, all these had their proper names, a fact which makes
an exact and felicitous rendering of Arabic poetry notoriously
difficult.
The triliteral root with its ramifications through a thousand
fonns, each of which has an assonance with the same form of

another root, produces a rhythm in Arabic as natural as it is
inevitable. When we utter an abstract idea we have no thought
of the primitive meaning of the word we employ. 'Association'
sits very loosely to socius in the mind of the speaker. We nave no
sotiusnor ad in English. But in Arabic the material is never more

than faintly obscured beneath the abstract; its presence can
always be felt. What in English would be but an indifferent pun
at best, is merely etymological consciousness in an Arab, who
would perceive at once the nicety of the explanation of Mene>
Mene, tekel upbarsin which is given in Daniel v. 25. The Hebrew
of the Old Testament can hardly be said to be free frofc artificial
etymologies which are obviously self-conscious attempts to find
a radical justification for names whose primitive significance has
been lost. But I do not know of such an extreme example as
viii
Preface
can be seen in the naive explanation given by an Arabic writer
of the name of an ancient chieftain Muzaiqiya, the little man
who up (mazaga) his clothes every evening!
tore
paramount superiority of the Arabic language is

Belief in the
an article of faith among Muslims, and an exact knowledge of
its grammar in cultured circles the distinguishing mark of a
gentleman. Yet it is a remarkable fact that before the end of

the first century of the Hi] rah an Umayyad caliph was unable
to convey his meaning to the pure-blooded Arabs of the
desert.The fact that the chaste language of ancient Arabia
is
only to be found in the ancient pre-Islamic and early Islamic
writers, so far from discouraging attempts to master its intri-
cacies has incited Muslim scholars of all lands to a laborious
study of its grammar and rhetoric. Nor are such labours fruit-
less. If it is profitable for the cultured European to imitate the
periods of Cicero,it is also

profitable for the Oriental to acquire
a discriminating taste for the classics of his own language. 1
The charm which the Arabic language and Arabic literature
never fails to exert on
devotees lies in its unexpectedness, its
its
unaff ectedness, and love of direct speech.

its Elsewhere in this
volume examples will be found of the contributions which the
Arabic tongue has made to the languages of Europe. How
many words lived only for a day or were slain by the European
Renaissance only specialists can say. What, for instance, have
the physicians done with the soda which once formed the
2
opening discourse of the third book of Avicenna's Qanun,
the Sermo universalis de Soda ? This barbarous transcription
stands for sudd', headache, and comes appropriately enough
from the root sada'a, to split. Beside this service we owe a
great debt to Arabic in the field of Old Testament studies.
Professor Nicholson's Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose, Cam-

1
bridge, 1
922, is invaluable as an indication of the pleasure and profit to be
gained from reading Islamic literature.
2 See further, p. 329.
Preface ix
As soon Arabic became an imperial language the Jews per-

as
ceived its close affinity with Hebrew. In the third century

of the Hijrah the Jews had imitated the Arabs, or rather, the
non-Arab Muslims, and submitted their language to gram-
matical analysis. The grammar of Rabbi David Qimhi (died
c.
1235), which exercised a profound influence on the subse-
quent study of Hebrew among Christians, borrows a great deal

from Arabic sources. His exegesis, which was founded on his
Grammar, is frequently to be traced in the Authorized Version
of the Old Testament scriptures.
Since the beginning of the nineteenth century there has been
constant recourse to Arabic for the explanation of rare words
and forms in Hebrew; for Arabic, though more than a thousand
years the junior as a literarylanguage, the senior philologically
is
by countless centuries. Perplexing phenomena in Hebrew can

often be explained as solitary and archaic survivals of forms
which are frequent and common in the cognate Arabic. Words
and idioms whose precise sense had been lost in Jewish tradition,
receive a ready and convincing explanation from the same source.
Indeed, no serious student of the Old Testament can afford to

dispense with a first-hand knowledge of Arabic. The pages of
any critical commentary on the Old Testament will illustrate
the debt that biblical exegesis owes to Arabic. And the legacy
is not
yet all spent. When Julius Wellhausen, whose writings
stilldominate the study of the Old Testament, ceased to write
on matters Arabian, the study of Arabic and of Islamic institu-
tions lost the services of a genius. Yet a fair exchange was
effected when Ignaz Goldziher forsook Hebrew for Arabic. An
outstanding example of what may be done by him who holds the

balance true can be seen in the writings of Robertson Smith,
whose Religion of the Semites is a masterly synthesis of old
Arabian and ancient Canaanitish lore.
It is difficult to write calmly of the loss which our book has

suffered in the untimely death of my fellow-editor, Sir Thomas
x Preface
Arnold. He was a personal friend of every contributor, and his
death, was not only an irreparable loss to Oriental scholarship,
but it has left a wound in the hearts of his friends which time
alone can heal. His own contribution, a chapter on the Legacy
of Islamic Painting, he left unfinished. His knowledge of the
subject was unique in England, and it has seemed fitting to

print his article, just as he left it, as an
appendix to the chapter
on Minor Arts, rather than to attempt to add anything to it. 1
Sir Thomas Arnold and I drew up the plan of the book, and
he lived to read most of the articles in proof. Since then
Professor Nicholson has been good enough to read every chapter
with me, and besides making a number of valuable suggestions
has allowed me to consult him on any doubtful matter.
For arranging the illustrations of the volume, apart from the
articles on the Minor Arts and Architecture, for which the
authors provided their own illustrations, I am indebted to
Mr. A. L. P. Norrington, of the Clarendon Press.
It has seemed advisable to confine the scope of this book to
the achievements of the past. At the present time Modernism
has interrupted the reform movement in the religious world of
Islam, while Materialism encroaches daily on the thought and
literature of the East. It would be the height of rashness to
attempt to forecast the course of events. On the one hand, the
past history of Arabic and Islamic institutions displays their
extraordinary vitality despite attacks from within and without ;
on the other hand, many far-reaching innovations have been

made in Islamic countries during the last few years. This book
may help the observer to estimate the importance of those
changes and to pursue them to their outcome with interest and
sympathy.
The system of transliteration is that recommended by the
Royal Asiatic Society. This system permits certain variations
1
This course is further justified by the fact that the author had said
that the influence of Muslim painting on European painting was negligible.
Preface xi
which will be found from time to time in the different chapters,
e.g. the diphthong ay may be written ai as in Hunain (Hunayn).

Well-known names like Mecca and Caliph and so on have been
left in the forms familiar to generations of English readers. The
name Muhammad, on the other hand, is generally written as it
is
spelt in Arabic.
In a work of this kind in which each chapter is a unity in
itself, the same writers and the same subjects must sometimes be
discussed more than once. The only alternative is a cross-
reference. Occasionally it will be found that the contributors
differ in their estimate of the significance of certain phenomena
common to East and West. Such differences of opinion have
been allowed to stand in order that the reader may sec both
sides of the question and form his own judgement.
A. G.
CONTENTS
OF ILLUSTRATIONS
.......
xiii
JLIST
ISPAIN AND PORTUGAL
By J. B. TREND I
THE CRUSADES
By ERNEST
Cambridge
GEOGRAPHY AND COMMERCE
.......
BARKER, Professor of Political Science at the University of
40
By j. H.
of Leiden .......
KRAMERS, Lecturer in Persian and Turkish at the University
ISLAMIC MINOR ARTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON

79
By
EUROPEAN WORK
A. H.
ISLAMIC ART
CHRISTIE
AND
......
ITS INFLUENCE ON PAINTING IN
IO8
EUROPE
By the late SIR THOMAS ARNOLD . . . .
.151
ARCHITECTURE
By MARTIN S.
BRIGGS, F.R.I.B.A. . . . . I 55
LITERATURE
By H. A. R. GIBB, Professor of Arabic at the University of London
MYSTICISM
By R. A. NICHOLSON, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at the
University of Cambridge . . . . . 2IO
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
By ALFRED GUILLAUME, Principal of Culham College . .
239
LAW AND SOCIETY
By DAVID DE SANTILLANA, Professor of the History of the Political
and Religious Institutions of Islam in the University of Rome 284
.....
.
SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

By MAX MEYERHOF, M.D., PH.D.
MUSIC
By
Glasgow .......
H. G. FARMER, Carnegie Research Fellow at the University of
356
ASTRONOMY AND MATHEMATICS
By BARON CARRA DK VAUX
INDEX
..... 399
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
THE modern Spanish school of scientific historians is not favour-
ably disposed towards the legacy of Islam. A hundred years
ago the importance of 'the Moors in Spain' was unduly exag-
gerated; to-day the subject is out of fashion among serious
workers and apt to be despised by intelligent readers. This
attitude may be regrettable, but there arc reasons for it, and not
all of them are bad reasons. The inaccuracies in Conde's
Historia de la dominacion de los drabes en Espana, thesomewhat
unfortunate conclusions reached by Dozy regarding the Cid
conclusions which subsequent research has proved to be fallacious,
and lastly the tendency emanating from French and American
universities to trace everything, if possible, to a Latin origin,
have led Hispanists to regard oriental studies with a certain
feeling of distrust, from which not even the solid achievements
of an Asin or a Ribcra have altogether been able to save them.
Other influences also have been at work, as a result of the
social and political conditions of modern Spain. An idea has
gained ground that oriental studies, and Islamic solutions for

the problems of Spanish history, philology, and art, belong to
that romantic but disastrous tradition, which, after a nineteenth
century of invasion, civil war^ and unrest, ended in the Spanish-

American conflict of 1898. ^The movement for reform and re-
cuperation, begun by 'the generation of 1898' and encouraged

by the inspired teaching and blameless life of Francisco Gincr,
led to the development of that sense of accurate scholarship
which is so conspicuously manifest in the work of Professor
Mcnendez Pidal. Yet it was singularly unfortunate that wherever
Pidal turned to the old ballads, to the poem of the Cid, to the
origins of the Spanish languagehe found a body of ill-supported
assumptions concerning 'Moorish origins', assumptions which
had to be cleared away before any real progress could be made.
3385 B
2
Spain and Portugal
Menendez Pidal was so much better equipped than any of his
contemporaries that the conclusion was drawn that a Romance

philologist must inevitably be more reliable in Spain than an
orientalist, and a Romance explanation of any phenomenon in
Spanish philology or Spanish art intrinsically more probable than

a solution derived from oriental studies. Pidal himself, how-
ever, had no illusions as to the value or necessity of the study of
Arabic in Spanish philology; and in the first number of the
Revista de Filologia Espanola, founded by him in 1914, the lead-
ing article was by Professor Miguel Asin.
Effects of Islam on political and economic history

Yet there
another line of opposition in Spain to the legacy
is
of Islam that the Muslims were the cause, directly or indirectly,

:
of all the evils which afterwards befell the country. 'Without

Islam' (writes one of the best of the younger Spanish medievalists)
'Spain would have followed the same course as France, Germany,

Italy and England; and to judge by what was actually accom-
plished through the centuries, Spain might have led the way.
But it was not to be. Islam conquered the whole of the Penin-
sula, distorted the destinies of Iberia and allotted to it a different
part in the tragi-comedy of history a role of and

sacrifice
vigilance, of sentinel and teacher, which had enormous

a role
importance in the life of Europe, but which proved extremely

1
expensive to Spain.'
The first result of the Muslim conquest of 711 was that
Iberian particularism sprang once more to life. All along the
mountain chains which cross northern Spain from the Atlantic
to the Mediterranean arose nuclei of resistance to the Muslim
invaders; and these nuclei became iri time the kingdoms of
Asturias and Navarre and the 'counties' in the Pyrenees. The
1
C. Sanchez Albornoz, Espanay el Islam. (Revista de Occidente, vii, no. 70,
p. 4, April 1929.) The Arabic origin of the famous name (al-humusl, the man
with the burnous) will not escape notice.
Spain and Portugal 3
new states led a separate existence for something like

eight
centuries, with nothing in common except their faith and the
fact that the dialects they spoke had once been a form of Low
Latin. They had begun as Christian points of resistance, like the
Balkan states, and so they continued. When at length Islam ceased
to be a dangerous neighbour, each of the Christian states turned its
gaze in a different direction; they fought with one another again

and again, and in their isolation created different dialects,
different traditions. The most vital of these new kingdoms was
the kingdom of Castille; but even that, owing to its prolonged
contact with Islam, was some three centuries behindhand in the
development of those institutions which are characteristic of
medieval Europe. Meanwhile the reconquest advanced south-
wards, and the Christian kings replenished their resources by
the occupation of immense territories inhabited by Muslim
agricultural labourers, while their Christian subjects tended
to become more and more an exclusive military caste. The
economic consequences of the reconquest were disastrous. It
was not that the influence of Islam was directly harmful, but it
certainly retarded the economic development of the Christian
states. Christian Spain revolved for five centuries in the econo-
mic orbit of the Islamic South; commerce was monopolized by
Muslims and Jews. For nearly four hundred years the Christian
kingdoms in Spain used no money except Arabic or French, and
for two hundred more the kings of Castille had no gold coinage
of their own. Among the 'Old Christians' there was no impulse
towards economic activity; the reconquest, whether it was a
conscious ideal or not, absorbed all men of action in military
adventure. When the reconquest was interrupted, as it was
from the middle of the thirteenth century until the fifteenth,
the spirit of adventure led Aragon to seek hegemony in Italy and
the East, and Portugal to exploration in Africa and the Atlantic,
while Castille, having no outlet to the sea, consumed its energies
in dynastic quarrels and barons' wars.
B2
4 Spain and Portugal
The union of Aragon and Castille in the persons of Ferdinand
and Isabella, which led to the capitulation of Granada and the
end of the reconquista, in 1492, coincided with the discovery of
America and this once more drew away, on the greatest adven-
;
ture in history, the most vigorous part of the Spanish population.

The banishment of the Jews, which also took place in that year,
had not been unpopular with the 'Old Christians'; but the ex-
pulsion of the Moriscos (the Spanish Muslims who by one means
or another had been converted to Christianity) never had the
support of the majority of the Christian inhabitants; and when,

at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the country was
suddenly deprived of all its skilled workmen and several hundred

thousand agricultural labourers by this measure, the decline of
Spain was inevitable.
Yet the fact of living in contact with a Muslim people had had
at least one advantage. It had created in the small cultivated
minorities of the Christian kingdoms a spirit of toleration rare in
Europe in the Middle Ages. The French crusaders who had

helped Alfonso VIII to win the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
(1212) deserted him in disgust when they saw how mildly he
treated the conquered Muslims, while Pedro II of Aragon died
monarchs of
fighting for the Albigensian 'heretics', and several
Castille and Aragon surrounded themselves with learned Moors
and Jews. They employed Muslim architects, listened to Mus-
lim musicians, and enjoyed the refinements of Muslim culture.
But at the same time the fact of constant 'holy wars' against
Islam at length produced an exacerbation of religious sentiment.
In no country in Europe did the clergy reach a position of power
and influence comparable with that achieved in Spain; and the
country came to be governed by an ecclesiastical minority with
whom the true interests of Spain took second place: 'Spain
sacrificed to Catholicism both liberty of spirit and greatness as a
nation.*
'Islam, while it died out in al-Andalus, ended by poisoning Spain.

Ferdinand and Isabella soon fell victims, and with innocent hands
administered the draught to their own kingdoms. In the first plarc they
abandoned the traditional toleration of the houses of Castille and
Aragon; they allowed themselves to be overruled by the ideas and senti-
ments of the ecclesiastical minority, and tried to achieve the fusioa of
their ill-united kingdoms by' converting the national unity into a unity
which was less political than religious Philip II, urged onward by
. . .
the ideas which had been imprinted on his mind by the ecclesiastical
minority, denaturalized the policy of Ferdinand and Isabella to the

limit of intoleranceand absurdity; and the prosecution of this line of
conduct by the successive Philips ruined ina few generations that
marvellous flower of Hispanic thought, the only favourable legacy

which Islam had bequeathed.' 1
Races and Languages in Muslim Spain
Such the indictment of a modern Spanish historian. Yet it

is
cannot be denied that while Europe lay for the most part in
misery and decay, both materially and spiritually, the Spanish
Muslims created a splendid civilization and an organised econo-
mic life. Muslim Spain played a decisive part in the develop-
ment of art, science, philosophy, and poetry, and its influence
reached even to the highest peaks of the Christian thought of the
thirteenth century, to Thomas Aquinas and Dante. Then, if
ever, Spain was 'the torch
But who were the torch-bearers ? It was formerly the custom
them 'Moors' or 'Arabs', but such a statement is far too
to call
sweeping. The leader of the successful expedition into

first
Spain, Tariq, was not an Arabjput ajkrber, and so were a large
proportion of his followers: the actual figures given arc 300

Arabs and 7,000 Berbers. The forces brought over in the follow-
ing year, 712, by Musa ibn Nusair were also a mixed force of
Arabs (from different parts of Arabia), Syrians, Copts, and
Berbers. Study of ancient records and modern place-names
(particularly in
the kingdom of Valencia) makes it possible to
1
Revista de Occidente, vol. vii, no. 70, p. 28 (April 1929).
arrive at an approximate tribal distribution of Arabs in Spain,
both directly after the invasion and later: and besides their
tribal names, the invaders brought their tribal quarrels, which
were fought out in Spain with as much bitterness as in the land
of their origin. Many families of Christians living in Spain were
converted to Islam, and the more important of them, and some
who remained Christian, left their names also, with the Arabic
prefix Banu-y or Barii- 'sons of.y
There was much intermarriage between Muslims and

Christians. The son of Musa ibn Nusair and other leaders of the
expedition married into the family of Witiza, the last legitimate

king of Visigothic Spain; and throughout the country the
mothers of the next generation, whether Muslim or Christian,
were all
Spanish. The Muslims of succeeding generations pre-
ferred the mothers of their children to be those fair-complexioned
slaves captured in the north of Spain, rather than, or in addition
to, their own womenfolk. Professor Ribera has studied the re-
cords of the slave-market at Cordoba at various periods. The 1
purchase of a slave was not so simple a transaction as is often
imagined. It had to be concluded in the presence of a notary,

and the purposes for which a female slave was required, as well
as her capabilities and treatment, were carefully considered.
Women enjoyed more freedom and more consideration under

f
the Umayyads in Spain than under the Abbasids of Baghdad ;
yet it was thought highly desirable that those destined to become

the mothers of children in good families should be fair-skinned,
and, if possible, Galicians. The result was that, although their
descendants bore the names of their ancestors in the male line
only, the purity of the Arab race was diminished by crossing with
Spanish strains in each successive generation, and the more Arab
names a man bore the less Arab blood he had in his veins. It is
wrong, therefore, to assume that all Muslims in Spain were

Arabs, and all Christians Romans or Goths; that all of these fled
1
Julian Ribera, Disertacioncs y opuscules, vol. i, pp. 17-25. (Madrid, 1928.)
S-ftain
and Portugal 7
to the north time of the conquest, or that the
for refuge at the
'reconquest' was a war lasting eight centuries between the

'Latino-Goths' in the north and the Andalusian 'Arabs' in the
south.
From the third or fourth generation after the conquest, most
Spanish Muslims were bilingual, both those of Arab descent (by
that time a small minority) and those of Spanish Christian
origin. Besides Arabic, which was the official language, they

used a Romance patois, which was also spoken by the Mo/arabcs
(mustarib, 'Arabized' or 'would-be Arab') the Christians still
living under Muslim Al-Khushanl (Aljoxani), in his

rule.
history of the qadis of Cordoba, brings out clearly how general

1
the use of this Romance dialect was. It seems to have been used
in Cordoba by all classes, even in courts of law and in the royal
palace. There were, in fact, four languages in use in Muslim

Spain :
(1) Classical Arabic, the language of men of letters;
(2) Colloquial Arabic, the language of administration and

government;
(3) Ecclesiastical Latin, a merely ritual language associated
with form of worship and
a particular ;
(4) A Romance dialect, mainly derived from Low Latin,

but destined to become (under the name of Romance
casUllano or Spanish) one of the great interim tional
languages of the world, by the side of English, and

Arabic.
It was difficult at first for the illiterate people of Peninsular

origin to learn to express themselves in Arabic of any kind ; and
in the first centuries after the conquest there were many newly-
converted Muslims in Spain who were too ignorant of the Arabic
language to be instructed in the fundamental laws of Islam.
jueces de Cordoba. Text, translation, and introduction by

1
Historia dc los
Julian Ribera. (Madrid, 1914.)

8
Spain and Portugal
Even no great surprise when a man who
in later times it caused
spoke no Arabic was appointed qddi. 'Abd al-Rahman III and his
courtiers made jokes and rimes about the odd-sounding words em-
ployed by the people. Al-Khusham relates that there was in

1
Cordoba at that time an old man called Yanair, or Giner a name

which no one at all intimately acquainted with the development
of modern Spain can pronounce without emotion. He only spoke
in Romance (al-*ajamiya 'the outlandish speech'), but he was so
esteemed for his honour and sincerity that his testimony was
accepted without question in legal and judicial proceedings. He
was much beloved in Cordoba for his virtues and his orthodox
professions of the Muslim faith; and one day the officers invited
him to give evidence in a case against a certain qddi. 'The old
man replied in *ajamiya: "I do not know him, but I have heard
the people say of him that he is a little ." And he used . . .
*
a diminutive of the word in ajam lya. So when they reported his
saying to the Emir (the mercy of God be upon him !) he was

delighted with the man's expression, and said: "There would not
have come the like of this word from that honest man, unless it
were to be trusted." So he dismissed the qddi forthwith.' 2
Mozdrabes and Muslim culture
Yet in spite many Muslims in Spain were of

of the fact that
Spanish origin, and that the Arabic language was by no means
universally understood nor spoken very well even in the ninth
century the Arabic of Spain was described by a traveller from the
East (al-MuqaddasI) as being 'obscure and difficult to under-
stand' still the
legacy of Islam continued to make progress. If
cultivated Mozarabes were bilingual, the majority were illiterate ;
the few who could read and write preferred to do so in Arabic
rather than in Latin. Latin was a clumsy language to write
compared with Arabic, and the Latin literature available was of*
1
R. Menendez Pidal, Origenes del Espanol, p. 442. (Madrid, 1926.)
2 loc. cit., p. 1 and Arabic
J. Ribera, 18, text, p. 97.
no great we find* a bishop in Cordoba reprimanding
interest ; so
his flock not so much for lack of faith as for preferring Arabic
poetry and prose to the homilies of the Fathers. Again, the
^Muslims had introducej_paper and books were more quickly
3
and cheaply produced in Arabic than in Latin.

Cordoba in the tenth century was the most civilized city in
Europe, the wonder and admiration of the world, a Vienna
among Balkan states. Travellers from the north heard with
something like fear of the city which contained 7jibranes ancj
900 publicj)aths yet whenever the rulers of Leon, Navarre or
;
Barcelona needed such things as a surgeon, an architect, a

dressmaker or a singing-master, it was to Cordoba that they
applied. Queen Tota of Navarre, for instance, brought her son
Sancho the Fat to be cured of his corpulence. She was referred
to a famous Jewish physician; and not only was the treatment
successful, but the government made use of the doctor to

negotiate with the Queen an important treaty.
But what most struck the imagination of travellers were the
reports of the summer palace of Madmatu-1-Zahra, situated
about three miles to the west of Cordoba, which even in the
sober pages of al-Maqqari writing long afterwards seems more
like a dream-palace of the 'Thousand and one Nights' than a
group of buildings of which modern excavators can find little

1
except the drains.
Madinatu-1-Zahra was destroyed within fifty years of its
completion. But the fall of the Caliphate meant that its culture
or, at any rate, some of it became 'available to the con-
querors. The tenth century is the
period of Muslim city states
or 'party-kings' (Ar. muluk al-tawffif, Sp. reyes &e taifas) and ;
though Seville under the 'Abbadite dynasty (e.g. Mu'tamid, the

poet) was
no less brilliant than Cordoba had been the century
before, the Muslim states were now more open to the Christians
of the north, and cultural influence spread as their political
1
R. Velazquez Bosco, Medina Axzabra y Alamiriya. (Madrid, 1912.)
io Spain and Portugal
power declined. The expansion of Muslim culture to the north
was further encouraged by the emigration of the Mozarabes
still
during the persecution which took place under the Berber

dynasties, Almoravides and Almohades (al-
(al-Murdbituri)
Muwakhiduri), especially between 1090 and 1146. For the first
time in Spanish history intolerance had appeared; but it is
curious that it should have appeared almost simulfaneously in
both camps, being introduced by the Berber fanatics in ,the
south and the Cluniac monks in the north. The Mozarabes of
Valencia found it impossible to live under the Almoravides;
when Jimena abandoned the city in 1102 after the death of the
Cid, all the Mozarabes were expatriated to Castille. This mass
emigration was followed by otl^rs; and under the Almohades
(1143) the position of the Mozarabes grew worse. 'Abd al-
Mu'min decreed the expulsion f all Christians and Jews who
refused to turn Muslim. It is surprising, however, to find that it
is precisely this period of Berber hegemony in Spain (roughly
from 1056 to 1269) which includes some of the greatest names
in Muslim Spanish culture al-Bakrv and IdrisI the geographers
:
and Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) the physiciaixlived under the Almora-

vides; the succeeding dynasty pi^duced Avempace,
while
Averroes, and Ibn Tufayl among philosopher^J4te^4rabl of
Murcia the mystic, Maimonides the Jewish savant, and Ibn
Jubayr the traveller.
The deported Mozarabes had carried with them certaiii
ways of building and styles of dress, certain Muslim customs and
expressions (e.g. quern Deus salvet^ cut sit beata requies^ que Dios
mantengd), but the legacy of practical Muslim civilization as it
1
had existed in Spain was spread all over the country by the Chris-
tian conquests and by Jewish intermediaries in the first half of
the thirteenth century, which brought large numbers of Muslim
craftsmen under Christian rule. The way to Muslim learning
had been thrown open to the whole of Europe by the capture of
1
Menendez Pidal, loc. cit.
Spain and Portugal n
Toledo (1085), and with the fall of Cordoba (1236) and Seville
(1248) it spread rapidly. With the conquest of Granada (1492)
the legacy might be said to have come to an end,
except for
pottery and some of the minor ar*s.
The Arabic renaissance, which had been preceded by a French
renaissance, was followed by the Italian renaissance, and the
period of Arabic influence was ended.
Architecture: Mozarabe and Mudejar
Muslim architecture has been dealt with in another chapter.

The periods of the emirate and caliphate are represented by
the great mosque of Cordoba (fig. 77); a memorial (one of
the very few)* of the 'party-kills' are the scanty remains of the
f
Aljaferia (al-Ja fariya) at Saragossa. The Almohade period is

illustrated by the Giralda tc*ver and the oldest part of the
Alcazar (the patio del yeso) at Seville; while the art of the
Nasrite dynasty of Granada is represented by the Alhambra
(fig. i) and the Generalifc (frontispiece).

There are, however, two other styles, both characteristi-
cally Spanish, which deserve attention: the Mozarabic and
Mudcjar.
Mozarabic architecture is in some ways a reaction against
Islam, but it had to submit to influences from its more powerful
and more civilized neighbour in the south. Originating in a
ityle practised in Spain
before the invasion of 71 1, it became the
typical style of the Christian kingdoms of the north between

that period and the introduction of the Romanesque style
towards the end of the eleventh century. As *a distant outpost
of Byzantine art', it shows certain features which appear in
Muslim architecture also, such as the paired ajimez windows
(al-shamas) and the horseshoe arch. The history of this 'Moorish'
arch is a very pretty problem, for it is found not only in Muslim
buildings but in Mozarabic churches also. It has been suggested
that Christian emigrants from Cordoba, especially monks,
12
Spain and Portugal
brought with them ideas of a higher culture than any known in
the north, including new methods of building. The unpretend-
ing churches which date from this epoch, though they show
certain features of Byzantine origin, betray the influence of
Cordoba in the structure of the arch and in the system of
vaulting (e.g. San Miguel dc Escalada, built by monks expelled
from the Muslim capital in 913). Cordoba made the 'Moorish'
arch known to the Christians and Muslims alike, but did not
originate it, for it undoubtedly existed in Spain before the date
of the conquest, and is even found on late Roman tombstones.
The Spanish Muslims, however, quickly realized its possibilities,
both structural and decorative, and adopted it generally,
exaggerating the 'pinch' in the sides and eventually half filling
the hollow of the arch. The influence of Cordoba, including
the horseshoe arch, is also to be seen in Mozarabic illuminated
manuscripts (such as the commentaries of Beatus of Liebana);
while other Latin manuscripts are known which actually have
marginal notes in Arabic explaining the meaning of the Latin
words. But the most original contribution of Cordoba to archi-
tecture was the system of vaulting based on intersecting arches
and system which attacks the main
visible intersecting ribs, a
problem of architecture that of covering space with a roof in

much the same way as the system of Gothic vaulting which
developed two centuries later.
The architectural forms developed at Cordoba were carried
to Toledo and Saragossa, where they are beautifully exhibited in
brickwork. The exquisite 'Cristo de la Luz' at Toledo (fig. 2),
originally a Visigothic church, was turned into a mosque at the
time of the Muslim occupation, and was restored by a Muslim
architect in 980, as is stated in an inscription on the front of the
building. Inside, the walls are lined with 'blank arcading'

rows of 'dummy' arches leading nowhere. This is said to be the
earliest instance of its use, the next being the cathedrals of
Durham (1093, fig. 3) and Norwich (1119). Decorative inter-

secting arcading became a favourite device with the Muslim

workmen after they had submitted to the Christians.
These men, known as Mudejares (mudajjanln\ were the
creators of the Spanish national style, perhaps the most charac-
teristically Spanish contribution to the art of Europe, and their

work is to be seen all over Spain. But its real home is Toledo.
There we find those beautiful brick church-towers with cons tantly
varying courses of blank arcading, the principle of decoration
being one of tiers of arches, one above the other in rows, while
each story has windows of different form (fig, 4). In Aragon, the
Mudejar towers arc separated from the churches, like minarets,
and are sometimes decorated with brightly-coloured tiles as well
as brickwork. At Teruel, four of the towers arc built across the
streets, with the going through an arch at the bottom;

traffic
at Calatayud (qafat Ayyub) the towers are octagonal.

1
The
brick apses of the Mudejar churches in Toledo arc also parti-
cularly beautiful examples of brickwork, while the north wall of

the older of the two cathedrals at Saragossa is a splendid example
of this kind of decoration. Mudejar workmen were employed all
over Spain for the decoration of churches and private houses,
e.g. the fantastic courtyard of the Infantado palace
at Guadala-
jara (wddi-l-hijdra). They were particularly in request for the

canopies of tombs, and also for synagogues, as may be seen in the
buildings at Toledo now known as *E1 Transito' and 'Santa
Maria la Blanca'. The
Alcazar at Seville was built by Mudejar
workmen for King Pedro the Cruel entirely in the Muslim style,
and is still used as a royal residence.
Woodwork, ceramics^ textiles^ and music

The Mudejar workmen excelled above all in the minor arts:
woodwork, pottery, textiles. The Spanish coffered (artesonado)
ceilings have no parallel in Europe if we except that of the
*
1
Bernard Bevan, 'The Mudejar Towers of Aragon (illustrated). Apollo', ix.
no. 53 (May 1929).
Capella Palatina at Palermo, which is also Muslim work. Their
inlaid doors are no less beautiful and individual, and to this day
the technical Spanish words of the carpenter's trade are largely
Arabic. The various kinds of coloured tiles (azulejos), so
familiar to-day in Spain and Portugal, are a legacy from the
Muslims, as the name
implies (see p. 20)* After the reconquest
the geometrical patterns and inscriptions of earlier times were
replaced by pictures, or even by vast frescoes composed of tiles
In Seville, tiles were used for altars, balustrades, fountains
(fig. 5).
(where the water was arranged so as to trickle slowly over the

rim of the basin and keep the tiles below it wet and shining) ;
and in public gardens they are used for seats and bookshelves
(the free library in a public garden is a peculiarly Spanish in-

stitution). In Portugal coloured tiles and tile-pictures are used
is a church in Evora, the in-
to an even greater extent: there
terior of which is
completely covered with blue and white tiles.
The highest level of Mudejar workmanship was reached in
Hispano-Moresque lustre pottery, which, in the eyes of col-
lectors, ranks only below Chinese porcelain. The earliest men-
tion of it in the eleventh century (Toledo 1066, Cordoba 1068),
is
while Idrisi describes its being made at Calatayud before 1154.

Two other places in Spain, widely separated, were famous for this
ware Malaga and, above
: Manises in the kingdom of Valencia.
all,
The from the fourteenth century,

earliest existing pieces date
though fragments which must have been four hundred years

older were found during the excavations of Madinatu-1-Zahra.
Typical Hispano-Moresque ware has a shimmering metallic

golden lustre varying from ruby to mother-of-pearl and greenish
yellow. The earliest forms of decoration are Byzantine, but the
square Kufic characters were soon introduced for decoration;
while later, a favourite inscription was al-'dfiya, good health
(Sp. alafia, prosperity, fate, or blessing). This formula was

popularly supposed to have been adopted by the potters as a
name of Allah, so that there might be
substitute for the sacred
no chance of the piece with that name being broken and the
f
potter consequently losing his soul. The al- afiya is found

principally on drug-jars. The Valencian potters, however, in-
vented other schemes of decoration based on the wild bryony
(Ar. al-gbaliba, Sp. algalaba)^ a plant familiar in their district.
Vine-leaves were also employed, and, latterly, heraldic devices
(fig. 6),from which it has been proved that Hispano-Moresque

pottery was manufactured for popes and cardinals and the
greatest families of Spain and Portugal, Italy and France.
1
'They lack our faith', Cardinal Ximencz remarked of these

heretical craftsmen, *but we lack their works*.
Spanish-Moorish were hardly less in demand than

silks
Spanish-Moorish pottery. They were particularly treasured in

Christian churches; even at Canterbury Cathedral several of the
little silk bags which held the seals of documents, dating from
1264 to 1366, were found to be made of pieces of ancient

Spanish the patterns being unmistakable and unequalled for
silk,
their intricacyand fineness of workmanship. The best surviving
pieces probably date from the end of the twelfth
and beginning
of the thirteenth centuries. With the fourteenth century, new
designs appeared with still more elaborate interlacings, and
these outlasted the Muslim dominion in Spain and are one more
manifestation of the Mudejar art of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
Cordoba became famous for its leather, known as 'Cordovan'
or 'Cordwain', so that the Cordwainers' Company, or at least
the name, might be considered part of the legacy of Arabia.
In later years fine and characteristic work was done by Mudejar
bookbinders. The Muslim-Spanish goldsmiths also achieved
renown; and the workers in other metals took no less pains with
such things as enamelled and inscribed sword-hilts, as with such
the
every-day objects as iron keys, the wards of which often take
1
C. van der Put, in Spanish Art: Burlington Magazine Monograph
and separate studies.
16
Spain and Portugal
form of interlacing letters and words in the square Kufic script
to which their shape is admirably adapted.
It is difficult to do justice to the industrial arts of the Spanish
Muslims; in music, on the contrary, their influence has probably

been exaggerated. The superficial resemblance between popular
music heard in the south of Spain and that heard in Morocco and
other Muslim countries has led many observers astray. Though
in the dances and dance-rhythms there is undoubtedly a re-
lationship between modern Spain and modern Morocco, and
although certain melodies in the repertory of musicians at Fez
are said to have been brought from Granada, in other music the
likeness lies in the manner of performance rather than in the modes
and forms of the music itself. There were undoubtedly Muslim
musicians at the courts of the medieval kings of Castille and
Aragon their names have been preserved, just as have the
names of their colleagues from England or Scotland and other
parts of Europe but in the later medieval period (e.g. that of
the Archpriest of Hita) the 'Moors' are more often described as
dancers than as players on instruments, though the instrument
had in many cases been brought to Spain and so to Europe by
Muslims the lute al-ud^ guitar qltdra (Gk. /aftxpa), and rebeck
:
or ribible, a favourite instrument with Chaucer, Ar. rabab, Sp.

rabel, Port, rabeca, the last being the ordinary word still used in
Portugal for a violin.

There are other instruments in the Peninsula with names
derived from Arabic, such as the tambourine (Sp. pandero,
pandereta, coll. Ar. bandair) ; while the 'jingles' round the edge
are known in Spain as sonajas (Ar. plur. sunuj\ Pers. sanj). The
old Spanish trumpet anafil is the Arabic al-nafir; while the word
'fanfare', a piece of music played by several trumpets, is derived
by Dr. Farmer from a plural form ofnafir anfdr. The Spanish

bag-pipes gaita are the Arabic al-ghaifa (hautboy), known in
West Africa as 'alligator', the nearest English word to the
colloquial pronunciation of the Arabic. There is also the old
Spanish instrument known as albogue, and albogon (Ar. al-biiq,

Lat. biiccimim). This has long been a mystery; but it has
recently
been described and illustrated as played to-day in the Basque
1
provinces. Finally (as pointed out in another chapter) the words
'troubadour' and trobar are almost certainly of Arabic origin:
from tarraba^ to sing, or make music.
During the persecution and gradual expulsion of the Moriscos
during the sixteenth century, the Gipsies (who are first reported
as landing at Barcelona in 1442) gradually came in and took their
place, some even settling down in the abandoned quarters of

Granada, and giving up their wandering habits. Though they
sometimes plied the trade of tinker or farrier, they had no arts
or crafts, and were in every way a bad substitute for the Moriscos ;
but they gradually became the musicians of the people, per-

forming music which they had heard in the course of their
wanderings, but performing it with a dash and fire that was all
their own. The manner of performance, which is known to the
initiated as a zambra (Ar. zamara) and still more, the manners
of the audience, breaking in with cries of Ole! Ok! (walldhi ?)
kept up a likeness to what had been in Muslim times. The

guitar-player began alone, playing a long prelude until the spirits
of the audience and the other performers were worked up to the
proper pitch; and then, when the singer at last entered, he or
she would begin with a long ay! for the same purpose- -to try
the voice or (as was heard as lately as 1922) with a wild wailing
leli, leli, which may be nothing else than a memory of the
'
Muslim creed, or perhaps 'my night, my night !
There is, however, a distinct possibility that European musical

theory, like cverj^_other_branch of learning in medieval Europe,
2 Between the
was^ influenced by Muslim writers. eightlT*and
eleventh centuries many Greek treatises on music were trans-
1
Rodney Gallop, A Book of the Basques (1930), p. 183.
2 'Clues for the Arabian influence on
H. G. Farmer, European musical
theory.' J.R.A.S., Jan. 1925, pp. 61-80.
3385 c
1 8 Spain and Portugal
latcd into Arabic, and important original works were written in
Arabic by Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avempace, Avicenna, and others.
When students from the north began to visit Toledo, these
Arabic works gradually became known in Europe in Latin trans-
lations, and it is a curious coincidence that this period (the first
half of the twelfth century) is the period in which a new prin-
ciple appears in northern music the principle that the notes

have an exact time-value orratio among themselves, instead of
the fluid time-value of plain-song. 1 The inventor of this
'measured music' is sometimes stated to have been Franco of
Cologne; but he himself speaks of measured music as a thing
already in existence, and it seems to have been known to Al-
Khalil as early as the eighth century, as well as to Al-Farabi
(tenth century), who, under the name of Alpha rabius, was

translated into Latin and widely read among northern musicians.
Walter Odington, the greatest musician of the thirteenth
century, spoke with enthusiasm of the Arabic masters; and
another English musician of the time, a writer on the theory of
music, goes so far as to call the new note-values by Arabic
names: thus he speaks of 'elmuahym' and 'clmuarifa'. 2
Medieval music is, at present, a subject in which too much is
known about the theory, and too little about the practice; the
chapter on the 'Social aspects of music in the Middle Ages' in
the introductory volume of The Oxford History of Music (1929)
broke entirely new ground. Yet the practical value of the system
of 'measured music' was immense, for it enabled music to be
composed and written down in a legible form for several voices
singing together. Such music would probably have been com-
pletely unintelligible to 'Alpharabius' and the other Muslim
theorists,and they might never have understood that the
northern musicians were applying a principle which they them-
selves had been the first to enunciate. 'Sumer is icumen in',
1
1
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians^ 3rd ed. (1927), art. 'Franco .
2
Coussemaker, Scnptores de musica medii aevi, i. 339.
the great 'round' for six voices composed about 1240 by a monk
of Reading, is in advance of any music of its time; and is in a
different world altogether from the songs of the Troubadours
and the Cantigas of the Spanish kirg Alfonso the Sage (c. 1283)
which probably arose under direct Muslim influence.
Arabic words in Spanish and Portuguese
Nothing in Spain gives clcaref evidence of the debt to Islam

than the Spanish language. Yet here particularly it is important
to avoid exaggeration and to estimate as accurately as possible
what the debt amounts to. By the time of the Muslim invasion
of 711, a Romance dialect was already in process of formation
from the Low Latin which had once been spoken in the Penin-
sula, and it is known to have been used (as we have already seen)
by the Christians under Muslim rule, and, as time went on,

by numbers of Muslims themselves. A considerable number of
Arabic words made their way into this Romance dialect and the ;
reason to be found, not so much in the direct borrowing of

is
Arabic words, as that the Spanish dialects themselves were in an

uncertain and fluid state while there were Arabic-speaking
people in the Peninsula.

The borrowed in most cases nouns, and they
Arabic words are
are the kinds of objects and ideas which had (and in many cases
still have) Arabic names in modern Spanish, e.g. Jondu hotel
(Ar. funduq), tahona bakery (Ar. tdhuna mill), tarifa tariff (Ar.
tarlf notice, definition).
As a rule, however, the Arabic word was taken over into
Spanish with the Arabic definite article joined to it, and then
1
the Spanish article was added in front of that, e.g. la alhaja
the jewel (Ar. al-hdja), el arroz the rice (al-ruzz), la acequia the
canal or dyke (al-sdqiya), el anacalo the baker's boy (al-naqqdl
the carrier.) The Spanish words, it need hardly be said, were not
1
In the sixteenth century the usual form was el alhaja.
derived from the classical, written language, but from the
colloquial Arabic of Southern Spain; and, in pronunciation, the

-1 of the article was in certain cases assimilated to the initial
consonant of the following word, e.g. ar-ruzz as-sdqiya, an- 9
naqqdl, but al-hdja, al-qubba, &c. Pedro de Alcala, the mission-

ary, who in 1505 published two books dealing with the colloquial
Arabic of Granada, writes a dar the house, a xems the sun, a
{oltdn the Sultan, &c. Yet it should not be concluded that every
strange-looking Spanish word is of Arabic origin if it begins
with lunch, alamcda avenue, alambre wirc almendra
al-: almiterzo 9
almond, are words of undoubted Latin origin; while albaricoque

apricot, and albcrchigo one of the numerous varieties of peach,
were originally Latin words which have passed through Greek
and Arabic before settling down in Spanish.
Nevertheless the fact remains that the Spanish words bor-
rowed from Arabic include some of the commonest objects of
life
daily :
passage into a house xagudn Ar. ustuwdn, Gk. crroa

flatroof azotea al-sufaiha^ dim. of safh roof
awning to/do zulla canopy
bedroom alcoba al-qubba dome
cupboard alacena al-khizana, cupboard
shelf anaquel al-naqqdl bearer
stand, dais, footstool tarima tarima
partition tabique fabaq layer, surface

carpet or mat alfombra al-khiwira mat of palm-leaves
pillow almobada al-mukhadda pillow

pin alfiler al-khildl
dressing-gown bata batta a coarse garment, lining

overcoat gabdn qaba? outer garment
builder alb anil al-banna?
scaffolding andamio ad-da aîm pillars, supports

warehouse almacen al-makhzan
paving-stone adoquin al-dukkan shop, stone bench
tar alquitrdn al-qatrdn
hire alquiler til-kin?
damage averia *tnvar

to reach, overtake alcanzar <il-kanz buried treasure
hole in the road baden. bat in sunk ground
custom-house aduana al-diw3n
ticket office (station or theatre) taqa, Gk. OiJKi]
taquilla
mayor alcalde al-qadi judge
executor albacea al-wasi testator, executor
notice, invoice albardn al-bara'a document of acquittal
what's-his-name fulano fulan
until basta hatta
These are common words of every-day use, and the list might
have been made longer. Suburbs, village, farm, are all known
by Arabic words. The countryman measures his corn by the
fanega of one and a half bushels (Ar. fan'iqa a large sack), and
divides into twelve cele mines, each equivalent to a gallon (Ar.

it
tbamdni, colloquial zemeni, eight), and he has another measure,

the arroba (al-ruVa, fern.) a 'quarter' (of a hundredweight) dry
measure, or four gallons liquid. His entire vocabulary concerned
with irrigation is Arabic, and so are the names of numerous
flowers, fruits, vegetables, shrubs, and trees. Sugar azucar has

passed into Spanish, Portuguese, and other European languages
through the Arabic al-sukkar, Persian shakar,and not (as \s often
stated in Spain) through the Latin saccharum; both words arc
derived ultimately, but by different roads, from the same word
in Sanskrit. Again, the word jarale which the traveller in
southern Spain sees so often in advertisements is the English
'syrup' (also 'sherbet' and rum 'shrub') derived from the
Arabic
sh_arab y drink. Jarabe was formerly spelt xarabe, the Spanish x
having been pronounced as sh down to the seventeenth century,
as it still is in Catalan and Portuguese. It may be surprising to
learn that the Spanish-speaking peoples still make use of the

Arabic phrase in sba'llak; yet such is the explanation of the
22
Spain and Portugal
common Spanish expression ojald, formerly spelt oxald and
then pronounced with the x equivalent to sb.
Other words borrowed from Arabic, 1 which have survived
in literary Spanish, are gradually dropping out under the in-
fluence of journalism. Spanish journalism, and particularly
Spanish-American journalism, is strongly influenced by Paris,

and the so-called 'Latin press' (prensa latino) has no love for
words which are not immediately intelligible in any Latin
country. The most notable modern exception is Jose Martinez
Ruiz the essayist who has always written under the pen-name
of *Azorin'. No man in Spain is a greater 'Francophil' than he;
yet his love for the old Spanish writers, and his early environ-
ment like Professor Ribera he is a native of Valencia, full of
Moorish devices for irrigation and the Arabic words and place-
names which describe them led him to use the language with
extraordinary richness and variety; while his passion for
'interiors' and his minute and detailed description of common
things and his delight in their names make his earlier essays a
valuable contribution to the legacy of Arabia in modern Spain.
The really cultivated Spaniard still takes pleasure in words of
mixed Spanish-Arabic origin, no less than in those of Spanish-
Latin origin which can be traced back to Mozarabic times. The
wandering minstrels who recited the Toem of my Cid' and the
older Spanish ballads, the poems of Gonzalo de Berceo and the
Archpriest of Hita, the prose of Alfonso the Sage and Don Juan
Manuel all these drew upon 'a well of Castilian undefiled'
which, from its Low Latin origins and Arabic borrowings, had be-
come a possession peculiarly characteristic of the Spanish people.
Nevertheless the influence of minds which cannot conceive of
Dozy and W. H. Engelmann,
1
R. Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais
derives del'arabe, 2nd ed. (Leyden, 1869); D. L. de Eguilaz, Glosario etimo-
logico de las palabras espanoles de origen oriental (Granada, 1886); R. Academia
Espanola, Diccionario de la lengua espanola, i5th ed. (Madrid, 1925); K.

Lokotsch, Etymologiscbes Worterbucb der europdiscben Worter orientaliscben
Ursprung* (Heidelberg, 1927).
any good thing which does not come from leading to the
Paris is
introduction of colourless Gallicisms in their place. No one in

Spain under forty, perhaps, would have taken pleasure in ex-
plaining to a foreigner the exact nature of the leather bindings
still known by the Berber name of tajllete^ or have referred to
the exactions of the Corunna fish-wives (who seize on the lug-
gage of passengers arriving from America) as an almojarifazgo, a
kind of customs duty (Ar. al-mushr if-\- Romance suffix -azgo,
Lat. -aticuwi).
What has been said of the destructive effects of cosmopolitan
'Latin' journalism is no less true of Portuguese. number of A
orientalwords passed into that language, 1 but they came rather
from the Portuguese colonies in India, East Africa, and the Far
East than from the Muslim occupation of Portugal. Yet it is
curious that some of the Arabic words which have survived
there from that time have either died out in Spain, or seem never
to have become naturalized there at all. Many of the Spanish
words in the foregoing list are also found, under one form or
another, in Portugal (e.g. 'until', Sp. basta, Port. ate\ 'ware-

house', Sp. almacen^ Port, armazem, &c.) The following common
Portuguese words, however, are never used in modern Spain :
Portuguese Arabic
carpet alcatifa al-qatifa blanket, velvet
tailor alfaiate al-khayyat
custom-house alfandega al-funduq
pocket algibeira al-jaib (the colloquial al-jabtra
has returned to Arabic from the
Portuguese)
foot-path azinhaga al-zanqa, coll. az-zanaqa
waste place safara sabra*
harvest safra isfarra to ripen
and ceifa 9 accifa saif summer
lettuce alfaf a al-khass
pound weight arratel al-ratl

1
S. R. Dalgado, Glosdrio Luso-asidtico, 2 vols. (Coimbra 1919, 1921).
The word 'baroque* seems to be of Arabic origin, (burga, uneven
ground) and to have reached Europe through barroco, a technical term
used by Portuguese pearl-fishers, and dealers in pearls.
Arabic place-names in Spain and Portugal

Place-names are unaffected by journalism, and the map of
Spain and Portugal is of extraordinary interest to a student of
Arabic. Though some of the names are Arabized forms of older
Iberian and Phoenician names, and
many are of characteristically
mixed origin, Arabic and Romance, they form when taken to-
gether a striking demonstration of the mark which the Islamic
peoples left on the Peninsula. Mountains and hills, capes and
islands, sand-banks, rivers, lakes, and hot springs; plains, fields,
woods, gardens, trees, and flowers; caves and mines; colours; and
works of man such as farms, villages, towns, markets, mosques,
paved roads, bridges, castles, forts, mills, towers, have all become
geographical names. Thus jabal (mountain) appears in Monte
Jabalcuz, in Jabalcon, Jabaloyas, Jabalquinto, Javaleon and the
Pico and Sierra de Javalambre; there is also the Sierra de
Gibralbin, Gibraleon, Gibralfaro (mountain of the pharos),
while Gibraltar (mount Tariq) is named after the Berber chief
who led the first successful Muslim expedition into Spain.
Al-kudya (the hill) appears in the nine or ten places known as
Alcudia, as also in Cudia Cremada (Burnt Hill) in Menorca;
al-qur (plural of qdra, hillock) in Alcor and Alcora; while
al-mudawwar (round, from ddra, turn) is the name of the
hill-townsAlmodovar del Rio and Almodovar del Campo, and
others. The port of Almeria is named from al-mariyya the
watch-tower. From al-manara (beacon) are named the heights
Cerro de Almenara, Sierra de Almenara, and the harbour
Puerto de la Almenara; the Spanish word almena y however
(battlement), is not al-mana, but a Latin word minae to which
the Arabic article has been added; while in Aragon the word
almenar (al-manbar) is connected with irrigation. Taraf (cape)
has given Trafalgar, taraf
al-gh dr, cape of the cave; al-jazira,
the island, appears in Algeciras and Alcira. Kallff
anchorage
(from halo? a, protect) is found separately as Gala (beach), and in
combination, such as Cala Barca, Cala Blanca, Gala de San
Vicente, Cala Santany, Punta de la Cala, Torre de la Cala Honda,
La Caleta. The sand-banks at the mouth of the Ebro are known
as Los Alfaques, perhaps from al-fakk, jaws.
Ramla^ a sandy river-bed, recalls the origin of La Rambla,thc
principal street of Barcelona but the Arabic word most familiar
;
in Spain in connexion with a river is wddi, which in

Spanish is
spelt guad though
y still often pronounced with a w. Thus we
find Guadalquivir, wddi-l-kablr, the
great river; Guadalajara,
wddi-l-hijdra, the river of stones, Guadalaviar, wddi-l-abyad y
the white river; Guadalcazar,
wddi-l-qasr, the river of the fort;
Guadalcoton, wddi-l~qutn, the river of cotton, Guadalmedina,
wddi-l-madina y the city river; Guadarrama, wddi-l-ramla, the
sandy river; Guarroman, wddi-l-rummdn^ the river of pome-
granates. Others preserve an ancient place-name in an Arabic
disguise: e.g. Guadiana, wddi Anas\ Guadix, wddl Acci\
Guadalupe, wddi-l-lubb, the wolf river (Latin lupus). In Portugal
the Arabic word has become Odi-, or Ode- Odiana
; e.g.
(Guadiana), Odivellas, Ribeira de Odelouca, and Odeleite.
Lakes and lagoons in Spain and Portugal have often
preserved
their Arabic name of al-buhaira
(dim. of bahr, sea) thus there ;
are Albuera, Albufera, Albufeira,

Albuhera, and Bafialbufar.
Reservoirs, ponds, or tanks, al-birka, account for Alberca and
Alverca; wells or cisterns, al-jubb, for Algibe ; conduits, as-sdqiya,
for Acequia all of which are common
geographical terms in
Spain. The Persian khandaq is remembered in Laguna de la
Janda, Jandula, Jandulilla; it was in the first of these that the

greater part of the Visigothic army perished in the decisive
A familiar place-name is the hot spring,
victory of Tariq in 71 1.
al-hamma, Alhama.
Woods and thickets have given their Arabic names to
Algaba, al-gbaba, and Algaida, al-ghaida. Meadows have pre-
served an Arabic word, al-marj, in Almargem (Lisbon), Al-
margen (Malaga), Almarcha (La Mancha). Gardens which

recall their Arabic origin in their names are Generalife, jannat-
al-*arif, the garden of the architect or inspector, and Almunia

de Dona Godina, al-munya,ihe market garden. Fields of barley,
al-qastl, have given their names to Alcacer do Sal in Portugal;
sunflowers, al-*usfur, to Venta de los Alazores; the tamarisk,
al-tarfa\ to Tarfe; the wild olive, az-zanbuj, to Azambuja
and Zambujeira in Portugal and the Puerta del Acebuche at
Zafra. Among colours, a favourite geographical term is Albaida,
al-baida, the white (fern.), while the Alhambra, al-hamrdy

the red (palace), was the dwelling of al- Afamar the red (king). ',
Familar geographical names are derived from the mine, al-

ma din, Almaden ;
the farm, al-qarya, has given its name to Alcaria
do Cume and Alcaria Ruiva in Portugal, and several places named
Alqueria in Spain ; the village, al-da?a* has become the common
Peninsular word aldea. Medina, Medina del Campo, Medina
de Pomar, Medina de Rioseco, Medinaceli, Medina Sidonia,
Laguna de Medina show one half of their origin (madina, city)
very clearly. The mosque, masjid, Mezquita, appears in several
names; and the market, as-suq, though officially known as *el
mere ado*, is still spoken of by country people as el azogue (Port.
azougue), and survives in a well-known proverb
I
and in the
proper names Azoguejo (Segovia), Azuqueca de Henares, and
the Zocodover of Toledo : i.e.
suq-ad-dazvabb, the cattle-market
which, in medieval times, was known as the zoco de las bestias
(suq of the beasts).

Arabic words for fortress have produced many geographical
1
En el azogue
Quien mal dice mat oye.
(In the market, he who speaks evil hears evil.)
The common meaning of axogue, however, is
quicksilver (Ar. al'%awuq t and
az-zauqa).
names in Spain. Fromal-qaVa y we have
Alcala (de Henares, de
Guadaira, de Chisbert, &c.) while
;
without the article this word
has given Calatayud, qaVat Ayyub, the castle of Job, Calatanazor,
Calatrava, Calatorao. From the diminutive, al-qula?a, comes
Alcolea. In the same way al-qasr (Latin castrum ?) has produced
all the Spanish places named Alcazar, while its diminutive
al-qusair gives Alcocer. A fortress,
al-qasaba, makes the Spanish
Alcazaba and the Portuguese Alcacovas. In the same way
al-qanfara, the bridge (Gk. /cei>T/>oi>),
has named several points in
Spain now known as Alcantara, at which the Muslim conquerors
found a Roman bridge. The watch-tower, al-tdlia^ became, in
Spanish, Atalaya; and the name has remained with several
places, including Atalayas de Alcala, while without the article it
has given Talayero, Talayuela, Talayuelas. The existence of a
paved road, or causeway, probably of Roman origin but called

al-rasifby the Muslim invaders, has given the names Arrecife,
Arrizafa, and Ruzafa. The suburbs, al-rabad, gave rise to the
common Spanish name Arrabal; al-rdbita on the other hand was
'the hermitage*, the place in which one might expect to find a
marabout, murdbit, although the marabout would probably have

been armed, and the 'hermitage', a block-house with a vigilant
and energetic garrison. The name persists in Arrabida, Rabida,
Rapita, Rabeda. The suburbs of a town were also known as
al-barra and al-balad, one of which will account for names such
as Albalat, Albalate, Albolote. Towers situated outside the
walls are sometimes known as Torres Albarranas, al-barrdm\

while the name Albarracin commemorates the fact that it was
the district of the Berber tribe Banu Razm. Names beginning
bena-, beni- y bini- are extremely common, especially in the
province of Valencia and the Balearic Isles: Benadalid, Benal-
galbon, Benaguacil, Benajarafe, Benameji, Benaojan, Benarraba,
Benaudalla; Beniajan, Benicarlo, Benicasim, Benifayo, Beni-
ganim, Benimamet; Binaced, Binisalem, Biniadris, Binicalaf,
Binimaymut, Binisafua, Binixerns, and numerous others.
28
Spain and Portugal
The School of Toledo
Place-names and common words which have survived show
how the Spanish language was affected by Arabic at the most
tender period of its growth. By the tenth century the whole
basis of life throughout Spain was profoundly influenced by
Islam: with the capture of Toledo that influence spread to the

rest of Europe. Since the destruction of Cordoba by the
Berbers at the beginning of the eleventh century, Toledo had
gradually become the centre of Muslim learning in Spain, and

it maintained that position after the Christian conquest in 1085.
The court of Alfonso VI, though nominally Christian, was as
much imbued with Muslim civilization as the court of Frederick
II at Palermo nearly two hundred years later, and Alfonso
proclaimed himself 'Emperor of the two religions'. The schools
of Toledo attracted scholars from all parts of Europe, including
England and Scotland. Among them were Robert 'the English-
man', Robertus Anglicus, the first translator of the Qur'an,
Michael Scot, Daniel Morlcy, and Adelard of Bath. Their
adventures and activities, the shifts and subterfuges to which they
resorted in order to obtain Latin translations of the works of
Aristotle, Euclid, and other books which were only to be read in
Arabic, have been vividly described in another volume of this
series, and there is no need to repeat them here.
1
The greatest contribution of the Muslims in Spain to Euro-

pean thought was (as has been pointed out in another chapter)
the work of the philosophers. Though they had adopted the
narrowest and most orthodox forms of Muslim theology, they
gave free rein to philosophic speculation; and although the
Berber rulers Almoravides and Almohades were inclined to
fanaticism, they not only tolerated the speculations of the
philosophers but even encouraged them, with certain reserva-
tions, so that the philosophers were left free and unhampered
1
The Legacy of Israel, pp. 204 ff.
in theirwork of teaching, provided that that teaching was not
spread abroad amongst people in general.
The great thinkers of Muslim Spain do not belong to the
brilliant age of the Caliphate of Cordoba, but to the ages of
political confusion which followed. They rediscovered Greek
philosophy, and above all the works of Aristotle. The historians
and the dramatists were apparently unknown to them, but they
introduced Aristotle to the West centuries before the revival of
Greek scholarship which directly preceded the Renaissance and
was one of the causes of the Reformation. They seem hardly ever
to have known the Greek texts at first hand or to have trans-
lated from them directly; their translations were made as a rule
from intermediate versions in Syriac; so that an English or

Scottish student, if he wished to become further acquainted with
the works of Aristotle than was possible from the meagre Latin
versions at his disposal, found it convenient to travel to Toledo
and learn to read his Greek authors in Arabic. The transmission
of Greek learning to the West began at Baghdad, whence it was
forwarded by Jewish or Muslim intermediaries to the Muslims in
Spain ; and thence, by Jewish intermediaries again, it was con-
veyed to wandering scholars from Christian Europe,
Arabic influences on early Spanish literature

The administrative, economic, and artistic aspects of Muslim
civilization in Spain have already been mentioned, while its
effects on European literature have been discussed in another
chapter. Something more, however, remains to be said con-
cerning the influence of Muslim thought on the literature of

Spain.
In the age of heroic poetry (c. 1050-1250) the influences are
French and Teutonic rather than Arabic. The national epic of
Castille, the Toem of my Cid', has the form of a chanson degeste,
though the hero himself was very nearly contemporary with the
first minstrel who sang of his doings, and was not (as in the case
of Roland) a semi-mythical hero who had perished hundreds of
years before. The date of the poem is about 1 140, and Ruy
Diaz de Bivar, the Cid, died in 1099. His title, of course, is
Arabic: saiyyid (colloquial sld), lord; and the mixture of
languages prevalent at the time could not be better shown than
by the usual form under which the Cid was addressed by his men :
Ya mio Cid. An Arabic-speaking vassal would have said Yd sidi. :
The second period (c. 1250-1400) is one in which the chief

foreign influence on Spanish literature was Arabic. The gates of
oriental learning and story were opened both to Spain and to the
whole of Europe by the capture of Toledo (1085), which became
a school of translation from oriental languages. As early as 1 120
Petrus Alfonsi, a Spanish Jew who was baptized and whose
godfather was Alfonso VII, introduced Indian fable into Spain
by the celebrated collection of stories known as Disciplina
Clericalis. The Spanish translation of the 'Indian tales' of
Calila e Dimna made directly from the Arabic text dates from
1251:* it is the earliest attempt at story-telling in the Spanish
language. The romance of the Seven Sages (Sindibad or Sende-
bar) was translated from the Arabic for the Infante Don
Fadrique about 1253, under the name of Libra de los engannos e
asayamientos de las mujeres (Book of the Wiles and Deceptions of
2
Women). From the second half of the thirteenth century,
collections of aphorisms and moral tales become numerous in
Spain. They include a lost version of the Buddhistic legend of

Barlaam and Josaphat, the Libra de enxemplos for ABC collected
by Clemente Sanchez de Vercial,3 and the oddly-named Libra
de los gatos, 'Book of Cats', which is probably a misreading for
Libra de los qetos (quentos), 'Book of Stories' and is derived from
an Arabic source through the Narrationes of the English monk
1
Ed. J. Alemany (Madrid, 1915) and A. G. Solalinde (Madrid, 1917).
2 Ed. D. Comparetti, Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad (London,
1882), and A. Bonilla y San Martin (Madrid, 1904).
3 Ed. A. Morel Fatio, in Romania (18
Odo of Cheriton. 1 Stories included in these collections are con-
in Spanish literature down to the time of the
stantly recurring
dramatists of the seventeenth century: the greatest of Spanish
plays, La vida es sueno (Life's a Dream), is the story of

Christopher Sly in 'The Taming of the Shrew' and 'The
Sleeper Wakened' in the 'Thousand and One Nights', and is
derived ultimately from Barlaam.
Alfonso the Sage

The greatest apostle of Muslimlearning in Christian Spain
was Alfonso X, el Sabio,
king of Castille and Leon from 1252
to 1284. Under his patronage and indeed under his immediate
supervision a number of vast works were undertaken, many of
them being compiled from Arabic sources, which were made
available to him by Jewish assistants. 2 His prose works and his
naive, semi-oriental prose is one of the great delights of medieval
Spanish studies include a code of laws, Las siete partidas,
which is a mine of curious information on Spanish life and cus-
toms of the time; the Cronica general, in which chapters 466 to
494 are devoted to a strange life of the Prophet Muhammad ;
3
and the Grande e general Estoria, a 'great and general history' on

a vast scale which is now in process of being printed for the first
time. 4 The astronomical studies of Alfonso the Sage include the
famous 'Alfonsine Tables' a collection of observations taken at
Toledo, which were in use throughout Europe for some cen-
turies; he also compiled a Lapidario, a treatise on the virtues of
precious stones, and a 'Book of Games', Libra ie los juegos, in-
cluding dice, backgammon, and several varieties of chess played
on boards of different shapes and sizes.
1
Ed.
S. E.
Northup, in Modern Philology (1908).
2 The Legacy of Israel, pp. 222-5.
3 R.
Menendez Pidal, Primera cronica general, pp. 261-75 (Madrid, 1906),
and A. G. Solalinde,^//iwwo Xel Sabio:
Antologia, i, pp. 152-72 (Madrid, 1921).
4
Madrid, Centre de Estudios Hist6ricos, vol. i, 1930.
Chess so characteristic a product of the legacy of Islam
is
that it deserves more than a passing mention. Modern European

chess the direct descendant of an ancient Indian game,
is
adopted by the Persians, handed on by them to the Muslim

world, and finally borrowed from Islam by Christian Europe.
1
In most European languages the game is named after the king

(Persian shah medieval Latin scad, chessmen) ; but the Spanish
;
word axedrez or acedrex), and the Portuguese

ajedrez, (formerly
xadrez arc derived from the Arabic name for the game itself:
al-shatranj, a word borrowed from Persian and ultimately
from Sanskrit. Several of the terms still used in chess are Persian :
'checkmate', for instance, shah mat, which does not necessarily

signify that 'the king is dead', but that he is dishonoured or de-
feated. 2 The Castle or Rook is the Spanish roque, and the
Persian rukh the dreaded 'roc' encountered by Sindbad the
Sailor. been discovered, however, that this word was in
It has
use among the Muslims in Spain for a chariot, and the idea of a
chariot seems to explain at once the straight move and de-
vastating power of the Rook in modern chess. In an early set of

chessmen, reputed (but only since the seventeenth century) to
have belonged to Charlemagne, the Rook is actually a chariot
with a man in it; while the triumphal car used in certain re-
ligious festivals at Valencia is still known as the roca. The
Bishop, again, is known in Spain as el alfil (Ar. al-fil, the ele-

phant), the French fou (when it refers to chess) being a corrup-
tion of the same word, and in no way connected with the moves
or powers of a dignitary of the church.
Spain provides the earliest certain references to chess in

Europe; there are bequests of chessmen in the wills of two mem-
bers of the family of the Counts of Barcelona, dating from 1008
1
H.
J. R. Murray, A
History of Chess. (Oxford, 1913.)
2
'Check (xaque) is a manner of legal affront to the lord; and when they give
him mate, it is a manner of great dishonour, even as if they should conquer him
or kill him.' Alfonso el Sabio, Libra de losjuegos, fol. z b.
(or 1010) and 1017. The first

description of the game in a
'
European language is that of Alfonso the Sage. His book 1

is
obviously compiled from Arabic sources and the miniatures

usually show players in oriental dress. Sometimes they are accom-
panied by oriental musicians, while now and then the musicians
may be seen having a game by themselves, holding their in-
struments ready in the left hand, in case they are suddenly
calledupon to play them (fig. 7). The description of the game
given by Alfonso has been found to be not altogether in accord-
ance with Muslim practice, but the problems he gives are almost
exclusively Muslim, for the chess-problem is a kind of mental
activity which is characteristic of the
legacy of Islam to Europe.
His pieces, with one exception, are the same as ours. There is no
Queen her place is taken by the piece which Chaucer called the
;
Ters' and Alfonso ell alferza (al-Jirzdn, the counsellor; not

al-faraSy the horseman or knight). The Fers could move one
square diagonally; but for his first move he could jump to the
third square either diagonally or straight. He is the ancestor of
the modern Queen, and the development of his powers in that
directionis
chiefly due to two Spanish players: Lucena (1497)
and Ruy Lopez (1561).
Alfonso X's games of chess on a larger number of squares than
usual are of peculiar interest at the present time, when sugges-
tions for improving the game (and reducing the chances of a
draw) are being made by such masters as Sr. Capablanca. One

of these suggestions is a board of 100 squares instead of the usual
64; while another is a kind of double chess, played on a board
with 1 6 squares at each end and 12 at the sides. It is curious that
the name of Alfonso el Sabio has never been mentioned in the
discussion of these projects; for he knew of a game played on a
board of 100 squares, with two additional pieces (which he calls
1
J. G. White, The Spanish Treatise on Chess-Play written by order of King
Alfonso the Sage in the year 1283. Reproduction of the Escurial MS. in 194
phototypic plates. (Leipzig, 1913.)
3385 D
'
judges') on each side, and two additional pawns. A game which
interested him more, however, was
!
'great chess' (Grandeêdrex^

played on a board of 144 squares, with 12 pieces and 12 pawns.
Next to the King stood a Gryphon and then, on each side, came
;
a Cocatrice, a Giraffe, a Unicorn, a Lion, and a Rook. The

King moved, as in the modern game, to any adjacent square;
and although 'castling' had not yet been invented, he could leap
to the third square for the first move. The Gryphon (Sp.
aanca, Ar. 'anqa) moved one square diagonally and then any
number straight. The Cocatrices moved like modern Bishops,
though the large board gave them a far greater range and
power. The Giraffes had a move resembling that of the modern
Knight, except that their leap was longer; for while the Knight
moves one square diagonally and two squares straight, the
Giraffes moved the one square diagonally and four squares
straight. The Unicorns also had a complicated move, and were

regarded as the most powerful pieces on the board, after the
Gryphon; they began like a Knight and went on like a Bishop,
with the proviso that they could not take another piece until the
move was completed. The Lion could leap to the fourth square
in all directions; while the Rook moved as usual: straight, in any
direction. The pawns moved as in the ordinary game one square
:
forward at a time. They had no right of moving two squares for

the first move, but in compensation for that, they started on the
fourth row instead of the second, and if they reached the twelfth
square of their file and 'queened', they took the rank and powers
of the piece on whose file they had started.
Alfonso the Sage has one more connexion with the legacy of
Islam to Spain. He was responsible for one of the greatest
collections of medieval poetry, the Cantigas de Santa Maria,
preserved, with contemporary musical notation, in two manu-

scripts in the Escurial and one at Madrid. The language
of these
poems is not Castilian but the Galician dialect of northern

Portugal, which, in the thirteenth century, was the language of
.
court poetry in Castille and Aragon as well as Portugal, and con-
tinued to be so until Castilian Spanish became sufficiently ductile
I
for refined lyrical expression. The music has been claimed by

Professor Ribera to be Andalusian music of Muslim origin, a
claim which historians of music are not very ready to admit. Yet
many of the instruments shown in the miniatures, and even some
of the performers, are obviously of Muslim origin; while the
poetic form is peculiar to Muslim Spain, consisting almost en-
tirely of stanzas of the type of the muwasbshah and zajal first-
employed by Ibn Quzman (Abencuzman) and described in
another chapter. It has been urged that these poems are of ex-
clusively Christian inspiration, and are therefore unlikely to be
tainted with any suspicion of Islamic artifice. But the forms of
muwashshah and zajal developed into the typically Castilian
popular verse- form of villancico which was extensively used for
all kinds of Christian poetry, including Christmas carols; and the
subject the praise of the Virgin Mary is a logical develop-

ment of the troubadour's idealization of the lady of the manor;
while the poems of the troubadours (as will be found con-
vincingly demonstrated in chapter III) are, in matter, form,
and style, closely connected with Arabic idealism and Arabic
poetry written in Spain.
Don Juan Manuel and, the Archfriest of Hita

The period of translation and compilation from oriental
sources represented by the school of Alfonso the Sage was suc-
ceeded by a brilliant period of original work, in the prose of the
Infante Don Juan Manuel (1282-1349 ?) and the poetry of the
Archpriest of Hita (d. before 1351). Both had learnt from East-
ern story, not only how to employ fables for teaching a moral
lesson, but also how to set them in a suitable framework. In
Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor* the Count asks the advice
Ed. H. Knust (Leipzig, 1900) and F. J. Sanchez Cant6n. (Madrid,
1
1920.) See also Broadway Translations. (London, 1924.)

D2
of his Councillor, Patronio, on certain questions of life and
government, and Patronio replies in each case by telling a story
to illustrate the point. The stories have in many cases been
traced to an Eastern origin, and on two or three occasions they
contain phrases in the colloquial Arabic of the time, written out
phonetically in Spanish. The moral tone is uniformly high, and

the author, a nephew of Alfonso the Sage, is clearly conscious
that by writing he is
performing a public duty. Juan Ruiz,
Archpriest of Hita, is a man of the people, with no sense of
public duty or personal obligation to society and still less with

any religious vocation. Yet he is a true poet, among the greatest
in the Spanish language. His Libro de buen amor 1 ('The Book of
True love' buen amor as contrasted with earthly love, loco amor)
is a satirical autobiography in which he tells with disarming
candour the tale of his love-affairs. There is no possibility of an
allegorical intention. The love that leads the Archpriest is

earthly love, though in lyrics of passionate sincerity he protests
his devotion to the Virgin Mary. Not all his desires end in
fulfilment; but some of the ladies, e.g. Dona Endrina, are vividly
and enchantingly portrayed, and the go-between, Trotacon-
ventos (the direct ancestor of La Celestina and Juliet's nurse), is
already one of the great characters in fiction. The Archpriest
moved on the margins of society; he ministered to outcasts and
wantons, and such despised subjects as musicians and Moorish
dancing-girls. He reports conversations and sometimes tran-
scribes answers which were given in Vulgar Arabic. The form of
his work is to a certain extent oriental, a framework on which
numerous fables and apologues are hung, and the vocabulary is a
store-house of words borrowed from Arabic but the Archpriest ;
also availed himself of subjects borrowed from French and from

medieval Latin. He employed every metre known to him in a
masterly fashion, not excluding the characteristic zajal, with the
1
Ed. J. Cejadory Frauca, 'Clasicos castellaiW, Nos. 14 and 17. (Madrid,
1-
thought ever present in his mind that a minstrel might one day
sing parts of his book in the street as indeed is known to have
actually happened during the half-century after his death. For

a distracted scribe,
copying a chronicle in his cell, one day
made notes of the performance of a wandering minstrel in the
street outside; and the man, in the midst of a string of anecdotes,
rhymes, and a somersault or two, was heard to catch the flagging

attention of the audience by exclaiming: 'Now we begin from
the book of the Archpriest!' *
v
Contemporary with the Infante Don Juan Manuel and the

Archpriest of Hita was the author of the earliest Spanish book of
chivalry, the His tor ia del Cav oiler o Cifar ^ which was probably
composed between 1299 and 1335. Like all books of chivalry, it
was said to have been taken from a 'Chaldean' (i.e. Arabic)
original, and the underlying idea is that of a story in the
'Arabian Nights', though the detail is a strange mixture of the
'Golden Legend', Arthurian romance, and Oriental fable. The
name Cifar is Arabic (safar, a journey; or sifara, an embassy),
so that 'Caballero Cifar' is
equivalent to 'Knight -Errant'. His
wife is named Grima (Karima, a common name among Muslim
women and signifying 'precious thing', 'nobly-born', or 'daugh-
ter'). Other Oriental features have been noticed. 3
Spanish written in Arabic characters

Another contemporary of the Archpriest was the author of
the Poema de Tu$uf^ an anonymous poem based on the legend
1
R. Menendez Pidal, Poesia juglaresca y juglares (Madrid, 1924), pp. 270-1
and 462-7.
2 Ed. H. in Stuttgart, cxii.
Michelant, Bibl. des litt. Vereins (Tubingen,
1872), and C. P. Wagner (Univ. of Michigan, 1929).
3 A. Gonzalez Palencia, Historic* de la literatura Ardbigo-Espanola (Madrid,
1928), pp. 316-17.
4 Ed. R. Menendez Pidal. (Madrid, 1902.) [Text in Arabic and Latin
characters.]
of Joseph. is that
Its peculiarity although the words are Spanish
(Aragonese dialect) and the verse-form French, it is written in
the Arabic character; and the poem is derived from the Qur'dn
and other Muslim sources. It is an example of what is known in
Spain and Portugal as literatura aljamiada, 'ajama meaning to
''
speak bad Arabic, whence ajami a foreigner, and al-ajamiya

the outlandish language. In Spain it was originally used by
Arabic-speaking Spaniards to designate Spanish, and afterwards
applied to the writings of the Moriscos who employed the
Arabic character for Spanish words. Manuscripts of this kind
are fairly numerous. Some time ago a collection was found hid-
den under the floor of an old house at Almonacid de la Sierra in
Aragon, where they must have been placed to keep them out of
sight of the 'familiars' of the Inquisition: they are now in the
1
library of the Junta para Ampliacion de Estudios at Madrid.
They include important legal documents, verses in praise of the
Prophet written in muwashsbah form in the fourteenth century,

sermons, legends, stories, and superstitions of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries; while one of the most instructive manu-
scripts of the time is a pastoral epistle from the mufti of Oran 2

advising the persecuted Moriscos in the century following the
conquest of Granada to what extent they should conform to the
conquerors, who seemed to regard every decency of Muslim life
even washing as heresy and therefore a capital offence. The
use of the Arabic character, even after the fall of Granada, shows
how the conquered Muslim Spaniards clung to the handwriting
of their religion, even when they spoke a Romance dialect and
were (in many cases) of Christian Spanish descent. The method
of transcribing the Spanish sounds in Arabic character offers
many points of interest, and is especially valuable as an indication
1
MSS. drabes y aljamiados de la Biblioteca de la Junta. (Madrid, 1912.)
See also D. Lopes, Textos em aljamia portuguesa. (Lisbon, 1897.)
2 Pedro
Longas, Vida religiosa de los Moriscos (Madrid, 1915), pp- 35~7>
t. 210, pp. 1-17 (Jan.-Mar. 1927).
zndjourn. Asiatique,
(confirmed by Pedro de Alcala's transcription into Roman type
of the colloquial Arabic of Granada as spoken about 1500), of how
the Muslims in Spain pronounced the languages of the country,
Spanish and Arabic. The after-effects of Morisco pronunciation

are still
perceptible to-day.
The pitiful story of the expulsion of the Moriscos need not be
repeated here. They were not driven out finally until 1614, so
that Arabic was still
spoken in the Peninsula during the lifetime
of Cervantes, and it could not have struck his contemporaries as
fantastic or impossible when, remembering that the romances of
chivalry had usually been stated to have been taken from a book
in Arabic or 'Chaldean', he declared that the original of Don
Quixote was the work of a Moor called 'Sidi Ham'ete ben Engeli',
and that it too had originally been written in Arabic.
J.
B. TREND.
THE CRUSADES
I
MEN have often thought of what may be called the fatalities of

history. Among them has always been counted the duel of East
and West. Herodotus began his history by asking why they
fought, Si'
f)v alrirjv eVoAc/XTycrav aAAÂotort; and our poets still
speak to-day of the silent deep disdain of the East for the
thundering of Western legions, or celebrate the implacable
difference which separates the two for all eternity. The Trojan
and the Persian wars of antiquity: the battles of Crassus and
Heraclius in Syria: the Crusades and the Ottoman conquests
allseem to make a rhythm and to suggest a regular recurrence.
But the duel of East and West is a geographical simplification of
a complicated series of historical facts. History is a record of
something more than struggles in space; and it is only when we

reduce the apparent struggle between 'East' and West' into the
which vary from age to age, between competing
real struggles,
churches and races and civilizations, that the story gains point as
well as dimension. true, indeed, that for a variety of
It is
geographical reasons the eastern coast of the Mediterranean,

from Constantinople to Alexandria, was for long a vexed region
of history. Here, whether by way of the Black Sea, or the Red
Sea, or from Beyrout across the desert, Europe touches Asia and
the commodities and mysteries of Asia here, whether in Egypt
;
or Crete, in Jerusalem or Athens, civilizations and religions and
philosophies have found their cradle. In such an area many con-

flicts were bound to arise. Some were economic: sorrfe were
religious: some were political: some were racial: many were
mixed. Each conflict is best understood in itself and its own
individuality. One of the greatest is the conflict between the
church, the civilization, and the peoples of Western Christianity
and the faith, the civilization, and the peoples of Islam. It began,
The Crusades 41
we may say, with the defeat of Heraclius, 'the first of the
Crusaders', on the Yarmuk in 636 by the forces of Omar; and
who shall give a date to its end ? It has at one time been primarily
religious, andat another predominantly political: it has been a
struggle between different peoples in the main the Romance

and Slavonic on the one side, and the Arab and Turk on the
other; but it has always remained a mixed conflict, in which two
civilizations have been fundamentally engaged. One of its
chapters is the Crusades. That chapter began in 1096: it ended,
if we regard it as closed by the loss of the last Christian foothold
on the Syrian mainland, in 1291 it lasted, if we look rather/to

:
the lingering relics of the old Crusading impulse, till the naviga-
tions of the Portuguese and the discoveries of Columbus.
J
The Crusades have a double aspect. They are, in their original
impulse (crossed, it is true, from the first by other strains), a
spiritual movement which translated itself into the objective

'
form of a spiritual institution. They are a 'holy war' a war

which, in the theory of the canonists, is not only 'just', but also
attains the full measure of consecration; a war which is res
Christiana, and unites the Christian commonwealth in common

hostilities against the arch-enemy of its faith. But the Crusades
are also, in their results, the redemption of the Holy Land: they
are a projection of the Christian West into the Muslim East:
they are the foundation of a Christian State, the 'Latin Kingdom

of Jerusalem', camped on the shores of the Levant, and looking
eastward to Mosul and Baghdad and southward to Cairo and
Egypt. The former
is the broader theme: the latter has its
particular and peculiar interest. In the Latin Kingdom of

Jerusalem the Crusades become specific, and here they show their
specific resultsthejisepfthe military orders; the foundation of
trading quarters, by the Venetians and Genoese, in the Syrian
ports; the growth of trading and missionary connexions with
Further Asia. Here (as indeed also in Spain, but here in a Avay
42 The Crusades
which engaged the general attention of Europe as Spain never
contact be-
did) there was a constant conflict and a permanent
tween Christianity and Islam. It is when the eyes are fixed on
the Latin Kingdom that the general background comes most

clearly into view (like distant mountains rising above
the im-
mediate scene) the geographical background of the Mediter-
ranean basin: the historical background of the previous centuries
of oscillation in that basin between Christian and Muhammadan
power.
Geographically we may say that there are two Mediterraneans.

There is the Mediterranean of the West, closed on its eastern
side by Italy and Sicily, with a sea-passage, some 100 miles wide,
between Cape Sorello in the south-west of Sicily and Cape Bon
in north-eastern Tunis. There is the Mediterranean of the East,
from the eastern shores of Sicily (which again and again in
history has been the battle-ground or meeting-place of the two
Mediterraneans) to the coasts of Asia Minor and Syria. Two
halves of one sea, the eastern and the western Mediterranean
became, in classical times, the homes of two civilizations. In the

'jWest; civilization; and on this basis, as Christianity
was Latin
triumphed, there arose the Roman Church and the Holy Roman
Empire of the West. The East' was the home of Hellenistic

and here were developed the Greek Church and the
civilization;
Byzantine Empire. Upon this division there supervened, in the

seventh century, the rise of Islam. Spreading with the rapidity
of an electric current from its power-house in Mecca, it flashed
into Syria; it traversed the whole breadth of north Africa; and
then, leaping the Straits of Gibraltar, it ran to the Gates of the
Pyrenees. It had fixed itself permanently in both Mediter-

raneans by the early Middle Ages on the southern and western
shores of the West; on the southern and eastern shores of the
East. In both halves of the Mediterranean basin Christianity
was engaged in conflicts with it; and these conflicts, even before
The Crusades 43
the Crusades, have already something of the nature of a Crusade.
But the peculiarity of the Crusades, when their course began at
the end of the eleventh century, is that the Latin Christianity of
the_West .moved over into the East, hitherto secluded from it,
and that here it came into contact, on the one hand, and nomi-
nally as an ally, with the Greek Church and the Eastern Empire,
and on the other, in declared hostility, with the Muhammadans
of the East.Perhaps the primary and the most fruitful element in
the Crusades is this simple fact of the entry of the West into the
East. And yet the simple fact has its complications, for the East
into which the West made its entry was itself full of complica-
tion. Not only had Latin Christianity to make its terms and
settle its relations with the Greek Christianity of Byzantium.
Muhammadanism also was divided the Sunnite Turks, who had
:
established themselves in western Asia from the Black Sea on the

north to the Red Sea on the south, were confronted, in the de-
batable land of the Shrttes of Egypt under the Fatimid
Sjria, by
dynasty; and the Crusading West had to discover, and to use
as best it could, an opposition of which it was hardly aware. 1
Historically, the passage of Latin Christianity overseas to

fight against Islam may be regarded as the culmination of a long
1
The position in A. D. 1096 has some similarities with that in 201 P.C. The
Romans, when they began to act in the East, were similarly faced by three
powers the Macedonian Kingdom, which ruled Greece and the northern
Aegaean as far as the Bosphorus: the Seleucids of Asia Minor; and the Ptole-
maic dynasty in Egypt. On the other hand there were fundamental differences.
The Romans came with a readiness to learn and an admiration for everything
in Hellenistic culture. Latin Christianity at the end of the eleventh century
had a developed culture of its own; and so far as it could learn from the Muham-
madan it was able to do so at home, in Spain and Sicily. Moreover the Romans
came into a new and different world: the 'Franks' of the eleventh century
found in Byzantium something which, though it had pursued a different
line of development, was akin to their own traditions. In the issue, as we shall
see, they perhaps learned more from the Byzantines than they did from the
Muhammadans of Syria and Egypt.
44 TKe Crusades
course of hostilities between Christian and Muslim in the
western Mediterranean, and this is a large element in the
historical background against which we must set the Crusades.
By the end of the seventh century the Arabs had mastered the
Berbers of northern Africa; and between 711 and 718 the Arabs
and Berbers had conquered Spain as far as the Pyrenees. In the
course of the ninth century, between 827 and 878 (when Syra-
cuse fell), the Aghlabids of Kairawan, in northern Africa, had
conquered Sicily; and they also harassed, both by temporary

forays and the foundation of robber-states, the south of Italy
as far as the
Campagna and the Abruzzi. Muslims from Spain
raided Provence, northern Italy, and even Switzerland; and
Corsica and Sardinia were again and again ravaged by corsairs.
Only in Spain and Sicily did the civilization of the Muslim

attain any height ; but in both of these it flourished, and from
rboth of these it transmitted its influence, iato Franceand Italy.
The philosophy of Cordova and its great teacher Ibn Rushd
(Averroes) penetrated to the University of Paris; Arab villas,
Arabic geographers and Arabic poets adorned Palermo under its
Norman kings and their successor Frederic II. 'The blessings of
culture which were given to the West by its temporary Islamitic
elements', it has been said, 'are at least as important as the in-
fluence of the East during the time of the Crusades.' 1 But what-
ever the gifts which it received, the West could not tolerate the
occupation of Christian soil by the followers of another faith; and

the eleventh century saw a gradual recession of Muslim arms in the
western Mediterranean before the advance of the Christians.
In Spain, after the death of the great al-Mansur in 1002, the
small Christian powers of the north Leon, Castile, Aragon, and
Navarre embarked on a period of expansion.Toledo fell before
Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085,2 and Saragossa was captured by
1
Professor Becker in the Cambridge Mediaeval History, vol. ii, p. 390.
2 His progress received a serious set-back from the new inroad of the Almo-
ravides in 1086: but the set-back, in the issue, proved to be temporary.
The Crusades 45
Aragon in 1118.South Italy, torn by disputes between Byzan-
tine governors and Arab raiders, fell into the hands of the Nor-
mansjJuring the first half of the eleventh century; and between

1060 and 1090 they had also conquered Sicily. -Benedict VIII,
about 1016, had instigated the Pisans to the occupation of
Sardinia; and with the rise of the Genoese and the Venetians
the Muslim corsairs ceased to be the terror of the western
Mediterranean. By the end of the eleventh century the Muham-
madans held only southern Spain and the north of Africa and ;
during the twelfth century they were to be attacked by the

Normans of Sicily even in their African strongholds. A more
consolidated and developed West was making itself master in its
own house. '.<-""
This was the juncture of affairs in the West when the call to
the Crusade came from the East. It was a double call, if it was
due to a single cause. The pressure of the Seljuk Turks who,
beginning as the mercenaries, had become virtually the masters
of the Caliphs of Baghdad had on the one hand, and in Syria,
resulted in the capture of Jerusalem from the mild Fatimid
Caliphs of Cairo (1070), and on the other hand, and in Asia

Minor, in the capital defeat of the Byzantine forces at Manzi-
kart (1071). The needs of Jerusalem and the necessities of
Fyzantium both called aloud to the West; and the First Crusade
(1096-99) was an answer to that double call.
The^religious habits and the social development
of western
Europe conspired to produce the answer. The habit of peni-

tentiary pilgrimage for the sake of remission of sins was ancient
in the West. Jerusalem at once the most sacred and the most
distant of holy places, and therefore conferring a double grace
had long been the goal of such pilgrimages. The goal was now
menaced: the menace must be removed. The Crusade accord-
ingly came as a great armed pilgrimage for the sake of clearing
the routes and liberating the goal of future pilgrimages and it ;
46 The Crusades
was pilgrim knights who founded, as it was pilgrim knights who
came afterwards year by year to maintain, the Kingdom of Jeru-
salem. The social development of feudalism, under the influence
of the Church, was another and parallel cause of the Crusade.
The bellicose passion of amilitary society for private war (guerrd)
had engaged the attention of synods and Popes from the be-
ginning of the eleventh century. At first they attempted to
check it by the institutions of the Pax and the Treuga Dei later :
they sought to direct it into the channels of 'just' and 'holy'

warfare, partly by consecrating the arms of the knight, in the
ceremony of his initiation, to the defence of justice and the
remedy of oppression (thus helping to create a new chivalry), and
partly again by demanding, as Urban II demanded at Clermont
in 1095 in preaching the Crusade, that the fratricidal abuse of
private w^rjhould^be turnedîntQ-tbe sanctity of battle against

thfi infidel. The cause of internal peace was thus linked with
that of a holy war; and synod on synod enjoined, in the same
breath, the cause of the truce of God and that of the Christian
Crusade.
So the Crusade wears the double aspect of a 'Pilgrim's
far,
Progress' and of a 'Holy War'. But it was also something more,

or something less, than these. It was, in the first place,
ajjplutiiQn
of the problem of feudal over-population. The younger sons of
the feudal nobility had little prospect at home. It would have
fared ill with many of the many descendants of Tancred
d'Hauteville, for example, if there had been no founding of a
Norman Kingdom of Sicily and a Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Such kingdoms were feudal colonies :
they provided an outlet for
feudal emigrants. In the second place the Crusades afforded a
new vent for the commercial ambitions of the growing Italian
ports ; and the Venetian, Pisan, and Genoese esfaEEsKm~nts on
"tLe Syrian coast,which served as entrepots for the great routes
of Asiatic trade, were no small factor in the history of the Latin
settlement. Italian ships accompanied and aided the progress
The Crusades 47
even of the Crusade; the help of the Italian towns was a
first
necessity in the war of sieges which led to the subsequent growth

of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; Italian transports carried the
annual flow of pilgrims and both for good and for evil the com-
;
mercial motive was added to the spiritual impulse of the

Crusade.
It was these various factors, coupled with the happy opportu-

nity of Muhammadan dissensions in Syria, which enabled Bald-
win I and Baldwin II to establish and consolidate the Kingdom
of Jerusalem between noo and 1131. But the kingdom was
hardly established when it began to be menaced with destruc-
tion. Christian pressure produced a Muslim reaction. The

centre of this reaction was Mosul. Here, among the debris
of the Seljuq Empire, which had collapsed into fragments even
before the first Crusade began its course, there emerged about
1127 the figure of the atabeg Zangf. He extended his power

among his rivals, and in 1 144 captured Edessa from the Latins
the first serious set-back to their career. His successor Nur-al-Dm
(1146-74) was already animated by the religious motive of

the counter-crusade (the jihad) and during his reign his
;
lieutenants, the Kurd Shlrkuh and Shirkuh's nephew Saladin

(Salah-al-Din), brought Egypt under his sway. Menaced both
from Mosul and from Cairo, and with the new ardour of the
jihad ready to meet the waning passion of their own Crusade, the
Latins of the Kingdom soon succumbed. In July 1187 they
were defeated at Hittin in October of the same year Jerusalem
:
capitulated. Saladin had attained 'the goal of his desires, and

set free the
mosque of Aqsa, to which Allah once led in the night
his servant Mahomet'.
The Third Crusade failed to undo the work of Saladin. The
Latins still kept for some time the principalities of Antioch and
Tripoli in northern Syria; the emperor Frederic II was able for

a t>rief while (1227-44) to recover, by diplomacy and not by
48 The Crusades
force of arms, the city of Jerusalem; but the Kingdom of Jeru-
salem had perished. The thirteenth century was full of Crusades ;
but they were waged, as has been well said, 'everywhere except
in Palestine'. They had become uncertain of their, goal; and
they wandered uncertainly from Constantinople (1202-4) to
Egypt (1218-21 and 1249-50) and even to Tunis (1270). The
one Crusade which was successful only succeeded in capturing
the Christian city of Constantinople, and in dividing the
Byzantine Empire, for a time (1204-61), between the French

and the Venetians. Constantinople, if it had invoked the
Crusades, perished by them; and if it rose again for two centuries
of feeble life from 1261 to 1453, it had to leave the French in the
Morea, and the Venetians in Crete and the islands of the
Archipelago. The First Crusade had been an alliance between
French feudalism and the maritime strength of the Italian towns.
By the thirteenth century French feudalism was diverted to
Greece, and the Venetians and Genoese were founding new
entrepots for Eastern trade in the Crimea and the Sea of
Azov. It seemed as if Palestine were left derelict, and the
centre of gravity had shifted into the debris of the Eastern
Empire.
But new hope dawned before the middle of the thirteenth
a
century; and a new vicissitude in Asiatic affairs was acclaimed in

the West as the promise of better things. A great Mongol
Empire, neither Christian nor Muhammadan, had been founded
by J en ghiz Khan. It stretched from Pekin on the east to the
Dnieper-and the Euphrates on the west the four Khanates, into

:
which it was divided, were each of the dignity of an empire;

and the Persian Khanate in particular, with its capital at Tabriz,
was near enough to the eastern Mediterranean to be drawn into
its affairs. The Mongols were tolerant the Nestorian Christians
:
of Asia flourished under their sway; why should they not be

converted to Christianity, and why should not the fundamental
purpose of the Crusades be realized, after all, on a vastly greater
The Crusades 49
scalethan had ever been dreamed before? Envoys came and
went Innocent IV sent John de Plan Carpine on a great journey
:
in 1245, and St. Louis dispatched William of Rubruquis on

another in 1250: missions were active, and churches were
founded as far afield as China. It was all a dream no help came
:
to Palestine. For a time Antioch and Tripoli, and the few
possessions left to the Latins on the coast of the old Kingdom of

Jerusalem, were spared. The successors of Saladin were divided
by -dissensions; and by the grace of those dissensions the Latins

survived. But a new and militant Muhammadanism arose with
the Mameluke Sultans of Egypt, who seized the throne of Cairo
in 1250. The greatest of these Sultans, Baibars, defeated the one
attempt of the Mongol Khanate of Persia to establish a footing
in Syria: he established himself in Damascus (1260): he crushed
and annexed the principality of Antioch (1268). His successor
Kala'un conquered and annexed Tripoli (1289); and his son and
successor Khalll captured Acre, the last stronghold of the Latins
on the Syrian coast (1291). By the end of the thirteenth
century
Latin Christianity was entirely expelled from the mainland of
ASIZL
It survived among the islands. Cyprus, captured from the
Greeks by Richard I on the Third Crusade, became under its
Lusignan kings the refuge of the Latin feudatories of Palestine.
It was here that the feudal jurisprudence of the Assizes of
Jerusalem was continued and codified; and the Kingdom of

Cyprus survived as an independent state until 1488, when it
passed into the hands of Venice. In the same way the Knights
1
Hospitallers, after the final loss of Acre, occupied Rhodes in

1309, and maintained themselves in the island until 1523, when
they moved to the west and to Malta. It is in these two islands
that some of the finest monuments of the presence of the Latins
in the eastern Mediterranean during the Middle Ages still sur-
1
See Stubbs's two lectures on Cyprus in his Lectures on Medieval and
Modern History.
3385
50 The Crusades
vive. While the feudal nobility was thus established in Cyprus
and Rhodes, the Venetians held Crete, and a number of islands
to the north, as the spoils of the Fourth Crusade; and the
Genoese, who had aided in the restoration of the Palaeologi to

the throne of Constantinople in 1261, were not only rewarded
with the suburb of Pera, but rewarded themselves with the
islands of Lesbos and Chios. In this way Latin Christianity kept
a hold in the eastern Mediterranean to the close of the Middle
Ages and even if it was confined to the islands, and although its
;
possessions were rather the debris of the Byzantine Empire than

conquests wrested from Muslim power, it still waged a war
against Islam from its scattered bases, and only abandoned the
struggle when the victory of the Ottoman Turks made the
eastern Mediterranean into a mare clausum. Indeed it was not
until 1668 that Candia fell, and Venice lost her last great
stronghold in the Levant.
ii
What were the results of the long adventure of Western
Christianity in the Eastern Mediterranean and of its long con-

tact with the Muhammadans of the East ? The question is really
double. It is a question, in the first place, of the effects of the
Crusades considered simply as a mode of contact between the
East and the West a question of the influence upon the West
of factors and impulses derived from the East. It is a question,
in the second place, of the effects of the Crusades regarded as a
general movement operative in the sphere of Western society

a question of the influence upon that society of a movement
which at once sprang from it and reacted strongly upon it. The
two questions have been too often confused by historians; and
the confusion has produced exaggerations which a distinction
might have avoided.
We may take as an- example of such exaggerations the passage
in Henne-am Rhyn's Allgemeine Kulturgescbickte which deals
The Crusades 51
with the Crusades. 1 Here we find the whole development of the
Middle Ages ascribed to the Crusades. In the religious sphere
they djmimshed the prestige of the Papacy, irretrievably affected
monasticism, and encouraged the growth, of heresy. In the
social and economic sphere they led to a greater equality of
classes^the growth of a free peasantry and of guilds of artisans,
and the development of trade and industry. In the field of
politics they were followed by the rise of the system of Estates,
byâ growing centralization of government, and by the appear-
ance of written law and a regular judicial administration. In the
great world of culture, philosophy developed its greatest thinkers
after the Crusades and the connexion with the Arabs which they
brought: even mysticism assumed a scientific character: the

study of the ancient languages grew in extent and fertility:
historiography and geography acquired a new vigour: a verna-
cular poetry arose: Gothic architecture succeeded to Roman-
esque, and a finer taste appeared in sculpture and painting.

Something of the same confusion, the same exaggeration, and
the same fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc appears even in the
learned and imposing Kulturgeschichu der Kreuzzuge of Hans
Prutz. 2 It is a work of massive erudition, but in some respects it
is
essentially uncritical. In the first place Prutz is apt to write as if
the Crusades were the one factor in the development of Europe
during the two centuries between 1 100 and 1300, and as if all the
causae causantes of those two hundred years causes which helped
to produce the new Europe of the Age of the Renaissance, the
Age of Discovery, and the Age of the Reformation were com-
pact and contained in that one factor. Actually they were only
one factor among many: and the fallacy of the 'single cause' is
added to the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc when we make
1
Vol. iii,
Book VII, esp. pp. 498-500.
Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters,
2
Berlin, 1883, ye books, of which Book IV (on economic culture) and
* n fi
Book V (on the effects of the Crusades upon the history of culture) deserve
especial attention.
K 2
52 The Crusades
them and universal explanation. In the second place,
a single
though Prutz admits that Spain and Sicily were important

vehicles of Arabic influence, he is prone in the issue to forget
his own admission, and to make Palestine far the greater
and almost the only vehicle. 'In most of the areas of cultural
development', he writes, 'we find the first permanent connection
of Eastern andWestern elements among the Franks (of Palestine),
and it is this mixed stock which must be described as the
. . .
pioneer in the process of mediation between East and West.' 1

Here again we cannot but notice the fallacy of the 'single cause',
and the fallacy appears the greater when we remember that the
other cause (the mixture of Eastern and Western elements in
Spain and in Sicily) was the more potent and penetrating.
Finally, it is impossible to escape the impression, in reading
Prutz's work, that he has both minimized the culture of the
Latin West and exaggerated the culture of the Arabic East, as
they stood about noo, in order to leave a larger scope for the
influence of the Crusades, and to provide (as
it were) an
emptier
market for a larger importation than our evidence warrants us
in accepting. The Western Europe which was just passing
through the great Gregorian age which was witnessing the
growth of thought that culminates in Abelard, the rise of the
French communes, the vigour of Norman diffusion and Norman
architecture, the industrial and commercial revolution that may
be traced at the end of the eleventh century this was no tabula
rasa. Nor was the Arabic culture of the East, about the year
1 1 oo, in its hey-day. On the contrary, as we shall see, its sun was
setting when the Crusades began; and we must always remember
that, so far as Kulturgeschichte goes, it was a new and growing
West which burst upon an old and waning East. ,j
Crusade is a magic word, and magic words may be magnets

4
1
P. 452. In justice it must be added that Prutz admits that in the sphere of
definitely scientific life an essentially different process appears*.

The Crusades 53
which draw large tracts of irrelevancy into the sphere of their
influence. Not everything which happened in Western Europe
during the Crusades was connected with them far less due to
them. Even if there had been no Crusade, Western
Christianity,
in which town-life and trade were rapidly developing during the
latter half of the eleventh century, would
probably have pushed
its commerce into the Eastern Mediterranean. It would have
sought to establish itself at the termini of the Eastern caravan

routes on the north coast of the Black Sea, where it might
touch the route that went north of the Caspian and west of the
Aral Sea to Bokhara and Samarcand or again in the Syrian ports,
;
from which it might reach Persia and the Persian Gulf, and so
touch the sea-route that led past India to China. What the
Crusades did was to establish a feudal Syrian State occupied
partly by individual feudatories and partly by the feudal
chartered companies of the Templars and Hospitallers to which
the commercial impulse, for a time, particularly attached itself,
and in which it created for itself the various 'quarters' occupied
by the Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans in the ports along the

coast. We have to remember that this commercial impulse was
not exclusively tied to these Syrian quarters that it had also its
;
contacts with Constantinople and the Black Sea; and that after
the Fourth Crusade, and during the course of the thirteenth
century, these contacts became the richer and the more manifold.
But at any rate during the twelfth century, between the First
and the Third Crusade, Syria was the particular focus of relations
between Christianity and Islam in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Here Islam could act upon Western Christianity, partly by its
direct impact upon the feudal State and by the repercussions of
that impact on the West, and partly by a process of filtration
along the routes of commerce. It is this action which we have

to study.
But we have to remember, and to repeat, that Islam was also
established, and could also act on the West, in Spain and in
54 5TA* Crusades
Sicily. There was a play of concurrent forces ; and though we

cannot measure the exact and separate extent of either, we may
guess that Islam acted more profoundly on Western Christianity
from its bases in Spain and Sicily than it did from its bases in
Mosul and Baghdad and Cairo. There are two reasons which
support this conjecture. The first is that there was never estab-
lished in Syria itself the potent influence of a mixture of
cultures, such as we find in Sicily under Roger II and Frederic II.
The second that the Latins of Syria were never able to draw
is
on the riches of a Muhammadan culture external but contiguous

to themselves, as the Christians of the Western Mediterranean
were able to draw on the riches of the culture of Cordova and
Muhammadan Spain.
The absence of any mixture of culture, or indeed of any degree
of culture of any kind, in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem is a
striking thing. In Sicily the mixture of stocks Greek, Norman,
Lombard, and Arab-Berber produced a remarkable mixed
civilization. At the court of the Norman kings we not only find
Arabic geographers and poets encouraged; we also find a king's
chancellor translating for William I the Phaedo and Meno of
Plato, a part of the Meteorologica of Aristotle, and the writings of
Diogenes Laertius. The court of Frederic II was even more
famous. Here, as in the De Vulgari Eloquio,
Dante records
Italian poetry took beginnings ; here the King could concoct,
its
or have concocted for him, knotty questions on the interpreta-

tion of Aristotelian philosophy (Quaestwnes Sicilianae) which
stillsurvive in an Arabic manuscript in the Bodleian Library.
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was a rude military settlement,
without the impulse, or at any rate without the time, for the
creation of any achievements of civilization. It was a foreign
legion encamped in castles and barracks: it came into no close

contact either with the tillers of the soil in the Syrian villages or
with the artisans who were busy, then as now, in making carpets
and pottery and gold-work in the towns. The Latins were scat-
The Crusades 55
tered thinly on a narrow littoral, which
they had to defend
against a vast and dark background of Muhammadanism ; and
though they might feel that
they were in the warmth of Jeru-
salem, the hearth of their faith and the centre of the round
earth (umbilicus Urrae), they were none the less removed from
the great centres of medieval civilization in Rome and Paris.
Nor, if they had the power to draw (and their time was too
brief, and their footing too precarious and hostile, for them to
do so), was there any neighbouring Muhammadan civilization
on which they could draw. The Western Mediterranean had
the culture of Arabic Spain before its eyes. Here Ibn Rushd,
jurist, physician, and philosopher, was teaching till the end of the
twelfth century; here the Jews had come into contact with
Arabic philosophy, and Maimonides, under its influence, had
attempted to reconcile Aristotle with the Old Testament and ;
here the Latin Christianity of the West learned, about 1200, a

deeper knowledge of Aristotle than it had been able to acquire
before from the solitary source of Boethius' translation of
the Organon.The Mosque Library of Toledo which fell to the
Spaniards with their conquest of the city, became a resort of
scholars; and the Arabic Aristotle of Spain was one of the
sources of the scholasticism of the thirteenth century. 1 Nor
was this all. The
border-warfare south of the Pyrenees became
a theme of poetry; and just as the border-warfare of English
and Scots produced our own border-ballads, or the struggle of
Greeks and Turks in the Taurus produced Byzantine chansons de
geste^ so the battles of Christian and Paynim in Spain were the
theme of the Song of Roland and the legend of the Cid Cam-
peador. It was otherwise in the East. Here Arabic philosophy
was beginning to wane by the time of the First Crusade and ;
no native poetry was stimulated by all the border-battles of the

twelfth century. The great Ibn Sina had died in Hamadan in
1
Cf. T. J. de Boer, Geschicbte der Philosophic im Islam, and E. Renan,
Averroes et V Averroisme.
56 The Crusades
1037; Ghazali, a sceptic who has been accused of destroying
the philosophy which he professed, died in Khurasan in 1 1 ;
in n
1150 the Caliph at Baghdad was committing to the flames a
philosophical library, and among its contents the writings of Ibn
Sma himself. In days such as these the Latins of the East were
hardly likely to become the scholars of the Muhammadans; nor
were they stimulated by the novelty of their surroundings to
any original production. No new poetry or art arose in the Holy
Land the ;
minstrels who s,ang the theme of the Crusades were
the minstrels of the West ; and if historiography flourished with
Fulcher of Chartres or William of Tyre, or law-books were
composed by a John of Ibelin or a Philip of Novara, these were
the only products which can be celebrated.
In the realm of culture the Latins of the Kingdom thus learned
littlefrom Eastern Muhammadanism, and developed little of
their own which could influence the West. Indeed it may
almost be contended that the chief service of the Crusades to
the development of Western civilization was not so much that
it
brought Latin Christianity into contact with the Muslim
East, as that it brought it interrelations with the Byzantine
Empire and Greek Christianity. Before the First Crusade, the
Church and Empire of the West had been separated from the
Church and Empire of the East by a gulf of oblivion. Luitprand
of Cremona might go on a famous embassy for Otto I to Con-
stantinople in 968 the envoys of Leo IX might appear in Con-
;
stantinople in 1054; but the relations of East and West were for
centuries sparse and infrequent. Atejog6jhe Comneni are in
constant relations with Western powers; after 1204 the Latins
are settled in the Eastern Empire. During the thirteenth cen-
tury the Flemish archbishop of Corinth, William of Moerbeke,

and his colleague Henry of Brabant are translating the Ethics
and Politics of Aristotle in collaboration withSt. Thomas, and
opening for the West another avenue to Greek philosophy than

that of Spain. At the end of the fourteenth and during the
The Crusades 57
fifteenth century Byzantine scholars bring to
Italy the full
wealth of the Greek inheritance, and provide the Italian Re-
naissance with its material. lie on the
Constantinople did not
main stream of the Crusades; but was from Constantinople
it
that the Crusades brought back the richest argosy to the West.
Yet there were ways in which the Crusades, through their

direction to Syria, and through the Latin State which they
temporarily established there, affected the development of

Western Europe. We may appeal, first and foremost, to the
evidence of language to the Western words which flowed into
Arabic, and trie Arabic words which flowed into Western lan-
guages. The borrowed Western words in Arabic are not very
numerous. Prutz cites as examples inbirur (imperator), kastal
(castellum), burj (burgus), and ghirsh (grossus). The borrowed
Arabic words in Western languages are far more abundant.
We need only think of caravan and dragoman, jar and syrup ,
in our own
language; and if we turn to the Romance lan-
guages of the continent which borrowed directly, while we,
for the most part, only borrowed through them we shall
realize that the of Western borrowings from the Arabic
list
may readily (witness words such as douane,

be increased
gabelle, felucca, chebec, and the like). But there are obvious
difficulties in the attribution of these borrowings.
philological
Palestine is not the only place, or the age of the Crusades
the only time, in which they may have originated. Spain and
Sicily are other possible places
of borrowing; and long centuries
of contact between the West and the Arab-speaking world
both east and west of^Suez; both in the way of commerce
and in the way of piracy are other possible times and ways.
The West, it is true, still uses Arabic terms of trade, such as
bazaar* dinar, tariff, and ztchin; it still uses Arabic terms of
sea-faring, such as admiral and arsenal , 9

it still uses Arabic term?
1
The origin is Persian rather than Arabic,
58 The Crusades
of domestic life, such as alcove, carafe, mattress, and sofa, or again
amulet, elixir, julep, and talisman-, it still uses or has used some
Arabic terms of music, such as lute and naker. But before we
assign the introduction of such terms to the Crusades we must
consult both Arabic and Romance philology, and we must be
certain both of the original place and the exact time of the
introduction.
/
^/
The Crusades were a series of wars wars fought against
new enemies, armed with new weapons and following, in some
respects, a new technique of war. We should naturally expect to
find that they exerted some effect on the development ofjtiie.,art .
of war in the West. Some writers have held that the 'concentric'
castle,of the type which became common in England during the
reign of Edward I, was modelled upon the military architecture
of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, as that in turn was modelled
upon the modifications made by the Arabs in the Byzantine
fortswhich they found in Syria. Following this line of argument
Prutz suggests that while the general scheme of military defence
in Palestine followed the Norman system of castellation (such as
we find, for instance, on the Welsh marches and South Wales),

in
*
Arabic influence may be traced in the disposition of the different
parts of the greater fortresses, in the addition of parts unknown

to the older military architecture of the West, and in a number
of new methods of defence made necessary by the technique of
siege tactics developed in the East'.
1
He assigns accordingly to
Arabic sources the use of a double line of walls (the essence of the
'concentric' castle) and the erection of an additional tower or
2
keep between the two lines ; and he suggests that the famous
1
Kulturgescbichte, p. 194.
2 An advanced tower of this sort, when it is erected over the gate
especially
or entrance, is known as a barbican; and
has been suggested that the word
it
may be derived from Arabic (or Persian) words meaning 'house on the wall' or
'gate-house*. (See N.E.D., sub voce.)
The Crusades 59
Chateau Gaillard built by Richard I in the Vexin shows in-
disputaBirtFaces of Oriental influence. On the other hand it

has been contended that the 'concentric' castle was
developed
in the West, and carried by the Crusaders to the East and ;
it is
at any rate certain that the engineering

skill of the adventurous
Normans, which showed itself in Western Europe earlier than it

did in Palestine, was fully competent to arrive at such a
develop-
ment from its own independent resources. We may assert with
more confidence that the Crusades fostered the growth of siege
sapping and mining, the employ-

tactics the use of the art of
ment of an 'artillery' of mangonels and battering-rams, and
possibly the application of various fires and combustibles;
though even here the original impulse may be Byzantine rather
than Arabic, and the engineer from the Holy Land em-
skilled
ployed by Frederic I at the siege of Crema in 1 159 may have been

a disciple not of the Arabs but of the Greeks. The cross-bow
is said to have been an Oriental
import the use of mail for the
;
knight and his horse is ascribed to the influenceTxTtne Crusades ;
the wearing of cotton quilts or pads ujideT is at-

theârmour
tributed to the same origin ; and at any rate
th||Frankish knight,
when he was fighting in Palestine, learned to use he Arab
kufvya for the protection of head and neck against an eastern

sun. The employment of carrier-pigeons to convey military in-
formation was borrowed from the Arabs, though it must
a device
be added that we commonly mentioned in the records of

find it
Norman Sicily; and it has been suggested that the celebration of

victory by illuminations and by the display of hangings and car-
pets on walls and from windows natural and indigenous as they
may seem to the soil of human emotion were perhaps borrowed

from the same source. The practice of the tournament, which
has its with the exercises of the Jarid, was perhaps
affinities
fostered by the Crusades; and a growing use of armorial bearings

may be due to contact with the Saracens in Syria. They cer-
tainly used heraldic devices, such as the double eagle, the
60 The Crusades
de-lis,and the two keys (fig. 10); and many heraldic charges, as
well as some of the recognized terms of heraldry (such as azure
and possibly gules), spring from this source. It appears to be also
due to the Crusades that the rules of armorial bearings became
uniform throughout Europe, and that 'the charges and terms
and rules of heraldry are identical in all European countries'.
Trade followed in the footsteps of war during the Crusades,

and the Italian merchant hurried at the heels of the Prankish
knight. It was not only a matter of the products and the wares
of Syria; it was also a matter of the products and the wares of
India and China and the Spice islands. It is true, and we have
already had occasion to mention, that this Eastern trade would
have existed, and produced its fruits, even if there had been no
Crusades; nor must it be forgotten that Venice had already
found her way into the Eastern markets, by way of Byzantium,
many years before the beginning of the First Crusade. We can-
not therefore ascribe to the Crusades at any rate we cannot
ascribe solely to the Crusades all the Eastern commodities
introduced into western Europe during the Middle Ages, or all
the fructification of old trade-routes and markets which fol-
lowed on that introduction. Equally, however, we cannot deny
the great trading impetus which came from the Latin settle-
ment in Syria, with all its native products and manufactures,
and with the new access which that settlement gave, on the
one hand to the markets of Damascus, and on the other hand (by
way of Rakka and the Euphrates) to the markets of Baghdad.
In way we may explain the dissemination of new plants and
this
crops and trees from the levant to the regions of the Western
Mediterranean sesame and carob, maize and rice, lemons and
melons, apricots and shallots.
1
In this way too we may explain
the spread into the West of new manufactures and fashions, or
1
The shallot (French ecbalote) is the allium Ascalonicum the onion from
Ascalon.
The Crusades 61
at any rate the growing vogue of old manufactures and fashions
cottons; muslins from Mosul; baldachins of Baghdad; damasks
and damascenes from Damascus; 'sarsenets' or Saracen stuffs;
samites and dimities and diapers from Byzantium (cfa^tros,
St/ztros", and SiaoTTrpos") ; the 'atlas' (Arabic atlas), a sort of silk-satin

manufactured in the East; rugs and carpets and tapestries from
the Near East and Central Asia; lacquers; new colours such as
carmine and lilac (the words are both Arabic) ; dyes and drugs
and spices and scents, such as alum and aloes, cloves and incense,
indigo and sandalwood; articles of dress and of fashion, such as
camlets and jupes (from the Arabic jubbab), or powders and
glass-mirrors; works of art in pottery, glass, gold, silver, and
enamel; and even the rosary itself, which is said to have come
from the Buddhists of India by way of Syria to western Europe.
This Eastern trade, which the Crusades stimulated if they did
not produce, and which in the twelfth century was mainly con-
centrated hi Syria, produced no small effects in the development
of trade-routes and the growth of new instruments of credit and
finance. The great trade-route of medieval Europe, which ran
from Venice over the Brenner to Cologne, and bifurcating there
turned to Liibeck on the Baltic or Bruges on the North Sea,
was fed by this Eastern trade; and it was along this route, in
Lombardy and along the Rhine and in Flanders and Northern
France, that medieval towns and medieval guilds clustered most
thickly. At the same time a regular system of shipping developed
in the Mediterranean, partly for the transport of goods and
partly for the conveyance of pilgrims Venice and Marseilles

:
became head-quarters,, and the military orders joined with

its
lay shipowners and shipping companies in the operation of the

system. The financial needs both of a far Eastern trade and of
pilgrims and knights travelling and sojourning overseas developed
ajystem of credit-note^s firms of bankers arose (Genoese, Pisan,
;
or Sienese) with branches and business in the Levant; the
military orders, and especially the Templars, became banks of

62 The Crusades
deposit and lending. One of the curious monetary results of the
Crusades and oFthe Eastern trade which they encouraged was
the striking by the Venetians of Byzantini Saracenatiin the Holy
Land. This was a gold coinage (perhaps the earliest gold coin-
age struck by the Latins) for the purpose of trade with the
Muhammadan hinterland and down to
; 1249 (when Innocent IV
protested) these gold coins bore Arabic inscriptions, with some
brief text from the Quran, a reference to the Prophet, and a date
calculated from the Hijra. Even in southern France, and as
late as the end of the thirteenth century, coins of this character
are to be traced.
In building, in the arts and crafts, and in the general frame-

work of daily and domestic life, we may trace some influences
that passed from the East to the West during the two centuries
of the Crusades. There seems indeed to be little ground for
thinking that the Crusades influenced the general architectural
development of the West, any more than that they influenced
the particular development of the concentric castle. There is no
general style of Saracenic architecture. It varied from country

to country, according to the type of indigenous building which
the conquering Arabs found; and the only uniformity was
that of decoration and ornament. The Arabs used a form
of pointed arch, but it differed from that of Gothic archi-
tecture: they used geometrical designs, because they were for-
bidden by their religion to copy animal forms, but there is no
evidence that their designs influenced the trefoil or cinquefoil of
Western Gothic in its geometrical stage. 1 The monuments of
ecclesiastical architecture in the Holy Land are almost purely
Western in style, and constructed on the rules and according to
1
Prutz, op. cit., p. 419, conjectures (but he admits that it is conjecture)
that Arabic influences may have introduced into the West the horse-shoe arch
and the semicircular arch composed of many small arches, and so have helped
to create cinquefoil and the various forms of decorated tracery.
The Crusades 63
the plans of Western building. At the most we can say that local
factors induced local variations, as when, for example, the lack
of timber in Palestine led to the building of flat roofs to churches,
or again when local masons and stone-cutters, naturally imbued
with Oriental traditions, introduced some Eastern twist or turn
into a building generally constructed on Western lines. 1 Arab-
esques in mural decoration are of Moorish and not of Eastern

origin; and if the Crusades introduced any new elements into
the sculpture of the West, these elements were Byzantine rather
than Arabic. Painting was not an Arabic art and the mosaics in
;
the churches of the Holy Land were of Byzantine inspiration. It

is in the narrower
sphere of the domestic arts and crafts that we
may perhaps trace Arabic influence most. In the Kingdom of
Jerusalem itself the houses of the magnates might follow the
Arabic pattern of courtyard, marbles, fountain, and the murmur
of running water; and the internal decoration and furniture
might also copy the same model. The importation of Oriental
gold-work and jewellery may have influenced the art of design
and especially at Venice and the ivories, the enamels, the
in Italy ;
carpets, the tapestries of the East may have exercised a similar

influence in the West at large. We
may perhaps speak of the
'rebesk' or arabesque fashion in the Middle Ages in the same
sense in which we speak of the chinoiserie (in wall-papers,
lacquers, and furniture) of the eighteenth century. Pilgrims
might buy and bring home Arab reliquaries for the keeping of
Christian relics they might wear, and bring back for imitation in
;
Paris, the girdle-purses of the East; or they might bring into the
West horns whose blast had once been borne on Syrian echoes.
1
The round 'Temple' churches (of which there are four in England, and
which may also be traced in France, Spain, and Germany) are a deliberate
imitation of the church of the Sepulchre and the 'Temple' at Jerusalem
1
analogous to the 'labyrinths' or 'chemins de Jerusalem in some Western

churches, or the 'Jerusalems' in some of the towns of the Teutonic Order in
Prussia.
64 The Crusades
In the of science and
field it was the Arabs of
philosophy
ain rather than the Arabs of tKe East who brought gifts to the
Latin West. Some mathematical knowledge may indeed have
been imported from the East. Adelard of Bath, who studied the
astronomy and geometry of the Arabs, is said to have travelled in
Egypt and Asia Minor as well as in Spain during the first half of
the twelfth century. Leonardo Fibonacci, the first Christian
algebraist, acontemporary ôTFrederic II, to whom he dedicated

his treatiseon square numbers, is also recorded as having visited
Egypt and Syria. The diffusion of Arabic numerals and arith-
metic may have owed something to the lively trade between the
Italian ports and Syria. Medicine, like mathematics, was one of
the staples of Arabic science; but the home of the staple, and the
source of its diffusion, was Spain rather than Syria, and the
utmost licence of possible conjecture about Syrian influence is
that which would connect the rise of a medical school at Mont-
pellier with the trade between southern France and the Levant.
The scholastic philosophy of the thirteenth century, as we have
seen, owed no debt directly to ther Arabic philosophers of the
East. The material which it used, apart from the Christian
tradition and the teaching of the fathers, was the Aristotelianism
of the Arabs of Spain or the knowledge of Aristotle which it
drew directly from Byzantium. 1
In arj&jiiid letters the influence of the Crusades was perhaps

deeper ajnd more pervasive. One of their direct results was the
study of Oriental languages. This development, however, was
due less to the Crusades themselves than to the Asiatic mission
which succeeded to the Crusades and was directed to the con-
version of the Mongols. It was a Catalan, Raymundus Lullus,
who first
attempted to promote the development of Oriental
1
Professor C. H. Haskins remarks, in an article on Arabic Science in Western
Europe (printed in />, vol. vii, p. 3), that 'the Crusades as such had a surpris-
ingly small part in the transmission of Arabic science to Christian Europe'.
The Crusades 65
studies as the instrument of a pacific Crusade in which the arms
should be entirely spiritual. In 1276 he founded a college of
friars for the study of Arabic at Miramar; and in
1311, perhaps
at his instigation, the Council of Vienne resolved on the creation
of chairs of Oriental languages (in Arabic and Tartar) at the
Universities of Paris, Louvain, and Salamanca. But his restless
and devoted spirit carried him to martyrdom in Tunis in 1314;
and little came of his endeavours. The Eastern mission of which
he was the eager advocate continued but it resulted, as we shall
;
see, less in the growth of Oriental studies than in the growth of

1
geographical knowledge.
In the field of literature the Crusades produced a great deal of
history, and they were a theme of many Western poets. Among
the Western historians of the Crusades are the anonymous Nor-
man who wrote the Gesta Francorum and described the First
Crusade Fulcher of Chartres, whose Historia Hierosolymitana
;
describes not only the First Crusade, but also the history of the
kingdom down to 1127; and above all William the Archbishop of

Tyre, whose History of things done in the parts overseas, in twenty-
three books extending to the year 1183, became, in a French
translation, the current staple of the Middle Ages and the chief
basis of the story of the Crusades. William of Tyre not only wrote
of the deeds of the Latins;
he also compiled a History of the
Muhammadan Princes from the appearance of the Prophet; and
the work is now lost, the traces of it which survive in
though
William of Tripoli's Tractatus de Statu Saracenorum (1273) show
the extent of its author's understanding of the Arabic world,
and attest his insight into the character and genius of Islam.
Among Eastern sources proper there is the autobiography of
1
Professor Raskins (op. cit.), basing his remark on J. K. Wright's Geographical
Lore of the Time of the Crusades, suggests that 'if the Crusades widened the
geographical knowledge of Christian Europe, it was by actual experience,
rather than by contact with the writings of Arabic geographers', which were
unknown in the West during the Middle Ages.
3385 F
66 The Crusades
Usama ibn Munkidh, a north Syrian Sheikh, which covers the
twelfth century; Ibn al-Athir's history of the Atabegs; and
Baha-al-Din's life of Saladin. But in the West at any rate the
story of the Crusade rapidly turned from history to legend. The

way had already been shown in the Song of Roland, which is
the fruit of the play of poetic imagination on the theme of
the border-warfare between Christianity and Islam in northern
Spain. Early in the history of the Crusades perhaps during the

First Crusade the same play of imagination began to
itself
create a legend which ran by the side of the history but departed
widely from it. The legend already appears in the Chanson des
1
Cbetifs (1130) and the Chanson d'Antiocbe (1180): it glorified

Peter the Hermit or Godfrey of Bouillon, as the Song of Roland
had glorified Roland and Oliver it played at will over the Cru-
:
sades, throwing its limelight now here, now there, and creating
a saga which for centuries usurped the place of reality. It is this
saga which came to Tasso, and which in his Gerusalemme
Liber ata he dressed in the conventional heroic dress of the six-
teenth century. Nothing shows better how far the Crusades had
passed from the heart of Europe. Tasso had wished, says de
Sanctis, to write a poem which was seriously heroic, animated by
the religious spirit, fossibilmente storico e prossimo al vero o
verisimile. What had he achieved ? Un mondo cavaleresco,
fantastico, romanzesco e voluttuoso, cbe sente la messa e si fa la
croce?
The Crusades, in reality, never became one of the great
'matters' of medieval poetry, like the 'matter' of Charlemagne
or the 'matter' of Britain and the Round Tabled They affected,
1
See Von Sybel's Gescbicbte des ersten Kreuzzuges.
2 De Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura Italiana^ ii. 161, 168.
3 Prutz remarks (op. cit., p. 494) that thegesta of the early Crusaders, which
had once excited an insatiable fund of interest, had already lost that quality by
the end of the Crusades. James of Vitry (fi24o), the author of a collection
of Exempla or edifying stories, notices that any other 'matter' was more
attractive to writers than the matter of the Crusades.
The Crusades 67
indeed, those two great themes: Charlemagne was made a
Crusader, and sent on voyages to Constantinople and even
Jerusalem; the poets of the Arthurian cycle learned to put some-
thing of a crusading complexion on their story; and the Morte
d* Arthur would not have been what it actually was if the
Crusades had not filled the Middle Ages. But there is
nothing
derived from Islam in such influence. It is simply the idea of the
fight of faith against unfaith, as the best kind of fight for a
fighting age; and this is an idea as old as the
fight between Iran
and Turan. Islam itself added little to the poetic stock of the
Middle Ages, except as the incarnation of unfaith. The author
of the cantefable of Aucassin and Nicolette may have borrowed
something from Arabic sources ; but if he did, his borrowing is
independent of the Crusades.
1
And if again there be any truth
in the 'Saracenic' theory, which refers to the East the origin not
only of the sonnet, but also of the form of rhymed lyrical verse,
that again is independent of the Crusades, and a matter of
Sicilian history. It would almost seem as if the story of Troy and
the romance of Alexander had given medieval poets their
picture of the East even more than the Crusades. One might
even hazard the saying that it is not till the days of Count
Robert of Paris and The Talisman that the Crusades became the
real stuff of Western romance. But themes and motives derived
from the Crusades, if not the CrusadesTEemselves, "became" a
part of the romantic tradition of the Middle Ages. There is the
theme of the knight imprisoned in Saracen-land and his rescue
by the Saracen princess whose love he has won : there is the motif
of the wife who after long mourning has abandoned hope of her
Crusader husband's return, and is about to marry again when he
1
Prutz suggests (p. 450) that an Indian cycle of romances (Calila andDimna)
may have been carried by the Crusades to western Europe. He adds that the
trouveres incorporated Oriental elements into their lays, and were the bridges
by which Eastern tales and fables passed to Boccaccio and the Italian
novelists.
F 2
68 The Crusades
reappears alone, or with a Saracen lady. But these are romantic
embroideries, and they do not touch the true matter and essence
of the Crusades. 1
Ill
Apart from the question of the influence which the Muham-

madan East exerted in Western Europe through the channel of
the Crusades, or through the conduit (if it may so be called) of
the Kingdom of Jerusalem, there remains the further and the
broader question of the whole general influence of the Crusades
themselves, as a movement of Western Europe at large, on the
home of their origin and diffusion. That further and broader
question beyond the limits of our theme; but it may be
lies
permissible, by way of an appendix and epilogue, to add some few

observations, and, in particular, to draw attention to those
general results of the Crusades which affected the relations of
East and West.
The Crusades affected the Christian commonwealth of
Western Europe in some four ways. In the first place they
affected the Church, and particularly the Papacy. In the second
place they affected the internal life and economy of each of the
several states; and we may trace that effect partly as it shows
'
itself in the action of the Government (the State' proper),
and partly as it appears in the position of the two secular estates
the nobility and the commonalty, more especially the com-
monalty of the towns. In the third place, they affected the
external relations of the different states ; and that effect may
be traced both in the changes of their relative weight and im-
portance and in the general development of a concert or system
of Europe. Finally, they affected the relations of Eurogejto^the
continent of Asiaj and in the widening ripples of exploration,
from the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth, we
1
It is perhaps worth adding that the music of the West may have been in-
fluenced, in some small degree, by that of the East in the epoch of the Crusades.
The Crusades 69
may trace the successive stages of a movement which the
Crusades first set on foot.
The Church and the Papacy

The
clergy were an international Estate; and the Pope, the
head of the clergy, was a great European figure. An international
and European enterprise such as the Crusade seemed naturally
destined to come under clerical and papal control, and thereby
to exalt the theocratic tendency already implicit in the Grego-
rian movement. In the idea of Urban II the Pope was to be
the generalissimo of the .Holy War ; the Crusade was to be the
foreign policy of the Papacy, conducted at its nod; and a papal
legate was to accompany and rule the army of God. In the
event this ambition was far from being realized. The secular
ambition of lay princes is already prominent, and indeed domi-
nant, in the First Crusade itself; and the foundation of a lay
Kingdom of Jerusalem in noo, in place of the clerical theocracy
of which some seem to have dreamed, is itself significant. In the
Second and Third Crusades the emperor and the kings of the
West, absentees from the First Crusade, play a foremost part;
and we shall have occasion to notice how the lay State imposes
its own
system of taxes for the sustentation of Jerusalem. None
the less, and in spite of lay direction and lay diversion (which
were nowhere more conspicuous than in the course of the Fourth
Crusade), the Crusades remained essentially connected with the
Papacy. It was by Popes that they were preached and organized.
It was by Popes that they might be directed, not only against the
Muslim of the East, but also against the heretic Albigensian in the
West itself; and the time even came, in the reign of Frederic II,
when they might be launched by a Pope against an offending
Emperor. Not only were they a weapon ofjyagj&^policy: they
were also a part of papal finance. nTKelay State imposed its
Saladin tithe, the Papacy could also levy a tithe of its own ; and
tenths of ecclesiastical revenues, on the plea of the Crusade,
70 The Crusades
were levied regularly from the clergy after the beginning
of the thirteenth century, first by the decree of Councils and
then by the Pope's authority, and continued in force in
England till the Reformation. As the Crusades added new
revenues to the Church, so they also added new orders and the ;
Templars and the Hospitallers, following a rule based on that of

the canons regular, gave to Europe the new spectacle of the
warrior-priest
who combined the rules of monasticism with the
life of a professional soldier.
The mixed character of the military orders admirably

illustrates the mixed character of the Crusades, which made
them once papal and anti-papal, clerical and anti-clerical, a
at
support of ecclesiasticism and at the same time a mine beneath

its foundations. The Crusades, if
they did not remove, at any
rate weakened the old clear distinction between sacred and pro-
fane, the lay and the clerical, the temporal and the spirTtuaL
They were the consecration of the fighting layman, and in their
way they led to the emancipation of the laity. On the Crusade

the layman might become something of a priest; and by collabora-
tion withit the
lay State might acquire some measure of sanctity.
A movement which had proceeded from a temper of other-
worldliness, and had been born in an age which seemed set towards
theocracy, was thus none the less a contributory force to the
development of the lay spirit and the lay power. The day-to-
day contact with Muhammadanism in the East a contact
which brought familiarity, and with it the toleration which
familiarity can breed weakened the old opposition of faith and
unfaith, just as the Crusades had weakened the distinction be-
tween secular and clerical within the bounds of the faith. Not all
men in the thirteenth century were of the temper of Frederic II,
who used a Saracen army against the Pope, corresponded with
Arabic scholars, and negotiated with Muhammadan rulers even
when Jerusalem itself was in question. But at any rate scholars
showed themselves ready to borrow from Arabic philosophers;
The Crusades 71
some began to study Arabic; and a new spirit of comprehension
arose. There is a difference between St. Louis, the survivor of
an earlier age, who would argue with an infidel by
plunging his
sword into his vitals, and the attitude of the University of Paris
which could draw even on Arabic Spain for thcjistca et meta-
fisica of Aristotle.Scholasticism arose and developed its doc-
trines independently of the Crusades ; but it was only in the new
age of comprehension which the Crusades had done something
to create that scholasticism could attempt its great task of
reconciling the secular wisdom of Aristotle with the received

tradition of the Bible and the Church.
7be State and the Secular Estates
One of the simplest and clearest results of the Crusades, in the

internal life of the States of the West, was the development of a
new species of taxation. Taxes had hitherto fallen on land: it is
with the Crusades that we get the beginnings of taxes on per-
spnaJjgrogejrty,. Louis VII in 1 146 was the first to impose a tax
propter sustentationem terrae Hierosolymitanae he repeated it in :
1165 and Henry II of England followed his example in 1166,

;
exacting twopence in the pound for that year, and one penny
for each of the four next succeeding years, from all classes in-
differently, in respect of personal property

and income (catalla
et redditus). In 1 1 84 Philip Augustus and Henry II agreed on the
exaction of a similar tax for the next three years in their domi-
nions though the agreement appears not to have been executed.
In 1 1 88, after the fall of Jerusalem, both kings imposed the
Saladin tithe. In England, at any rate, the precedent was not
forgotten; and in the thirteenth century the tax on catalla et
redditus is made a current feature of the national system of
finance. 'From the needs of the Holy Land', it has been said,
'arises modern taxation'. 1
w*-
1
Cartellieri, Philipp II August^ vol II, p. 85. A full account of the develop-
ment is given p. 5 onwards.
72 The Crusades
The effects of the Crusades on the secular Estates of the
Western Kingdoms are less certain and obvious. It has been said
that the Crusades contributed to the dissolution of feudalism
and the depression of the baronial Estate. Certainly they drew
unquiet spirits away to the East, to find new fiefs in Syria or to
become members of the military orders: perhaps, too, they
resulted in some sales of property and some disturbance of the
validity of titles; but the feudal baronage could still show itself
a lively force till the end of the fifteenth century, and the in-
fluence of the Crusades on its members is shown less in any distur-
bance of their status than in the new methods of their warfare,
and the greater vogue of the tournament and of heraldry, of
which we have already spoken. In the same way the rise of
municipal independence has been often ascribed to the Crusades,
and the grant of municipal charters ha^been assigned to the need
of crusading lords for ready money. Here again presumption
has outrun proof; and we are on safer ground if we simply say
that, so far as the Crusades fostered the growth of trade and
commerce, they necessarily êncouraged the growth of towns.
The great Italian ports certainly owed much of their early
prosperity to the Crusades ; and the inland route of commerce,
by which Venetian goods were carried up the Rhine to the
Balticand the North Sea, was also, as we have seen, the route
and the focus of the growth of free towns and free guilds.
The External Relations of States and the System of

Europe
The Crusades affected the system of Europe, not only by
their influence on the Church and its general position, but also
by afordmâ^new bond of European unity. After 1096 we may
say that the idea of a united Western Europe is expressed not
merely in the formal scheme of a Holy Roman Empire, but also
in the actual fact of a_ common Christian Crusade. It is true
that the rulers of European States, when they met on a Crusade,
met only to disagree; it is true that national differences were
Crusades 73
accentuated by the national rivalry which accompanied, for
example, the Third Crusade. And yet the feeling of a unity of
interests .an d.,a. common cause was never
entirely obliterated.
There was no common direction from Baghdad, and no call of
the Caliphate, to unite the Muslims of the East at the most :
there was the de facto power of Mosul, and the puritan faith of a
Nur-al-Dinorthe ardour of a Saladin. Western Christianity had
its
Papacy and the papal direction of a Crusade: it was inter-
nationalized, as it were, in a common system of offence against
its
enemy. T^he idea of a European Commonwealth a res-
publica Christiana^ engaged in the res Christiana of defence or

offence against the Turk survives through the centuries. A
Dutch scholar, Ter Meulen, has written a work entitled Der
Gedanke der inUrnationalen Organisation, in which he traces
the various schemes which, from the time of Dubois (1300) to
that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre and Kant (1800), were directed
to the foundation of some scheme of European unity or League of
Nations. In almost all the basis adduced is the need of common
action against the Turk: in almost all we may trace some relic
of the lingering idea of the Crusades.

Meanwhile, during the Crusades and in their course, ^the
balance of European. States had been altered. The Byzantine
EmpireTbid ceasedjojyeigh in the'scales against the Empire of

the West. It had fallen in 1204; and if by the end of the thir-
teenth century there were again Greek Empires in Constanti-
nople and Trebizond, they were only the shadows of a great
name. The balance of Europe had come to lie in the West.
Among the Western States, France had achieved a predomi-
nance; and in its achievement the Crusades had played their
paFtr~They had been preached on French soil; they had been
waged by French knights; it was France which had produced in
St. Louis the perfect type of Crusader. French colonists had
settledjnjM .Kingdom of Jerusalem and, when it was lost, in

that of Cyprus: they had settled in the Morea and the Duchy of
74 Tk* Crusades
Athens. 'The noblest chivalry of the world', says a French
writer of the fourteenth century, 'is the chivalry of the Morea as :
good French is spoken there as in Paris.' The Lingua Franca of

the Levant was not 'good French' so far as it had a Latin basis,
:
itderived that basis from the Italian of Venetian and Genoese

traders; but if the French language did not survive in the
Eastern Mediterranean, the French tradition was never ex-
tinguished. The protectorate of the Holy Places, which had

been exercised by Charlemagne, was vindicated by Francis I in
the sixteenth century; treaty stipulations gave the Latins
possession of the grotto of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulchre

in Jerusalem; and these stipulations were still active enough in
the nineteenth century to be one of the causes of the Crimean
War. Even to-day we may count the French mandate in Syria
among the legacies of the Crusades.
The Relations of Europe and Asia

It remains, in conclusion, to speak of the new system of re-
lations between Europe and the continent ofVAsia which was
inaugurated by the Crusades. Not only did Europe find in the
Crusades a new form of internal union and a new influence on
its own inner life it also gained in their course a new and
:
vastly
extended view of the world. This widening of view, with the
growth of exploration and of geographical knowledge by which
it was
accompanied, is the last, as in its sweep it is the greatest,
of the results of the Crusades. Already, during the twelfth
century, geography was the richer for the pilgrims' guides,
1
with descriptions of routes and of holy places, and for the

military reconnaissances of strategical areas (especially of the area
between Palestine and Egypt), which were then undertaken.
These only touched the coast fringe of Hither Asia; but in the
1
On the peregrinatores see Prutz (op. cit., pp. 470 sqq.), the editions of
Itinera Hierosolymitana (e.g. in the Corp. Script. EccL Latin.)) and the publica-
tions of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society.
The Crusades 75
thirteenth century, as we have already had occasion to notice,
exploration and description turned to the whole of Further Asia.
The great age of Asiatic discovery, which is parallel, if it is not
equal, to the age of American discovery in the sixteenth
century, began about 1240 and ended a century later.
1
During
that century Asia was loosely united in a Mongol
Empire, which
stretched from the Crimea and Tabriz, through Bokhara and
Samarcand, to Cambaluc (Pekin) and Kinsai (Hangchow),
The Mongols, who kept their old Shamanism, were tolerant of
other faiths if they were not Christians themselves, they yet
;
sheltered in their Empire Christian elements; Christian zeal

hoped for their conversion,
, and commercial ardour sought
routes to the fountain-heads of Eastern trade through their
dominions. The mission to the Mongols was partly based on the
interested calculation that with their conversion the objects of
the Crusades might yet be finally achieved, and the Holy Land
permanently recovered; but while it was connected with the

Crusades it came to transcend their scope. There were those
who, like Raymundus Lullus, believed that the mission must
supersede the Crusade, and peaceful preaching displace the
military expedition ; and to such as these the conversion of Asia
became an end in itself a filling of the earth with the know-
ledge of God as the waters cover the sea. Aided by Mongol
tolerance and the presence of Nestorian Christians in Asia, these
missionarieswent far afield; and in the beginning of the four-
teenth century John of Monte Corvino, the founder of the Latin
Church in China, became archbishop of Cambaluc with three
Franciscans as suffragan bishops. With the mission went the
Italian merchant, just as the First Crusade had been accom-
panied by the mariners of the Italian ports; and not only did the
Polos make their great journeys, but (a mark of more solid
1
See Miss Eileen Power's chapter on 'The opening of the Land Routes to
Cathay' in Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages, edited by Professor A. P.
Newton.
76 The Crusades
establishment) a Genoese company navigated the waters of the
Caspian Sea, and a Venetian consul was settled in Tabriz. All
the great hope was in the issue dashed; and the prospect of a
great mass-conversion of the Mongols, which would have linked
a Christian Asia to a Christian Europe and reduced Islam to a
small faith encamped in a portion of Spain and a corner of the
Levant, dwindled and disappeared. The Khanates of Persia
turned to Muhammadanism in 1316; by the middle of the four-
teenth century Central Asia had gone the same way; in 136870
the native dynasty of the Mings was on the throne and closing
China to foreigners; and the end was a recession of Christianity
and an extension of Islam which assumed all the greater
dimensions with the growth of the power of the Ottoman
Turks. But a new hope dawned for the undefeated West; and
this new hope was to bring one of the greatest revolutions in
history. If the land was shut, why should Christianity not take
to the sea ?
Why should
not navigate to the East, take
it
Muhammadanism it were, win

in the rear, and, as Jerusalem a
tergo ? This was the thought of the great navigators, who wore
the cross on their breasts and believed in all sincerity that they
were labouring in the cause of the recovery of the Holy Land;
and if Columbus found the Caribbean Islands instead of Cathay,
at any rate we may say that the Spaniards who entered into his
labours won a continent for Christianity, and that the West, in
ways of which it had never dreamed, at last established the
balance in its favour.
If we regard their larger scope, and the long after-swell which

followed the original impulse, we shall not regard the Crusades
as a failure. Nor did they fail altogether even in their original
motive the defence of a common Christianity against the
menace of Islam in the Eastern Mediterranean. We may say,
it is Crusades began with the Seljuq Turks
true, that the
encamped at Nicaea on the confines of Asia, and that they ended
The Crusades 77
with the Ottoman Turks encamped in Europe itself on the
Danube. We may say, again, from another point of view, that
after nearly five hundred years all ended as it had begun, with
a Frankish protectorate of the Holy Places
in a territory governed
by Muhammadans. But territory not everything; and if the

is
Crusades did not gain, or even maintain, what can be measured

on the map, they gained or maintained other things which are
more impalpable, but not less real. They defended Western
Christianity during the crucial period of the growth of Western
civilization in the Middle Ages; they saved it from any self-
centred localism; they gave it breadth and a vision. 'The
people that hath no vision perisheth'; and to the peoples of the
Middle Ages the vision of the Crusade seldom seen steadily,
perhaps never seen whole was none the less a saving ideal.
ERNEST BARKER.
GEOGRAPHY AND COMMERCE
WERE we to draw a map of the political condition of
Europe,
Africa, and western Asia about the middle of the tenth century
of our era, we should see that by far the greater part of that
'inhabited world', which the Greeks called the 'oikoumene', was
occupied by countries possessed of an Islamic government and

an Islamic civilization. They no longer constituted a strict
political unity, but they were connected by such strong ties
of common religion and culture that their inhabitants and

not only their Muhammadan inhabitants felt themselves
citizens ofone vast empire, of which Mecca was the religious,
and Baghdad the cultural and political centre. This vast
empire had grown in the three foregoing centuries from
a series of conquests that started originally from Medina.
Arabia was its centre. To the west it comprised Egypt with the
entire northern coast of Africa, including the Atlantic coast as
far as the Anti- Atlas and, further, nearly the whole of Spain
(with the exception of Asturia), and the islands of Sicily and

Crete. Sardinia and Cyprus, too, were constantly exposed to
Muhammadan attacks; so was also the southern Italian coast,
where some towns, were actually under Islamic rule,
like Bari,
while others, like Amalfi, belonged to its sphere of influence.

To the north of Arabia, Syria with Armenia and the south-east
of the Caucasus belonged to the permanent possessions of Islam;
and, farther to the east, Mesopotamia with 'Iraq, followed by
the whole of the territory of modern Persia with Afghanistan.
Northward of these countries, again, Transoxania belonged to
Islam, including in the west the delta region of Khwarizm, and,
in the east, the valley and the mountains of Farghana. The
Indus had been crossed already in the eighth century; the re-
gions on lower course belonged, with Sind, to the Islamic
its
Empire. Only in the southward direction did the territorial

8o Geography and Commerce
extension of Islam in Africa scarcely exceed the latitude of
Aswan in Egypt.
'The length of the Empire of Islam in our days extends from the
limits of Farghana, passing through Khurasan, al-Jibal (Media), 'Iraq
and Arabia as far as the coast of Yaman, which is a journey of about
four months; its breadth begins from the country of the Rum (the
Byzantine Empire), passing through Syria, Mesopotamia/ Iraq, Fars and
Kirman, as far as the territory of al-Mansura on the shore of the sea of
Fars (the Indian Ocean), which is about four months' travelling. In the
previous statement of the length of Islam I have omitted the frontier

of the Maghrib (northern Africa) and Andalus (Spain), because it is like
the sleeve of a garment. To the east and the west of the Maghrib there
is no Islam. If one goes, however, beyond Egypt into the country of
the Maghrib, the lands of the Sudan (the Black) lie to the south of the
Maghrib and, to its north, the Sea of Rum (the Mediterranean) and
next the territory of Rum.'
These are the words of the geographer Ibn Hauqal, writing

about A.D. 975.
Although the regions enumerated above do not coincide at all
with, and are even smaller than, the countries now inhabited by
a Muhammadan population, the fact that they constituted
not only a religious but also a politically powerful block, brought
together and kept together by force of arms, enabled them to
hold the position of a strong central power in the world then
known.
If we
consider, on the other hand, the geographical and
political conditions of the Christian European world of those
days, we immediately realize to what extent in reality the latter
must have been dependent on the huge Islamic Empire. To the
south the Mediterranean, at that time under the domination of
the rulers of the Muhammadan shores, formed an insurmount-
able barrier; to the east the Byzantine Empire stood face to face
with Islam in Armenia; the northern Caucasus and eastern
Europe were the home of half-civilized nations that were at
Geography and Commerce 81
least as much under Muhammadan as under Christian influence.
Only Northmen were at the

in the north of Europe the heathen
beginning of their powerful extension, which was largely to

contribute, in the twelfth century, to the annihilation of the
political and economic hegemony of Islam.
The relative geographical position of the pilgrimage centres
of the two rival religions was quite different. Jerusalem, the
had since A.D. 638
ideal religious centre of Christian Europe,
been under the control of the Muhammadans, but the Muham-
madan conquest had not put an end to the pilgrimages under-
taken by European Christians to the Holy Sepulchre. The first
pilgrims of whose travels accounts have come down to us, were
the Frank Arculf 680), the Saxon Willibald (c. 725) and a
(c.
certain Bernard, started c. 870 from Rome on a pilgrimage.
who
No doubt they were not the only ones that contributed to the
maintenance of knowledge about the countries conquered by
Islam. The relations of the Christians in the Byzantine Empire
with their co-religionists in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia
must have been very important in this respect.
In the Islamic world matters were quite different. Mecca, the
centre of pilgrimage, occupied a central geographical position in
Islam itself. The pilgrimage or 'hajj' to Allah's house was one of
the five 'pillars of Islam', according to the Sacred Law, and Muham-
madans from all parts of the Islamic Empire met at that place.
So the 'hajj' became not only a powerful factor in promoting
religious unity, but it also materially assisted in strengthening
the ties all Muhammadan countries, and
of commerce between
disseminated among Muhammadans a fairly good knowledge of
all parts of their world. To the 'hajj' was due the compilation
of a number of itineraries, in which the stations and stages of
the roads leading from different countries to Mecca were in-
dicated. There was, however, a great ignorance of, and lack of
non-Muhammadan parts of the known world.
interest in, the
Nearly a millennium has passed since 'the cultural horizon of

3385 G
82 Geography and Commerce
Christian Europe was bounded in nearly all directions by Islam.
In the meantime Europe has circumnavigated and pierced the
barriers that separated it from the southern and eastern parts of
the known world, not to speak of the unknown world. Europe
owes much to its own force and initiative, but it has also largely
profited by the knowledge and the experience of those who were
at one time the masters of the world. Therefore Europe ought
to look upon them as its cultural ancestors in the domain of
geographical knowledge, of discovery, and of world trade. The

influence which Islam has exercised on our modern civilization
in these spheres of action can be seen in the many terms of Arabic
origin which are to be found in the vocabulary of trade and

navigation. The measure
of this influence can only be proved
by studying the historical development of the domain over
which our actual geographical knowledge extends. For modern
geography is a science so positive and independent of tradition
that it all but excludes the more or less correct views of former
ages; I say 'all but', for

it is
only just to remember the fact that,
when Jaubert in 1840 edited his French translation of Idrlsl,
it was thought not unlikely that this edition might increase
geographical knowledge of the world, and especially of
Africa.
The study of the historical influence of our Islamic cultural
ancestors on our knowledge of the world is not without its
difliculties, because it is not always easy to ascertain how far the
geographical knowledge of the Muhammadans was based on per-

sonal observation, how far they actually went on their voyages,
and what was the extent of their commercial relations. This
statement may cause surprise in view of the fact that from the
ninth to the fourteenth century a considerable and important
geographical literature was produced in Arabic. But what the
bulk of this literature has to offer us is only the official science
of scholars and literary men. However observant these writers
may have been of the regions and peoples which they visited,
and with however much interest they may have listened to the
travellers and sailors from whom
they derived their information,
they were still more or less
captivated by ideological religious
and traditional views, which prevented them from seeing
certain facts in their true light, even if their opinion was much
less prejudiced than that of the Christian scholars of the
'Dark Ages'. Apart from this official and literary science there
was the great naval and geographical experience of seafarers
and merchants. The literary men certainly profited by their
knowledge, but it appears sometimes from their own writings
that the less pretentious traders and navigators were less
prejudiced than themselves. Now it is this more humble kind

of people whom we must consider as the principal mediators
and teachers in the relations between Islam and medieval
Europe. The big Arabic geographical works appear to have had
practically no immediate influence on medieval geographical
views, except in so far as astronomical geography is con-
cerned.
We must not omit, however, to give a survey of the way in
which the vast geographical knowledge of the Muhammadans
was reflected in Arabic literature. In the first 150 years of Islam
geography as a science was certainly not superior to what we
observe in the Christian world. Curious opinions are reported,
on the authority of contemporaries of the Prophet, concerning
the length of the world and its
parts, the sources of the Nile,
and so on. Among them we meet with the comparison of the
world to a bird, whose head is China and whose tail is north
Africa. The Quran itself contains a geographical indication
in the twice recurring statement that God has separated the
two seas by an insurmountable barrier (xxv. 55; Iv. 19, 20).
These words are interpreted by the scholars as alluding to the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, including the Red Sea,
which interpretation is probably correct. There is little doubt
that this theory of the two seas is of Persian origin, and its
02
occurrence in the Quran has elevated the theory to a dogma,
which has dominated to a great extent all Muhammadan geo-
graphical literature and cartography.
The scientific study of geography in Islam began under Greek
influence.One result of the widespread activity in translating
Greek works, which, at the beginning of the ninth century
especially in the reign of the Caliph al-Ma'mun (813-33) made

the Muslims the spiritual heirs of Hellenism, was that they
became acquainted with the geographical work of Ptolemy;
and Ptolemy's doctrine of the prolongation of the east coast of
Africa to the East fitted very well into the theory of the two
seas. We possess no early Arabic translation of the text of
Ptolemy, but there exists an adaptation of this work, made

about 830 by the astronomer al-Khwarizml; the map which
must have accompanied his text is lost. Al-Khwarizmi's longi-
tudes and latitudes go back for the greater part to Ptolemy, but
the book gives also the geographical positions of such places as
originated after the conquest of Islam. It is not certain if the
latter indications aredue to new astronomical observations; we
only know that the Caliph al-Ma'mun had ordered the measure-
ment of a geographical degree in the Syrian desert and that the
same caliph had caused to be executed by seventy scholars
amongst whom was al-Khwarizmi an 'image of the earth', of
which a description is still extant in a work of rather late date.
So we may assume that al-Khwarizmi's book already contained
the results of the research of Islamic scholars. It bears, moreover,
traces of other influences, such as the division of the inhabited
world into seven zones or climates, which does not appear in
Ptolemy. Traces of the doctrine of the seven climates are no
doubt to be found among Greek scholars, perhaps as early as
Eratosthenes. It is
probable, however, that this theory of the
division of the inhabited world was of Persian-Babylonian
origin and this may account for the predominant place it has
occupied in much of the geographical literature of the Muham-
madans, who were more receptive of Eastern traditions than the
Greeks.
But the world image, that had made its
entry with Ptolemy
into the Muhammadan world, did not accord very well with the
idea which the citizens of the new Islamic Empire must neces-
sarilyhave formed of the world. They had no objection to the

spherical form of the earth then denied by many Christian
theologians neither did they see the necessity of affirming it.
This explains the fact that very soon Islamic geography and
Islamic astronomy went their own ways. The astronomers,
such as al-Farghani (c. 860), al-Battani (c. 900), Ibn Yunus
(c. 1000), and the great al-Biruni
(c. 1030), continued to give
geographical tables of longitudes and latitudes, following the

division of the seven climates, but they added little or nothing
to the actual knowledge of countries. Such knowledge was
gained from of countries and itineraries, so useful
a description
for the administration of the Empire, of which those to Mecca
have already been mentioned. Thus, already in the course of
the ninth century, several descriptions of countries came into
existence under such titles as 'The Book of Countries', or
'The Book of Roads and Kingdoms'. The chief writers of that
epoch were Ibn Khurradadhbeh (c. 870), al-Ya'qubi (c. 890),
Ibn al-Faqih (c. 903), and Ibn Rusta (c. 910). In a more or less
systematic form they give an administrative and topographical
description of the different countries belonging to Islam, in
which the itineraries occupy a prominent place. In these
works considerable attention is still
paid to non-Muhammadan
countries, such as the countries and islands in the Far East
and also the Byzantine Empire; on the other hand they give
a large place to all kinds of legendary stories. To the same
period belong the accounts of the sea-captain Sulaiman of

Siraf of his voyages to India and China.
In the tenth century we observe the development of a literary
geographical school, which was to exert a lasting influence on
the geographical views of the Muhammadans. The contents of
these books are based to a large extent on the earlier works, but
they are enriched by the knowledge of Muhammadan countries

which had been gained meanwhile most of the authors of this
;
epoch were travellers themselves. This new school is distin-

guished from that of the foregoing period, in that it paid very
little attention to countries not belonging to Islam, and in its
systematic treatment of the geographical matter, accompanied

by a number of maps, of which the text is meant to be a de-
scription. The first of these maps isa map of the world, circular
in form, Mecca being the centre. The world is surrounded by
the 'encircling ocean' and from this two gulfs enter the con-
tinent, so as to approach very close to one another at one point,
the isthmus of Suez. These gulfs are the Mediterranean and
the Indian Ocean (the Sea of Rum and the Sea of Fars), in
accordance with the Quranic tradition. After the map of the
world, Arabia is treated as being the centre of the world, and
next north Africa, Muhammadan Spain, Egypt, and Syria ; this
part is completed by the description of the Sea of Rum. The
second part of the geographical description treats of eastern
Islam, beginning with Mesopotamia and finishing with Trans-
oxania.
The first author who is said to have composed a geographical
is Abu Zaid al-Balkhi (d.
treatise of this kind 934), who was a
famous scholar at the court of the Samanid dynasty, the rulers
of Khurasan and Transoxania (822-999). Al-Balkhi stood in
high favour with the vizier al-Jaihanl, who is likewise the writer
of a voluminous geographical of which the text is not
treatise,
yet known in Europe. book itself is not preserved either,

Balkhi's
but some of the principal geographical works are elaborations of
the system established by him. These are the books of al-
Istakhri (c. 950) and Ibn Hauqal (c. 975), and the somewhat
more independently composed work of al-Maqdisi (c. 985). It
is
very probable that this geographical school partly inherited
older Persian traditions from the time of the Sasanids as
appears, for example, from the naming of the Indian Ocean

'the Sea of Pars'. The maps (fig. 13) certainly show a more exact
notion of geographical reality than those which circulated at
the same time in Europe, founded chiefly on the world-map of
the Spanish monk Beatus (c. 730-98). We never find in these
Muhammadan maps pictures of men and animals, owing no
doubt to the prohibition against the pictorial representation of
living beings. The
addition of pictures makes most European
maps, such as the famous map of Hereford, appear still more

fantastic. But, on the other hand, we can observe already in the
Islamic maps of the tenth century a tendency to represent the
coast-lines and the rivers under conventionalized forms; thus
many Istakhri maps show the Mediterranean in a circular or
elliptical form.
In other works of a geographical nature written at this
period only one special region is treated. The best known are
the description of the Arabian peninsula by al-Hamdani and
the famous description of India by al-Biruni. Several works
of this sort have not come down to us intact, but are known
from later compilations, such as the report given by Ibn Fadlan
of the embassy sent in 921 by the Caliph al-Muqtadir to the
Volga Bulgarians. A special place is held by the work of al-
Mas'udi. Al-Mas'udi was a globe-trotter of the Muhammadan
world and collected on his travels a large amount of geographical
and ethnographical knowledge. He wrote several works, two of
which, finished in 956, are preserved. In geographical matters
they show a remarkable lack of system, but they are important
in that they display the great difference between 'imperial*
Islamic geography and the independent geographical notions
of travellers and sailors; thus, after giving in one place a
survey of the views prevailing among Islamic scholars as to the

extension of the Indian Ocean, he cannot help remarking that
the seafaring people from the ports on the Persian Gulf, who
are well at home do not agree at all with the
in those seas,
measurements given by the scholars, and that they even claim
that those seas have no limits at all in certain directions. This
was totally opposed to

the prevailing dogma, that the 'Sea of
Pars' was a gulf of the 'encircling ocean', and that it had a
rather narrow entrance, like the Mediterranean. Similarly the
above-mentioned author al-Maqdisi, while discussing the shape
of the Indian Ocean, says that some people represent it as a
'tailasan' (a kind of semicircular Persian coat), and other people
as a bird, but that after long investigations a certain sheikh,

who was one of the experts in the matter, had drawn for him in
the sand the shape of this sea. It did not resemble either a
'tailasan' or a bird, of irregular forms for gulfs and
but was full
peninsulas. Al-Mas'udi seems to have visited China and to have

known a good deal of the east coast of Africa. On the other
hand, he seems to have had little grasp of astronomical geo-
graphy; for we find in one of his books the curious view that in
one climate all
important towns must necessarily lie on the same
latitude.
The eleventh century continues, but less brilliantly, on the
linesof its predecessor: the best-known author of this time is the
Spanish Muhammadan al-Bakri (wrote c. 1067), of whose
voluminous work only the part concerning Africa has been
edited. Here we find a still more elaborated knowledge of
itineraries and especially of the coast-line with its numerous
ports and inlets. From about the same time there is an account
of the travels of the Persian Nasir-i Khusrau, who came from
Khurasan and visited Egypt and Mecca ;
this man, while showing
himself a keen observer, held very erroneous views as to the
structure of the world in general.
The eleventh century had witnessed events which were to
deal serious blows to the ideal unity of the Islamic world. The
eastern half was invaded about 1050 by the Seljuq Turks;
while, in the west, the island of Sicily, a good deal of Spain, and
even some places on the African coast had been conquered by
Christian rulers. At the same time Europe was preparing itself
for the Crusades. This was also the time when the exclusiveness
of the Islamic world towards the Christian world began to break
up. By disintegration it had lost its political strength, which
was to reappear, only for a short time, under the hegemony of
th6 same Seljuqs and the Ayyubids in their fierce struggle
against the Crusaders. These events did not affect the prevailing
geographical views in Muhammadan literature: only a slight
approach towards astronomical geography is perceptible. We
find, forexample, that in a later extract from Ibn Hauqal's geo-
graphical treatise of about 1164, the world -map is no longer
round, but in conformity with the astronomical
elliptical,
representation of the inhabited world.

The most brilliant author of this time is al-Idnsi, formerly
called Edrisi. Al-IdrisI has, more than any other Islamic geo-
grapher, a claim on our attention, first because he worked at the
court of a Christian ruler, the Norman King Roger II of Sicily
(1101-54), at t ^le ver7 meeting-point of the two big cultural
areas, and secondly because he long passed for the sole representa-
tive of Islamic geographical knowledge. From the study of earlier

Arabic geographical texts we know that al-Idrisi was to a great
extent dependent on his predecessors. But the fact that King
Roger entrusted the composition of a description of the known

world to a Muhammadan scholar indicates clearly how far the
superiority of Muhammadan learning was acknowledged at that
time.
It is well known that the Norman court of Sicily was half
oriental; Roger's desire to have a geography made for him was

itself oriental in character. Since olden times it had been con-
sidered as the prerogative of great monarchs, such as Alexander

the Great and some Persian kings, to have a synopsis made for
them of the world that lay at their feet. A
similar idea had been
at the bottom of the Caliph al-Ma'mun's geographical interest,
go Geography and Commerce
and even of the tenth-century geographical school which had
started at the court of the Samanids. According to al-Idrisi's
preface, King Roger had sent in all directions for information

to be incorporated in the book; he had also ordered, just like
al-Ma'mun, the construction of a big world -map. Al-Idrlsi's

work, too, contains maps, and the maps are in a way its most
important part, as the text is a commentary on them. In the
best known of its two editions there are seventy maps (actually
in all manuscripts one is lacking), each representing the tenth
part of one of the seven climates into which he divides the world
after the fashion of the Islamic astronomers. If put together,
these seventy maps constitute an oblong quadrangle, much
after the Ptolemaean pattern. But the specific Islamic concep-
tion of the two big seas is strictly maintained, whereas the
details, especially the coast-line of the Mediterranean, answer

much better to the reality than any of the previous Islamic
maps.
shows the author's indebtedness to the earlier
Al-Idrisi's text
geographers, and the work as a whole is a good illustration

of the reconciliation between descriptive and astronomical
geography. It is doubtful, however, if the result of the measure-

ments of great astronomers, such as al-Biruni, have been
used. For in the second, abridged, edition of al-Idrlsi's book,
the so-called 'small IdrTsf, we find, in addition to the seven
climates, an eighth climate, to the south of the equator.
Moreover, the world -map, which in the 'big Idrisf precedes the
other maps, is round, after the traditional fashion.
It is difficult to believe that al-Idrlsi's work, composed as it
was at the chronological and geographical point of contact

between the Islamic and the Christian civilizations, remained
wholly unknown to Christian scholars in Sicily, Italy, or other
Christian countries. At present, however, there is no certain
trace of its influence. The first translation known of al-Idrisi
was published in Rome, in 1619, after an incomplete abridge-
ment of the work; the translator did not even know the author's
name.
The geographical literature after al-Idrisi cannot claim any
great originality, except the narrations of travellers, which
become more numerous about this time. Among the best known
are the Spaniard Ibn Jubair, who went in 1192 to Mecca and
Mesopotamia; and, more than a century later, Ibn Battuta,

a man from Morocco, who journeyed all over the Muham-
maHan world and farther eastward to Ceylon and the Maldives,
visiting also Constantinople; his last travels brought him, in
1353, far into the interior of Africa. Another traveller, who had
left a valuable description pf this part of the world, about 1250,
was Ibn Fatima; we do not possess his book, but it was utilized
by the author Ibn Sa'id, about A.D. 1274. The work of this
last writer is of great interest, because subject in the
it treats its
same way as al-Idrisi and, though less detailed in description,

it shows how greatly Muhammadan knowledge of Africa had
grown. Moreover, it
approaches still closer to astronomical
geography in thatgives very exact indications of the geo-

it
graphical position of the principal towns and places. Ibn Sa'id,

is one of the chief authorities for Abu'1-Fida",
again, prince of
Kama in Syria. Abu'l-Fida"s 'Table of Countries' (1327) was,
about 100 years ago, the best-known geographical work in Arabic
next to al-Idrisi; it is, however, a rather poor compilation of
earlier sources.
A muchmore valuable compilation, for our purpose, is the
big geographical dictionary of Yaqut (1228); it contains all
geographical names in alphabetical order. This work owed its
existence as much to biographical as to geographical interest,
the compiler's aim being to explain the surnames of well-known
people, named after their birthplace or the place where they

lived. Another kind of compilation was that of al-Qazwml
(c. 1275). Tk* 8 write 1 h as been styled the Pliny of Arabic
literature; he wrote a cosmography and a geography and gave
in the latter many curious and fabulous details about the places
he mentioned ;
some information about the German
he has also
countries. A better and more original geographer was al-
Dimashqi (c. 1325), although his general tendency is the same
as al-Qazwinl's.
The great number of Islamic geographers after al-Idrlsi shows
clearly that the knowledge of geographical matters was still
widespread at that epoch, but we can no longer speak of an
Islamic school of geographers. After the Mongol invasions the
Muhammadan world lost for ever its ideal and even its cultural
unity. It is true that by this time the faith of Islam had made
new progress in Asia Minor and Central Asia by Turkish
aggression, and in inner Africa by the more peaceful way of
trade and preaching. Arabic as well as Persian literature still
continues to give us much information about those countries,
but the Christian peoples themselves, in the first place the
Italians, were already active in travel and discovery. An Egyp-
tian author of the fourteenth century, al-'Umari, quotes a
Genoese as his authority in describing Asia Minor. now We
find more specialized geographical descriptions of one country
and its institutions. Thus the Egypt of the early Mamluk
period was fully described by a series of authors; the best

known al-Maqrizi's voluminous description of Egypt (c. 1420).
is
As has already been said, literary Islamic geography does not

seem to have left much direct impression on European thought
in theMiddle Ages. One of the few proofs of the acceptance of
Muhammadan geographical views by Christian writers is the
world -map to be found in the Opus lerrae Sanctae completed
by Marino Sanuto in 1321 and dedicated to the Pope. This
map is round, Jerusalem being its centre, and shows clearly the
two big seas derived from the ocean and the prolongation of the
African coast to the east. Thus this indefatigable reviver of the
crusading spirit showed himself one of the few students of the
lore of the people he wanted to destroy.
Something has been about the geographical work
said already
of the Muhammadan astronomers. This had much more direct
influence on medieval science in Europe than had geography.
Some of their works were translated at an early period, such as
the Zlj of al-Battani (wrote c. 900), by Plato of Tivoli (c. 1150).
The chief centre where Christian scholars from all countries
became acquainted with Arabic scientific literature was Toledo,
after its conquest by Alfonso VII. So far as geography is con-
cerned, these studies contributed in the first place to the keeping

alive of the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth, which had
been nearly forgotten in the 'Dark Ages' and without which the
discovery of America would have been an impossibility. All
Islamic astronomers treated geography only in connexion with
the determination of the geographical longitude and latitude
of a certain number of places, without ever attempting,
seemingly, to draw a map. Their tables of longitude and latitude
are arranged after the seven climates. Because of the more
general character of this science, Christian scholars took a

greater interest in it than in purely Muhammadan geography;
consequently, in the twelfth century there began to appear
astronomical tables in Latin, sometimes accompanied by geo-
graphical tables. Some Christian scholars accepted also the

division into seven climates. A legacy of still greater importance
was the idea that the known hemisphere of the world had a
centre or 'world summit', situated at an equal distance from
east, west, north, and south. Al-Battani speaks of this
of the earth' as an island, but another author of his
'cupola
time (Ibn Rusta) already knows it as the 'cupola of Arm'.
The word Arm is a
misreading of the Arabic transliteration of
the name of the Indian town Ujjiyaini (Ozene in Ptolemy's
geography), where there had been an astronomical observatory,

and on the meridian of which town the 'world sumimt'
originally an Indian conception was supposed to lie. Like the
Muhammadan astronomers, their Christian disciples considered
importance; amongst the latter were
this doctrine of the highest
Adelard of Bath, who translated in 1126 the trigonometrical
tables of al-Khwarizmi, Gerard of Cremona (1114-87) and, in
the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. The
Arin (or Arim) theory was still later to be found in the Imago
Mundi of Cardinal Peter of Ailly, published in 1410, and it was
from book that Christopher Columbus learnt the same
this
doctrine, which had developed in the meantime so far as

to make Columbus believe that the earth was shaped in the
form of a pear, and that, on the western hemisphere, opposite
the summit of Arin, there was another centre, much more ele-
vated than the one on the eastern side, so as to form the shape
of the lower half ofa pear. Thus Islamic geographical theory
may claim a share in the discovery of the New World. We

find the influence of the same theory in quite another
domain. It is highly probable that it induced Dante, whose
indebtedness to Muhammadan traditions has been established
in many respects, to localize his Purgatorio, in the shape of a
mountain, in the western hemisphere, by combining with it, in
an ingenious way, the ancient Christian belief that the terres-
trial paradise was situated in the extreme east of the world,
behind the sea (as shown on the different world-maps of Beatus).

Islamic navigation had already reached its widest extent in
the ninth century. But, while navigation on the Indian Ocean
derived its chief
importance from the commercial relations with
the non-Islamic coasts of Asia and Africa, commercial navigation
in the Mediterranean was limited to the parts under Muham-
madan rule, the relations with Christian ports being of a military
and predatory character.
The Indian Ocean, consequently, was the only field of great
enterprise. Its base was the Persian Gulf, where ports like
Siraf and Basra, with its suburb al-Ubulla, and those on the
Oman coast had been, even in pre- Islamic times, very im-
portant centres of trade and navigation. The coming of Islam,
however, and especially the establishment of its
political centre
enterprise. About the middle
in 'Iraq, encouraged the spirit of
of the tenth century Muhammadan ships had already reached
the Chinese town of Khanfu, now Canton. There was then a
considerable Islamic colony in that town, which had become an
emporium of the trade with China. From here some Muham-

madan and sailors went even farther north, and it is
traders
probable that they knew Corea and Japan. This early com-
mefcial prosperity seems to have been brought to an end
in 878 by certain disturbances, in which the port of Khanfu
was destroyed. From that time regular navigation did not
extend farther than a town which the Arabic authors call
Kala, famed especially for its tin mines, the position of which
must be sought on the western coast of Malacca. Kala was
politically dependent on the ruler of Zabaj, which name is
the early Arabic rendering of the name Java. But at that
time Zabaj stood in the first place for Sumatra, and par-
ticularly for the centre of the then flourishing empire of Shrivi-
jaya; with these regions trading connexions existed. It appears
from such authors as Ibn Rusta (c. 900), Sulaiman (c. 850) and
his continuator Abu Zaid (c. 950) that the Muhammadan navi-
quite at home in those seas, though
gators were the texts do not
give a very clear account of the sea-routes which were followed.

The ships of Islam kept up an equally lively traffic with the
ports of (Sarandib) and with the west coast of India; a
Ceylon
prosperous Arabic colony inhabited the town
of Saimur in the
of Bombay. Daibul, situated in Sind on Muham-
neighbourhood
madan territory, was an important emporium for these regions.
On where, on the whole, trade
the eastern coast of Africa
was less they reached, in the beginning of the
important
tenth century, the country of Sufala, known for its gold.
This region was on the African coast, opposite Madagascar, and
the island itself was known to the Muhammadans as the isle of
Waqwaq. Now the authors knew also another Waqwaq, which

g6 Geography and Commerce
was opposite China, and the description of which seems best to
answer to that of Japan. The result was, of course, a fatal con-
fusion in the accounts given in geographical texts, caused, no
doubt, by the geographical dogma that the east coast of Africa

ran in an eastern direction to reach, somewhere in the neighbour-
hood of China, the mouth of the 'sea of Pars'. The knowledge of
the sea-captains was not hampered by traditional views, as has
been shown; stories of their voyages are very popular in Arabic
literature and were soon invested with a romantic hue which
has survived in the well-known tales of Sindbad the Sailor in
the Arabian Nights.
The age-long seafaring tradition which centres in the
Persian Gulf prepared the way for the nations that afterwards
sailed and ruled those waters: Portuguese, Turks, British, and
Dutch. When Vasco de Gama, after his circumnavigation of

Africa in 1498, had reached Malindi on the east coast of Africa,
it was an Arab
pilot that showed him the way to India. Accord-
ing to Portuguese sources, this pilot was in possession of a very
good sea-map and of other maritime instruments. Arabic
sources of that time alsoknew the story; they state that the
pilot, whomthey knew under the name of Ahmad ibn Majid,
could only be induced to show the way to the Portuguese after
having been made drunk. This probably fictitious story shows
that the Muhammadans fully realized the far-reaching conse-
quences of the coming of the Portuguese. The same Ahmad ibn
Majid is also known as the writer of a sailing-manual for the
Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the South China
Sea, and the East-Indian archipelago. According to a statement
of Sir R. F. Burton iteven seems that Ibn Majid was venerated
in the past century on the African coast as the inventor of the
compass.
The idea of piercing the isthmus of Suez is ascribed to some
of the Abbasid caliphs; it was never realized, however,
earlier
and since the Crusades such an enterprise was justly considered
a great danger to Islam. Islamic navigation in the Mediterranean
has therefore always been isolated from that in the Eastern
waters : trade in the Mediterranean was restricted to Muham-
madan ports. Commercial relations with Christian countries
were strongly opposed, both from the Islamic side as early
as the Caliph Omar and from the Christian side. The
result was the decay of the port of Alexandria and the ruin of
many other ancient seaports. Now Tunis became the new

centre of the considerable traffic between north African and
Spanish ports. Towards Christians Muhammadan navigators

were often nothing but pirates, but it is only just to say that
the same thing is true of Christian navigators.
From the beginning of the Crusades the Mediterranean ceased
to be the almost exclusive domain of Islamic navigation. Islam
had lost a great part of Spain, the island of Sicily, and its hold
on the Italian coast; at the same time the Italian seaports of
Genoa and Pisa began to develop. The traveller Ibn Jubair, in
1
192, made use of a Christian ship to go from Ceuta to Alex-
andria. In practice this transition of maritime hegemony was
much less violent. It only meant that the Christians, who had
navigated before as sailors or slaves under Muslim control,
now fully emancipated themselves and sailed and traded on their
own account. The modern international maritime vocabulary
contains not a few words of Arabic origin, which show the former
Muhammadan supremacy on these seas, such words for example
as admiral, cable, average, shallop (sloop), barque, and, in the
maritime language of the Indian Ocean, monsoon.
Mention has already been made of the compass in connexion
with the pilot Ibn Majid. This man himself supposes in his
work that the inventor of the compass was King David. But it
cannot even be proved that the Muhammadans were acquainted
with this instrument at an earlier date than the Christians. It
may be true that the Chinese knew this instrument and its use
in the second century and that they transmitted it to the West.
3385 H
But the first indubitable indication that Islamic sea-captains
knew the compass is found in an author of 1282, and this is
about the same time that a knowledge of it can be traced in
France and Italy. Some terms of oriental but not Arabic
provenance in the terminology relating to the compass make it

probable that Europe received the knowledge of the qualities
of the magnetic needle from the East, but it does not appear
that theMuhammadans were the predecessors of the Christians.
Their, in many respects, clumsy cartography makes us rather
suppose that their ships could sail only in sight of the shore.
So it is safer to assume that, even if the Muhammadans knew of
the compass earlier than European Christians, their acquaint-
ance with it does not go back beyond 1200 and that, soon after
it became known to them, the knowledge of it was passed on to
Christian navigators.
The problem connected with the appearance of the first
sea-charts of the Mediterranean at the end of the thirteenth
century closely resembles the problem of the compass. The
oldestknown portulan was probably made by the Genoese. The
portulam give at once a much more exact image of the position
of coasts and islands than all the earlier maps, and their con-
struction was only made possible by the use of the compass.
The portulans also show a very detailed design of the coast-
lines, and these details can hardly have been the work of one
generation. Now we need only remember the exact descrip-
tion of the African coast in the work of al-Idrisi and his predeces-
sors Ibn Hauqal and al-Bakri, to realize that the experience of
the Islamic navigators reflected in the geographical treatises
cited above must have contributed considerably to the com-
position of those prototypes of modern cartography, the oldest
portulans.
By the big water-ways of Mesopotamia the Persian Gulf was
linked to Baghdad, the centre of the Islamic Empire. By this
means the navigation of the Indian Ocean became the instrument
of a world-trade. The great merchants of Baghdad obtained in
this way the of China and the spices and aromatics of
silks .
India, different kinds of wood, coco-nuts, muscat-nuts, and the

tin of Kala. All these wares found their way from Islamic
countries into Europe, then deprived of all direct traffic with
those countries. A
part of this sea-trade did not enter the Persian
Gulf, but brought the products to Aden and the Red-Sea ports
of Jedda and al-Qulzum (the ancient Clysma near Suez), and,
in the crusading times, to 'Aidhab, an ancient port for pilgrim
caravans which lay about opposite Jedda. From here the
occidental part of the Islamic world was supplied. By the same
way came also the African products, such as ivory; these were
f
shipped from the Ethiopian seaport of Zaila , opposite Aden.

More typical than navigation of the traffic of Islam is the
overland trade by the 'ship of the desert'. Though, long before
the appearance of Muhammad, trade caravans had crossed the
steppes of Asia and Africa, we are accustomed to associate
caravan trade with Islam. Even down to the last few years the
Islamic peoples have not been surpassed by western civilization
in the means of locomotion in the desert. The recently started
motor traffic in the Syrian desert, in Arabia, in Persia, and in the
Sahara, some railways in Central Asia, and the recently estab-
lished air services have begun to follow the immemorial tracks
of the camel. In the centuries when the Islamic Empire
flourished, caravan traffic was the most common means of travel-
ling and trading between the different Islamic countries,
especially the pilgrim caravans to Mecca. At the same time

there were some important overland routes that led out of the
Empire, first those to India and China, secondly those to southern
and central Russia and thirdly the African trade-roads. India
and China could also be reached by sea; for this reason the
caravan trade was not so important on this side as in other
directions. The land-route to India was moreover hampered by
the difficult roads in the mountains of Afghanistan. To
H2
ioo Geography and Commerce
trade with China it was necessary to pass through the regions
occupied by Turkish peoples; the chief Chinese product, silk, was

produced, moreover, in Persia at an early period. After the fall
of the Samanid Empire, in the eleventh century, political con-
ditions became still more unfavourable for the Chinese overland
trade. The great revival of the Asian trade routes in the thir-
teenth century was not the work of Islam, but of the Mongols.
For our knowledge of the extension of Islamic trade influence
in a northerly direction we can rely not only on written sources,
but also on the enormous number of Muhammadan coins which
have been found in different parts of Russia, Finland, Sweden,
and Norway, not to mention some isolated finds in the British
Isles and On the middle course of the Volga, in the
in Iceland.
province of Kazan, great quantities of these coins have been

found, but these are far surpassed in number by the Arabic coins
found in the Baltic provinces. In Scandinavia the chief finds
are on the south-western coast of Sweden and the southern point
of Norway. The coins belong to the period from the end of the
seventh to the beginning of the eleventh century. It is very un-
likely that the Islamic merchants themselves advanced so far to
the north as these places, for it appears from the written Arabic
sources that the country of the Volga Bulgars, on the middle
course of that river, was the final goal of their trade expeditions
and their embassies; the faith of Islam, too, penetrated as far as
those regions at an early date. The route generally followed by
trade went from Transoxania to the Delta region of Khwarizm
(Khiva) at the mouth of the Oxus ;
the way up the Volga from
its mouth was less usual. The fact,however, that the coins are
found over so wide an area is a symptom of cultural influence,
and proves that the Muhammadans purchased in the Bulgarian
markets a good many wares from the peoples living in the
north-west. Amongst these the Scandinavian Russians were the
most important. We know from geographical works, principally
from al-Maqdisi, what were the wares that the Islamic merchants
acquired in this way: 'sables, miniver, ermines, the fur of foxes,

beavers, spotted hares, and goats; also wax, arrows, birch bark,
high fur caps, fish glue, fish teeth, castoreum, amber, prepared
horse hides, honey, hazel nuts, falcons, swords, armour, maple
wood, slaves, small and big cattle'. Most of the slaves came from
the Slavonic peoples, whose name still bears witness to the role
they played in the civilized world and especially the Islamic

countries. Another way by which slaves were imported was
Spain, whence they came to the Maghrib and Egypt. This last
category were chiefly eunuchs destined for the Islamic harems.
It is well known that the slaves of different races so imported have
contributed not a little to the spreading of Islamic cultural
acquisitions in Europe. Apart from this far-reaching Islamic-

Bulgarian trade of which traces have been found also in Ger-
many there were also commercial relations with the empire of
the Khazars, by the Caspian Sea and the mouths of the Volga,
where was situated Itil or Atil, the capital of the Khazars. This
trade was less important for the exchange of merchandise, but
the Khazar Empire, constituting a kind of buffer-state between
Islam and the Byzantine Empire, furthered the transmission of
many Islamic and oriental products which found their way
into Christian countries.
The African overland trade was divided into an eastern and a
western area; on both sides the chief import was gold. In the
country of the Buja, to the east of Aswan, beyond Islamic
f
territory, lay al- Allaqi, the big trade-centre of the region of the
gold mines, famous since ancient Egyptian times. In western
Africa an active trade went on with the gold country of Ghana,
the capital of which must have been on the Niger. The Muham-
madan merchants from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia travelled
several months' journey to the south and passed generally
through Awdaghosht, an oasis situated fourteen days' journey

to the north of Ghana. As a proof of the importance of trade in
those regions the geographer Ibn Hauqal (c. 975) alleges
that he
io2 Geography and Commerce
saw in Awdaghosht an I.O.U. (the Arabic word is sakk, from
which the modern word cheque has been derived), for an
amount of 42,000 dinars, addressed to a merchant in the town of
Sijilmasa in southern Morocco.
It is even said that in the pre-
ceding century the volume of trade had been still greater, as

there existed then a straight road connexion between the
western regions and Egypt, which road had been given up on
account of its insecurity.
In later centuries, also,Africa remained a domain where
Muhammadan enterprise and missionary zeal could display
their activity without competition. The author Ibn Sa'id, in
the thirteenth century, is
very well acquainted, through the
travels of IbnFatima, with the Atlantic coast as far as the Senegal
(which was thought to be connected with the Niger and even to

belong to the same fluvial system as the Nile), and with the negro
peoples living round Lake Chad on the other hand, the Muham-
;
madans never knew the sources of the Nile, for they only repeat
the tradition of Ptolemy on this point. Still the Europe of the
Renaissance had no information except from Muhammadan
sources about the interior of the Dark Continent, for the
description of Africa by the christianized Muslim Leo Africanus

in 1526 was then, and for long afterwards, almost the only
source of knowledge. The value attributed to Idrlsi in the first
half of the nineteenth century has already been pointed out.

The trade between Islam and Christian Europe showed at
first a
sharp contrast with the large commercial development
previously described. There was as good as no direct commercial
intercourse. What trade there was lay in the hands of Jewish
merchants. At that time the Jews were almost exclusively a
commercial people and only they could trade freely in both
areas of civilization. Ibn Khurradadhbeh relates that Jewish
merchants from the south of France crossed the sea to Egypt,
traversed on foot the isthmus of Suez, and travelled by ship to
India; others went overland from Ceuta to Egypt, and from

Syria to the Indus. They often visited Constantinople also. In

this way the Islamic countries received from Europe slaves of
whom mention has already been made silks (from the Byzan-
tine Empire), furs, and arms, all of which came also by way of
Russia. The same traders brought to Europe musk, aloes,
camphor, cinnamon, and similar products; the names betray

their oriental origin. Other routes by which oriental products
could enter Europe were the Empire of the Khazars, between
the Caspian region and Byzantium, and the half-barbaric
peoples of Russia, that kept up a lively trade with central

Europe. On the Byzantine frontier the town of Trebizond was
in the tenth century an important emporium for the Islamic-
Greek trade. A number of Muhammadan merchants lived there,
and the Byzantine government profited largely by the levying of
customs. There was also some direct trade on the Spanish
border.
So we may speak, in a way, of a state of mutual commercial
isolation between the Christian and the Muhammadan world.
It is true that since the
eighth century Muslim travellers and
traders are to be found in Italian towns and in Constantinople,
but these relations were only the germ of the lively commercial
intercourse that began to develop in the eleventh century, to be
interrupted only for a short time in the first period of the

Crusades. After the barrier of former ages had broken down,
trade itself subsequently became one of the strongest factors in
promoting the transmission of cultural values to the European

peoples, who, aided by their rulers (as Roger of Sicily) were
eagerly seeking to benefit by them.
The manifold ways in which commercial relations led to
close co-operation between Muslims and Christians e.g. in the
form of joint partnerships and of commercial treaties cannot
be treated here in detail. The great riches of material culture,
which the Islamic world had gathered for nearly five centuries,
were poured down upon Europe. These riches consisted not
only of Chinese, Indian, and African products, which the enter-
prising spirit of Islam had fetched from far-distant lands; they
were in the first place represented by what the Muhammadan
countries themselves yielded of natural and industrial products.
Industrial production in Muhammadan countries had developed
in a particular way; it was chiefly characterized by being com-
pletely under the control of the rulers, by its lack of capital, and
by its organization of the craftsmen in guilds. This peculiar

form of industrial development proved a great disadvantage to
Islam when it came, in later times, into economic competition
with European industry; but at the time of Islamic prosperity
it had made possible a development of industrial skill which
brought the artistic value of the products to an unequalled
In first place should be mentioned the

height. the products of
the textile industry; a number of names, now commonly in use,
shows which textiles were originally imported from Islamic
countries: muslin (from Mosul), damask (from Damascus),
baldachin (originally a stuff made in Baghdad), and other woven
stuffs, which bear Arabic or Persian names, like gauze, cotton,
satin, &c. The import of oriental rugs is likewise as old as the
Middle Ages. It is curious to note, too, that the state robes of
the medieval German Emperors bore Arabic inscriptions; they
were ordered and executed probably in Sicily, where Islamic
art and industry continued for a long time after the Christian
reconquest. Natural products, which, by their name, betray

their original
importation^from
Muhammadan countries, are
lemon, and apricot, vegetables such as
fruits like the? orange,
spinach andârtichokes, further saffron, and the now so im-

portant aniline. Likewise names of precious stones (lapis lazuli)
and of musical instruments(lute, guit^lkc,), though it cannot
be proved that the borrowing of these terms goes back directly
to commercial intercourse. The same is to be said about so
important a material as paper, the fabrication of which Europe

learnt from the Muhammadan peoples in the twelfth century.
Finally, our commercial vocabulary itself has preserved some

very eloquent proofs of the fact that there was a time when
Islamic trade and trade customs exercised a deep influence on
the commercial development in Christian countries. In the
word 'sterling', for example, is contained the ancient Greek word
'stater', but it has reached the English language only through the
medium of Arabic. The word 'traffic' itself probably is to be
derived from the Arabic tafriq, which means distribution, and
such a well-known word as 'tariff' is nothing but the good
Arabic ta'rif, To the same origin
meaning announcement.
belong the words and the everyday word
'risk', 'tare', 'calibre',
'magazine', from Arabic makbazin, meaning stores (the French

'magasin' is still the common word for shop). The 5
'cheque has
already been mentioned in the description of the African trade,
and the German and Dutch words for the same thing (Wechsel,
wissel) are equally Arabic. So is also the term 'aval'. Next to the
knowledge of the bill of exchange the conception of the joint-
stock company was acquired by the partnership of Muslim and
Christian Italian merchants. Muhammadan mercantile law
was based only theoretically on the Sacred Law, derived from
the Quran and the sacred tradition; practically it was governed
by a developed system of trade customs, to which the instances

cited above bear witness. One of these trade forms was also the
feigned bargain called 'mohatra', which word has also passed
from Arabic into European languages.
A largely used word like 'douane' is a reminder of the time
when regular commercial intercourse had developed in different
ports of the Mediterranean. It is well known that this inter-
course has also reacted largely on the commercial organization of
western nations.The treaties which they concluded with
Muhammadan rulers, and the institution of consular representa-
tives in eastern ports, have been important stages in the develop-
ment of the rules that
nowadays govern international trade.
As may be seen from the previous observations, the cultural
io6 Geography and Commerce
gain, which Europe has acquired from the Islamic world in the
domain of geography and commerce, is not the fruit of one
moment, but is based on the mutual relations that have gone on
since the beginning of the eleventh century and were especially
livelyduring the Mongol period in the thirteenth century. Also

the fact that Islamic civilization with its accretions has been
continued by States such as Turkey, Persia, and Muhammadan
peoples in India and the East Indies, has caused many Islamic
views and customs to become known and even practised in
European countries. But no period shows so clearly the once

enormous superiority of the Islamic peoples over the Christian
world as the tenth century, when Islam was at the summit of
its
prosperity and Christian Europe had come to a seemingly
hopeless standstill.
J. H. KRAMERS
FIG. 14. A gold coin struck by Offa, King of Mercia (757-96), closely imitating
an Arab dinar. The words 'OFFA REX' are inserted upside down in the Arabic
inscription. The coin illustrates the wide influence and distribution of Muslim
coinage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. REINAUD, Introduction Generate a la Geographic des Orientaux, in Tome I of
Geographic d'Aboulfeda, Paris 1848.
C. SCHOY, The Geography of the Moslims of the
Middle Ages in The Geographical
Review (published by the American Geographical Society of New York),
1924, pp. 257-69.
K. MILLER, Mappae Arabicae, Vols. I-IV, Stuttgart 1926-9.
Monumenta Geographica Africae et Aegypti, par Toussouf Kamal, Tome III
(fipoque Arabe), Fasc. i, 1930. (This publication is the first to enable a

complete survey to be made of the extant texts and of the maps, which
have been arranged in a strict chronological order. It also makes possible
a comparison of the European and the Islamic general geographical
knowledge of the time,)
J. LELEWEL, Geographic du Moyen Age, avec cartes. 2 vols. Bruxelles, 1852.
Atlas, Bruxelles 1850.
C. R. BEAZLEY, The Dawn of Modern Geography Vols. I-II. London 1897-
',
1901; Vol. III. Oxford, 1906.

G. JACOB, Studien in Arabischen Geographen, Vols. I-IV. Berlin, 1891-2.
CH. DE LA RONCIERE, La Decouverte de I'Afrique au Moyen Age, 3 vols. Cairo,
1925-7.
SIR ARNOLD T. WILSON, The Persian Gulf. Oxford, 1928.
G. FERRAND, Relations de Voyages et textes geographiques arabes, per sans et
9
turcs rclatifs a I' Extreme-Orient des VIII* au XVIII siecles, 2 vols.
Paris, 1913-14.
A. HEYD, Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen Age, 3 vols. Leipzig,
1885-6.
W. A. BEWES, The Romance of the Law Merchant, London, 1923.
L. DE MAS LATRIE, Historical introduction to Traites de Paix et de Commerce
et Documents divers concernant les relations des Chretiens avec les Arabes de
VAfrique Septentrionale au Moyen Age. Paris, 1866.

AL-MUQADDASI, translated from the Arabic and edited by G. S. A. Ranking and
R. F. AzoOj Vol. I 1-4 (incomplete), Calcutta 1897-1910 (Bibliotheca
Indica).
EDRISI, Geographic traduite de I' Arab e en Franfais d'apres deux mss. de la
Bibliotheque du Roi et accompagnce de notes par Amedee Jaubert. Paris,
1836-40, 2 vols.
C. BARBIER DE MEYNARD, Dictionnaire geographique, historique et litteraire de
la Perse et des contrees adjacentes, extrait du Modjem al-Bouldan de Taqout
et complete a I' aide de documents arabes et per sans , Paris, 1861.
IBN BATTUTA, Travels in Asia and Africa^ 1325-54; translated and selected by
H. A. R. Gibb (The Broadway Travellers, edited by Sir E. Denison Ross
and Eileen Power), London, 1929.
PIERRE D'AILLY, Tmago Mundi, ed. par Edmond Burn, Tome I, Paris, 1930
ISLAMIC MINOR ARTS AND THEIR
INFLUENCE UPON EUROPEAN WORK
WHEN Islam began that dramatic career which, in its Western
course, was destined to plant a new form of art in cities over-
looking the Atlantic, it set out from regions where art was in a
and backward state. Such art as existed in Arabia was

primitive
either a sterile survival from the remote past, or merely imitative
in nature, a reflection from abroad that flickered in places
precariously affected by alien progress. Not even in the fertile
spots where under conditions

a settled population prospered,
very different from those that kept the nomads of the desert in
stagnant isolation, does any outstanding native art seem ever to
have arisen. Islamic art derived its
spiritual complexion from
Arabia; but its material texture was fashioned elsewhere, in
lands where art was a vital force.
In Syria and Egypt Christianity had wrought profound changes
in the pagan art current at its inception. Various factors, rooted
in the soil orbrought in and developed by foreign domination,
had been reanimated by a new spirit, and combined to
produce a coherent and impressively beautiful art. Beyond the
Euphrates and the Tigris another order of things prevailed.
Some centuries had elapsed since the Persians, rising against
their Parthian overlords, had set up the native Sasanian dynasty
and entered upon a brilliant national revival. Their art, an
ancient stock upon which Greek elements current since Alex-
ander's invasion, and later importations from Inner Asia, had
been grafted by Iranian genius, was now a vigorous growth
characterized by most splendid magnificence. It was amidst
these two cultures, mutually hostile and both equally repugnant
to the Muslims, that Tslamic art came gradually into being.
In the Middle Ages art was first and foremost a religious
Islamic Minor Arts 109
expression. We instinctively identify the great orders ofmedieval

art with the creeds that shaped them, for however clearly cer-
tain elements in their composition and technical procedure may
unite them in common ancestry, they were moulded into dis-
tinct entities by religious influences. Christian art was essentially
a vehicle for religious edification; mission was always plainly
its
apparent, clearly expounded with all the subtle resources of

picture and symbol in ways as intelligible to the unlettered as to
the scholar. But superb iconography seemed sheer idolatry
its
to the Arabs, who, lacking any artistic tradition, regarded art

with suspicion, associating it, like all primitive people, with
magic. Moreover, in the first flush of puritanical zeal,, luxury
was to them specially reprehensible; an outcome of effete infidel
levity, it was a snare of the Devil with which the true believer
could have no truck. The splendour of Persian art, the very
quality that Persian craftsmen were presently to impress so
deeply upon Islamic art, was at first as offensive as the heathen
abominations it so patently displayed.
Islamic art had its beginnings in the Here it was born
mosque.
and bred openly under public tutelage.
in the full light of day,
The first mosques were bare structures without any architectural
pretensions, planned solely for prayer and exhortation. Their
furniture, when it appeared for at first there was none was
as simple as could be, and every innovation was subject to
rigorous criticism. It is said that the first pulpit set up in Egypt

was destroyed by order of the Caliph when the scandal reached
his ears, for it raised the preacher in unseemly dignity above his
brethren. The first recessed niche built to mark the direction
of Mecca was sharply questioned because it recalled too closely
the Christian apse, from which, indeed, it was undoubtedly
derived. But soon a more sophisticated generation arose to con-
trast the poverty of the mosque with the richness of the in-
fidel church. In due course the minbar and the mihrab became
the chief ornaments in buildings that for skill in design and
no Islamic Minor Arts and
diversity of decoration count amongst the triumphs of archi-
tectural art.
As Islarn^ spread farther afield, contact with alien races en-
larged its artistic within the^restrictionTpernianently
vision, and,
imposed" Ey~the creed, produced fresh aspects of the ideal type.

Moreover, as it acquired a wider outlook, a new culturalelemenf
purely secular in nature began to assert itself at the expense of
spiritual supremacy. When alien customs began to infect rulers
who were not conspicuous pillars~of the faith, the odour of
sanctity waxed faint in the palace. Kinds of art not strictly
orthodox crept in when cultured sovereigns began to indulge
refined tastes for beautiful books, richly figured stuffs, and other
such things, fit, perhaps, for a king, but not for a successor to the
Prophet. When the ruler's connoisseurship found imitators
amongst the nobility and those who aped the manners of their
betters a distinct 'Court art' arose, a development not without
profit to
the craftsman, but grievous to the devout.
Aristocratic seclusion was impossible under the early Caliphs,
who enforced social equality as an inviolable principle, holding
that every one at his need might seek the presence of the ruler,
whose way of life, whose house and its appointments, should be
above reproach. It was not until an easy-living governing class
began to detach itself from public business that the palace be-
came a place apart, where a new standard of conduct prevailed.
That a secular Cfflrtârtwas already in being under the Omay-
yads is_jhown by son^^rernarkable wall-paintm^
designed figure subjects, in mixed Hellenistic" and Oriental
t still surîve'^tfrii clereTic t
:
Hunting^dge
raîtion,^whicli
m the desert to the east of the Dead Sea,
1
a building
thought to been erected by the Caliph al-Walld I
have
between the years 712 and 715. Court art was an estab-
lished tradition when the Abbasids moved the seat of govern-
1
Coloured drawings of these decorations are reproduced in Alois Musil's
Kusejr 'Amra. Vienna, 1907.
their
Influence upon European
Work
ment from Damascus the new city of Baghdad, practically
tcj
completed in 766. Thfejchange of cajgj^jm^^

the history of Islamic art, for henceforth Persian influence
^
predominates in
not our purpose to follow the growth of Islamic art step

It is
by step, but to sketch briefly some of its mature developments;

and, concentrating upon certain important products, to trace
how they affected contemporary and subsequent progress in
Christian Europe. Moreover, we are concerned solely with the
minor arts, the work of those craftsmen who, when a building was
erected, were called in to furnish it down to the last detail with
all the necessities and amenities dictated by the purpose which
it was to serve.
The Muslims soon became great builders. Their genius
real5zdj3efi^^ in-
sight. Religious objection to representation of the Human form
presented any development of statuary, birt-g carvers in stone,

wood,ancU)ther materials they were extremely skilful. Although
mural painting seems to have existed from early times, the
painting now known is restricted to so-called 'miniature' work,
small pictures, illustrations in manuscripts and the like, which,
whilst they display masterly technical ability and keen sense of
colour, lack certain qualities conspicuous in the best work done
under similar conditions in medieval Europe. Master builders
of great ability abounded, but we seek in vain for their peers in
sculpture and painting.
If, however, with the single exception of architecture, the
Muslims failed to equal Western achievement in the fine arts,
their success in the arts in which their genius had free play was
unparalleled in medieval times. Islam was the direct heir to
many ancient craft traditions unknown in the West. In much ^
the same way that Muslim scholars transmitted to posterity a
large fund of ancient learning, Muslim artisans preserved,

ii2 Islamic Minor Arts and
developed, and spread abroad the traditional 'workshop practice'
of arts current in the Orient, which had either never penetrated
into Europe, or, if known there in former times, had decayed
during the period of storm and stress that ushered in the Middle
Ages.
In developing anew this ancient skill Islamic art acquired a
characteristic so obvious that it
may easily be taken as a matter
of course and overlooked. Everything, whether made for
common or ceremonial use, is lavishly enlivened with ornament,
so justly planned and expressed that the patterns seem to be
natural growths, like the figurings with which Nature endows
living creatures, rather than artificial embellishments. The

forms taken by the designs, although definitely exotic, are not
so far removed from European tradition as to be inconsistent
with it. Their strangeness is attractive and romantic. So dex-
terously are their component elements unfolded that we are
beguiled almost into the belief that beyond their material
structure lies some
elusive vitality. Such enrichment is no mere
space-serving artifice for masking bare forms, but an essential

part of fine craftsmanship, without which a work is incomplete.
To the contemplative Oriental eye the rhythmic dance of a
pattern is as much a recreative necessity as is melody to the
Western ear. Ornamental composition had such fascination for
Oriental craftsmen that they continually devoted intensive
study to its
problems, systematizing its
practice on lines which
modern workers still pursue. The most casual survey of Islamic
art will show that ornamental design must be ranked as the
outstanding minor art evolved by Muslim genius.

Although religious tenets absolutely forbade Muslim designers
to introduce into their work human figures or living creatures,
such representations are, as a matter of fact, very commonly
found in Islamic ornament. But they are not tolerated by any
particular sect, as is sometimes supposed, nor are they under
any circumstances allowed in the mosane. Their occurrence at
their Influence upon European Work 113
once stamps the objects they decorate as made for secular use.
Offences breaking the bounds of a discipline too exacting for
universal sufferance, they were passed over by the broad-minded,
but were always vexatious to strict spirits, who might at any
moment rise in angry protest. In our museums and art collec-
tions are many things showing how blatant lapses have been
purged by a swift blow or scrape, sure evidence that at some

time or other the fervour of rectitude has impelled the hand of
reproof.
Another notable feature in Islamic ornament is the use of
Arabic inscriptions. A
passage from the Qur'an, an apt verse
from a poet, or a phrase of greeting or blessing often runs
round a border or frieze, or fills a shaped cartouche. Now and
again the name and grandiose titles of a noble owner enrich
some valued possession, giving a welcome clue to its date and
provenance; facts which are sometimes exactly stated when
the master craftsman has added to his work his signature, the
name of the city where it was made, and the year of its
completion.
Arabic script, the sole Arab contribution to Islamic art, is a
universalmark of Muslim dominance or influence wherever it
spread. The script in which the Qur'an was written, it was held
sacred throughout Islam, whose scribes vied with one another
in perfecting its beautiful characters. Generations of expert
calligraphers worked with such success and approval that riot
only was a fine book a priceless treasure, but the merest scrap of
a great master's writing a collector's prize.
European craftsmen gradually became familiar with the

semblance of Arabic script, even if they could not read
Early it.
evidence of this knowledge and ignorance is afforded by a gold

coin struck by Offa, king of Mercia (757-96), now in the British
Museum This closely resembles a Muslim dinar, but
(Fig. 14).
has the words 'OFFA REX' inserted upside down in the middle of
an Arabic legend, which is so accurately rendered that the date of
3385 T
H4 Islamic Minor Arts and
the original piece (774) and the Muhammadan religious formula
itrecited are both clearly legible in the copy. This coin had no
successor similar in type, but it records how widely the sound
currency then being issued from Muslim mints was circulating.

In the same museum another instance of Western contact with
Muslim work is seen on an Irish bronze-gilt cross of about
ninth-century date, which has in the centre a glass paste in-

scribed with the Arabic phrase bismflldb in Kufic letters. In
neither case can the workers have realized the significance of the
strange writing they copied or adopted, for inscriptions so

Muhammadan could hardly have been set knowingly
flagrantly
upon the coinage of a Christian king, or inserted on a sacred
emblem.
From this time onward scraps of Arabic lettering, often so
crudely rendered as to be illegible scribbles, and ornamental
details derived from Muslim sources become increasingly
numerous in craftwork wrought in Christian Europe. Pious
attraction to the Holy Places, thirst after the learning inherited
solelyby Islam, commercial enterprise and other such interests,
drew many travellers to Muslim lands, whence they returned
with trophies of Muslim skill to bear out their tales of Saracenic
magnificence.
Amongst the things brought back by wandering scholars who
sought in Muslim seats of learning knowledge unknown in their
own countries, the astrolabe was a most important acquisition.
An astronomical instrument of ancient Greek invention, im-
proved by the Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy, and perfected

by the Muslims, the astrolabe came to Europe some time in the
tenth century. Its principal use in the East was to determine
the hour of prayer and the position of Mecca. But it also served
other purposes, like that described in The Story 7old by the Tailor,
where the glib barber. delays his exasperated victim whilst he
finds with his astrolabe the precise moment auspicious for
shaving. Association with astrology gave the astrolabe and those

versed in its use a sinister reputation throughout the Middle
Ages, when astronomy and astrology were

in popular belief
synonymous terms. The

great tenth-century scholar Gerbert
of Auvergne, who became Pope under the name of Sylvester II
in 999, was held, from his astronomical learning, to have had
dealings with the Devil during his sojourn in Cordoba. In re-

counting how Gerbert, who 'surpassed Ptolemy in the use of
the astrolabe', revived the legitimate mathematical sciences in
Gaul, where they had long been in abeyance, William of Malmes-
bury gives a dark hint of his necromantic skill. An interesting
of late tenth-century science is preserved at Florence, an
relic
astrolabemade for the latitude of Rome, which is thought by

some authorities to have belonged to Pope Sylvester. 1
Theearliest dated astrolabe known is at Oxford. Made in
984, was
it the joint work of two masters, Ahmad and Mahmud,
sons of Ibrahim the astrolabist, of Ispahan. Amongst those in
the British Museum is an English example dated 1260. Merton
College Library possesses the instrument traditionally associated
with Chaucer, who wrote a treatise on the astrolabe for his
little son.
To mariners the astrolabe was invaluable. Its use for nautical
observations continued in the West until the seventeenth cen-
tury, when it was superseded by new inventions. A

fine astrolabe
isa beautiful work of art, made and engraved with amazing care
and form that persisted for centuries without material
skill in a
change. One made under

the superintendence of Ibrahim ibn
f
Sa id at Toledo in 1066-7, shown in Fig. 15, may be compared
with another (Fig. 16), similar in shape but covered with delicate
ornament, the work of a celebrated Persian master, 'Abdu'l-
Hamid, in 1715.
Amongst the many specimens of early Islamic metal-work
that have come down to us is a casket in the Cathedral of
1
See Eduardo Saavedra, 'Note sur un astrolabe arabe*. Attideliv. Congresso
Internationale degli Orientalist^ 1878. Firenze, 1880.
12
n6 Islamic Minor Arts and
Gerona (Fig. 17), made of wood sheathed with silver-gilt plating
heavily patterned in repousse with scrolling foliation. The casket

bears an inscription stating that it was the work of two
craftsmen, Badr and Tarif, and was made for a courtier of
al-Hakam II (961-76) to give to the heir-apparent, Hisham, who
succeeded his father as Caliph at Cordoba. This is one of the
few pieces of silver-work which have survived to our times;
but, despite religious objection to the use in this world of
the precious metals reserved for the blessed in Paradise, gold
and silver plate was by no means prohibited in the Caliphs'
palaces.
Egyptian records describe in some detail the gold and silver
treasure accumulated by the Fatimid Caliphs in Cairo, the bulk
of which was dispersed by tumultuous Turkish mercenaries
during a rising in 1067. An inventory of the heirlooms hoarded
in the palaces since their foundation, transcribed by the
historian al-Maqrizi from early archives still existing in his
time, helps us to picture some of the curious luxuries that the

court goldsmiths were then contriving. It is a lengthy document,
describing with business-like precision items such as gold and

silver inkstands, chess-men, parasol-handles, vases for narcissus
flowers and violets, golden birds, and trees set with precious stones,
in such amazing numbers, that, even if we discount a few hun-
dreds or so from the round thousands freely enumerated by the
enthusiastic surveyors, the sceptical cannot remain wholly un-
impressed. Moreover, the reputed wealth of the Fatimids is

amply borne out by a contemporary witness, the Persian traveller
Nasir-i-Khusrau, who, in 1047, by favour of a palace official,
made a tour of the State apartments. He traversed in succession
eleven chambers, each, mo re splendid than the last, before enter-
ing the twelfth, in which was the throne, a stupendous work made
of gold and decorated with scenes of the chase, interspersed with
finely wrought inscriptions. Before the throne, which was raised
upon three silver steps, was set a wonderful golden trellis of
open-*vork. Unfortunately its
beauty was such that 'it defied
1
description'.
Early Islamic gold- and silver-work has practically disappeared.
It is
mainly in what survives of the bronze, brass, and copper
furniture and utensils used by wealthy Muslims that Islamic
metal-work can now be studied. The great bronze griffin (Fig.
1 8) that stands in the
Campo Santo at Pisa is a monumental
example of a type more usually represented by small birds and
v
beasts, often parts of fountains, or portable water-vessels, from

some of which the later European so-called aquamaniles derived
their fantastic shapes. The body of this engaging monster he
has the self-satisfied assurance of a pampered pet is com-
all
pletely covered with engraved patterns. On the neck and wings

in represented a scale-like feathering, and the back bears the
semblance of a close-fitting cloth decorated with roundels and
edged with an inscription in Kufic characters, which is con-

tinued on a band round the chest. On the haunches are pointed
panels engraved with lions and falcons within borders of running
spirals. The
inscription, a verse showering adulation on the
possessor, gives no clue to the date or origin of this remarkable
piece of bronze-casting, but in all probability it is a relic brought
from some Fatimid palace of the eleventh century.
Other ways of decorating metal besides raising patterns in
relief or engraving them were practised by Muslim craftsmen.
They excelled in the art of inlaying designs in gold and silver in

bronze or brass; a process performed in several ways, known
generally as damascening, a term derived from European associa-

tion of the work with Damascus, where it was certainly practised,
although it did not originate there. In the finest and most

ancient kind the
patterns
were incised in the metal ground and
the grooves filled in with gold or silver, both sometimes being
used on the same object. The brilliance of the design was often
1
See Sefer Nameb: Relation du Voyage de Nassiri-Kbosau, translated into
French and edited by Charles Schefer. Paris, 1881.
n8 Islamic Minor Arts and
heightened by filling other interstices with a black masti<|oin-
position, and in some cases this was the sole method of enrich-
ment.
Muslim inlaid metal- work reached perfection about the middle
of the twelfth century, and persisted in great excellence for two
hundred years. A typical specimen, one of the finest extant, is a
brass ewer in the British Museum (Fig. 19), entirely covered with
designs inlaid in silver. The ten-sided body and neck are divided
horizontally into zones diversified with variously shaped panels,
and every part of the surface is
heavily enriched with figure
subjects, geometric or floral patterns, and inscriptions. At the
base a valance of knotted-work, finishing in tassel-like pendants,
completes the design. The little inlaid silver plates that express
the figures are exquisitely shaped, and have details such as fea-
and folded draperies, engraved upon them
tures of faces, hands,
with minute care. An
inscription running round the neck states
that the ewer was made by Shuja* ibn Hanfar * at Mosul in the
year 1232.
This ewer representative of a school supposed to have been
is
centred at Mosul, a city in close touch with ancient and prolific

copper-mines, and filled with craftsmen who were renowned for
all sorts of artistic
products; particularly, as a thirteenth-century
writer quoted by M. Reinaud explicitly declares, for the manu-
facture of copper vessels for table service. But the same tech-
nique and similar decoration occur on work earlier in date made

in regions to the north and east of Mosul, showing the school
to have had Armenian and Persian connexions, which are not yet
clearly defined. As the technical processes and some elements
in the decoration of the later pieces go back to Hellenistic
traditions of the second century, it is
nofejpiprobable that
1
The name is so givenby M. Reinaud, who first read the inscription in
1828. But a revision by M. Max van Berchem ('Notes d'archeologie arabe',
e
Journal Asiatique^ XI serie, Paris, 1904) substitutes Man'ah for the paternal
name Hanfar.
Islamic developments originated in a local art current in these
regions from remote times.

The influence of this school spread rapidly through Syria to
Egypt, a migration accelerated by the Mongol invasion, which

laid the cities of Mesopotamia in ruins and dispersed their
craftsmen. The capture of Baghdad by Hulagu, grandson of
Chingiz Khan, and the death of the Caliph Musta'sim brought
the Abbasid dynasty to an end in 1258.
A writing-case in the British Museum (Fig ?ft\e~6ofcf Oairo
r
inlaid with and gold, bears thes a central feature a silver

silver
of the master, Mahmiid ibn Sunfce Occhi di Cane, a noble

Baghdad, but it cannot have been rr e modelled upon contem-
the city of his fathers, for it is date<en made in
actually being
when the sole inhabitants of Baghdattled in that
city,
country folk who had settled amith centuries metal-working
ruins. A most
beautiful piece, this \il ar to that taken
by the
workmanship scarcely inferior to thtimately connected, but its
the Zodiac, grouped in fours in thircfinement in the
shapes of
ornaments on the lid, which has, ii n their decoration. At the
taining astronomical devices. The vival of Persian art, which
rayed human-faced Sun, and in th^nastv in the ODeninp- vears :
seated figures representing the Moon, Mercury with pen and

script, Venus with a lute, Mars holding a sword and severed head,
seated like a judge, and Saturn with staff and purse. All
Jupiter
are set upon a richly patterned ground, and enclosed by ^ border
of intricate design. This case isa magnificent example of many
similar objects which in their original state were fitted with
ink-wells, boxes for sand and paste, and oblong cells for reed
pens, arranged as shown in Fig. 22.
As the inlayef^fkrt spread southwards its decoration changed,
and new developments became characteristic of a second school
centred in Cairo during the fourteenth century. The medallions
placed at intervals in the ornamental bands acquired delicate
floral borders, and the inscriptions, from being more or less
120 Islamic Minor Arts and
subsidiary, became the most important features. In Fig. 23 is
a typical bordered medallion, a detail from a large basin made
for al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qala'un, Sultan of Egypt, who
reigned, with two interruptions, from 1293 to 1341.
These two examples must suffice to give some idea of the
many lovely pieces that have come down to us, often in mar-
vellous preservation. Amongst them are ewers and basins, and
other shapely vessels which, as is shown by the names and titles
jio^v, v - in their ornament,
incorporated
md every part of the surf, once graced the banquets of sul-
;ubjects, geometric or floral tans an d great nobles. Things such
:>ase a valance ofknotted-wo as jewel-cases, writing-boxes, can-
:ompletes the design. The li
dlesticks, perfume-burners, flower-
the figures are exquisitely sh vases ancl ot her similar
objects of
:ures of faces, hands, and fold domestic use abound in
sumptuous
Adth minute care. An mscrip var i etv an d q uan tity too numerous
:hat the ewer was made by S to
specify. During the thirteenth
rear 1232. and fourteenth centuries this beau-
This ewer is representative t ifu i inlaid WO rk was much favoured,
:entred at Mosul, a city in cl an d fi ne
examples by famous masters
copper-mines, and filled with were eagerly sought by wealthy
nobles, who frequently had pieces specially made for them. In
the British and Victoria and Albert Museums are many specimens
with interesting historical associations, and several of outstand-
ing excellence unrivalled elsewhere.
At the end of the fourteenth century the art of inlaying was
already in decline. The Mongol irruption into Syria and the
sack of Damascus by Timur in 1401 wrought havoc in busy
centres, and the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 scattered

the few remaining Cairo masters. But whilst it was decaying in
its home, the art was receiving increased attention in
original
Europe, where it was destined to
enjoy a brilliant rebirth. In
the fifteenth century the Oriental trade established by Italian
cities during the Crusades flourished exceedingly. Eastern
products became popular in the splendid pageantry of the petty

Italian princes, whose workmen adopted them as models and be-
gan to emulate their triumphs. In Venice Muslim metal-work

inspired native craftsmen so profoundly that a distinct Venetian-
Oriental school arose in which Muslim technique and designs
were adapted to Italian Renaissance taste. An example of this
development is seen in Fig. 21, a brass salver dating from about
the middle of the fifteenth century. It is inlaid in silver with an
Islamic interlaced knot-pattern that recalls the bold Cairo
ornament of earlier times, and has as a central feature a silver
shield enamelled with the arms of the Occhi di Cane, a noble
Veronese family. Other pieces were modelled upon contem-
porary Persian work, which was then actually being made in
Venice itself by Persian craftsmen settled in that city.
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries metal-working
had followed in Persia a course similar to that taken by the
Mosul school with which it was intimately connected, but its
progress was marked by increasing refinement in the shapes of
the vessels and certain modifications in their decoration. At the
beginning of the second national revival of Persian art, which
dates from the rise of the Safavid dynasty in the opening years
of the sixteenth century, these changes were fully developed into
a new style, in which the inlays were generally reduced to linear
patterns or inscriptions, set on grounds covered with minutely

chased scrolling patterns. An example of this style is shown in
Fig. 24, the top of a bowl-cover signed by Mahmud al-Kurdl, a
famous Persian master who worked in Venice in the first years of
the sixteenth century.
As used by medieval Muslim craftsmen, gold and silver inlaying
was in some measure an Oriental counterpart of the enamelled
metal- work produced by contemporary European workers, whose
champleve process inlaid designs in coloured glass-pastes upon
many objects which it was customary for the Muslims to enrich
with precious metals by a similar method. Enamelling on metal
was certainly practised in the Orient, but examples definitely
Islamic are rare. Gold plaques enamelled in colours are men-
tioned in al-Maqrizi's inventory of the Fatimid treasures, and a
metal disk with foliated ornament and an inscription enamelled in
cloisonne, recovered from the rubbish heaps of Fustat and now
in the Museum of Arab Art at Cairo, is apparently a relic of this
But the most important specimen of Muslim enamelled
period.
metal-work known is a
copper bowl in the Museum Ferdi-
nandeum at Innsbruck, which is decorated in cbampleve with a
central medallion containing a representation of the Ascent of
Alexander, surrounded by others filled with mythical beasts,

set upon a ground enriched with palm-trees and standing
figures. Although Byzantine in style, this bowl bears an in-
scription showing that itwas made for an Ortuqid prince of

Mesopotamia, who reigned towards the middle of the twelfth
century.
Judging from the few specimens that have come down to us,
it would seem that enamelling did not find favour with Muslim
metal-workers. It was not until the fifteenth century, when
richly enamelled sword-furniture was made in Spain, that the
art reappears in Islam; and these examples, like the later
enamelled work made for the Mughal Emperors of India, are
perhaps rather reflections of foreign fashion than traditional
developments.
In enamelling of another kind, the application of coloured
glazes to earthenware, the Muslims were from an early period
expert masters. Under Islamic rule native potters in Egypt and
the Near East revived and developed technical processes and
decorative devices which had survived from ancient times in more
or less decadent forms. Wall- tiles with beautiful greenish-blue
glazed surfaces go, back to a very early period in Egypt, and simi-
larwork, variously coloured, was used with great effect in th
palace of Darius at Susa about 500 B.C. In these regions the ar
persisted in obscurity until the Arab invasion, when, unde
Muslim influence, potters began again to experiment with new
technical processes and ornamental schemes.
The early history of Islamic ceramics
is as
yet unwritten, and
although many interesting specimens have been unearthed in
recent years, their provenance and chronology are largely matters
of conjecture. It is clear that various types spread rapidly
throughout the Islamic world
from centres situated in Persia,
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt,
but it is impossible to deter-
mine exactly where specific
wares originated. So widely
were popular kinds scattered
that pieces similar in make and
design are found on several

ancient sites, in places far
separate from one another. One

or two specimens must serve
to show what early Islamic
pottery was like.

A glazed earthenware dish found at Susa (Fig. 30), painted
with a poppy-head in bright cobalt blue upon a white ground,
is
assigned to ninth-century date, as similar pieces have been
excavated on the site of a palace at Samarra, built by a son of the
Caliph Harun al-Rashid in 836 and abandoned fifty years after-

wards. The dishan early example of the blue and white
is
decorative scheme now so familiar in Western ceramic art, a

fashion that came to modern Europe in later times from China.
In the ninth century the Abbasid rulers were already importing
Chinese wares characteristic pottery and porcelain made under
;
the T'ang dynasty have been recovered at Samarra, together

with pieces which are plainly native imitations of those wares.
The realistic design upon the dish belongs to this alien tradition;
but the beautiful blue with which it is
expressed is an indigenous
Islamit Minor Arts and
product, a colour that was eventually exported to China, where
it was known as 'Muhammadan blue'. So essential was it to the
Chinese for the manufacture of blue and white wares that when,
for unknown reasons, the supply occasionally failed, the pro-
duction of them temporarily ceased. Thus, although the West
habitually ascribes *blue and white china' to the Far East,
the
typical blue was there asso-

ciated with Islam. Muslim
potters used it with superb
effect upon certain wares made
at Kutahia in Asia Minor dur-
ing the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
Whilst readily absorbing pro-
gressive ideas the Muslim pot-
ters maintained great origin-
ality, very thoroughly welding
their -acquisitions from abroad
8UU ~
Museum. .,cw lork.
^ into a distinct tradition, in
a7S clearl 7 shown b 7 man7
interesting examples. The lid
of a jar drawn in Fig. 31 is a piece of so-called Gabri ware, a
kind of pottery supposed to have been made by Fire-wor-
shippers, who in certain parts of Persia clung obstinately to
their ancient religion long after the Arab conquest. In this
the decoration is roughly but expressively drawn by cutting
through the thin white clay 'slip', with which the surface is
coated, to the brick-red body beneath. The whole is then
covered with a transparent glaze, tinted yellow, green, purple,
or warm brown, colours in some cases distributed in irre-
in a way that recalls a
sponsible splashes contemporary
Chinese practice. From the prevalence of Sasanian motives
such as mounted huntsmen, mythical monsters, and charac-
teristic foliated work Gabri ware was formerly assigned to
their Influffice ^ôfTEu^ppe
the beginning of the Muhammadan era, but as examples
have been found inscribed with Kufic letters of eleventh-

or twelfth-century style, most of it is now dated from this
period. The incised method of drawing, known as graffito work,

was in common use in China, but did not necessarily originate
there, as it also occurs in pre-Islamic Egypt. In the fifteenth
century the process was used
with great success by Italian
potters, who probably derived it
from sources, whence

Islamic
they obtained much of the mature

technical knowledge that was so
serviceable to them in the revival
of the ceramic arts during the
Renaissance.
In what is termed 'lustred
pottery' the
^
Muslims achieved
FlG 32 Earth . dish
.
their great triumph. In this the in lustre. Persia. Tenth

^^ painte d
century.
Murfe du I*ime.
design is painted in a metallic
salt on and fixed by firing in smoke in a way that
a glazed surface
gives it a metallic gleam, which varies in different specimens

from a bright copper-red to a greenish-yellow tint, and in some
cases throws off brilliant iridescent reflections. Pieces dating
from the tenth century have been discovered in the Near East,
north Africa, and Spain, showing by their wide diffusion how the
ware was esteemed throughout Islam, but leaving its place of
origin in doubt. Whether it was first made in Egypt or Persia
is still a moot
point upon which authorities are somewhat hotly
divided. The large vase in Fig. 26 was recovered from the ruins
of Fustat, and is assumed to be Fatimid work of the eleventh
century. Fig. 32 is a dish, painted in pale lustre with a sprightly
griffin, foliated work, and formalized Kufic lettering, which was
found on the site of Ray, or Rhages, an ancient Persian city
destroyed by the Mongols in 1220.

Ray was a great centre of ceramic industry, where several
characteristic types originated. Its ruins are a mine of lovely
specimens. Definitely associated with this city are certain vases

and dishes painted in opaque colours blue, green, red-brown,
and purple, touched here and there with gold-leaf upon white
or tinted grounds with figure subjects and formal decoration
remarkable for their delicate workmanship, which resemble so
closely the paintings in contemporary manuscripts that it would
seem that the artists were inspired by them. The cup in Fig. 25,
decorated with sphinxes and seated musicians set in shaped
panels formed by a series of opposed S-shaped curved lines, is
a typical example of this 'miniature' ware, as it is often called,
the manufacture of which was at its height when Ray was
overwhelmed by the Mongols.
The vase in Fig. 27, painted in turquoise, dark blue, and black,
represents a type of pottery made at Sultanabad, in Persia,
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A pot so shaped
was known to the Italians as an albarello, a term perhaps derived
from the Arabic al-barnlya^ denoting a drug- jar. The name
shows the purpose that such vessels served in the Orient and the
use to which they continued to be put in Italy, In the fifteenth
century Italian apothecaries' shops displayed many such pots,

filled with drugs and preserves imported from the East. This
trade brought westwards the prototypes of the Italian drug-jars

in much the same way that Chinese ginger-jars still come to us.
In Fig. 28 is seen an Italian development of the Oriental form, an
albarello of buff-coloured earthenware painted in dark blue,
made at Faenza about the middle of the fifteenth century.
The Italians obtained drug- jars painted in lustre from Valen-
cia, the Islamic centre of this ware in the West, where examples
that rank amongst the finest ever made were manufactured,
sometimes to the order of foreign purchasers, whose arms were
painted upon them. In Fig. 29 is shown a dish decorated in
yellow lustre and blue which was made at Valencia late in the
fifteenth century for a member of the Degli Agli family of
Florence, whose blazon it bears. Spanish lustred pottery in-
spired Italian emulation so successfully, that in the sixteenth
century native potters learned how to illuminate characteristic
Renaissance designs with its unfading ^ : ~ " r
ays that
broke definitely with tradition. At Gubb centre,
worked the great master Giorgio Andreol ien and
ruby lustres remain unsurpassed either in )rient.
At the opening of the sixteenth cent rder of

ceramic art was everywhere changing; a mani-
festations two closely allied types which 1
>merg-
'
ing in Asia Minor and Syria flourished :ence.

Made of earthenware coated with a wh :
nted
under a transparent glaze with desig; and
coloured vivid green, blue, and dull na
Minor factories often added a bright t
was, perhaps, the most interesting d

they were used as wall-tiles, moulc
either with the repeating units of for
parts of large symmetrical compositk

In Constantinople, mussa, and othe
man Empire are maAy buildings witr
ornate decoration. - ,"
t
The
next three examples illustrai
work decorated with repeating pattei*^. ^ ........ __ v- A
6- 06)
the designer, setting in the middle of each tile a pointed oval
device, and repeating one quarter of the same figure in each
corner, produces when a number of tiles are fixed in place
an of white bands running in opposed curves from top to
effect
base of the space decorated. In contrast to this design the
second (Fig. 34), is purely naturalistic, being made up of parallel
waved stems bearing alternately vine-leaves and grapes, and
almond-blossom. Both these motives, one formal and the other
realistic, are combined in the third pattern (Fig. 35), which
adds a network of slender acanthus leaves punctuated with
acanthus rosettes. Such elaboration of simple themes into
complex designs in which apparently incongruous motives are
skilfully played off against one another is characteristic of this
school, and incidentally we see
how methodically Islamic designers
were experimenting with decora-
tive ideas. The beautiful panel in
Fig. 36 illustratesthe second type

of tile-decoration, a large set piece,
composed as a whole. It is a fine
example of Damascus work in the
subdued blue, green, and purple
scheme that distinguishes Syrian
from Turkish wares.
Turkish and Syrian potters used
the same technique as in their tiles,
and similar kinds of decoration, in
beautiful dishes, bowls, vases, and
other vessels of various forms. The
slender bottle in Fig. 37, orna-
mented with a strange medley of
sphinxes, birds, and beasts, reserved
in white on an apple-green ground,
is a remarkable
example of a dis-
tinct type, in which somewhat archaic elements persist. The
red touches that enliven the colour-scheme show Turkish origin.
Red is not always present on pieces made in Asia Minor, but it
is never found in
Syrian work.
The most striking decorative elements used in this kind of
pottery are undoubtedly the floral forms, such as those displayed
so profusely
upon the Damascus panel (Fig. 36), where tulips,
roses, hyacinths, irises, and almond-blossom issue from two
elegant vases in a splendid riot of vigorous growth. The
flowers are always drawn with consummate skill, and with such
just decorative sense that their naturalism never sinks into mere
pictorial representation. It was from Persia that the designers
gathered their floral elements and learned how to draw them
with such exquisite grace. We have
in Fie. 38 a fine piece of Damascus
work influenced by Persian models,
a jug, decorated with
tulips and roses
on a, blue scale-patterned ground,
which for delicate drawing and bril-
liant colour is a masterpiece of its
kind.
From Persia, largely through
Turkish and Syrian channels, Wes-
tern art obtained certain flowers
now commonly cultivated in our
gardens, but once known in Europe
only from representations of them
seen on pottery and porcelain im-
ported from the Islamic East. The

tulip was first brought to the West
by Busbecq, imperial ambassador to
Constantinople, about the middle >f the sixteenth century.
In Syria, where excellent native m iterialfor glass-manufacture
had been exploited in ancient times, the Muslims developed a
characteristic style of glass-decoration, seen upon numerous
bottles, beakers, vases, and other objects painted with figure
subjects and formal ornaments in coloured enamels, and often
heightened with gold. Some examples enriched in ways that

recall certain kinds of Persian and Mesopotamian pottery are
assumed from technical reasons to be the earliest in date. They
were, perhaps, the work of Mesopotamian craftsmen who
migrated to Syria during the first Mongol invasion, and established
there the workshops that flourished so brilliantly throughout
3385 K
the fourteenth century, only to suffer extinction when Timur
overran Syria in 1401.
The
beaker in Fig. 39, painted with two horizontal inscribed
bands, and between them a prince seated upon a throne, with a
j -'
-* on either
1
star side, is a typical composition of
1
style, resplendent in red and white
e le beaker must have come to
Europe
it is mounted as a chalice with a broad
'
so
fc f silver-gilt, heavily ornamented in
n fourteenth-century fashion, being
e-
lingof great value. Contemporary
d n
glass was highly prized in Christian
I the inventory of the treasures be-
i
] ranee in 1397 two entries describe this
y, thus: 'Trois potz de voirre ouvre par

on de Damas'; and 'Ung bassin plat de
*
Damas'. Another Syrian beaker in the
ve been made specially for a Christian,
Virgin and Child, St. Peter and St.
a Latin. In the fifteenth century,
nous throughout Europe since the
thirteenth century, turned their attention to Oriental methods,
and mastered the process of enamelling so thoroughly that it
soon ceased to be a Muslim monopoly. From Venice the art
spread to other European centres, and developed new styles.
The gaily enamelled spirit-bottles common in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries are debased descendants of medieval
Muslim skill.
Interesting as are the imitations they never rivalled their

Oriental prototypes in either beauty of form or spontaneous
directness in their ornamentation. Such pieces as the long-
necked bottle in Fig. 41 and the delicate bowl and cover in Fig.
42 are typical representatives of Muslim table-glass. The bottle
is enamelled with medallions,
inscriptions, and foliated work
disposed in horizontal bands, and it bears the name of an Amir

associated with al-Kamil Sayfu'1-Dm Sha'ban, Mamluk Sultan
of Egypt in 1345. The bowl has a similar design, enamelled in
green, blue, red,and white, and is gilt in places. This fine piece,
of uncommon shape, bears no
name, but is inscribed 'Glory to
our Lord the Sultan!'
The most splendid achieve-
ments of the Syrian glass-
workers were the lamps or
rather lamp-shades, fitted in-
ternally with small oil-vessels

hooked by wires to the rim
which, suspended by three or
more silver or brass chains at-
tached to loops contrived on the
body of the lamp, illuminated
the gloom of many great
mosques with jewel-like radi-
ance. They are generally orna-
mented with band-work filled
with medallions and inscrip- FIG. 44. Enamelled glass lamp. Syria.
r r
i Fourteenth century. Museum of Arab
tions, enlivened with conven- Art Cairo.
tional foliage; but in some the
whole surface is covered with floral patterning, like a brocaded
silk, as in Fig. 44. Another (Fig. 40), is treated in the same
way, but bears a shield with the blazon/of the donor who dedi-
cated it to some unknown mosque. **
Muslim nobles, following an ancient Oriental tradition, often

set devices of heraldic character upon their belongings. Their
use of such figures influenced the development of Western
heraldry which, during the Crusades, evolved into a systematic

science with a peculiar nomenclature of its own. In this the
technical term for blue, azure, is derived from the Persian word
denoting the blue stone called lapis lazuli. There are other
interesting linksbetween European and Oriental heraldry, such

as that curious figure the double-headed eagle which makes its
first appearance in remote antiquity on Hittite monuments.
It became the badge of the Seljuk Sultans early in the twelfth
century, and in the fourteenth

was adopted as the blazon of
the Holy Roman Emperors.
Muslim heraldic devices
were set upon shields either
circular in form, as on the
lamp in Fig. 40, or pointed at
the base, like the one enamelled
on the bottle in Fig. 41. Be-
sides symbolical birds and
beasts such as the eagle,
_ ,. , ,,.
FIG. 45. Muslim heraldic blazons.
,, which was fairly
' common, and
, * * , ,
the lion, borne by the Mamluk
Sultan Baybars there were other devices of a different nature,
attached to certain court functionaries the cup-bearer, the
polo-master, and various military secretaries of state by virtue

of their offices. In Fig. 45 some of these devices are brought
together. The significance of the chalice-like cup and the polo-
sticks is obvious, but the meaning of the last figure in the series
was long a perplexing question. Once thought to be the sole
survival of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing in Islamic
art, it is now recognized as a diagrammatic representation of

a writing-case, showing the internal fittings as in the plan given
in Fig. 22.
The pointed shield on the tall bottle shows how a personal
device an eagle sometimes accompanied an official badge.
Muslim blazons were always brightly coloured if the means by
which they were expressed rendered this possible, for a noble's
colours were an important part of his arms.
In Persia, Syria, and Egypt the sumptuous textile arts to
which we shall now turn were already highly developed when
the Arabs conquered those countries. In the adjoining provinces
of the Byzantine Empire important weaving centres were
manufacturing silk fabrics of wonderful richness, and incor-
porating in their patterns many Sasanian elements taken over
when Christian workers began to emulate their neighbours'
skill.Although silken garments had been specifically prohibited
by the Prophet, the Muslims not only encouraged existing silk
factories but established new ones wherever they went. So
shameless and unrestrained was their interest in the forbidden
luxury that they rapidly and surely gained a dominating

position as leading silk-mercers in the medieval world. This is
shown by the names by which many fabrics were known in
the Middle Ages, trade terms that in some cases have persisted
down to our own times, recording the distant places where
certain materials were originally made, or the markets where they
were procured. Thus the cloth known in Chaucer's time as
'fustian' came from Fustat, the first Muslim capital of Egypt.
The stuffs we still call 'damasks' took their name from Damascus,
that great trade-centre to which the West referred many things
not exclusively made there. Our 'muslin' is the mussolina im-
ported by Italian merchants from Mosul. Baghdad, Italianized
as 'Baldacco', gave its name to the rich silk fabrics brought thence
and also to the silken canopy suspended over the altar in many
churches, the 'baldacchino'. In later times dress fabrics from
Granada were known European shops, where
as 'grenadines' in
ladies also bought Persian under the name of 'taffeta'.

tdftah
The 'Attabiyah quarter of Baghdad, where dwelt the des-
cendants of 'Attab, great-grandson of a companion of the
Prophet, was in the twelfth century renowned for a special
fabric which, imitated in Spain, was known there as attabi silk.
France and Italy adopted it as tabis, and by this trade name it
became popular throughout Europe. In 1661, on October 13
(Lord's Day), Mr. Pepys put on his 'false taby wastecoate with
gold lace', all unconscious of the word's ancient history; and in
1786 Miss Burney attended a royal birthday celebration at
Windsor attired in a gown of 'lilac tabby', a tint known in Persia
as llldq and brought westwards with the flowering shrub of that
name. These beautiful watered silks are now out of fashion; but
a brown and yellow attabi pattern is still worn by our familiar
friend the tabby cat. 1
Although there is in Berlin a scrap that bears the magic name

of Harun al-Rashid, silks associated with Baghdad are extremely
rare. A fragment preserved in the Colegiata de San Isidore at
Leon (Fig. 43) bears an inscription definitely stating that it was
woven at Baghdad, perhaps by a master called Abu Nasr, a name
that appears in the mutilated lettering in a place where the
maker's signature might well be put. Woven in red, yellow,
black, and white, the design is a characteristic early Islamic
pattern of about the end of the tenth century in date, showing
birds, beasts, and foliated ornaments inherited from an older
tradition set in and around large circular panels. A prominent
element, the elephant, probably came from India. This beast

occurs on a somewhat earlier Persian silk discovered a few years
ago in a village church near Calais, a piece which is now one of
the treasures of the Louvre. It is also found on several Byzantine
imitations of Persian fabrics, notably on the magnificent silk pre-
served in the tomb of Charlemagne at Aachen.
In Europe the demand for rich silk textiles increased rapidly
asthe Oriental trade developed. Finely wrought stuffs came from
Muslim countries in such quantity that Western enterprise saw
in this lucrative industry a potential source of wealth, and, setting
up looms in various centres, began seriously to compete with the

Eastern and Spanish factories. It was largely from Sicily, where
Muslim invaders had established in the royal palace at Palermo
a famous weaving-house which continued to flourish when the
1
See G. le Strange, Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate. Oxford, 1900.
island reverted to Christian rule under the Normans that the
first Italian workers gained their technical knowledge and models
During the Norman occupation the Sicilian
for their designs.
school was reinforced by contact with Byzantine traditions
brought in when a number of Greek weavers, captured in a raid

into theAegean seas in 1 147, were installed in the palace work-
shops. At the beginning of the thirteenth century silk-weaving
was already the chief industry in several opulent Italian cities,
where fabrics, hard to distinguish from the Sicilian stuffs they
imitated, were produced and exported in profusion.
In the fourteenth century Italian silks reflected new influences
which were then affecting Muslim art. In the blue and white
silk fabric brocaded with gold shown in Fig. 46 are seen not only
the lions, palmettes, and foliated work, Arabic inscriptions, and
other Oriental elements usual in Italian work of this period,
but characteristic Chinese birds.
also Their appearance in
Europe was largely due to events that had brought about great
changes in the Far East. In 1280 the nomad Mongols under
Kublai Khan, brother of Hulagu, who had overthrown the
Abbasids in 1258, invaded China, and set up the Yuan dynasty
which lasted until 1367. As a result of these conquests a wide
stretch of Asia, extending from Persia to the Pacific, was for nearly
a century ruled by members of the same Mongol house, a cir-
cumstance that led to a remarkable interchange of artistic
traditions between eastern and western Asia. In China an im-
posing Muhammadan population had sprung from colonies

planted there during the T'ang dynasty, using, as happened
wherever Islam spread, the Arabic language. It included many
craftsmen, among whom were silk-weavers, who, working with
the skill
hereditary in the ancient home of silk-culture, produced
at unknown centres fabrics that were prized throughout Islam.
Their beautiful stuffs so appealed to their Western brethren
that they affected everywhere the development of Muslim
textile design, and, through this channel, the textiles of western
Europe. Some superb examples of medieval Chinese workman-
most remarkable is, perhaps, a piece
ship have survived; the
preserved at Danzig which must have been specially made for
the Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qala'un, whose
name is woven into the design. In Fig. 47 is shown a silk and
gold brocade of Chinese origin, with a pattern composed of
phoenixes and palmettes inscribed in Arabic, set in bands
between lines of formal ornament, an example of a type from
which the bird in the design shown above it might have been
derived.
Not only in the Middle Ages but also in later times Oriental
silkswere often made up into church vestments. The chasuble
in Fig. 48 was cut from a Persian fabric of late sixteenth-
or early seventeenth-century make, with a pattern by no
means suitable for the purpose to which it was put, and one
that most certainly would not have been tolerated in a mosque.
Its main elements are rows of standing youths attired in court
dress, holding cups and wine-bottles. They are set amidst

slender trailing stems bearing foliage and flowers of the kind that
the Turkish potters were then closely copying; in the inter-
spaces are lively birds posed and drawn in a manner that points
to a Chinese origin. The design belongs to a group of similar
gay patterns fashionable upon such brocades during the Safavid

period. Elaborate examples were even more pictorial in charac-
ter, showing episodes from romantic histories, such as the meeting
of Khusrau and Shlrin or the woful story of Laila and Majnun,
and sometimes enriched with veritable landscapes of flowering
trees and shrubs wherein roam all sorts of kindly or ferocious
beasts, drawn and coloured with irresistible spirit and brilliance.
The pattern on the silk strip used for the orphrey introduces
an interesting series of textile designs produced during a period
when Turkish and Italian weavers were so actively and success-
fully imitating each others' stuffs that experts often find it
difficult to distinguish fabrics as definitely of European or
their Influenceupon European Work 137
of Oriental origin. Although late in date and European in
appearance, this piece has a Turkish pattern of a type that arose
in Asia Minor some time in the fifteenth century. In their
simplest forms these patterns are composed of plain or decorated

bands running vertically in opposed curves which, uniting at
intervals, cover the field with a net-
like design. Some examples have
more or less elaborated formal orna-
ments set within the meshes of the
net, as in the pattern on the orphrey ;
whilst in others similar elements
spring from the bands at their junc-

tions. The latter plan is followed
on the magnificent silk brocade in
Fig. 50, with a pattern woven in gold,
outlined and touched with cobalt
blue, upon a crimson ground. Within
the interspaces
r left by
'
the main
FIG. 49.
~ A .. 7
Detail from a woven
system a secondary netting is con- silk fabric. Italian. Sixteenth
century- Nazionale,
trived,from which spring roses, tulip
Museo^
buds, pinks, and narcissus flowers.
From flower-knops, such as the main element in this design,
the Italians evolved the floral elements drawn in Fig. 49, and the
very similar one used in the late fifteenth-century velvet shown

in Fig. 51. During the sixteenth century European and Turkish
weavers, each alternately outdoing their rivals, worked out many
intricate variations of the net and knop theme, and gave the rich
velvets so fashionable at this period the special type of pattern
that became traditionally associated with them. It was a pattern
of this kind that William Morris designed for the sumptuous
brocaded velvet woven in blue, orange, white, and gold (Fig. 52)
which was his sole attempt to revive these costly fabrics.
The carpet, now a universal necessity, came into Europe from
the Orient as a luxury reserved for wealthy connoisseurs, who
it more as a treasure than as a
at first regarded thing of use.
Carpets, both with smooth faces like tapestries, and with loose
threads knotted into the fabric so as to produce a velvet-like
are of great antiquity in the East, where they
'pile' surface,
served as sleeping-mats and hangings, as well as coverings for
floors. From representations of Oriental rugs in Italian
pictures
it is known that
they came to Europe at least as early as the
fourteenth century. In the sixteenth they were regular articles of
commerce. It is recorded that in 1521 Cardinal Wolsey,
through the good offices of the Venetian ambassador, secured
sixty Oriental rugs for his palace at Hampton Court. They

probably resembled examples seen in pictures by Holbein, which
can be matched by existing carpets made in Asia Minor at that
time. At Boughton House, in Northamptonshire, are preserved
three pile carpets specially made for Sir Edward Montagu, with
his arms and the date, 1584, woven in the border. Of a type
known then, as now, as 'Turkey' carpets, they are decorated with
shaped ornaments, coloured blue and enlivened with detail in
yellow, set upon a red ground.
In the sixteenth century Persian craftsmen carried carpet-
weaving to heights never attained before or since, producing
with miraculous skill designs unparalleled in beauty. One of
these masterpieces, brought from Ardabll where it lay for
centuries in the mosque of Shaykh Safi the venerated ancestor
of the Safavid Shahs is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Fig. 53 shows a portion of this colossal carpet, which is of most
delicate workmanship, being built up of more than thirty
million minute knots, 380 to the square inch. In the centre is a
large medallion with serrated edges, surrounded by pointed oval

panels, enriched with foliated work in glowing colours. A
all
quarter of the central element is repeated in each corner of the
rectangular field, which is of deep blue covered with gay flowers

issuing from meandering stems, amidst which two lamps,
represented as if suspended in mid-air, form secondary centres
upon European Work
their Influence 139
in the design. The border, bounded by rigi<| marginal lines, is
filled with lobed circles and elongated panels, which, like the
plum-coloured ground they ornament, are heavily decorated.

In a cartouche at one end is a verse by the poet Hafiz; and be-
neath this is written: 'The work of the slavp ^- ^..~,\.~w ^
Maqsud of Kashan, in the year 94^
many older carpets exist, this one w
example known in ;
this respect it mus
of plage to another very fine Persian c
Pezzoli at Milan, which is stated
Ghiyathu-1-Dm Jami' in 1521.

^
European craftsmen learned how
the Muslims, using at first the trad
hand, but in later times purely me<
machine-made carpets and rugs no\
designs borrowed from Islamic origij
are freaks of fashion rather than tic
their velvet-like texture rather thai
ancient ancestry of modern carpets is
When we pass from flat surface

executed in relief we find Muslim c^,
suing much the same system of design tn^c ^

ûed- their .
practice in other modes of technical expression. The diversity of

style to which we are accustomed in European relief work, where
sculpturesque and pictorial influences unknown in Muslim
countries have become traditional, is absent in Islamic carving
and modelling, in which repeating patterns similar to or pre-
cisely the same as those used in weaving, inlaying, or painting
are generally found. Such patterns were adapted to decorative
purposes in ways wholly foreign to European usage. design A
that served to enrich the title-page of an illuminated manu-
script, or as the pattern of a silk fabric, would be deemed equally

suitable for carving in stone upon the exterior of a dome, or the
walls of a mosque. The white marble fountain-basin in Fig. 55,
dated 1277-8 anc^ inscribed with the name of Muhammad II,
Sultan of Hama uncle of Abu-1-Fida the historian shows
how the carver adapted a type of design common to several crafts
to his special needs. The scheme is essentially a repeating pat-
tern ; its elements might be extended
indefinitely either laterally as a
border or frieze, or both laterally
and vertically as an 'all-over' design.
Similar ornament is carved on the

long frieze and in the panels of the
wooden casing from the tomb of
a Shaikh who died in 1216, shown
in Fig. 56. One side of this remark-
ably rich example is at South Ken-
sington, and the rest at Cairo. In
carvings of the Fatimid period the
ground was often sunk very deeply,
with almost the effect of pierced
work, as in Fig. 54, a panel in the
Museum of Arab Art at Cairo.
Although made in Sicily, the carved
wooden ceiling in Fig. 57 is Fatimid
in style. Besides showing how effective are such deeply cut
panels, it has amongst the leafage in its ornament numerous

birds and beasts, features often seen in Fatimid work designed
for court or secular decoration, in which human figures were
also freely used.
This ceiling follows the characteristic method of construction

adopted by Islamic carpenters, a system which arose from con-
siderations both practical and decorative. Climatic conditions
that rendered wood very liable to shrink and warp, and scarcity of
suitable timber, led to panels being reduced to the smallest
possible dimensions, and to a corresponding increase in the
supporting framework. To secure stability and variety of in-

terest in the designs, a strangely elaborate method of assembling
small panels was gradually evolved, a scheme that actually
expressed by structural means pattern-schemes in which the

Muslims took particular delight. Designs made up of various
polygonal shapes radiating from
stars form a type of ornament
, ^ ^^ ^ i
that is, perhaps, the most charac-

teristic Islamic contribution to
decorative art. In woodwork,
whicn played a great part in
developing the type, it finds its

most complete expression, but
such patterns were used by many
craftsmen working in different
arts. The designing of them ex-
ercised ingenious spirits every-
where throughout Islam, and if
in later times they tended to

become irritatingly intricate and
to degenerate into over-con-
scious spectacular geometry,
their simpler forms were always
FIG. 60. Islamic geometrical
singularly effective vehicles for
design.
displaying the rich colour-
schemes in which Muslim genius was so adept.
A pattern of this type is given in Fig. 60, an ingenious
arrangement of twelve-pointed stars set within hexagons. This
drawing is developed from the outline in Fig. 61, traced from a
note made by Mirza Akbar, architect to the Shah of Persia at
the beginning of the nineteenth century, many of whose working
drawings are preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In

the original the geometrical setting-out, shown by thin lines in
the diagram, is scratched with a pointed tool upon the paper,
and the pattern is drawn in ink upon this basis. The method used
is
probably records an ancient workshop tradition,
instructive, as it
showing how Oriental designers set about a task which may be

tackled in many different ways as the very considerable
literature devoted to these patterns testifies. 1
In the two door-leaves of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
Egyptian work shown in Figs. 58 and 59 the panels are so small
that it has become possible to
substitute ivory for wood, and so
to gain an effect of surprising
richness. In 'one of them the
panels are carved with foliated
ornament cut in sharp relief, and
in the other they are inlaid with
geometrical patterns. Both are
probably relics of pulpits similar
in design to theone in the Vic-
FIG. 61. Structural basis of design .
A n , TV it i i
in Fig. 60. From a drawing by Mirza tona and Albert Museum, which
Akbar. Persian. Early nineteenth was erected by the Mamluk
century.
n a
mosque at Cairo, destroyed in the nineteenth century to make
way for a new street.
The Muslims produced many beautiful things made partly or
wholly of ivory, a substance which they decorated with carved,
inlaid, or painted ornament. In the tenth century a school of
ivory-carvers centred at Cordoba was working in a style that

already proclaims mature experience. Amongst the extant
examples of their work is the
cylindrical casket in Fig. 62, from
the cathedral of Zamora, which is now exhibited in the Museo
Arquelogico at Madrid. Around the domed lid runs an
inscription stating that it was made in the year 964 for the
1
M. J. Bourgoin in Le trait des entrelacs (Paris, 1879) kas analysed some two
hundred of these curious designs. Dr. E. H. Hankin (The Drawing of Geometric
Patterns in Saracenic Art^ Calcutta, 1925) has explained with uncanny
wizardry some remarkably intricate examples.
Caliph al-Hakam II, as mother of prince

a gift to his wife, the
'Abd-al-Rahman. The example of a group that includes
finest
several similar objects made
Cordoba at about the same date,
in
it is
entirely covered with palmette leafage, peacocks and other
birds, and beasts. Other specimens now in London, Paris, and
elsewhere, although similar in shape and workmanship, have
different ornament, being carved
with interlaced lobed circles
enclosing figure subjects, like
the design upon the rectangular
ivory casket in Fig. 63. This

piece is the work of several crafts-
men, the names of two of them
Khayr and 'Ubayda being
legibleupon panels they carved.
It was made in 1005 for a court
functionary whose name and
titles are prominently inscribed
upon the lid.
Another type of ivory work FIG. 66. Painted ivory box. 'Siculo*
is seen in Fig. 64, a circular Arabic* Thirteenth century. Private
.
collection, Paris.
box with geometrical ornament
pierced through the body and flat lid. This is
representative
of a series thought to have been made in Cairo in the fourteenth
century. Dating from the thirteenth century, and rather vaguely

described as 'Siculo- Arabic', are a number of plain cylindrical
and rectangular ivory boxes painted in colours and gold, with
with knot-work or with figures, beasts and birds,
circles filled
flowers and trees, in a style that recalls illuminated manuscripts.

An example decorated with a mounted huntsman, who has a
cheetah perched behind him, is shown in Fig. 66.
Ivory caskets, painted, carved, or pierced, were used as jewel-
cases, perfume or sweetmeat boxes, and for other similar purposes.
They were often, as the inscriptions testify, made specially as
gifts. The earliest are amongst the most valuable records of
Islamic art in its beginnings. Many have come down to us in won-
derful completeness, but judging from the traces of colour still
visibleon some specimens, it is probable that the carved caskets
in their original state were resplendent with colour and gold.
Some still retain their metal hinges and clasps, fittings which are
interesting examples of a minor branch of the metalworker's
art.
As specimen of Muslim skill in carving, a remarkable

a final
rock-crystal ewer in the Treasury of Saint Mark's, Venice, is
given in Fig. 65. This superb work is historically important, for

it bears the name of al-'Aziz, the second Fatimid Caliph of
Egypt, and may well be one of the crystal ewers mentioned in
al-Maqrizi's inventory of the treasures dispersed in 1067, because
they had this Caliph's name engraved on them. In workmanship
and design it is a worthy memorial of a period that marks an
epoch in Islamic art.
Amongst the things in every-day use that owe something of

their substance, technique, or design to Islam, our printed books
are, perhaps, the most widespread. Although at first sight their

connexion with the Orient may appear remote, modern methods
of book-production have gained much from medieval Muslim
enterprise and skill. It was only in recent times that Islamic
literature began to be reproduced by mechanical means, either
from type or by lithography, the latter process being specially
favoured, as it faithfully preserved the actual work of the scribe,

the most honoured of all craftsmen. But although printing was
perfected in Europe long before it spread to Muslim countries,

it is to the Orient that we owe a substance that was a great, if not
the chief, factor in development. Paper, an ancient Chinese
its
invention, became known to the Muslims when they captured

Samarqand in 704, and learned how to make it from Chinese
workmen. Its use spread westwards throughout Islam. A con-
siderable number of Arabic manuscripts written on paper date
from the ninth century, but it was not imported into Christian
Europe until the twelfth, and was still uncommon there in the
thirteenth. The first European paper factories were established
by the Muslims in Spain and Sicily, whence the manufacture

passed into Italy.
When in the fifteenth century book-production was com-
mercialized by the introduction of mechanical apparatus, paper
became an essential material in the manufacture of machine-
made books, without which printing could hardly have pro-
gressed as it did. It isnot, however, solely for paper that the
modern publisher is indebted to the Muslims. During the
fifteenth century, when Venice was so actively absorbing and
scattering abroad Islamic fashions in art, books bound in Italian
workshops assumed a very Oriental appearance. At this period

some volumes took on a peculiarity common in Muslim bindings,
the flap that folds over to protect the front edges. This
feature still
persists in certain bindings made for accountants
such as our bankers' 'pass-books' and is a memorial of their
Oriental descent.
Another innovation inspired by Muslim work was a new
method of decorating leather covers. In the Middle Ages
European binders often enriched leather covers by impressing

devices upon them by means of metal dies, a process that de-
veloped effective schemes as the stamps became larger and more

elaborate in design, and cleverly devised units giving a wide
range of repeating surface patterns and borders came more

generally into use. But ornament produced by 'blind tooling',
as it is termed, was expressed only in relief until Oriental
workers began to enrich stamped designs by filling the sunk parts

with gold paint, a practice introduced into Europe by Muslim
binders settled in Venice. Towards the end of the fifteenth
century this method was supplemented by a new process, in

which the gold was permanently fixed by reimpressing the
heated tool through gold-leaf. This new departure appears to
3385 L
have originated at Cordoba. In the sixteenth century it was
universally used by both Christian and Islamic binders, although
the older Oriental way of using gold was never entirely superseded.
The by the Oriental use of gold is seen in the
result obtained
superb patterns worked on the late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-

century binding of which the inside is illustrated in Fig. 67. It
is a marvel of clear, delicate design, patiently executed by making
an infinite number of impressions with a few simple tools.
Fig. 68 shows some other decorative processes used by Oriental

binders, methods that go back to times much earlier than the
seventeenth century, when this example was made. The crimson
leather cover has a central device stamped and enriched with
gold ; above and beneath it, and in each corner, are shaped panels
sunk below the surface and decorated with lace-like ornament
cut out of thin white leather and pasted on a black ground. A
formal landscape, with trees, birds, and beasts amongst which
is a
dragon from the Far East is painted in gold upon the plain
field. The Venetian sixteenth-century cover in Fig. 69 has
similar sunk panels and painted decorations obviously imitated
from a Persian model.
The Egyptian binding (Fig. 67) has a central pointed oval
panel, which is
quartered in each corner, and the Persian cover
is decorated with a variant of the same scheme, a
plan, as we
have already seen, common to many crafts. A similar design,
with central and corner devices of Muslim origin and linear work
of Oriental inspiration, is tooled in gold upon a Venetian cover,
dated 1546, shown in Fig. 70; and in Fig. 71 the same arrange-
ment appears German example, although the details
in a later
are now being modified in accordance with contemporary
European fashions.
These four bindings trace roughly the development of certain
technical processes that, originating in Muslim lands, found
their way into European workshops and brought with them
schemes of design and ornamental elements which, with slight
changes, have become firmly incorporated in modern practice.
The gold tooling and lettering now universal upon fine leather
bindings are expressed by means that were perfected by Muslim
workers; and when, in the nineteenth century, mechanically
produced book-covers began to supplement ancient hand-work,
machine-bound books to a great extent merely stereotyped ways
of working that hark back to Islamic origins.
The gaily decorated 'marbled' patterns so common upon end-
papers.,paper covers, and edges of books bound in European
workshops during the eighteenth century, were directly derived
from Oriental sources. Delicate examples of such patterns occur
on strips of paper pasted round the margins of Muslim drawings
and specimens of calligraphy mounted during the sixteenth cen-
tury for connoisseurs whose fastidious taste required elaborately
contrived settings for their treasures. Marbled papers were
known in England in Bacon's time; he tells us that 'the Turkes
have a pretty art of chamoletting of paper, which is not with us in
use. They take divers oyled colours, and put them severally (in
drops) upon water; and stirre the water lightly, and then wet
their paper, (being of some thicknesse,) with it, and the paper
will be waved, and veined, like Chamolet or Marble.'
Books bound in the West towards the end of the sixteenth
century are found with end-papers brought from the Orient,
but it was not until about a century later that European
binders began to make them themselves. Hand-made marbled

papers are now rarely used, but more or less clumsily reproduced
imitations still serve various purposes.
For more than thousand years Europe has looked upon Is-
a
lamic art thing of wonder; at first largely because it was

as a
closely associated with lands deemed the Christian heritage,

but later solely by reason of its own intrinsic beauty. Many of
its rich
products owe their preservation to medieval piety, for
not a few have rested secure for ages in churches, where a casket
L 2
that had served as a Caliph's jewel-case became the repository
of sacred perhaps brought in it from the Holy Land
relics,
wrapped in a scrap of splendid silk cut from a Muslim robe of

honour. The awe with which such things were regarded found
appropriate meanings for the strange figures and mysterious
writings upon them, thought sometimes to be talismans and
characters in the tradition of Solomon, or even to date from his
time, for in the Middle Ages archaeology was nothing if not

romantic. It was only in the last century that the cold light of
research dared to throw doubts upon the associations which had
long hallowed some remarkable treasures as gifts from Harun al-

Rashid to Charlemagne, or as acquired by Saint Louis in the
Orient. But whether such things were paraded under false
colours or not, their magnificence was real enough. Masterpieces
that every craftsman revered, they were always an inspiration to
those who devoted themselves to arts neglected in the West.
Intercourse between Christians and Muslims began in times
long prior to the Crusades. In Spain Islam was firmly established

upon the very frontiers of western Europe, and from the first
exercised profound influence upon Christian culture. In Sicily

the two religions occupied common ground, while North Africa
was wholly ruled by the Muslims, whose ships swept the Medi-
terranean from end to end.
With the Crusades a new era opened. The half-fabulous
magnificence traditionally ascribed to the Saracens became a

reality to astonished Christendom. A
host drawn from every
part of Europe came suddenly into close contact with a social

order that in every respect outranged the narrow limits of their
experience. In every activity of life the reactions of this impact

with alien progress soon became apparent, and in art its results
were by no means the least far-reaching. As time went on Italian
merchants established direct traffic with Syrian ports, Oriental
trade became regularly organized, and all kinds of rare things
from Islamic workshops arrived in European markets. These
imports met new-found needs, aroused emulation wherever they
went, and opened up lines of development either immediately
or in subtle ways destined to mature in the future.
During that critical period when the West wa's emerging

from medieval conditions, forces
aroused and fostered by religious
enthusiasm entered upon another
phase of energy centred wholly in
commercial activities. In the fif-
teenth century European crafts-

men, impelled by Muslim success
in the sumptuous and lucrative
arts that had become essential
to Renaissance splendour, turned
with renewed interest to the
Orient. Moved by deeper study
of Islamic methods, they reviewed
and enlarged their own technical
procedure, and in so doing were
no longer content to absorb such
ornamental elements as came by
FIG. 72. Islamic design. Develop-
the way. They began to explore ed from a drawing by Leonardo
da Vinci. (From /I Codice Atlan-
intently Muslim canons of design,
iico.)
and to adapt them in a new spirit
to work that was purely European in conception. Not only
humble craftsmen, but also outstanding figures like Leonardo
da Vinci, experimented with Oriental pattern-work; the design
in Fig. 72, developed from a rough sketch in one of his note-
books, records his interest in such studies.

These innovations were not always results of direct observa-
century a new method of spreading
tion, for early in the sixteenth
the inspiration came into being, the 'pattern-book', an im-
mediate product of the printing-press. By means of such
collections specimens of master designers' researches in the new
1
style became known to those to whom access to original sources
was difficult. One of the most interesting pattern-books is the
rare volume by Francesco di Pellegrino, 1 whose examples are
wholly derived from Islamic models. From this and contemporary
pattern-books of the same kind such as those by Peter Flotner,
Virgil Solis, Martinus Petrus, and others it is instructive to
turn to the designs by Holbein, in whose drawings for silver-

smiths and workers in other crafts Muslim inspirations are skil-
fully welded into an original style.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Dutch and Eng-
lish enterprise was reaping the fruits of Vasco da Gama's
adventure into the Indies. A new stream of trade flowed in ever

increasing volume directly from the Orient, and influenced
connected with everyday life, which, attracting an
crafts closely
increasing demand, were now being organized in ways that fore-

shadowed modern industrial developments. From Muham-
madan Asia came many seemingly insignificant things which,
becoming necessities, have found not only European favour but

spread throughout the civilized world. Cargoes of cottons and
'chintzes' printed with gaily coloured patterns brought a new
vogue in which, developed in the 'persiennes' of Paris,

textiles,
gave ladies in the time of Queen Anne pretty dress fabrics, and,
later, brought wealth to Manchester. New 'shawls', as their
name tells us, came from Persia. Certain forms of tea- and coffee-
pots, imitated perhaps from Moghul ewers brought back from

India by opulent nabobs, were still common on Victorian break-
fast tables, and have persisted in modified shapes until to-day.

Ever since the beginnings of Islam, Western piety, learning,
commerce, and curiosity have found each something to its taste
1
A Florentine painter and sculptor who worked at Fontainebleau for
Francis I, known in France as Francesque Pellegrin. His book, La Fleur de la
science de Pourtraicture: Patrons de Broderie^ Fafon arabicque et ytalique, is

dated 1530. A facsimile edition with an introduction by Gaston Migeon was
published in Paris in 1908.

in the products of Muslimbut in knowledge of their
skill;
technical excellence and their beauty master craftsmen such as
Odericus of Rome, who in 1286 wrought Islamic patterns upon
the inlaid marble pavement of the Presbytery of Westminster
Abbey, and William Morris, who wove another into his velvet in
1884, together with a host of others before, since, and between
them, have time and again refreshed Western art from a fund
which has been to us rather an annuity than a legacy.
A. H. CHRISTIE.
ISLAMIC ART AND ITS INFLUENCE ON

PAINTING IN EUROPE
THERE is no evidence of
any Muhammadan paintings having
been brought to Europe before the seventeenth century, and
Rembrandt is believed to have been the first painter in the
West who was sufficiently interested in Oriental art to make
copies of some pictures that had reached Holland from the far
East portraits of members of the imperial family of Delhi. 1
Any direct influence of the pictorial art of the Muslim world
upon any individual artist in Europe is therefore excluded; still
less isthere evidence that any great movement in the art of
painting in Europe has been stimulated by influences from the

Muslim East; it is impossible, for example, to trace to Islam any
new direction in pictorial art similar to that which manifested
itself in Italian painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
as the result of the revived interest in classical art. Such

Muhammadan influences as are traceable, tend, therefore, to be
superficial; but they make their appearance in Europe at quite

an early period of the Arab domination in the waters of the
Mediterranean. From Oriental fabrics were copied several
1
F. Sarre, jfahrbuch des Kgl. Preussiscben Kunst-sammlungen, 1904, p. 143.
152 Islamic Art and its Influence on
representations of animals, such as appear in the eleventh-
century manuscript of the commentary on- the Apocalypse by
Beatus in the Bibliotheque Nationale, 1 and in several other
manuscripts, especially those of the school of Limoges during
the early Middle Ages ; but the effect of the direct contact of
the Christian world with Muhammadan culture and of the
importation of objects of Oriental art, was never so marked in
painting as it was in sculpture, architecture, or metal-work. It
exhibits itself chiefly in the adaptation of Oriental motifs for
ornamental purposes and is for the most
part confined to sub-
ordinate details. These decorative motifs, though brought to
the notice of western artists by the importation of Muham-
madan and other objects of Muhammadan manufacture,

silks
were not confined to such characteristic features as were devised

by the followers of Islam themselves, but included also those
which Muhammadans had taken over from their predecessors ;
and among such artistic heritages from the past are several
conventional designs of great antiquity, such as the Chaldean
sacred tree, which passed on, through Sasanian art, into the
Muslim period. This tree of life, in accordance with the primitive
type, was often flanked by two beasts facing each other, but the
Christian artists often omitted the central feature of the design,
the sacred tree; among other primitive, pre-Muslim designs are
the two animals, one the prey of the other, and animals with two
heads and a single body. They occur more frequently in sculp-
ture than in painting, and in the latter case were possibly often
copied from similar carvings on capitals and bas-reliefs in

churches. 2 Of the presence of Muslim artists working for
Christian patrons on the continent of Europe during the early
1
Lat. 8878 (J. Ebersolt, Orient et Occident, p. 99, Paris, 1928).
2 Along list of these has been compiled, see Andre Michel, Histoire de
me
Van, t. i, 2 partie, pp. 83 sqq. (Paris, 1905); A. Marignan, Un butorien de
Fart franfahy Louis Courajod (Chap. IV, L'influence orientale sur les pro-
vinces du nord et du midi de 1'Italie) (Paris, 1899).
Painting in Europe 153
Middle Ages, such as those who decorated the Palatine Chapel
at Palermo for Roger II (1101-54), there appears to be no
evidence. 1
During the period of the Crusades more frequent intercourse

with the Muslim East of objects
facilitated the importation
bearing specifically Muhammadan

decorative motifs, and in the
country of those centres of commercial communication with the

East Genoa, Pisa, and Venice these motifs became introduced
into paintings. Consequently, an interest in the Oriental world,
stimulated largely by curiosity and the fascination of the un-
familiar, manifests itself in the early products of the Sienese
school of painting, and becomes more prominent in Tuscan art.
Turbaned figures and Oriental physiognomies make their ap-
pearance in such Italian pictures as early as the second half of the
fourteenth century; such foreign personages generally take a
subordinate place in the representation of a sacred scene, and it
is in the accessories that Oriental influence make themselves
especially felt, e.g. in the copying

of Persian and other carpets,
the clothing of even the more important persons in Oriental
stuffs, and the introduction of exotic animals, such as leopards,
apes, and parrots. In details of landscape, also, it is possible to
recognize detailsof trees and foliage that appear to be deliberate

imitations of Oriental designs.
A borrowing of a particularly Oriental character occurs in the
frequent adaptation of Arabic letters for decorative purposes.
This is one of the first examples of the direct influence of Mus-
lim art on Christian workmen to attract the attention of Euro-
pean and since Adrien de Longperier published his

scholars,
article, 'De 1'emploi des caracteres arabes dans Pornementation,
chez les peuples Chretiens de Poccident', in the Revue arcbeo-
logique, in 1846,
an increasing number of instances have been
collected, the richest collection of which is to be found in the
1
A. Pavlovsky, 'Decorations des plafonds de la Chapelle Palatine' (Byzan-
tiniscbe Zeitscbrift, ii, 1893).
154 Islamic Art and its Influence on Painting
learned articles of Mr. A. H. Christie in the Burlington Magazine
(vols. xl and xli, 'The development of ornament from Arabic
scripts'). Such an ornamental use of Arabic characters appears

in Italian painting as early as Giotto (e.g. on the right shoulder
of the figure of Christ in the Resurrection of Lazarus, in the
Arena Chapel, Padua). Fra Angelico and Fra Lippo Lippi (Fig.
73) were especially fond of this kind of decoration, and employed
it even for the sleeves of the Virgin and the borders of her
robe obviously entirely in ignorance of the origin of such
shapes. The source of their knowledge of this script must be

sought in the many pieces of silkand other fabrics brought into
Europe from the East, or in lamps and other brass vessels.
THOMAS ARNOLD.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SIR THOMAS W. ARNOLD, Painting in Islam. A study of the place of Pictorial
Art in Muslim Culture, Oxford, 1928.
ARCHITECTURE
A GENERATION hence it may be possible to estimate with some
confidence the legacy of the Islamic world to architecture; but
in the present state of scholarship so much doubt exists as to
several important aspects of Muhammadan architecture that
only a violent partisan can feel sure of his ground. It is un-

fortunate that much recent research, which should have thrown
light on uncertain points, has been presented to us in the form

of polemical arguments. These are not mainly concerned with
the nature of Muslim architecture in its maturer periods, still
less with its effect on the evolution of architecture in our Western
world, but rather with its origins and its earlier buildings.
Nevertheless, they have a direct bearing on the question of its

legacy to mankind, for we cannot fairly recognize a bequest from
Islam unless there is some proof that Islam possessed the original
f
title. In other words, so
many things in Muhammadan archi-
tecture are said to have been stolen from non-Islamic peoples
that some scholars actually hold that the Muslims were mere
borrowers of the architectonic forms and had no architecture of
their own worth the name. To reach a conclusion on this
fundamental point, it is necessary in the first instance to attempt
a brief outline of the origins and nature of Muhammadan
architecture in general.
The Arabs, who within a half-century swept like a desert
whirlwind from the Hijaz to the Pillars of Hercules in the West
and to the confines of India in the East, conquered countries
already civilized. Their dominions extended over an area wider
than that of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent, and em-
braced many nations whose architecture differed from that of
Rome and
in some cases was far older.
Whatever position one may assume in the bitter controversy
between those who believe in the mainly Roman origin of our
Western medieval architecture, and those who attribute every-
156 Architecture
thing to Iran or Armenia, it is becoming clear that the latter

school of thought demands our serious attention. series of A
remarkable discoveries in Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Turkistan,
though revealed to us in a bellicose way, has shaken our confi-
dence in the ultra-Roman point of view. It may be that the
Church has fostered for centuries a belief that our
'Romanesque'
and Gothic buildings rose from the ashes of Imperial Rome, or
that pedantic humanists of the Renaissance are to blame for our
misconceptions. But whatever the cause, it is evident that now

we must look eastwards with an impartial mind, at the outset
getting rid of the habit of regarding 'the East' as a single entity.
Hardly any one seriously doubts the fact of our debt to Rome ;
the time has come, however, to reconsider the extent of our

obligation.
Of the territory subdued by the Arab conquerors, Syria, part
of Armenia, and the habitable part of North Africa including
Egypt were taken from the East Roman Empire; Spain was cap-
tured from the Visigoths, but had previously been a Roman
province; and the lands from Mesopotamia to Turkistan and
Afghanistan constituted the former Sasanian kingdom of
Chosroes II. Christianity had penetrated the whole of this vast
area up to the eastern frontier of Armenia and Syria, and there
was a sixth-century cathedral as far south as San'a' in Yemen
(southern Arabia).
1
The conquerors therefore found, ready to
hand, skilled builders in every one of the subject provinces, and
a great number of buildings which they, like the Coptic and
Visigothic Christians before them, freely used as stone-quarries.
Much has been made of this undeniable fact, but one must
remember also that the Arabs found native craftsmen in the
eastern provinces of their dominions who built in a style quite
foreign to that of the Romans, and who, if we are to believe
certain authorities, taught the Byzantine architects everything

that makes Byzantine work differ from that of Rome.
1
B. and E. M. Whishaw, Arabic Spain (London, 1912), p. 122.
Architecture 157
There no need to dispute the view commonly and justifiably
is
held that the first Arab conquerors had no architectural skill or

taste. In the nature of things it must have been so. Such a con-
quest was only possible to a race of soldiers inspired by religious

enthusiasm, whose time was necessarily occupied mainly in
fighting and praying. Moreover, they were not a town-dwelling
people but nomads; and even when they forsook fighting to take
up the task of government, they inevitably relied for technical
skill in the building arts on craftsmen they found on the spot, or
(and this is important) on craftsmen brought from one conquered
country to another. Thus it is known that Armenian masons
were employed not only in Egypt but in Spain, and perhaps at the
ninth-century church of Germigny-des-Pres in France, which
has several Muhammadan features. 1 But in spite of the Arabs'
probable ignorance of architecture in the early years oi conquest,

thVTemarkable and incontrovertible fact about Muslim archi -
tecture is that in all countries and in all cent
unmistakable individ uality of its own., although its origin* w^r**
so diverse. There was something about it that differentiated it
from the work of all the local schools of craftsmanship which were
technically instrumental in bringing it into being.
The factor that transmuted and welded a host of varying
modes of building into one style possessing individual character-
istics waspresumably tile iaith of Islam for the buildings erected
;
by tII5 Arabs in their early years were chiefly mosques and palaces^
axSxTmost of the important architectural works of subsequent
centuries continued to be mosques or other religious buildings,
such as madrasahs and convents, containing mosques. The
mosque waj the typicaLand principal Arab building^ varying to
some extent in form with different localities, but always retaining
jts mam features^The annual pilgrimage to Mecca from all parts
of the Islamic world doubtless contributed to the standardization
otrthe mosque form, for in each town that the pUgrim passed
1
J. Strzygowski, Origin of Christian Church Art (Oxford, 1923), p. 64.
158 Architecture
through on his long journey he would make his prayers in the

local mosque, and it he happened tobe a building craftsman or
an architect he would notice its design.
The at Madmah, built by Muhammad in
primitive mosque
^22, was the prototype oi all others, it was a squarcTenclosure
surrounded by walls of brick and stone. Some part of it,

probably the north portion where the .Prophet led the
praters,
was rooiejj! The roots were probably made ot palm^Franches
covered with mud and resting on palm-trunks. The congregation
Knelt facing north, the direction of the holy city of Jerusalem,
and this direction (qiblah) was marked in some way. In 624 the
direction for prayer was changed from Jerusalem to Mecca ; that
is (in the case of Madmah) from north to south,
jn so elementary
a kmldin,therc was no need to borrow architectural features
from anywhere^ tor no architectural features were required^
The next mosque, built at ICufah in Mesopotamia in 639,
had on marble columns brought from a former
its~roof carried
palace ofthe Persian kings at Hirah, and was also square, but was
enclosed by a trench instead of by a wall Asmaller mosque was
founded by 'Amr at Fustatjgairo) in 642. "It was square'inplan,
is said to have had no
open court (sahn), and contained a new
Feature, a high pulpit (rninbar). A few years later j&.maysurak
(screen or_grille of wood) was introduced to protect the im dm
from thejcinwd. Minarets are said to have appeared about
the end of the ccntury/and the rrnhrab or prayer-niche (indi-
cating"the qiblaW) a little later, (Fig. 74.). Thus, within eighty or

ninety years from the building of the first moscmeat Madmah,
all the essential features of the
congregationalmosquc_ (jam?)
had Seen evolved. Minor additions were llwdndt (plural of
~liwdn> corruption of al-lwari), which were colonnades or

a
arcades surrounding the sahn to give shelter, and facilities for
Ablution. This short list includes all the chief ritual requirements
of the mosque in all periods.
None of the buildings mentioned retains its original structure
Architecture 159
and even their plans have been lost in successive alterations. But
the plan is all that matters, for the primitive mosque was barely
a building and certainly not a work of architecture as we under-
Nevertheless, M. van Berchem has suggested the

1
stand it.
ascription of the origin of even this rudimentary mosque-plan

to that of the early Christian church': the sabn being derived
from the atrium, the principal llwdn from the church proper,
the maqsurah from the chancel-screen, the minaret from the
2
church-tower, and the mihrab from the apse. But such con-
jecture seems hardly necessary or appropriate: it is not until
the Arabs begin to translate this religious enclosure and shelter
into architecture that the question of origins arises.
The transition from bare necessity to attempts at dignity and
splendour was very rapid surprisingly so when one considers the
austerity of the Islamic cult and the severity of the campaigning
life led by so many of its votaries. Within twenty years of
Muhammad's death, his own mosque at Madman was rebuilt
with walls and of dressed stone. Andinthe last years of the
piers
seventh century was built, near the rude mosque erected by the
Caliph Omar at Jerusalem, after the Arab conquest of that city

in 639, the magnificent 'Dome of the Rock', as it is
commonly
building of impressivejize and monumental character,
callecf, a
gorgeously decorated (Fig. 75). TAt" this point we plunge into

the ~b:eart oQll^theâcute controversy that still rages about
the origin of Muslim architecture. The Dome of the Rock
(QuEbat al-Sakhrah inTJirabic) was^n elaborate stone building,
strictly speaking a mashhad ('place of witness') where pilgrims
circumambulated the Rock, the spot whence Muhammad was
believed to have ascended to Heaven. Moreover, it remained
unique; and for four centuries at least there was no important

attempt at departure from the normal square congregational
mosque with its open court. It has therefore been assumed, far too
1
Encyclopaedia of Islam: article 'Architecture'.
2 This theory is now discounted.
160 Architecture
rashly, that the Dome of the Rock is simply a Rom an

or Byzantine
type of structure, copied direct from pagan or Christian proto-

types, executed by Christian craftsmen throughout, and therefore
an_aj?en yyprk of jgchitecture standing right outside the main
art. Thre_js ja measure of
stream__of\Arab
__
plausibility,
in thjs view, but it must not be pressed too far.
In evolving this new type of building, an aisled rotunda,

the Arabs had a definite purpose in mind. JThey wished to
glorify and shelter the Sacred Rock of Jerusalem, alreadyltn
ancient object ot devotion to Muslims as well as Jews; and they
desired to erect a building which should rival and surpass
the famous Christian church of the Holy Sepulchre near by.
The new mashhad was placed in the midHle of a spacious rock
plateau, known as the Haram al- Sharif, or 'Koly Sanctuary', on
a great terrace or podium. (Aligned with it on the central axis
of the plan already stood a mosque, that known as al-Aqsa.

A primitive building, its history is too obscure and complicated
for discussion here.) In adopting fhe dome, or more precisely
the 'annular rotunda', for the distinctive feature of their shrine,
the Arabs showed sound judgement; and it is true that the dome
had been used in this way, as the culminating and controlling
element of a building designed to shelter a tomb or other
venerated place, by both Romans and Byzantines before them.
But these were not the only dome-builders on earth; and
Strzygowski, the protagonist of Iranian inspiration, argues that
the Eastern dome originated in Asia Minor or farther east, passed
through Armenia to Byzantium, and thence to the Balkans and

Russia under the patronage of the Greek Church. 1 Thus,
though the Arabs here used a dome for the first time, they were
adopting a feature which was not exclusively Christian or even
exclusively Roman, and was probably copied from the famous
'Anastasis'dome, adjoining it and of almost identical size.
Certainly there were domed churches in Syria and Armenia
1
J. Strzygowski, op. cit., p. 27.
Architecture 161
long before the end of the seventh century; and churches of

the^ type of the Dome of the Rock, that is 3 a rotunda within
an nrt-agnT^jIrpgjy- existed in Palestine. For the rest, the walls
are of solid stone, the arches of the internal arcade and of
the window-openings are semicircular, the whole of the
ajid
columns used in the two arcades are antiques, taken from
oldeFEuildings, pagan or Christian. Hence neither the shafts
nor "tnecapitals of these columns are uniform in style. Across
the springing of the arches are massive timber ties, probably
introduced to resist the shocks of earthquakes prevalent in
the locality, or perhaps because the builders were nervous of
trusting -the arch alone; similar precautions are to be found
in Byzantine buildings. The dome itself is double and con-
structed entirely of timber, covered externally with leadjmd
internally "with modelled "arid, painted plaster, but it is not Jthe
original structure. Much of the mosaic work is original, but
m-oTToFthe remaining decorations are of later date. Hence we
find that, at theDome of the Rock, the innovations are the
domical plan, the use of semicircular arches, timber ties, and
perhaps mosaic. The semicircular arch was decidedly not an
Arab invention, the origin of timber ties is doubtful, and the
earliest use of mosaic is
pre-Islamic.
After the Dome of the Rock, the next important Muslim
building in chronological order is theCjreat Mosque at Damascus,
erected in the first years of the eighth century (i ig. 70). The 1
principal llwdn or sanctuary is a lofty apartment with doors or

screens in the arches separating it from the sahn. Arcaded por-
ticoes also surround the remaining three sides of the sahn. The
new features in this mosque are numerous. The principal llwdn
has three aisles, crossedby a central transept, over the middle of
which is a dome. At the end of the that is, in the centre
transept,
of the south walT of the principal llwdn^ is a prayer-niche
(mibrab) indicating the qiblab or direction ot Mecca. The arclies
surrounding tne central court are carried partly on piers and
3385 M
162 Architecture
partly on columns, and the arches are of the 'horseshoe' form

which was destined to become characteristic of Western Muslim
architecture, for some not very apparent reason. A horseshoe
may be round or pointed at the top, but in either case its curve
is carried down below the
'springing line'. At Damascus the
round horseshoe arch is used. Above the main arcade, all round
the sahn^ is a range of semicircular-headed windows, two to each
arch. JOf the four Roman towers that once stood at the angles of
the temenos within which the mosque was built, and which were
used by the Arabs as minarets, only one (at the south-west angle)
now remains, the other minarets being later in date. ^]jf
interior of the building was richly decorated with marbles,
mosaics, and apparently windows of coloured glass. The unusual
plan of rhis mosque may have been influenced by the arrangement
of Syrian churches converted into mosques, and the introduction
of a transept and dome in the middle of the sanctuary may be
evidence of a desire to enhance the importance of the qiblak,
now represented for the third time by a mihrab. The mifrrdb
1
itself may have been an original idea : in a part of the world where
diseases of the eyes are verycommon, may even be possible, as
it
an old shaykh once told me, that the mihrab was made in the form
of a niche so that a blind man could recognize it as he groped his
way round the walls, or it may have been borrowed from the
Christian apse. The horseshoe arch has been found in pre-Islamic
buildings, carved in the rock, but its occurrence at Damascus is
one of the earliest cases where it has a true structural function.
2 to
The purpose of the minaret is clear enough : it was provided
give a position of vantage to the mu'adhdhin who summoned the
faithful to prayer a call invented perhaps intentionally as a
contrast to the Christian custom of summoning worshippers
with a clapper (before bells were introduced), or the Jewish use
1
The first niche-mibrdb was at Madlnah, the second at Fustat (Cairo).
2 The Arabic word for minaret (ma'dbana) signifies the place whence the
call to prayer (adbZn) is made and the muadbdhin is the man who makes the call.
$
Architecture 163
of a horn. The first instance of a tower being utilized for this
purpose seems to have been at Damascus.

The earliest surviving minaret is that of the Great Mosque
at Qayrawan near Tunis, and is recorded to have been built
duringthe caliphate of Hisham (724-43). It is a huge and massive
square tower, tapering slightly upwards, crowned with battle-
menis, and surmounted by two stages, one built at a later date.
Even if it is true that the four square towers at Damascus were the
first minarets adapted to that end, it does not seem that a per-
fectly plain structure, such as that at Qayrawan, need be ascribed

to Syria or any other special place of origin. It is an instance of
ritual requirement met in the simplest and most straightforward
way. Otherwise, the mosque at Qayrawan is of the congrega-
tional type, frequently altered, but retaining in the main the form
in which it was rebuilt at the end of the ninth century. The
mosque of Zaytunah at Tunis, founded in 732, is another early

and interesting example of the congregational type, with arcades
formed of unpleasantly stilted arches supported on antique
columns. Over the capitals of the arches are wooden blocks or
abaci, connected by wooden tie-beams. This device mars the
effect of many early Muslim buildings.
The Great Mosque at Cordoba in Spain, begun in 786, con-
tinues the succession (Fig. 77). Its area was more than doubled
in the tenth century, but its original form may still be recalled by
a careful study of the existing structure. It was a congregational
mosque with a very deep sanctuary, containing eleven aisles
separated by arcades, each with twenty columns. These columns,

as in other cases already mentioned, were taken from older
Roman buildings. The enormous size of the sanctuary made it

desirable to have a proportionately lofty ceiling, much more lofty
in fact than the height of the available columns with ordinary
horseshoe arches above them. So a second range of arches was
built at a higher level, creating a complicated and restless effect
that is far from pleasing. Thus we find that the use of ready-
M 2
164 Architecture
made antique columns dictated the whole design of the arcade,
both at Qayrawan and Cordoba, whereas the introduction of
brick or stone piers, or of taller columns specially made for the
building, would have enabled the architect to dispense with

such regrettable subterfuges. The whole of the mosque at
Cordoba was surrounded by a high buttressed wall, and there
were arcades all round the sahn.
We must now retrace our steps to Mesopotamia, where a
seriesof mosques built in the brick style traditional to that

country connects the prototype at Madinah with the famous
mosque of Ibn Tulun at Cairo. Of these intermediate examples
the most noteworthy are at Ukhaidir, Raqqah, Abu Dulaf, and
Samarra. The first two of these are now ascribed to the late
eighth century, and the other two are of the mid-ninth
century. They all carry on the tradition of Sasanian archi-
tecture and all have the 'congregational' plan. The mosque
at Ukhaidir, so admirably described in the late Gertrude Bell's
monograph,
1
is of vital interest to us because one finds there in
embryo the pointed arch which afterwards became the dis-
tinctive feature of Western Gothic architecture. The character-
istic Sasanian arch is semicircular, but occasionally one meets
with isolated early examples of pointed arches. Horseshoe arches

were probably used in Mesopotamia before this; there are several
in Syrian churches (e.g. in the church of Qasr ibn-Wardan, c. 564),
and actually a Hellenistic example at Chiusi in Italy. At
Ukhaidir the arches are pointed ovoid and slightly stilted, as at
Mashatta. But in the Baghdad Gate at Raqqah and at Abu
Dulaf near Samarra the arch had assumed the curve typical of
laterMuslim architecture, and by the end of the eighth century
it was
replacing all other arch-forms in Mesopotamia. The
much earlier pointed arches found occasionally in India are cut
out of solid rock, so are not really arches at all.
The Great Mosque at Samarra is of enormous size and of con-
1
G. L. Bell, Palace and Mosque at Ukbaidir (Oxford, 1914).
A
THE CLOISTER DOORWAYS AT
WELLS ^ SALISBURY CATHEDRALS
fa-y CENTTY.) aosf LY RESEMBLE THIS
C D
FIG. 78. PARALLEL OF CUSPED ARCHES (not to scale)
A. Samarra, Great Mosque (846-52).
B. C6rdoba, Sanctuary of Great Mosque (961-76).
C. Church of La Souterraine, France (c. 1200).
D. Cley Church, Norfolk (XlVth century).
1 66 Architecture
siderablejiistorical interest. It consists of a sahn with a deep

sanctuary on the Mecca side and fairly deep porticoes round the
remaining sides of the John. The great brick enclosing- wall has
circular towers at each angle and semicircular towers inter-
mediately. In the south wall of the sanctuary there is a row of

small window-openings with cusped or multifoil heads. This
remarkable feature, also found at Cordoba, may have originated
in Buddhist India as Havell 1 suggests; otherwise it must be
credited, with all its

implications in Western art, to the Muslims
(Fig. 78). Still more important is the substitution of brick
piers
to carry the arcades, in place of the antique columns used at
Cordoba and elsewhere. These piers are octagonal in form on a
square base, and have four circular or octagonal marble shafts to
each pier. The shafts were jointed with metal dowels and had
bell-shaped capitals. Here we have another feature that passed
into Western architecture. The curious spiral minarets used at
Samarra, and later at the mosque of Ibn Tulun, led to no sub-
sequent advance.
The mosque of Ibn Tulun at Cairo, commenced in 876, has
2
peen^ciescribedat great length and by many ^writers^ but its
importance in the history of Muhammadan architecture has
been diminished to some extent since we have realized that some
ofits most distinctive features were
anticipated in rather older
buildings in Mesopotamia. It is a large congregational mosque,
nearly square in plan, with a sahn surrounded onjdljsides by

arcaded porticoes (Fig. 79), the sanctuary llwdn being much
deeper thantheothers. Outside theTmam walls is an operênclos-
ing court (ziydda),\ feature_that^we have not met with before.
'ITie external waffs are veryjnassive and are crownedjwith orna-
mental battlements wb '^,

1
ag ynll appear 1atpr ? may he regarded
as the prototype of Gothic
pierced
and crested parapets^ (Battle-
ments of various types were used in Assyria as early as the eighth
1
E. B. Havell, Indian Architecture (znd edition, London, 1927), pp. 85-6.
2
See Chapter III of my Muhammadan Architecture, &c. (Oxford, 1924).
Architecture 167
century B.C., in Egypt earlier still.) Bejow the battlementsjj a

row of pointed^ window-openings filled with pierced plaster
screens or claire-voies, alternating with pointed niches with
multiioil or cusped heads. The arcades consist of massive brick
pierswith brick-engaged shafts at the angles, and above them are

pointed arches which have a just perceptible 'horseshoe' curve
at the springing. Thus the whole structure up to the level of the
timber roof is of brick, covered with plain or ornamental stucco.
It said without exaggeration that this mosque is, in ajl
may be
rcspdcts,Mesopotamian injtyjje, and is derived from examples
at Samarra and Baghdad with which its founder, Ibn Tulun,
had been familiar in youth. Besides the features already men-
tioned, other innovations include carved Kufic inscriptions in
wood (a very skilful adaptation of lettering to ornamental pur-
poses), and decoration in colour on practically all visible surfaces,
mainly on whit stucco, but also on the timber beams of the
ceiling. There is a mihrab niche of bold design, since alteredi__a
central fountain^ (fawwdrab, not the original structure which
had a wooden dome) in the sahn and gorgeous lamps hung;
'
from the roof.

From the end of thcninthjcentury to the end of the Jtwelfth
the^number of sumvm^~Muhammadan mosques is notjarge.
Much military architecture was produced during that period,
and it is admitted that the Crusaders gleaned ideas from the
fortresses of Syria and Egypt, for masonry in Syria and Armenia
had reached a high level centuries before this. The European
use of machicolation, 1 for example, came from this source.
1
Machicolation: an arrangement of bold brackets or corbels, closely spaced,
carrying a projecting parapet. Between each pair of brackets is an opening
(French machicoulis), closed with a trap-door, through which arrows, boiling
oil or water, and other unpleasant things could be dropped on to the heads of
besiegers attempting to mine the bottom of the walls below. Machicolation

superseded wooden galleries, known as hourdes (hoardings) or breaches (brat-
tices) and used for the same purpose.
1 68 Architecture
In an appendix to his work on the citadel of Cairo, 1 Mr.
K. A. C. Creswell examined the origins of machicolation. He
pointed out that six or seven of the ten alleged
early examples in
Syria were in fact small projecting stone latrines of a type that
was common up to recent times; indeed there is one such, still
in use, on the pier at Gorey in Jersey. Of the three remaining
examples, which may have been used for the delivery of

missiles from a height, the earliest dates from the middle of the
sixth century A.D., that is, before the foundation of Islam. Since
Mr. Creswell cited these instances, a Muslim example has been
discovered at Qasr al-Hair near Rusafa in Syria, dating from
A.D. 729. There are two over the Bab an-Nasr (1087), a gateway
at Cairo built by Armenian masons, and these were evidently
machicoulis placed to cover the approach (Fig. 80). They ante-
date by a century the first instances known in Europe, viz. at
Chateau Gaillard (1184), Chatillon (1186), Norwich (1187), and
Winchester (1193). It is therefore clear that the Crusaders bor-
rowed the idea from the Saracens, and not vice versa. Machi-
colation on rows of corbels eventually became very elaborate in
French and English castles of the fourteenth century (Fig. 81).
Another feature of military architecture borrowed from Egypt
and Syria was the 'right-angled' or 'crooked' entrance to a
fortress through a gateway in the walls, by means of which an
enemy who had attained the gateway was prevented from seeing
or shooting through it into the inner courtyard. An entrance
of this type does not seem to have been known to Roman or
Byzantine military science, in which successive defensive gates
were placed on the same axis, separated by a space known as the
propugnaculum. These crooked entrances were first used, so far
as is known, in the 'Round City 'of Baghdad (eighth century),
again at Saladin's citadel at Cairo (begun 1176), and culminated

in a fine example at the citadel of Aleppo. They are seldom
1
In Bulletin de V Institut franfais d'
archeologie oricntale, vol. xxiii (Cairo,
1924).
Architecture 169
found in England, though there is a
good example at Beaumaris ;
in France they were more popular, e.g. at Carcassonne. But

both these countries favoured an oblique entrance for the more
elaborately fortified castles, e.g. Pierrefonds and Conway.
India has no Muslim buildings of importance prior to the
work atOld Delhi at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Nor is there anything in Asiatic Turkey, where the series of
Seljuq buildings at Konia begins about the same time. In Spain
and North Africa the chief remains, apart from military architec-
ture^ are the later work in the Great Mosque at Cordoba, where
considerable extensions took place in the second half of the tenth
century, and the fine minarets at Seville (the 'Giralda' tower,

1172-95) and at Rabat (1178-84), both of which are decorated
with cusped arcading resembling and anticipating later Gothic
tracery (Fig. 82). This work is very interesting in character,
and includes some remarkable dome-construction, but had no
marked effect on architectural development outside Spain itself.
In Sicily the Cappella Palatina was built in 1132, the church of
the Martorana in 1136, La Ziza in 1154, and La Cuba in 1180.
These are the accepted dates, and all of them fall outside the limit
of Muslim domination in the island, which ended in 1060 for
Palermo and in 1090 for Sicily as a whole. But even if they were
built by the Normans they abound in pure Saracenic features
which are also found on the mainland of Italy at Amalfi and
Salerno. In Persia the chief buildings of this period are the
'Friday Mosque' at Ispahan and the Great Mosque (c. 1145-
91) at Mosul, both large congregational mosques, but the
former has been much altered. The Persian mosques, being
constructed of brick, were decorated with stucco reliefs and with
enamelled tiles, the latter a fashion afterwards adopted even in
countries where stone was used, such as Syria and Egypt. The
minarets were generally placed in pairs, were cylindrical in form,
tapering slightly upwards, and were covered with glazed
coloured tiles. M. Saladin has rather unkindly likened them to
Ji7o Architecture
fictory chimneys, and certainly they do not compare in grace-

fulness with the Cairene minarets. Persia also enthusiastically
welcomed the curious 'stalactite' ornament described in the next
paragraph.
The
principal examples of the 'Syro-Egyptian' school are all
to be found in Cairo, and are the large congregational mosques
of al-Azhar (970) and al-Hakim (990-1012), the small con-
gregationalmosque of al-Aqmar (1125), and the small but im-
portant tomb-mosque of al-Juyushi (1085). At al-Azhar and
al-Aqmar the arcades are carried on antique columns, at al-
Hakim on brick piers. At al-Hakim stone was used for the
firsttime in Saracenic Cairo, though the Muqattam hills
adjoining it furnish an excellent limestone. Evidently Cairo had
leaned heavily on Mesopotamian tradition hitherto. The
mosque of al-Juyushi is the first example of a tomb-mosque, a
type afterwards developed to great elaboration, with a dome
over the founder'stomb and the mihrdb on its south wall. The
sahn is
small, and between it and the dome is a vaulted
transept.
There is a square minaret in three stages, capped with a small
high dome such as one sees on the Sicilian churches. The evolu-
tion of the dome is of the highest importance in the history of
Tviuslim architecture, but, as it has no apparent bearing on
Islam's legacy to Western _building, it must be ignored in this
bnejFjurveyl Forme same reason, there is no object in dis-

cussing the origin of that unique feature the 'stalactite', which
followed the Muslims everywhere and became a hall-mark of
their architecture from India to Spain. Possibly of Mesopo-
tamian parentage, its first authenticated occurrence is on the
minaret of the mosque of al-Juyushi; the next on the facade
of the mosque of al-Aqmar, where it is used decoratively,
and where there are also niches carved in the semblance of a
scallop-shell; surely the prototype of the familiar Renaissance
shell-niche ? A band of ornamental Kufic lettering runs along
the top of the facade. Another detail occurring in Cairene
BATTLEMENTS REMOVED (?)
"NBW TOP STAGE ADDED
A B
FIG. 82. PARALLEL OF TRACERIED TOWERS (not to scale)
A. Giralda Minaret, Seville
(1172-95).
B. The Bell Tower, Evesham
, (1533).
i7 2 Architecture
mosques of period is the 'saw-tooth' battlement, again

this
probably derived from Mesopotamia. This motifmay conceivably

have inspired the architects of the ducal and other palaces at
Venice.
From the thirteenth century onwards we have ample remains
of Muslim architecture in all its provinces ; India and Turkey
have to be added to the list and Sicily struck off.
Spain possesses
the important palaces known
the Alhambra and the Alcazar,
as
noteworthy for their profuse but graceful decoration ; otherwise

her later Moorish buildings are not of the first rank. Cairo
furnishes the finest sequence of mosques and tombs up to 1517,
when the city was captured by the Turks, and thereafter
followed Ottoman fashions in the few mosques that were built.
Anatolia provides a most interesting series of examples at Konia
and Brusa from about 1200 up to 1453, when Constantinople
became the capital of Turkey. From that date the Ottoman
borrowed freely from the monuments of Byzantium,
architects
even when building so far afield as Cairo or Damascus. Persia,
Turkistan, and India have an inexhaustible wealth of Muslim
buildings of the later periods, and in India the tradition has
persisted up to modern times. Strongly marked local character-
istics differentiated the later work of the five main schools of
Saracenic architecture
Syro-Egyptian, Hispano-Moresque,
:
Persian,Ottoman, and Indian. These differences arose partly

from the materials available, but were founded far more on local
building traditions.
The 'Middle Ages' saw a great variety and development in
mosque-pjanning.
The congregational mosque contmugd to be
'erected in some countries, the domed tomb-mosque became
r
vcrty~ popuiar, and the madrasah (cruciform schooFmosque) ,
introduced in the twelfth century, has to be added to the list.

The dome came to be a favourite feature of Muslim architecture.
In Cairo its form was usually stilted, in Persia and Turkistan
bulbous or ovoid domes were preferred, while in Constantinople
B F
FIG. 83. PARALLEL OF BATTLEMENTS AND ARCHES (not to scale)
A. Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Cairo (868).
B. Persian arch, Mosque of al-Azhar, Cairo (970).
C. Mosque of Zayn al-Dln Yusuf, Cairo (1298).
D. Palazzo Ca' d'Oro, Venice (1431).
E. Cromer Church, Norfolk (XVth century).
F. Christ Church Hall, Oxford (XVIth century), Tudor' arch.
174 Architecture
the mosques had low Byzantine domes. Externally, the stone
domes of Egypt were decorated with lace-like patterning in the
fifteenth century; in Persia they were covered with dazzling
glazed tiles. Stalactite pendentives supported them, and indeed

stalactiteswere used everywhere, often in excess, and sometimes
hanging from the ceilings like the 'pendants' of our English
fan-vaults. But whereas the Saracen dome had little influence
on our Renaissance domes in the West, it seems possible that
Muhammadan minarets of the graceful type found, especially,
in Cairene buildings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
may have influenced the design of the later Renaissance cam-
panili of Italy, and hence some of Wren's fine city steeples.
Certainly Muhammadan architects had begun to realize the
possibility of using dome and minaret in contrast, by this period ;
just as Wren afterwards used dome and towers so effectively in

contrast at St. Paul's. The rather clumsy cylindrical minaret of
Persia, and the pencil-shaped type beloved of the Ottoman
Turks, never spread outside their natural homes.
As Saracenic architecture advanced, the round horseshoe and
the pointed horseshoe arches continued to be favoured, the
semicircular and the ordinary pointed or two-centred arch forms
were frequently employed, and the so-called 'Persian' arch of
which the springing-curve turns into straight lines was largely
used in the country of its origin and elsewhere. It somewhat
resembles our 'Tudor' arch (Fig. 83). Multifoil or cusped
arches became general, and in the form of blind arcading and
tracery were used as surface decoration. Battlements were

elaborately foliated or cut into saw-teeth. Window-openings
continued to be filled with pierced tracery or lattice-work, in
stone or stucco, and were glazed with crudely coloured glass,
perhaps before stained glass came into use in Western countries.

Bands of decorative lettering, modelled in stucco or carved in
wood or stone, alternated with geometrical surface ornament,
for natural forms were prohibited by the theologians. Bold
a? tar
!K^j^SRieScsss3fî?8s^^
Cfnfre Jtne
FIG. 85. PARALLEL OF KUFIC AND GOTHIC INSCRIPTIONS

A. Mosque of Sultan Hasan, Cairo (1356-63); in stucco.
B. Arat Museum, Cairo (Xllth century).
C. South Acre Church, Norfolk (c. 1550).
D. Fishlake, Yorkshire, tomb (1505).
E. Tomb of Richard II, Westminster (1399).
3385
178 Architecture
which scholars increasingly tend to attribute the beginnings of
our medieval vaulting-system), we may reasonably ascribe the
invention of the pointed arch to Muslim buildings in Syria and
elsewhere. The ogee arch almost certainly, and the 'Tudor'
arch possibly, have a similar origin. The use of cusps and of
cusped or multifoil arches comes from the same source, as

probably does the tracery-patterning of surface^, and perhaps
even the use of bar-tracery in windows. Plate-tracery may be
derived from the pierced geometrical lattices in stone and stucco
of the early mosques, or it
may have originated still farther back
in pre-Islamic Syrian or Mesopotamian buildings. The in-
vention of stained glass is sometimes attributed^to the East, but
that attribution has not yet been proved. The use of engaged
shafts at the angles of piers, so important in the history of Gothic
vaulting, is a Saracen innovation of the eighth or ninth century.

Ornamental and pierced battlements came from Mesopotamia
to Cairo and were thence transmitted to Italy, afterwards be-
coming a feature of Gothic architecture. The carved inscriptions

used decoratively in late Gothic work were anticipated in the
ninth century at Ibn-Tulun's mosque at Cairo, but inscriptions
in Kufic characters penetrated far into France during the Mus-
lim occupation of her southern provinces, 1 and rare examples of
ornament even England are believed to show Arabic influence
in
(Fig. 85). Striped fagadesmay have come from Cairo, also possibly
the design of Renaissance campanili and Renaissance shell-niches.
The Arab mashrabiyyah or lattice of woodwork, used to conceal
the women's apartments of a house or as a screen in the mosque,
was copied in English metal grilles. The decoration of surfaces
1
e.g. the carved wooden doors by the Christian master-carver Gaufredus in
a chapel of the under-porch of the Cathedral of Le Puy, and another carved
door in the church of La Voute Chilhac. Bands of ornament on the retable
of Westminster Abbey and on certain early stained-glass windows are attri-
buted by Prof. Lethaby to a similar origin. See A. H. Christie, 'The Develop-
ment of Ornament from Arabic Script' in the Burlington Magazine, vola.
xl-xli, 1922.
Architecture
in low relief, by means of 'arabesques' or diaper patterns,;$nct
the use of geometrical patterns in decoration, is certainly a part
of our debt to the Muslim peoples, who were also the source or
channel of much of our knowledge of geometry.
All these are specific points, but the close contact of East
and West during the Crusades and (more amicably) during the
later Middle Ages must have contributed other influences on
architecture which have escaped notice in this cursory sketch.
In Spain the Moorish tradition in- design persisted right into the
late Renaissance period and helps to account for many of the
complexities and peculiarities of Spanish Gothic architecture.

Lastly, it
may be observed that the development of Muslim
building still
proceeds in some of the remoter countries where it
has flourished for more than a thousand years.
MARTIN S. BRIGGS.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. S. BRIGGS, Muhammadan Architecture in Egypt and Palestine. (Oxford,
E. DIEZ, Die Kunst der islamischen Volker. (Berlin, 1915.)
J.FRANZ, Die Baukunst des Islam. (Darmstadt, 1887.)

A. GAYET, Vartarabe. (Paris, 1893.)
RICHMOND, E. T., Moslem Architecture^ 623-1516: some causes and con-
Royal Asiatic Society. (London, 1926.)
sequences.
G. T. RIVOIRA, Moslem Architecture: its origin and development. (Oxford,
1918.)
H. SALADIN, Manuel d'art musulman: tome /, Architecture. (Paris, 1907.)
N 2
LITERATURE
THE literature of the Muslim Orient seems so remote from us
that probably not one reader in a thousand has ever connected
it in his mind with our own. The student of literary history,
on the other hand, who knows how much in European literature
has at different times been claimed, and how little has ever been
proved, to be of oriental origin, may well be inclined to regard

the whole subject with tolerant scepticism. There are certain
facts,of course, which no one disputes. The oriental apologue
and other works of its class enjoyed wide popularity in the Middle
Ages. The first book printed in England, The DjcttsjindSayings
of the Philosophers, was a translation from a French version of a
Latin recast of an Arabic work of this type. In the eighteenth
century, again, the Arabian Nights ran through at least thirty
editions in English and French, and has since been published
more than three hundred times in all the languages of western
Europe. Omar Khayyam is a name more familiar in England and

America thanm Persia But are these merely isolated intrusions
.
from the East, or do they illustrate a general tendency, and if so,

how did such tendencies arise and what influence did they exert
on the general course of literature ?
Unfortunately few of these
questions may be answered with any finality, and little more can
be attempted here than to suggest, on such evidence as is avail-
able, the lines along which an answer may be sought.

There is no more delicate problem than to assess the factors
which determine the nature and degree of influence exerted by
one literature upon another. The existence of a prolonged and
close historical contact is
clearly not necessary, though such
contacts do invariably leave their mark on the literature of one
or both of the peoples concerned. Nor does it seem to matter
whether their historical relations are in the main friendly or
hostile; the history of all the literatures of Europe serves to
Literature 181
prove that literary fashions and movements do not stop at
military frontiers. More essential than historical contact, and

more difficult to prove by ordinary historical methods, is the fact
of intercommunication. Whether it be personal or bilateral, or,
as more frequently happens, scholastic and unilateral, it is
only
by literary analysis in the last resort that its existence can be
affirmed or denied.
The most important factor is the most elusive of all. Before
any kind of transference is
possible there must be a condition of
receptivity on one or both sides a willingness to take what the
other has to give, an implied recognition of its superiority in one
or another field. It requires no close investigation to show that
European receptivity of Arabic or Persian literary modes has

been strictly limited both in time and in scope. There can be
no comparison between the steady permeation of Western litera-
ture by Latin and, since the Renaissance, by Greek influences,
and its fitful and half-concealed adaptation of elements of Eastern
literature. There has scarcely been anything approaching a
transference of any oriental literary art as a whole into European
literature, but single elements of technique and occasionally

certain established literary motives have been successfully trans-
planted. Why these should have been selected and the others
left is a problem largely of national or popular psychology. It
may be remarked, however, that oriental literature has exerted an

influence less through its differences from that of Europe than
through its similarities. The literary taste of Europe consistently
rejected the strikingly unfamiliar features of Eastern literature,
and was attracted instead to those elements of which the germ
already existed, or had begun to develop in a tentative way, in
European thought and letters. In such cases the oriental
parallels served as a key to the door at which the West was
knocking, or by their colour and brilliance of technique acquired
such popular favour that they illuminated the lines along which
the European movement should proceed. This is not to imply
1 82 Literature
that they set a standard or served as models to be slavishly
imitated; on the contrary, the branch of letters to which their
impulse had been applied afterwards developed or expanded
along its own peculiar lines, without reference to the East, and
often in complete ignorance of its oriental forerunners.
Any attempt to draw an analogy between the influences ex-

erted by oriental and classical literature respectively overlooks
the difference between them, a difference not merely of degree,
but of kind. The literature of Arabia and Persia is essentially
'romantic'. The student brought up to Greek ideals of literary
excellence will find in few of those qualities which constitute
it
the perennial fascination of Greek literature. There is as full, or

fuller, mastery of form, but it is rigid where Greek is
various, and extravagant where Greek is severe. The classics
achieve greatness by restraint and simplicity, the oriental
weaves a laborious fabric of precious and obscure language,
decorated with imagery often far-fetched and fantastic. The
Greek appeals through beauty to the intellect, the Arab or
Persian through richness of colour to the senses and the imagina-
tion. The assertion that Greek literature is creative, oriental
literature fundamentally imitative and poor in intellectual
qualities, though not without an element of truth, is an over-

bearing and extravagant generalization. Where the Muslim
writer excels is in clothing the essential realism of his thought
with the language of romance. But it would be false to conclude
from this that there is an essential antithesis between the oriental
spirit and the spirit of Europe. The antithesis exists, but it is
between the oriental spirit and the classical spirit. Classicism in
European literature has always been imposed from above; the
literature of the people especially in the north and west
shows closer kinship with the spirit of oriental literature. Their
mutual feeling of remoteness is due to their isolation and igno-
rance; whenever a channel has been opened between them, the
flow of oriental influence has generally brought such an access of
Literature 183
strength to the popular currents in European literature as to

enable them to challenge more or less successfully the classical
supremacy.
The very fact of the popular appeal and transmission of
oriental elements in the Middle Ages has still further obscured
the process, rendering more complicated in its effect and often
it
difficult to prove by ordinary methods of historical criticism,

the more so that most of the popular literature on both sides
has perished. Even yet our literary histories show traces of the
contemptuous aloofness which both Arabic writers and Euro-

pean scholars generally adopted towards the songs and tales of
the people. There is every reason to believe that the modern
studj- of folk-literature will throw fuller light on the diffusion

throughout western Europe of both materials and technique
derived immediately from the East. It is possible that this in-
fluence was at work already in the eighth century, 1 but it is
principally with the development of the vernacular literatures

that the question of oriental contacts arises.
The very first problem is perhaps the most difficult, and
certainly the most disputed. A
new type of poetry, with a new
theme, a new and a new technique suddenly
social psychology,
comes into existence in southern France at the end of the
eleventh century. There is little in the earlier literature of
France which points in the direction of this development on ;
the other hand, the new poetry bears some strong resemblances
to a certain type of contemporary poetry in Arabic Spain. What
could be more natural than to suppose that the first Provengal
poets were influenced by Arabic models ? For several centuries
this view met with almost unquestioned acceptance. It was
never more confidently or sweepingly asserted than by Giam-
1
See in Professor Leo Wiener's ingenious arguments for Gothic mediation
of Arabic influences (Contributions towards a History of Arabico-Gothic
Culture, vol. i. New York, 191 7), more especially the chapter on Virgilius Maro
the grammarian.
184 Literature
meria Barbieri in the full tide of the classical revival. 1 On the
revival of medieval studies at the end of the eighteenth century,
when public imagination was still obsessed with oriental
romance, the general opinion, led by Sismondi and Fauriel,
maintained the close association of Provengal with Arabic poetry.
It was only in mid-nineteenth century that there appeared a
revulsion, among both orientalists and students of Romance

philology.The critics demanded documentary evidence of con-
tactsbetween Provence and Andalusia, and failing to find them
swung to the other extreme. If one may without malice at-
tribute some share in the reaction to the overheated nationalism
which animated all the western nations, it must be conceded that
no self-respecting Romance scholar was likely to defend the
theory of Arabic influences in the face of the contemptuous
pronouncement of the famous Orientalist Dozy: 'Nous con-
siderons cette question comme tout a fait oiseuse; nous voudrions
ne plus la voir debattue, quoique nous soyons convaincu qu'elle
le sera pendant longtemps encore. A chacun son cheval de
bataille P 2On this ground the prevailing opinion appears to have
taken its stand; Monsieur Anglade, for instance, is categorical:
'Ainsi fond et forme, les troubadours ont tout cree'.
Yet in spite of the assurance with which both positive and
negative pronouncements have been made, both rest in fact
upon little more than guesswork. Of systematic research into
the problem from the orientalist side there has until recently
been little or none, but the new evidence now coming to light
goes far to remove all doubts that something at least of the
poetic achievement of the south did in fact influence the earliest
3
Provencal poets.
1
DeW Origine delta Poesia Rimata (published by Tiraboschi, Modena,
179)-
2 de fEspagne, 3rd ed. (1881). vol.
Recbercbes sur Vbistoire . . . ii.
Appendix
Ixiv, note 2.
hardly be said that in what follows there

3 It need is no intention of denying
Literature 185
The novelty of Provencal poetry lies not in the theme itself,
but in the conventional treatment of the theme. This palpita-
ting love, expressed with such a wealth of fantastic imagery and
literary refinement, is not the love expressed in the simple and
passionate songs of the people. It is a sentimental doctrine, a
romantic cult, a pathological condition which can be artificially
stimulated, which finds its ideal not in the maiden but in the
wife, from whose worship and service derives an ethical force by
which the poet's life is enriched and ennobled. Whence came
this art of love, this cult of the dame ? Not from the manners of
the time, as they are reflected in the literature of the people,

whether Teutonic or Romance. Women', wrote Brunetiere,
'in the bourgeois life of the Middle Ages seem to have bowed
the head as low as in any age and in any place on earth beneath
the law of force and brutality.' Nor was it by any means im-
plicit in the new ideals of chivalry, which were beginning to
inspire the upper classes. Such artificial sentimentality has

nothing in common with its warrior creed. The feminine ideal
of the new cult is flatly opposed to the Church's ideal of virginity .
Had it between the pro-,

arisen out of the natural relations
fessional poet and his patroness, its tone had been humbler.
Greek and Latin literature, whether of the Golden or of the
Silver Ages, offers little which could serve as its psychological
basis. Yet it obviously depends upon an established literary
tradition, and a possible source for that literary tradition may

at least be looked for in the poetry of Arabic Spain. 1
By the eleventh century Arabic poetry could look back on a

long perspective of growth and development. But far as it might
go there was never a time when love was not one of its main-
springs. In the old art-poetry of the desert, with its con-
the influence of other cultural sources, Latin, Celtic, &c., or of ruling out a
certain measure of indigenous development.
1
See for a discussion of this subject K. Burdach, *t)ber den Ursprung der
mittelalterlichen Minnesangs', in S. B. preuss. Akad. Wiss., 1918.
i86 Literature
ventional pictures expressed in polished language, elaborate
similes, faultless rhymes (for Arabic was
complex metres, and
the of the western languages to insist on perfect rhyme as
first
an essential element in its poetry), every ode must open with a

lament for the parting from some beloved, whose memory is
evoked by revisiting a deserted camping-ground. As poetry

migrated to the town, the love motive asserted itself more
strongly, and a new delicacy replaced the frank hedonism of the

desert. The ode gave place to the short lyric, in which the poet
expressed his own personality and emotions. For a few decades

Arabian poetry enjoyed a new spring, free, laughter-loving, true
to life, before the lyric in its turn became stylized and con-
ventionalyAmong the court poets, on the one hand, it gave rise
to the sentimental lyric and delicate trifle, in which sensuous
music combined with literary artifice to replace the warmth of
genuine emotionXXmong the people it was pressed into the
service of a new art, the romance of the love-crazed swain whose
life is consumed in pure devotion to an unattainable and ideal-
ized mistress, ^mong
the mystics, again, the elements of idealism
in these portrayals of an exalted and spiritual love were seized
upon to serve as an allegory of the soul's unceasing devotion to

the beloved. The bold and sensuous imagery of earthly love
dominates the_mvjtical poetry alike of Arab and Persian.
Turgid, ecstatic, and expressed with traditional Arab fantasy
by some Arab and refined in others by meta-
poets, subtilized
physical speculations, amongst the Persians it takes on a new
sweetness and simplicity, graced with the rich imagery which
springs naturally from the Persian imagination. Each of these
types of love-lyric was destined to play a part in the history of
European literature.
The most noteworthy feature of this new lyrical poetry was
the emergence of a definite literary scheme of platonic love,

combined with a social and ethical theory of love which was the
distinctive contribution of Arabia. Already by the end of the
Literature 187
eighth century some of the poets at the court at Baghdad were
devoting their muse exclusively to this art of love. Less than a
century later a boy barely in his teens, the son and successor of
the founder of the most austere religious school in Islam,
codified the scheme in a work of singular charm. \Jn the Book of
Venus Ibn Dawud arranged, classified, and illustrated in verse
all the
aspects of love, its nature, laws, forms of expression and
effects, in the spirit of the ideal put by Islamic tradition into
the mouth of the Prophet Whoso loves and conceals his love,
:
remains chaste and dies, that one is a martyr.'

The unity of culture in the Muslim world ensured the cultiva-
tion of these poetic arts in Spain also. But here they developed
farther on independent lines, through the assimilation and
coalition of Spanish and Arabic elements in the population, and
under the stimulus of the constant struggle with the Christian
powers of the North. In no period of Arabic literature was there
more widely diffused among all classes the spirit of poetry, the
receptivity of mind and heart to impressions of beauty and
the power of clothing these impressions in language both emo-
tional and exquisite. Of these countless poets, named and name-
less, the lyrics of the cavalier Sa'id ibn Judi quoted by Dozy 1
may serve as examples. Here too the ideal of platonic love found
universal acceptance. The name of Ibnjrlazm is proverbial in
Islam for religious puritanism and biting controversy, and
honoured in the West as that of the founder of the science of
comparative religion. Yet this man wrote and illustrated with
his own on love which rivals and perhaps sur-
verse a treatise
passes the Book of Venus? He accepts the Platonic theory of love

as the means whereby the severed portions of one sublime
essence attain to earthly union, and in this spirit of purest
1
Histoire des Musulmans de VEspagne, ii.
227 ff.
(English trans, by G.
Stokes, Spanish Islam, pp. 332-5.)
2
Ibn Hazm (d. 1064), Jawq al-Hamama (Le Collier de la Colombe\ edited
with an introduction by Petrof, Leiden, 1914.
1 88 Literature
romanticism unfolds an anatomy of love which is in many respects
that of the troubadours of the next century, but to whose
glowing altitudes they seldom attained.
Though so much of Spanish-Arabic poetry was natural and
spontaneous, what has come down to us is mostly the carefully
polished work of the court poets and poetesses, the aristocracy
of their craft, withwhom even princes and ministers did not
disdain to compete, nay, who were themselves princes and
ministers. In this courtly flower of Spanish-Arabic culture a
new poetic technique was gradually built up. Alongside the
epigram and the monoryhmed piece, with its verses of equal
length and caesura, the Andalusian love-lyric began to show a
preference for new stanza forms, with elaborate internal rhymes
and complex metrical schemes. Though these metres are still
syllabic it seems but a step to the poetry of the troubadours.
That too was essentially art-poetry, the production of courtiers
and court-poets, with artificial conventions and complex
stanzas. There remains one difficulty. None of the early trouba-
dours knew Arabic who were the middlemen who transmitted
;
the art from Andalusia to Provence ?

It must be frankly conceded that a complete solution of this
problem cannot yet be given, though much water has flowed

under the bridge since Dozy's time. It is now proved beyond all
1
question that not only were the 'Moors' of Andalusia over-
whelmingly Spanish in blood, but that all, from highest to
lowest, understood and spoke Romance familiarly and habitually.
These Spanish Muslims, while they absorbed Arabic culture,
also contributed to it, and to their collaboration Spanish-
Arabic culture owed many of its distinctive excellences. The
Christians of Andalusia, who had become half-Arabicized (as is
implied by their name ofMozdrabes) and were often conversant

with Arabic literature, in their turn communicated many seeds
By Don Julian Ribera,

1
Disertaciones y Opttsculos (Madrid, 1928), i.
12-35,
109-12.
Literature 189
of Islamic culture to the northern kingdoms. Some such process
of interaction underlies the history of Andalusian and of much
Spanish poetry. The Spanish genius played a large part in the
development of strophic measures, but in return the refinements
of technique imposed by Arabic laws of forms and metre upon
the strophe in its literary form (the mmvashshat)) were reproduced
in thejDOpular bilingual ballad (the zajaT^dÂ thence found
their wayinto^purely romance poetfyTThe identity of the
popular villancico with the zajal is scarcely open to question, ,
and there is no reason to assume that such interaction was

limited to technique or only to one kind of poetry, however few
the proved Arabic elements in the Romancero generally may be.
The Cronica general supplies an analogous example in Spanish
prose literature of the combination of both Arabic and Spanish
tradition. 1
The medium of transmission was thus the popular zajal and
its romance equivalent, the Fortunately one precious
villancico.
fragment of this popular literature has escaped destruction.

This is a collection of some 150 pieces written in the vulgar
mixed dialect in the early part of the twelfth century by the
Andalusian poet Ibn Quzman, who, though himself contem-
porary with the early troubadours, was by his own confession
following an established tradition in Andalusia. The technique
of his poetry is Arabic in its finish and rhymes, but already the
prosodic revolution is
complete the metres are accentual, not
syllabic. His stanzas are skilfully constructed with
a view to the
needs of choral singing, since most of his poems are (as Ribera
has shown) dramatic episodes intended for performance by
street minstrels. A
comparison of these stanzas with the
metrical systems of the first Provenal poets reveals some re-
markable analogies. The poems of William of Poitiers are written

in metres sometimes identical with those of Ibn Quzman, some-
1
See Fitzmaurice-Kelly, A
New History of Spanish Literature^ 1926, p. 24;
R. Menendez Pidal, El Romancero, p. 58.
190 Literature
times with slight variations which appear to be adaptations to
monody of a scheme originally devised for choral singing. More-
over, the very licence and caprice of the Provencal poets shows
that they were using metres which had no established traditions
or raison d'etre amongst them, whereas Andalusian choral poetry
was kept by its musical and rhythmical necessities so true to type,
that its influence can still be distinguished from that of Proven-
$al poetry in the poems of Alfonso the Wise and later Spanish
1
poets.
A final point still remains to be dealt with. Ibn Quzman's
poems by no means reflect either the elevated sentiments of the
court poetry of Andalusia or the honest romance of popular
ballads. Although some of William of Poitiers's productions are
not very far removed from the same gutter morality, there is a
world of contrast between the tone of this Andalusian popular
poetry and the conventional idealism of Provencal court-poetry.
But Ibn Quzman represents a startling degeneration in Spanish-
Arabic society, and it is more than probable judging from
casual references in the Arabic writers to popular versions of
famous poems that in other popular productions (especially in
the eleventh century, when the culture of Andalusia was at its
most brilliant) the ideals of the court-poetry were more faith-
fully reflected.
From this brief review of the evidence it seems clear that, in
view of the number and character of the coincidences between
the court-poetry of Andalusia and the poetry of Provence, the
theory of transmission cannot be simply waved aside. There
are still many points which need to be cleared up, and there are
other questions also, that of the musical accompaniment of
Andalusian and Provencal poetry, for example, 2 which may throw
1
Ribera, op.cit., i. 35-92.
2
See Ribera, Historia de la musica drabe medieval, 1927, and H. G. Farmer,
Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence^ 1930. It may be sug-
gested also, in the modest obscurity of a foot-note, that the technical terms
Literature 191
much light on the problem. But for the present the claim that
Arabic poetry contributed in some measure to the rise of the
new poetry of Europe appears to be justified, if we cannot yet go
all the way with Professor Mackail in asserting that 'As Europe
religion to Judaea, so it owes its romance to Arabia'.

owes its 1
The second area from which Arabic influences were trans-

mitted to Europe was the Norman kingdom of Sicily, whose
traditions were continued more especially by the Emperor
Frederick II. That Arabic poetry jwas cultivated at the co^ rj
of the Norman kings admits of no doubt. But it was only under
Frederick that the Sicilian school arose (unless all earlier works
have perished), and at Frederick's court, as at that of Alfonso
the Wise of Castille, though we hear much of translations of
Arabic books and much about Muslim philosophy, and much too
about Provengal and native troubadours, there is no definite
mention of Arabic poets or poetry .vOn the other hand, Saracen
ballerinas and singing-girls were certainly to be found in
Frederick's suite. The cautious historian of medieval Sicily,
while admitting that if we knew more of Sicilian-Arabic popular
poetry we might possibly discover closer ties between it and the

early Italian poetry in Sicily, goes no farther than to claim that
of Romance poetry might be re-studied from this point of view. Fauriel
326) has demonstrated the Arabic origin of galaubia, and Singer has
(iii.
referred to the senbal, the word midons, and guardador ( =

Arabic raqib).
F. W. Hasluck threw out a hint that stanza was suggested by bayt ('house',
used in Arabic for a verse of poetry). The tensio resembles the Arabic
tandzu* in both function and name. Ribera (Disertaciones, &c. ii. 133-49)
gives Arabo-Persian derivations for a number of other words, including trobar,
which he derives from tarab = music, song. But even if trobar is to be con-
nected with trouver, it is interesting to note that the Arabic wajada 'find'
*
means also 'feel the pangs of love or sorrow'.
1
Lectures on Poetry (1911), p. 97; cf. p. 125: 'To the kindred stocks of the
Arabo-Syrian plateau for of that single race and region Palestine is also a
part we owe largely or even mainly the vital forces which make the Middle
Ages spiritually and imaginatively different from the world ruled over by
Rome.'
192 Literature
the cultivation of poetry in the vulgar tongue was due to the
example of the Arabic poets and the patronage they enjoyed
from Muslim rulers. 1 Yet it is a significant fact that the metric
of the early popular poetry of Italy, as represented by the
canticles of Jacopone di Todi and the carnival songs, and with
more elaboration in the ballata, is identical with that of the
2
popular poetry of Andalusia. Even Petrarch's violent nation-
alist outburst against the Arabs 3 proves at least, if it proves any-
thing, that the more popular kind of Arabic poetry was still
known in Italy in his day.
Whatever place may be assigned to Arabic poetry in stimu-
lating the poetic genius of the Romance peoples, the debt of
medievalEurope to Arabic prose literature is_hardly open to

queîon/mough still far from
explored in detail. The vogue of
Arabic philosophical and scientific works brought with it an
interest in other sides of Arabic literature, more especially in
the apologues, fables, and tales, which constitute the bulk of
Arabic belles-lettres. Already before this, however, oral trans-
mission had broadcast elements of Arabic and other oriental
story over a wide area. Until recently an oriental origin was

claimed and accepted, for^xhej^ûlairtales which flouHsHed in
European the various forms of fabliaux, conies, exemfles, &c.,
during the thirteenth century, and which unquestionably
present analogies with oriental and Indian tales. Although the
exhaustive researches of Professor Bedier have now seriously
weakened the arguments in support of this view, 4 there are still
1
M. Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, 1868-72, iii. 738, 889. Sec also
G. Cesareo, Le Origini della Poesia lirica e la Poesia Siciliana sotto gli Suevi,
1924, pp. 101, 107.
2 See
J. M. Milla" s, Influencia de la poesia popular bispano-musulmana en la
poesia italiana, Revista de Archives, &c., 1920, 1921. It is worth noting also
that the Sicilian Richard of San Germano shows a characteristic feature of
Arabic historical composition in the insertion of poems and verses into his
chronicle.
3 4
Epist. Sen. xii. 2. J. Bedier, Les Fabliaux, $th ed., 1925.
Literature 193
large sections of popular literature which contain at least epi-
sodes from eastern story. Close analogies have been pointed out
between Arabic romances and the story of Isolde Blanchemain,
the German Rolandslied, and other northern tales. The author
of one version of the Grail-saga even mentions an Arabic book
as his source. The Arabic inspiration demonstrated for the Old
French romance of Floire et Blancbefleur is the more significant
because of its relationship with the lovely Aucassin et Nicolette,
which itself bears unmistakable witness to its Spanish-Arabic
provenance in the Arabic name of the hero (al-Qasim) and in
Nor does it in any way rob the
several details of the setting. 1
French jongleur of the credit
due to the creator of a master-
piece of beauty and delicacy to suggest that the chante-fable,
unique in European literature, is a favourite form of popular
Arabic romance.
Arabic travel-literature and cosmography have also left their
traceTln western^jiterature, as was only toHbeexpected when
to travel implied for Europe mainly going on pilgrimage to the
Holy was almost inevitable with oral transmission that

Land.^t
the fabulorfsand marvellous elements should have spread
Marco Polo and 'Sir
farthest. ''They supplied embroideries for
John Mandeville' amongst others, but their range was not

limited to the Latin countries of the West. They penetrated
even to Ireland and Scandinavia possibly by way of the Caspian-
Baltic trade-route and reappear in such monastic tales as the
Legend of Brendan. Merchants and jongleurs brought them
St.
back from the crusading states in Syria and the ports of the
Levant. It was from oral sources v jn^jdl probability, that
Boccaccio derived the oriental tales which he inserted in the
Decamerone.\/Ch2iucei'$ Squieres jTgfc_ia_aii 'Arabian Nights'
1
See for these generally S. Singer, 'Arabische und europaische Poesie im
Mittelalter', in Abb. Preuss. Akad. Wissensckaftcn, 1918, and Z. fur deut.
Pbilologie, lii
(1927), 77-92; and for Aucassin the edition of F. W. Bourdillon
(Manchester, 1919), xiv-xv.
3385 o
194 Literature
story, which was probably brought to Europe by Italian mer-

chants from the Black Sea, since the scene is laid at the court
of the Mongol Khan on the Volga, */
At Sarray in the land of Tartarye.
The oral dissemination of Arabic tales was supplemented in

the fourteenth century by numerous translations of Arabic
collections of stories made for the entertainment of the
new reading classes. These oriental tales were preferred to the
popular medieval stock, not only because of their variety and
polished literary presentation, but above all because they dis-
played a richer imagination more edifying aim. Here the

and a
Christian and Islamic Middle Ages met on common ground,
both in litJrary~prelerences and lit eiary^ methods. The people
told stories because they liked them, and in general their stories
were intended to serve no moral purpose. But the story as a
literary art takes its place in a moral framework. The general
of the writerjs, to define the art of government, or the
purpose
duty of good living, or the profession of the virtues. Of such
works there was an immense number in Arabic, drawn partly
from the stores of old Indian fable, partly from other repertories
in the East (including no doubt much of Greek origin), and
partly from historical and legendary episodes in eastern history.

There was no conception, of course, of literary proprietorship.
Neither in Islam nor Christendom did either author or reader
lay any weight on originality of material or power of psycho-
logical invention. The art of the moralizer (leaving aside for the
present the question of literary style) lay in his faculty of selection
and combination, in exhibiting familiar materials in a new
setting. Thus the Arabic apologues came to play a great part in
medieval and later European literature, passing from land to
land, and inspiring as well as entering into much of the original
composition of the time.
Of the many works of this type which were translated from
Literature 195
Arabic, chiefly by Jews, three may be selected as typical of the
rest. The
ArabjcJ?0o of Sindbad(not jthe Sailor), which was
derived from a Sanskrit original, and is now, like the original
was the medieval source of a number of versions,
itself, lost,
amongst others of a Syriac version (Sindbdri), from which the

medieval Greek Syntipas wasjjerived, a Hebrew version (Sinda-
bar), anoseveral Persian versions, some of which, retranslated into
Arabic and Turkish, were destined to reach Europe in the eigh-
teenth century. The Hebrew Sindabdr is the probable original
on the one hand of the thirteenth-century Spanish Libra de los
Engannos, on the other of the fourteenth-century Latin Historia
Septem Sapientium, which was the source of several verse
romances, amongst them the English Seven Sages of Rome.
The second work was a collection of sayings of the ancient
philosophers, compiled in Egypt in the eleventh century by
a certain Mubashshir ibn Fatik. This was translated into
Spanish under the title of Bocados de oro y while the other

western versions were based on a Latin translation (Liber
philosophorum moralium), from which Guillaume de Tignonville
made his version Les ditz moraux des philosophes, translated into
English by Earl Rivers as The Dictes and Sayings of the Philo-
sophers, and already noted as the first English book printed

by Caxton.
The influence of these and similar works is most obvious in
Spanish literature, especially in the earlier period. From them,

for example, the Infante Don
John Manuel (who was himself
familiarwith Arabic) drew the inspiration for El Conde Lucanor,
in which even the prologue is modelled on the introductions
with which all Arabic works are furnished. * There are indeed
few early prose writings in Spanish which did not draw on
materials translated from Arabic. But it has frequently been
1
It cannot be proved, however, that Don John borrowed directly from
Arabic sources (cf.
G. Moldenhauer, Die Legende von Earlaam und Josaphat,
1929, 90-4).
O 2
196 Literature
remarked that the Arabic literary tradition was not directly
disseminated from Spain; medieval Europe stood here, as in
many other matters, on the shoulders of Italy and southern
France, and only in much later days were such Arabic influ-
ences as had entered into Spanish literature transmitted to
France and England.
The same comparative isolation of Spain is seen in the case of
the third and still more famous collection, the animal fables of
Sanskrit origin,which were translated into Arabic in the eighth
century under the title of Kalila and, Dimna. This was retrans-
lated into Spanish for Alfonso the Wise (1252-84), but the rest
of Europe knew it
only in a Latin translation, entitled Dire-
ctorium humanae vitae, made in the same century by John of
Capua, a converted Jew. This version was drawn upon for other
Latin works, such as the Gesta Romanorum, and it was not until
1552 that it was first translated into the vernacular by Doni.
The subsequent show that even in
fortunes of this oriental tale
the full flood of the had
classical revival oriental literature still
power to attract. Thomas North's Moral Philosophy of Doni

(1570) was but the first of many English versions. The Latin
and vernacular versions continued to be used for many decades
by writers of novelli and even by dramatists (as, for example, by
Massinger in the third act of The Guardian). Its subsequent
revival, as the Fables of P Up ay, in the French translation (1644)
of the late Persian version known as The Lights of Canopus, is
of special interest, as the first direct contact of Persian literature
with western Europe, and one of the sources of La Fontaine.
Yet another branch of Arabic belles-lettres may have con-
tributed to medieval literature. This was the maqdmdt, the
most elaborate of all Arabic compositions. Though literary
convention demanded that maqdmdt should be written in
rhymed prose and adorned with all manner of philological
curiosities, the plan or plot of these works was of the simplest.
They consist of a number of disconnected episodes, the hero of

Literature 197
which always a chevalier d'industrie, a vagabond with a large
is
repertoire of more or less dishonest tricks for gaining a livelihood,

but who is
gifted with a fine literary wit with which he often
expresses the loftiest moral sentiments. To this plan the Spanish
picaresque novels offer certain analogies. It may be added that
the maqdmdt found imitators among the Spanish Jews, and that
El Cavallero Cifar, besides showing other oriental affinities,
contains in at least one of the adventures of the Ribaldo the
first, Spanish picaro an episode from the purely oriental cycle
which is associated in the Arabic version with the character of
Juhd. It is possible also that analogies may be found between
1
episodes in the maqdmdt and early Italian tales of the realist or

picaresque type, but the whole subject remains as yet unex-
plored.
This infiltration of Arabic literary themes into medieval
Europe forms in reality one aspect of a general intellectual move-
ment. Latin civilization was outgrowing the narrow ecclesiastical
disciplines of the Dark Ages; men were becoming curious about
matters which they had hitherto accepted on authority. Unable
to find satisfaction in the narrowness, poverty, and lack of
originality of such Latin literature as they possessed, they were

forced to look elsewhere for what they desired. To the Islamic
world they had hitherto conceded and that grudgingly only
a military superiority; now they realized with shame that it was
also their intellectual superior. With the flood-tide of Arabic
science which followed this conviction there was borne a volume
of prose literature, which entered more or less deeply into all
the rising literatures of Europe, and prepared the way for the
intellectual outburst of the Renaissance. Yet the most important
Islamic contribution to the literature of the Middle Ages may
have been rather the influence of Arabic culture and ideas on
both poetry and prose, whether accompanied or not by material
borrowings from Arabic sources. Though this subject strictly
1
Revue Hispanique, x (1903), 91.
198 Literature
outside the scope of the present chapter, some mention must
falls
be made of the repeated suggestions of recent students, that

elements of the Muslim cosmogony and legends of the ascent of
Muhammad (some of which may go back to older Persian
legend) have entered into the Divina Commedia either direct or
through earlier western legends, such as the Legend of lundal

and St. Patrick's Purgatory, as Arabic philosophical ideas and
the imagery and eroticism of the Muslim mystics are certainly
reflected not only in Dante's works, but also in the leading ideas
of the other poets of the dolce stil nuovo. 1 The interest with
which Arabic studies were pursued in Italy in Dante's
time certainly renders the theory by no means improbable,
though it cannot yet be held as proved, except on points of
detail. But the thought is attractive, if only because the genius
of Dante would tower all the higher could it be shown that he
fused into one magnificent synthesis not only the great heritage
of Christian and classical mysticism, but also the richest and
most spiritual features of the religious experience of Islam.

Before leaving the Middle Ages we must return for a moment
to Spain and take up again
a point already touched on, the con-
tinued influence, namely, of Arabic^ oral tradition and Arabic
culture in Andalusia, after the reconquest of the greater part of
it b^th<rT^nstjans. This influence, though scarcely lending
dogmatic judgements, has none the less a perceptible
itself to
bearing on Spanish, and, through Spanish, on European litera-

ture. Few would deny that something of the warmth and move-
ment, the richer fantasy, which marks the literature of the south
isdue to the Arabic cultural environment of Andalusia during
the early centuries and the impress which that culture left on
the Andalusian. It is of course true that during the interval
between the conquest of Seville and the fall of Granada the
Andalusians were at one with their co-religionists of Castille in
language, traditions, and literary style. But when, with the
1
On this last point see H. J. Chaytor, The Troubadours (1912), 106,
Literature 199
weakening and downfall of the Moorish power, the chief cause
of antagonism was removed, and friendly intercourse was re-
stored between Moor and Christian, there was a remarkable
literary revulsion. It seemed as if the Andalusians felt in the

colder, sterner Castilian the lack of something that still touched
a responsive chord in them, and turned back to the Moorish past
to find it again. The influence of the Andalusian spirit is pro-
bably to be seen already in the polish and refinement which
distinguish the Amadis de Gaula from other romances. It comes
to full expression in the 'morisco' romance, reaching a climax in
the Historia del Abencerrage (before 1550), and its continuation,
the Guerras Civiles of Gines Perez de Hit a. Whether or not
these romances were based in part on Arabic originals is im-
material; the important fact is that they achievedjôith^sispf
Moorijhjmd Spanish culture, which formed a turning-point in
the history of modern European literature. It was the birthday
of the modern novel. To this extent even Cervantes, whose
Don Quixote is, in Prescott's phrase, totally Andalusian in wit, is
indebted to Andalusian culture (though not, of/course, through
the medium of *Cid Hamete Benengeli, Arabian historio-
grapher'),and the same judgement may be Applied to other

names hardly less great in Spanish literature. /
* * * * ^* *
The Renaissance, relegating the East to the background,

erected a barrier and stemmed the tide of efriental influence. |
But the classical discipline could not last.vahe romantic spirit

of Europe, the spirit which had expressed itself in Breton
romances, in Teutonic
folk-lore, in the English drama, stifled
and repressed, sought an outlet. All its creations, pastoral
romance/neroic romance, picaresque novel, failed one after the
other.vTerrault tapped a mighty source, but as yet the folk-tale
was too weak to bear the weight of the assault. Thn^Jni224,
appeared Galland's Arabian Nights. Recent
translatiorôfjjie
researcHeshave shown that thiT^rinnation^was not an isolated
200 Literature
event, but the culminating moment in a long process of artistic

idealization, fed by the morisco romances, the beginnings of
travel and colonization in the East, the descriptions of Indian
and Persian life by Tavernier, Chardin, Bernicr, and others, and
the illusion of local colour created by the various eastern em-
bassies which from time to time had dazzled Paris with their
magnificence.
1
It was all doubtless very superficial, but during
those years there was built up that 'romantic' image of the East,
warm-coloured, exotic, and mysterious, which is still exploited
in our own time. The
succcssjjf the genuinelvôricntajL^f abian
Nights was^ immediateând complete.^The_imagination ,of the
readim^puhlic was firsd. Publishers competed for the privilege
The Arabian Nights was followed
ofrninistering to the fashion.
by thc^PersianTales^('Thousand and One Days'), the old Book
of Sindfagd^came to life again as. the Turkish Tales. When the
supply of genuine material ran short, industrious writers set to
work to supply the deficiency. Geullette filled the life of a
generation with pseudo-translations, and the genius of Mon-
tesquieu created a new form of social criticism in the Lettres
persanes.
In England the craze was hardly less. The Arabian Nights,
the Persian Tales, the Turkish Tales were translated as soon as
they appeared, and went through edition after edition. Numer-
ous imitators learned from Geullette's example how to 'turn a
Persian tale for half-a-crown'. It was a very strange Orient that
was reflected in the 'Oriental' literature of the eighteenth
century, an Orient which the romantic imagination of the time
refashioned after its own ideas and peopled with grotesque
figures clothed in the garb of caliphs, kadis, and jinns. So gross
a perversion could not endure. The pseudo-oriental romance
r
1
Pierre Martino: U Orient dans la Litterature
franfaise au XVII9 et au
XVIIP siecle, 1906$ see also M. P. Conant, The Oriental Tale in England,
New York, 1908, arid for the morisco romances M. A. Chaplyn, Le Roman
mauresque en France, 1928.
Literature 201
wilted under the lash of Hamilton, Pope, and Goldsmith, but

not before it had left its mark on literature. In England, fused
with the kindred rhythms of the Old Testament, it produced
The Vision of Mirza (the spark which first kindled the imagina-
tion of Robert Burns) and Rassdas. In France, reverting, by a
strange coincidence, to the truly oriental form of apologue, it

furnished Voltaire and the reformers with a setting for their
politicaland social satires. And in both France and England it

produced one remarkable book, which, by its fusion of 'Gothic
romance' with oriental subjects and imagery, prefigured and in-
fluenced much of the imaginative work of the next half-century,
Beckford's Fathek. More important, however, was its indirect
influence, its share in predisposing public taste for the reversion
to the non-classical and medieval which goes by the name of the
Romantic movement.
But something more is needed to
explain the success of the
Arabian Nights. The cause is probably to be found in the crisis
through which Frenchjmd English literature was passing, owing
to the expansionofthe reading classes and the demand for a
more popular type ofKterary production. Classicism, in England
at least, had never Been really popular, and the ponderous, slow-
moving novels of the seventeenth century were not for the
people. was an age of experiment, when writers like Defoe,

It
Steele, and Addison were feeling their way towards a new style.
The Arabian Nights, essentially a production of the people,
may have lacked all the finer elements of literary art, but it
possessed in a superlative degree the one quality, hitherto
overlooked by men of letters, but indispensable in a popular
of adventure. It is not over-rash to suggest
literature, the spirit
that supplied the clue for which the popular writers were
it
searching, and that but for the Nights there would have been
no Robinson Crusoe, 1 and perhaps no Gulliver's Travels.
1
An original for Robinson Crusoe has sometimes been sought in the philo-
sophic romance of Ibn Tufayl called Hayy ibn Taqzdn, translated into Latin
202 Literature
The which the vogue for oriental tales was carried
lengths to
in the eighteenth century and the influence which they exerted
are matters generally disregarded by our literary histories. The
explanation of this neglect is doubtless to be sought in the poor

literary quality of the direct imitations in both France and
England, a fact which moved Brunetiere to the criticism that
contact with the Muslim Orient had enriched only a branch of
letters which constituted a national disgrace. But there are
other indications of the depth of the impress made by the
oriental tale on the mind of the century. To Warton, writing
his History of English Poetry in the seventeen-seventies, it seemed
self-evident that the romantic movement in the Middle Ages
was Arabian product. Exaggerated out of all proportion
a purely
though Warton's theory may be, its very existence and accep-
tance throws a strong light on the ideas with which his age was
imbued. The same preoccupation can be seen in Southey's
choice of subjects for his narrative poems Thalaba and The Curse
ofKehama. To the modern critic these may well seem 'remotely

and unpopularly conceived', but to a generation reared on
Maugraby the Magician and other oriental fantasies they were
no more remote and unpopular than are Ali Baba and Aladdin
to the men and women of the twentieth century.
Above all the Arabian Nights remained. There was an element
in them that never failed of appeal to the imagination. It was
not only their rich colour and exotic setting that element
which has made the fortune of their imitators. For all their
magic and mystery they stood on the solid ground of reality;
though their characters might be standardized and undeveloped,
their adventures were real adventures, told with an instinct for
the dramatic. Beneath their fantasy and exotic appeal there was
by Pocock in 1671 under the title of

Philosophus Autodidactus, of which
in 1708. The
Ockley issued an English version subject is now being more fully
investigated by A. R. Past6r; see his work, The Idea of Robinson Crusoe (Part I,
Watford, 1930).
Literature 203
a moral core, without which they could not have entered so
deeply into the heart of Europe, nor have preserved for two
centuries a place in the affections of both learned and simple.
The real East became but the more vivid and its influence the
more potent that it was freed from the cumbering extrava-
gances that had hitherto obscured it.
It must not be forgotten that Europe was still profoundly
ignorant of the true literature and thought of the East. A fresh

page was turned when in 1774 William Jones issued, 'not as
a philologist but a man of taste, not as an interpreter but a poet',
his Latin Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry. For the first time it
was open to the cultured, classically-educated circles of western
Europe to understand and appreciate the qualities of Arabic and
Persian poetry. But the weight of tradition lay heavy on the
literature of France and England, and it was left for the leaders
of the new German movement to grasp their possibilities. They
were free agents, the creators, not the servants, of public taste.
Moreover the poetry of Persia had already left its mark on Ger-
man literature. More than
century before, the translations of
a
Sa'di's Gulistdn and Bustdn made by the traveller and scholar
Olearius had 'refreshed and supplied a salutary stimulus to the
German literature of that time', 1 and the continued influence of
Persian literature is seen, for example, in the Tusuf and Zallkha
story in Grimmelshausen's tale Joseph. On the other hand, the
literature of the eighteenth century could not but reflect the
current French 'orientalism'. Lessing followed Voltaire in
giving an oriental setting to his didactic work, and such early
productions of the Romantic school as Oehlenschlager's All und
Gulhyndi are typically eighteenth-century fantasies, while his
later playAladdin (1808), in spite of its mixture of Arabian
Nights, fairies, elves, and Indian apologues, already shows
glimpses of that better apprehension of the East which was
eventually to relegate all such things to pantomime.
1
Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 24, p. 275. Olearius died in 1671.
204 Literature
For understanding Germany was indebted to a
this real
remarkable line of poet-scholars, who continued the work begun
by Sir William Jones. Through Herder's influence the passion
for study, which was characteristic of the German romantic
movement, extended and thought.
also to oriental literature
Schlegel and Hammer in the first generation,

and Riickert in the
second, revealed to the poets and writers of the West new and
almost unsuspected treasures. The literature of the East,
Indian, Persian, and Arabic, was thus able to enter into nine-
teenth-century German literature to a degree unparalleled in
Europe since the literature of medieval Spain. The first and
fairest flower in the western 'Gulistan' was Goethe's West-
ostlicheDivan. His successors, who read and translated their
oriental models for themselves, went farther. Like Riickert,
they reproduced and imitated Persian ideas and images, if they

did not, like Platen, go the length of using Persian metrical
forms. Goethe, on the other hand, found in oriental poetry
first of all a means of
escape into the world of imagination from
the brutal realities of the age. Mere imitation could not satisfy
him ; rather, by yoking
the art and ideals of Persian poetry with
those medieval and 'romantic' elements in the European tradi-
tion with which they were in closest harmony, he created a new
idiom to express his own thought, and at the same time empha-
sized the cosmopolitanism which it was his aim to impress on
German literature. 1
For a time the Persian and Indian fashion held the field.
Even Heine, though he did not spare his satire on it, could not
keep the oriental note entirely out of his lyrics. But it failed,
as it was bound to fail. It was a hothouse
plant, and could not
take root in European soil without hybridizing. There is much
truth in the view that the more deeply impregnated the poet
1
On the orientalist element in the German Romantic movement see
A. J. F. Remy, Columbia Univ. Germanic Studies, vol. i. no. iv (New York,
1901).
Literature 205
with oriental thought, the important was his work, con-
less
sidered as literature. The genius of Goethe instinctively re-
jected all the elements of Hafiz which he found uncongenial, yet

even among his works the Divan stands below the best. Only
Bodenstedt, with his forged Lieder des Mirza Schaffy, was able
to impress the imagination of the public. Nevertheless, if the
oriental poetry of the German romantic movement cannot be
given a high place as literature, nor be credited with achieving
a fusion of the poetry of the East with modern
European poetry,
it made a valuable contribution to the ultimate heritage of
Europe through its
reproductions and translations, and opened
a door never again closed.
The partial penetration of oriental currents into German
literature might have raised, and did in fact raise, 1 expectations
of an eastward movement on a much wider scale, but they were
totally beliedby the literature of England and France in the
nineteenth century. For good or for evil, the mind of the West
suddenly swung farther away from the East than ever. Dis-
tracted by its new
philosophies, its new new
political ideas, its
inventions, its immense industrial development, it was in no
mood to listen to the East, still less to seek patiently to under-
stand its thought. Goethe's ideal of a Weltliteralur^ broken
on the wheel of nationalism, perished even in Germany. Yet
the place occupied by the East, especially the Islamic East, in
the literature of the nineteenth century and of our own times is
not at all negligible. It seems a paradox that in an age when the
East has become more closely linked to the West than ever in
the past, and when it has exercised an unparalleled power of
attraction over the imagination of the western peoples, the
claims of oriental literature have been entirely ignored. The
1
Cf. the passage from Schopenhauer quoted by Brunetiere (Etudes viii. ,
21 1): 'Le XIX* siecle ne devait guere moms un jour a la connaissance du vieux
monde oriental que le XVP siecle a la decouverte ou a la revelation de
l'antiquit greco-romaine.'
206 Literature
explanation must be sought, at least in part, in the difference of

quality between the Romantic movement in France and England
and the movement led by Herder.
In France the Romantic movement, less exuberant and less
alliedwith scholarship than in Germany, more under the in-

fluence of Scott and Byron than of Goethe and Schiller, showed
few traces of the new orientalism. Political preoccupations,
and that quality in French literature for which provincialism
is
perhaps too strong a word, kept the poets and writers of France
concentrated on things nearer home. It was not that the East
was overlooked; on the contrary 'In the age of Louis XIV^,
wrote Victor Hugo, in his preface to Les Orientals, 'alLtlie
5
worlTwartellenist, now it is'cmentalist . Arid he confessed to
strong poetic sympathies for the oriental world. 'He seemed to
see in it from afar the gleam of a rich poetic art. It is a spring
from which he has long desired to quench his thirst. There in-
deed all is vast, rich, productive, as in the Middle Ages, that
other ocean of poetry.' But in spite of this declaration it would
be difficult to trace any substantial oriental influence in his
verse, certainly not of those Persian poets who cast their spell
over Goethe and the Germans. His sympathies were rather
with the Arabic poets. 'From the Arabs to the Persians the
transition is violent; it is like
coming to a nation of women after
a nation of men. . . . Slavish people, fawning poetry. The Per-
sians are the Italians of Asia.' For him the Orient, the Orient
of Zim-Zizimi as of Les Orientales, was still in essentials the
glittering and barbaric Orient of the eighteenth-century
tradition, the Orient personified by Gautier in the character of

Fortunio, or a decorative Byronic Orient, not the contemplative
and melodious home of poets and scholars. He used it for the
artistic effect of its glowing colours, as Delacroix painted
Algerian subjects. The same may be said of almost all the
French romantics. Some, like Gerard de Nerval and Gautier
the Elder, more under the influence of the German School, felt
Literature 207
a realattachment to the East, but their orientalism is too often
patently at second-hand. The things of the East, in Brune-
tiere's phrase, while becoming familiar, did not become 'in-
terior'.
English literature in the nineteenth century stood substan-

tially on the same footing as that of France. The effect of the
new orientalism was more marked, as might have been expected,
but the East continued to serve as little more than decorative
background, enriched by the romantic insistence on 'local
colour', a legacy of Scott and the German movement. It was
Byron who made this other Orient popular, and its classic
example is Moore's Lalla Rookh. The influence of the Arabian
Nights is reduced to a few elements of the frame-story, and the
poetical episodes are based on the works of Jones, d'Herbelot,
and other orientalists. In order to saturate his imagination with
eastern ideas and imagery, Moore secluded himself for two years,
but despite his own satisfaction with the result,
1
his poem merely
transports the accents of Scott from his native land to India.
For the rest, the place of orientalism in the greater poets is
negligible; Sohrab and Rustum, Ferishtatfs Fancies, and the like,
have little of the East in them but the name. In prose literature
Shagpat stands alone in dependence upon Arabian models.
The solution of the paradox, then, is that, where the Muslim
East was concerned, preoccupation with the romantic scene of
their own imagining distracted the poets and writers of England
and France from the reality behind the mask which served them
so well. The East was treated as a mere colour-scheme, and its
claim to have contributed to the spiritual heritage of mankind
impatiently waved aside. Long ago Sir William Jones observed

that no appreciation of Asiatic poetry was possible without a
scholarly knowledge of the peoples and natural history of Asia.
'Although I have never been in the East myself, yet every one who has
1
been there declares that nothing can be more perfect than my representations
of it, its people, and life, in "Lalla Rookh"/
aoSi
Jh fon this indisputable knowledge was confined to a few

javaftTs and civil servants, any productive influence of oriental
literature and thought upon Europe was out of the question.
Those who understood the East best, and who portrayed it, like
Gobineau and Morier, with a certain ironic sympathy, doubtless
owed something to oriental literature as well as to oriental
life, but it is a debt not easily estimated.
Yet even the nineteenth century was not to be left without a
witness to the essential kinship of East and West. Just as an
Englishman created in Vaihek the synthesis of the oriental and

the Gothic tale, so now another Englishman was to demonstrate
the power of an eastern poet to penetrate to the heart of
western poetry. Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam is at once truly
Persian and truly English, not a translation, but a re-creation.
If the mood expressed in the famous quatrains is not of the most
heroic or exalted, none the less they caught the exact tone of
the age, and voiced it as perfectly as eight centuries earlier they
had voiced the polished hedonism of the cultured society of
Ispahan.
On looking back over the field of European literature, the
influence of the literatures of the Muslim East seems at first
confined to a narrow and unproductive strip. Only when it is
realized that the East has acted like a leaven on the spirit is it
seen to possess a far wider importance. At three different periods,

if our view is correct, it has reacted on western literature with
results identical in nature, though not in degree. On each
occasion function has been to liberate the imagination from a
its
narrow and oppressive discipline, to make the first breach in the

wall of convention. It is in its power of calling into action
creative impulses hitherto dormant or impotent that eastern

literature has laid the West under its debt. The movement once
started has gathered momentum from its own internal resources,
and such oriental elements as have been absorbed are so blended
with native elements that in the finished development they are
SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
to A. D. 750
I.
Early Period . . . . . .311
2. Age of Translation from about 750 to about goo . . .
315
3. The Golden Age from about OOO to about IIOO . . . 322
4. Age of Decline from about IIOO *. . . .
-337
5. The Legacy . . . . . .
.344
THE treasure-houses of Islamic science are just beginning to be
opened. In Constantinople alone there are more than eighty

mosque libraries containing tens of thousands of manuscripts.
In Cairo, Damascus, Mosul, and Baghdad, as well as in Persia
and India, there are other collections^) Few have been listed,
much less described or edited. Even the catalogue of the
Escorial Library in Spain, which contains a large part of the
wisdom of western Islam, is not yet complete. During the last
few years the mass of material recovered has gone far to subvert
our former conceptions and has thrown a flood of new light on
the early history of scientific thought in the Islamic world.
Thus at present even an outline of the medical and scientific
achievement of Islam can, at best, be but tentative.
I.
Early Period to A.D. 750
When, in the seventh century, the Arabs first entered into the
heritage of an ancient civilization,^ they brought with them
apart from their religious and social ideals, no spiritual contribu-
tion save their music and their language. \The rich and flexible
tongue of Arabia was destined to become the scientific idiom of

the Near Easti just as Latin grew into a medium of scientific
understanding 'in the West.

The Arabian pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry shows that
the Bedouins possessed a certain knowledge of the animals, plants,
and stones of their vast peninsula. Their poets had a predilection
and horses, and
for describing the qualities of their riding-camels
312 Science and Medicine
from their accounts in later centuries was derived a definite class
of literature. In medicine, hygiene* andmeteorology their
knowledge_jva^_jno^^ The Quran expresses no
clear conception of the nature of disease and gives hygienic
directions only for social purposes. More elaborate material is
afforded by Quranic traditions and commentaries formed during
the first centuries of the Islamic faith. The contents of these,
however, are of but little scientific value, being mere lists oi
diseases and remedies mingled with magic practices, description!
of talismans against the evil eye and protective prayers.
By the time the Arabs had penetrated into the Byzantine anc
Persian Empires., Greek science had for centuries ceased to b<
a living
fcpê.vlt
had passed into the hands of scholars wh<
copied or commented on the works of Aristotle, Hippocrates
Galen, Ptolemy, Archimedes, and the rest. The Greek medic;
tradition had found its most effective expositors in Aetios c
Amida (ft. c. 550) and Paul of Aegina (fl. c. 625) who dwelt i
Alexandria, in Alexander of Tralles (525-605) domiciled

Rome, and Theophilos Protospatharios of Constantinop]
(fl. c. 640).
During the centuries preceding the Arab invasion, the capit
of Egypt saw some feeble revival of its ancient academy yHerf
new basis for medical learning was created by abstraction oft
main works of Galen. The Alexandrian Johannes Philopor
stands out as a bol3 advocate of the views of Aristotle. T
writings bearing the name of Hippocrates had been condens
by Alexandrian scholars at an earlier period. Egypt, howe\
provided on the one hand a population fanatically Christian, r
on the other abounded in occultism and mysticism. The soil '
not favourable for any scientific development.

For such reasons Jjgygt *iled to act^ as an
L
effectively
mediary betweenj3re^^
that we must look to the Syriac-speaking world.VThe
Aramaic or Syriac idiom had, from the third century onw*
Science and Medicine 313
gradually replaced Greek in the learned circles of western Asia.

The bearers of this Syro-Hcllenistic civilization were
mainlyjthe
Nestorians. This Christian sect was founded in A,D. 428 by
Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople VI ts adherents were con-
demned as heretical by the Council of Ephesus in 43 1 and thereon
migrated to Edessa. Expelled thence in 480, by the Byzantine
EmêroivZeno, they emigrated to Persia, then under Sasanian
rule, wEenTthey were well received. Pushing yet farther east-
ward, with missionary zeal, they penetrated the heart of Asia
and reached even as far as western China.
The Nestorian scientific centre, which included a medical
school, was transferred from Edessa to Nisibison Mesopotamia^
and again in the first half of the sixth century to Junde-
shapur in south-west Persia. There, besides a large hospital, an
academy had been founded in the fourth century by the Sasa-
nian monarch. The great' king Chosroes Nushirwan (531-79)
made the city the most important intellectual centre of the time.
Here Greek scholars who had left Athens when Justinian closed
the philosophical schools in 529 came to meet Syrian, Persian,
and Indian sages. Thus arose a scientific syncretism which later
became important for the development of Islamic thought.
Chosroes sent his own physician to India in search of medical
books. These were then turned from Sanskrit into Pahlavi
(Middle Persian), and many other scientific works were translated
from Greek in to Persian or Syriac. A disciple of the medical school
of Jundeshapur and a contemporary of the Prophet was the first
scientifically trained medical man in Arabia, and is cited by the
Quranic traditionists.
The important scientific figure in the Syyiacjêakjng
first
worjdjwaajSergius of Resh-ÂjaaU^. 536) who was not a Nestorian

but a Monophysite (Jacobite) Christian priest and chief
physidan in his Mesopotamian birth-place. It was he who
began the tasFof translating the Greek medical literature into
Sjrriac. Versions of many important works of
Galen are ascribed
to him. Though crude, they were sufficient to maintain Greek
medical tradition in western Asia for more than two centuries.
this period scholars began to write
During jnedical treatises
of their own, based on Greek medicine. The best known
ofjîsejveejlie^J^ Ahron^ a_ Christian priest and

physician in Alexandria shortlybefore the rise of Islam.
The work was perhaps originally composed jn_Qiek, but
soon translated into ^riac^njLfiSLintQ Arabic The writing .
of AhlvonTias not survived, but it seems to have contained the

first of
description ~ small-pox, a
disease unknown to ancient
Greek medicine*".
References to works on the natural sciences, from the centuries
immediately preceding the rise of Islam, are rarer than those of a
medical character. At some early period the Parva naturalia of
Aristotle and certain pseudo-Aristotelian books On the cosmos
and On appeared in Syriac, as did also the Physiologus, a

the soul,
Christian theological treatise on animals and their legendary
powers and qualities. In the same language appeared versions of

Greek treatises on cattle-breeding, agriculture, and veterinary
medicine, as well as alchemical tracts. Some early Syriac frag-
ments on metallurgic technical procedure still survive. It is pro-
bable that during the Sasanian rule the main centres of alchemi-
cal and astrological study were the great towns in the eastern
and northern provinces of Persia, where Chinese and Indian
influences were being welded to form a new civilization.
When the Arabs overran north Africa and western Asia they
left the Byzantine and Persian administrative and scientific
institutions almost untouched. The academy of Jundeshapur

continued as the scientific centre of the new
Islamic empire.
From here, during the Umayyad period (661-749), learned men,
especially physicians, came to Damascus, the capital. They were
mostly Christians or Jews bearing Arabic names. It was a Per-
sian Jew, Masarjawaih,
who^traiikted Ahron's Pandects into
Arabic, and was responsiBliTfoTwha^^ the earliest
book in that language. History however is almost silent
scientific
concerning scientific aims at the court of the Umayyad Caliphs.
2. Age of Translations from about 750 to about 900.
The of the Abbasids about 750 inaugurated the epoch

rise
of greatest power, splendour, and prosperity of Islamic rule. At

the very dawn stands the figure of a Muslim whose shadow lies
athwart the science of the Middle Ages in the Orient as in the
Occident. Jabir ibn Hayyan called as-Sufi (that is 'the Mystic'),
the Geber of medieval Latin literature, was the son of an
Arabic druggist in Kufa who died a martyr of the Shl'ite
propaganda. Jabir practised as a physician, but no record of

hismedical writings has come down to us, though the author of
this essay has recently been able to recover a work ascribed to
him on poisons. Jjibirjs famous as the fatherof Arabic alchgmy.
As we write there arrives evidence, however, that the works
ascribed to him are of the tenth century, where we shall accord-
ingly consider them (p. 325).

Jabir is said to have been closely attached to the family of the
Barmecides, the powerful viziers of Harun ar-Rashid. He was
implicated in their downfall in A.D. 803 and died in exile at Kufa,
his father's birthplace, where it is said that his laboratory was
found in ruins two hundred years later.
In the time of the second Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur (754-75)
the task of translation of Greek wisdom was taken up again,
notably at Jundeshapur. From there the ruler, when sick, sent
for Jurjis (George) of the Christian family of the Bukht-YismV
('Jesus hath delivered'), chief physician at the renowned hospital.

Another member of the same family was later consulted by the
Caliphs al-Had! (d. 786) and Harun ar-Rashid (d. 809).
The Bukht-Yishu' family produced no less than seven genera-
tions of distinguished physicians, the last of whom lived into the
second half of the eleventh century A.D. It was doubtless the
skill of the first Bukht-Yishu* that made the caliphs desire to
propagate Greek medical knowledge among the physicians of
their empire.
The ninth century was the period of greatest activity in
the work of translation. The old Syriac versions of Sergius were
revised and new ones added. The translators, mostly Nestorian
Christians, had a command of the Greek, Syriac, and Arabic
languages and often also of Persian. Most of them wrote first in
Syriac. The venerable Yuhanna ibn Masawayh (d. 857), however,
who was for half a century physician to Harun ar-Rashid's
successors, produced a number of medical works in Arabic. In
general the Syriac versions were prepared for Christian disciples
and friends, while those in Arabic were intended for Muslim
patrons who were themselves sometimes men of learning.
During the reign of the Caliph Al-Ma'mun (813-33) tne new
learning reached its first climax. The monarch created in
Baghdad a regular school for translation. It was equipped with
a library. One of the translators there was Hunayn ibn Ishaq
(809-77), a particularly gifted philosopher and physician of wide

erudition, the dominating figure of this century of translators.
We know from his own recently published Missive that he
translated practically the whole immense corpus of Galenic
writings. This amounted to a hundred Syriac, and thirty-nine
Arabic versions of Galen's medical and philosophical books. His
disciples,of whom his son Ishaq and his nephew Hubaysh were
the most prominent, produced some thirteen Syriac and sixty
Arabic translations. Thus was transmitted to the Islamic world
the whole legacy of the most voluminous of the Greek scientific
writers.^
Hunayn's predilection for the scholastic turn in Galen's
theories is
everywhere apparent. It was Hunayn who gave Galen
his supreme position in the Middle Ages in the Orient, and
indirectly also in the Occident. Concerning the works of Hippo-

crates we are less well informed. Hunayn himself translated his
Aphorisms, and this version remained classical for the later
Arabs who frequently commented on it. Most of the other
Hippocratic works were translated by Hunayn's disciples.

These versions were often revised by the master, who himself
rendered into Syriac and Arabic nearly all the commentaries
that Galen had himself written upon Hippocrates. Hunayn
translated moreover the great Synopsis of Oribasius (325-403),
the Seven Books of Paul of Aegina both voluminous works
and the important and exceedingly influential Materia Medic a
of Dioscurides (fl. c. 60) which had been badly rendered by a
former translator. This work was yet again translated into
Arabic in Spain during the second half of the tenth century (see
p. 330). Magnificent illustrated Arabic manuscripts of these
Arabic translations of Dioscurides are contained in various
libraries. Among the Arabic translations ascribed to Hunayn
are works of other Greek physicians and veterinary writers,
together with several Aristotelian physical works and the Greek
Old Testament (the Septuagint). Many of Hunayn's translations
are extant in manuscript, particularly in the libraries of
still
Constantinople. They exhibit a free and sure mastery of the

language, an easy adaptation to the Greek original, and a striking
exactness of expression without verbosity. The superiority of
Hunayn's workmanship was so generally recognized that many

of the minor translators ascribed their productions to the great
master.
Hunayn's own compositions are nearly as numerous as his

translations. They include many summaries of, and commen-
taries on, Galen's works, and skilful extracts and recapitulations
in the form of text-books for students. Among the Arabs and
Persians the most renowned of his books were the Questions on
Medicine, a manual in the form of query and answer, and Ten

Treatises on the Eye, which is the earliest systematic text-book of
ophthalmology known. Several important works of Galen,

though lost in their Greek original, have been preserved for us
in the Arabic translations made by Hunayn or his pupils.
Hunayn ibn Ishaq had several contemporaries who are con-
sidered 'great' translators, besides some ninety pupils who under-
took similar work of less importance. In the former class were
his nephew Hubaysh, his son Ishaq (d. 910), the great physician
and mathematician, Thabit ibn Qurra (825-901) of Harran in
Mesopotamia, and Qusta ibn Luqa (Constantine, son of Luke,
Jl. c. 900). All these except Thabit were Christians, like the
majority of the physicians of the ninth century. Thabit him-

self was a heathen 'Sabian' or star-worshipper. Hunayn and
Hubaysh translated medical writings almost exclusively, their
colleagues devoted themselves rather to astronomical, physical,

mathematical, and philosophical Greek works. All of them
produced also works of their own composition, the titles of which
run into many hundreds. In the first half of the ninth century
scientific works in the Syriac language predominated, but as the
century wore on Arabic works became more numerous. Accom-

panying this process was the disappearance of the old school of
Jundeshapur, all its famous physicians and scientists having
been gradually transferred to Baghdad and Samarra, the brilliant
residences of the caliphs.
About 856, al-Mutawakkil re-founded at Baghdad the library
and translation school, the direction of which was entrusted to
Hunayn. The caliphs and their grandees furnished the neces-
sary means to allow the Christian scholars to travel in search
of Greek manuscripts and to bring them to Baghdad for
translation. Thus Hunayn himself relates concerning a work
of Galen now lost, and rare even at that date, 'I sought it
earnestly and travelled in search thereof in Mesopotamia, Syria,
Palestine, and Egypt, until I reached Alexandria. Yet I was
not able to find aught save about half of it at Damascus. He
5
says that he always tried to work from at least three manu-

scripts of a Greek book so as to collate them and restore
their text properly a very modern conception of the duty of
an editor.
As for medical learning in
Baghdad, an interesting passage in
Hunayn's recently published Missive on the Galenic Translations
shows us the Greek traditions fully alive there in 856. Thus he
gives a picture of how the Twenty Books of Galen were being
studied. 'The reading of the students of the Medical School at
Alexandria was confined to these books, keeping to the order
which I have followed in my list. They were accustomed to
meet daily to read and interpret one of the standard works, as in
our days our Christian friends meet daily at the educational

institutions known as schole (uskul) to discuss a standard work
from among the books of the Ancients. The remainder of
Galen's books they used to read each for himself, after an intro-
ductory study of the afore-mentioned books, just as our friends

to-day do with the explanations of the books of the Ancients.'
At this period, as well as later, full liberty to teach was granted
in the schools and mosques of Baghdad.

Besides the translations of Greek works and their extracts, the
translators made manuals of which one form, that of the
'pandects', is typical of the period of Arabic learning. These

are recapitulations of the whole of medicine, discussing the
affections of the body, systematically beginning at the head and
working down to the feet. Most of these pandects are lost. One
however was republished at Cairo only a few months ago. It
was ascribed to Thabit ibn Qurra (p. 318), more celebrated as
a translator and astronomer than as a physician. It is divided

into thirty-one sections. The subjects 'treated are hygiene,
'hidden' and general diseases, e. g. those of the skin ; then comes
a section occupying the bulk of the work on diseases of parts
from the head, down through the breast, stomach, and intestines
to the extremities then follows a discussion on infectious diseases,
;
among which are small-pox and measles and here also poisons find
;
a place; next is an account of climate, then of fractures and
dislocations, then of food-stuffs and diet, and lastly of matters of

sex. The exposition of each disease, its causes, symptoms, and
treatment, given in clear and succinct language.
is
Many Greek
and Syriac authors are quoted.
Another kind of medical literature, much in favour with the
Arab scholars, was the cram book in the form of questions and
answers. Such books have survived in hundreds of manuscripts
and have done much to give to Arabic medicine its scholastic
aspect.
As regards the process of translation of the Greek works on the
sciences other than medicine, our sources of information are
somewhat meagre. Most of the Aristotelian scientific corpus was
rendered into Syriac and Arabic by unknown translators. The
Physics, the Meteorology, the De Anima, De Sensu, De Coelo,
De Generatione et Corruptione, the Historia Animalium, together
with works on botany, mineralogy, and mechanics spuriously
ascribed to the great philosopher, all became accessible in these
languages. Some treatises of neo-Platonic origin such as the

Secret of Creation and the famous De Causis, ascribed to Apol-
lonius of Tyana (called Balinus by the Arabs), and other apocry-
phal works of Hellenistic scientists appeared in Arabic dress.

Many Greek alchemical works, all or most under false ascrip-
tions, were also translated. During the ninth century A.D.,
however, no progress in chemistry is recorded, and two of the
great scientists, Hunayn and al-Kindi (d. c. 873), were violent
opponents of alchemical practices which they considered
fraudulent.
We turn nowjfrom the translations to the original works
of the period. In physics al-Kindi is the most frequently
named scholar. No less than 26<f~works are ascribed to this
first Muhammadan 'Philosopher of the Arabs'. Of these at
least fifteen are on meteorology, several are on specific weight,
on tides, optics and notably on the reflection of light, and eight
are on music. Unhappily the bulk of al-Kindfs scientific output
is lost. His Optics^ preservedja_a Latinî^n^tior^. influenced
Roger Bacon
The
technical arts were rapidly developing in Mesopotamia
and Egypt, where irrigation works and canals for water-supply
and communications were created. Theoretical mechanics
roused much interest, and many books on elevation of water,
water-wheels, on balances and on water-clocks were written.
The earliest treatise on mechanics extant appeared about 860
as the Book of Artifices by the mathematicians Muhammad,
Ahmad, and Hasan, sons of Musa ibn Shakir, who were themselves
patrons of translators. This book contains one hundred tech-
nical constructions of which some twenty are of practical value,
among them being accounts of vessels for warm and cold water,
and water wells with a fixed level. Most are descriptions of
scientific toys such as drinking-vessels with musical automata
and the like, based on the mechanical principles of Hero of
Alexandria.
In natural history a special type of literature arose during the
eighth century. It took the form of accounts of animals, plants,
and stones composed with a literary aim, but containing useful
information. One of the most prominent authors of such works
f
was the famous Arabic philologist al-Asma I of Basra (A. D. 740-
828). He composed books On the Horse, On the Camel, On Wild
Animals, On Plants and Trees, On the Vine and the Palm-Tree,
On the Making of Man, and several other writers produced
comparable works. A book that has caused much controversy
is the Nabataean Agriculture of Ibn Wahshiyya (c. A.D. 800).
It contains some useful information on animals, plants, and their
cultivation, mingled with legends and forged translations from

Babylonian and other Semitic sources. The Syriac version
of the work on husbandry (Geoponica) by the Byzantine scholar
Cassianus Bassus (c. 550) was translated into Arabic by different
scholars.
After the Arabic edition of Aristotle's apocryphal Mineralogy
many Islamic writers composed books on stones, particularly
precious stones, which form a special genre, the 'lapidary', after-
US Y
wards both translated and imitated in the West. Nearly all those
we have mentioned, from c Jabir ' to al-Kindi, were authors of
such pamphlets. AJ-Kindl small works.on
moreovgr^TOtejseverai
iron anj_steeHor weapons. The increasingly close connexion
between the empire and eastern and southern lands,
caliphs'
e. g.,Turkistan, India, and the east African coasts, increased the
afflux of rare and precious stones and the knowledge of them.
Thus some modern names of stones still bear traces of Arabic or
Persian contacts, for example the bezoar (Persian pad-zahr,
: i. e.
protecting against poison). Stôo^nai^^

^ e. g.
camphor (an_Arabic wpâ^gf^^rsiar^^rigin) and galanga-root

(Persian khulinjdn from Chinese kawliang-chang) from the
Sunda Islands, musk from Tibet, sugar-cane from India, amber
from the coasts of the Indian Ocean. Pharmacological and toxi-
cological treatises were composed by many of the Arabic-
writing physicians from Jabir ibn Hayyan onwards. Papejr was
introduced from China into the Islamic world in the eighth
century and in A.D. 794 the first Islamic paper-manufacture was
established in Baghdad.
3. The Golden Age from about goo to about IIOO.

At the end of the period of translation, the physicians and
scientists of the Islamic world stood on a firm foundation of
Greek science, increased by a large share of Persian and Indian
thought and experience. Their work had been learned but not
very original. From this time on they begin to rely upon their
own resources and to develop from within.
The sciences, particularly medicine, now pass rapidly from
the hands of Christians and Sabians into the possession of Mus-
lim scholars, mostly Persians. In medicine, in place of pandects
compiled from antique sources, we find imposing encyclopaedic
works in which the knowledge of former generations is carefully
classified and set against that of the moderns.
The first and surely the greatest of the writers of this new
school is al Razi, the authorknown to the Latin West as Rhazes
(c. 865-925), a Persian Muslim born at Rayy near modern Tehran.
Rhazes was_unûêdjy^die_great:es^ physician^ of the, Islamic
world and one jgf the ffeat physicians oall_time. He studied in
Baghdad under a disciple of Hunayn ibn Ishaq, who was ac-
quainted with Greek, Persian, and Indian medicine. In his youth
Rhazes practised as an alchemist, but in his later years, when his
reputation attracted pupils and patients from all parts of western

Asia, he devoted himself exclusively to medicine. His erudition
was all-embracing, and his scientific output remarkable, amount-
ing to more than 200 works, half of which are medical.
The writings of Rhazes on medicine included many short
missives of an ephemeral character. Their very titles bring a
human element into what must be, for most readers, a somewhat
arid theme. On
the fact that even skilful 'physicians cannot heal
Why
all diseases^ frightened patients easily forsake even the skilled
physician; Why people prefer quacks and charlatans to skilled
.
physicians; ignorant physicians, laymen, and women have

Why
more success than learned medical men, are among his lighter
topics. Other of his missives treat of separate diseases, for
example of stone in the bladder and in the kidneys, both very
common conditions in the 'near East. We have also-Jby him
The most celebrated of all the works of
Rhazes is that On Small-pox and Measles. It was early translated
into Latin and later into various languages, including English,
being printed some forty times between 1498 and 1866. It

gives the first clear account of these two diseases that has come
down to us. An extract will convey to the reader something of
the observing spirit of the original.
'The outbreak of small-pox is

preceded by continuous fever, aching
in the back, itching in the nose and shivering during sleep. The main
symptoms of its presence are: back- ache with fever, stinging pain in
the whole body, congestion of the face, sometimes shrinkage, violent
Y 2
redness of the cheeks and eyes, a sense of pressure in the body, creeping
of the flesh, pain in the throat and breast accompanied by difficulty
of respiration and coughing, dryness of the mouth, thick salivation,
hoarseness of the voice, headache and pressure in the head, excitement,
anxiety, nausea and unrest. Excitement, nausea and unrest are more
in the back
pronounced in measles than in small-pox, whilst the aching
is more severe in small-pox than in measles.'
Rhazes gives sound and detailed advice as to the treatment of

the pustules after the full development of small-pox. These
pustules are of course the cause of the unsightly scars left by the
disease, which is still common in the East.
The greatest medical work of Rhazes, and perhaps the most
extensive ever written by a medical man, is his al-Hawi, i. e.
6
Comprehensive Book', which includes indeed Greek, Syriac, and
early Arabic medical knowledge in their entirety. Throughout
his lifeRhazes must have collected extracts from all the books
on medicine which he had read, together with his whole medical
e^cgerience.
These he combined in his last years into this
enormous manual. The Arabic biographies agree in saying that
he could not finish his work and that after his death his disciples
gave it its actual form. Of the more than twîxtjLYQlumeg of
which the Hdwl consisted about ten only are in existence,
scattered in eight or more public libraries. Half a century after
Rhazes only two complete copies were known, but \ have myself
found a note in the book of an oculist of the Bukht-Yishu*
family of about A. D. 1070 to the effect that he had had0/ccasion
to consult five copies of the Hdwfs ophthalmic section. For
gach jjjsease Rhazes^first^ citesâll thc_ Grcck^ Syrian, Arabic,
.
Injiajjâuthp^ gives _his own
êx^^ and he preserves many striking ex-
amples of his clinical insight.
The fl^was_tiaiilaJ;e_.d jnt<xXatin under the auspices of
Charles I of Anjou by the Sicilian
Jewish physician Faraj ibn
Salim (Farragut) of Girgenti, who finished his enormous task in
1279. Herendered the flkme al-Hawl by continent, and as the
Liber Continent (see Legacy of Israel, p. 221) this greatest work
of Rhazes was propagated in numerous manuscripts during the
following centuries. It was repeatedly printed from 1486 on-
wards. By 1542 there had appeared five editions of this vast
and many more of various parts of it. its
costly work, besides
Influence on EuropcîLJiiedicine wasjjiiijery considerable.
Besides medicine, Rhazes left writings on theology, philo-
sophy, mathematics, astronomy, and the 'natural sciences'.

The last deal with matter, space, time, motion, nutrition,
growth, putrefaction, rneteoroiogy, ojjfrcs, and alchemy. The

importance of Rhazes' alchemical work has been brought tc
light during the last few years only. His great Book of the Art
(of Alchemy) was recently discovered in the library of an Indian
prince. Although dependent partly on the same sources as
'Jabir', Rhazes excels him in his exact classification of substances,
and in his clear description of chemical processes and apparatus,
which is
always devoid of mystical elements. While 'Jabir' and
the other Arabian alchemists divide mineral substances into
'Bodies' (gold, silver, &c.), 'Souls' (sulphur, arsenic, &c.), and
'Spirits' (mercury and sal-ammoniac), Rhazes classifies al-
chemical substances as vegetable, animal, or mineral, a concep-

tion which comes from him into modern speech. The class of
minerals he divides into spirits, bodies, stones, vitriols, boraxes,
and salts. He distinguished volatile 'bodies' and non-volatile
'spirits', placing among the latter sulphur, mercury, arsenic,
and salmiac.
A prominent contemporary of Rhazes was the writer known to
the West as Isaac Judaeus (855-955). This Egyptian Jew became
physician to the Fatimid rulers of Qairawan in Tunisia. His
works were among the first to be translated into Latin, the task
being accomplished by Cons tan tine the African about 1080.
They exercised much influence on Western medieval medicine,
and were still being read in the seventeenth century. Robert
Burton (1577-1640) quotes them freely in his Anatomy of
Melancholy. The books of Isaac On Fevers, On the Elements, On
simple Drugs and Aliments,

and above all, his treatise On Urine
dominated medicine for many centuries. Very remarkable is
his little tract, extant in a Hebrew translation only, Guide for
Physicians. a high ethical conception of the medical

It shows
profession. Some of
the aphorisms in this work are worthy of
record: 'Should adversity befall a physician open not thy mouth
to condemn, for each hath his hour.' 'Let thine own skill exalt
thee and seek not honour in another's shame.' 'Neglect not to
visit and treat the poor, for there is no nobler work than this,'
'Comfort the sufferer by the promise of healing, even when

thou art not confident, for thus thou mayest assist his natural
powers.' A practical piece of advice excellent when dealing
with Oriental patients is 'Ask thy reward while the sickness is
:
waxing or at its height, for being cured he will surely forget

what thou didst for him!'
most distinguished disciple was Ibn al-Jazzar (d. 1009),
Isaac's
a Muslim, whose chief work Provision for the Traveller was early
translated into Latin as the Viaticum, Greek (Ephodia) and
Hebrew. was very popular with medieval physicians, because
It
it gave good record of internal diseases, but it was ascribed by
a
its translator Constantine to himself and not to the real author
(see p. 346).
The alchemical writings to which the name of 'Jabir' is at-
tached have long been puzzle to scholars. If this 'Jabir' be the
a
eighth-century mystic of that name, it is difficult to understand

how he could have obtained any knowledge of the still in-
accessible Greek alchemical literature. As already indicated,
however (p. 315), evidence is now available that the works bear-
ing the name of 'Jabir' were produced early in the tenth century.
It appears that they were the work of a secret society similar
to the so-called 'Brethren of Purity'. In the medical work
of 'Jabir' only Greek authors are quoted, but the diction is
independent of theirs and shows a distinct scholastic trend.
Syrian and Indian names of drugs are rarely used, but Persian
terms abound. Thus we may consider this remarkable book to be
a mixture of Greek scientific research and Persian practical know-
ledge of medicines and poisons. Anyhow it is doubtless the last
link in a long chain of scientific development during pre-Islamic
and Islamic times.
'Jabir' is world-famed as the father of Arabic alchemy. This
word, al-klmiyd, usually said to be derived from the Egyptian
is
kam-it or kem-it, 'the black', or, as some have thought, from

the Greek ckyma, 'molten metal'. The fundamental premises of
this 'science' as established by Egyptian and Greek scholars were
(a) that all metals are in reality the same, and that consequently
a transmutation of one into another is possible (b) that gold;
isthe 'purest' of all metals, and silver next to it, and (c) that
there is a substance capable of continuously transforming base
into pure metals. These conceptions had the merit of provoking
experiment, but were unfortunately accompanied by an inor-

dinate tendency to theorize. Moreover, at Alexandria, the
centre of Greek learning, and indeed throughout the Islamic
realm, certain mystical tendencies derived from the Gnostics
and the neo-Platonists had very detrimental effect upon the
a
experimental spirit. Alchemy, which in the hands of 'Jabir' was

a matter for experimental research, tended to become the subject
of ineffable speculation and superstitious practice, passing into

fraudulent deception.
About a hundred alchemical works ascribed to 'Jabir' are extant.
Many are little but confused jumbles of puerile superstition. But
there are others which prove that the author recognized more
clearly, and stated more definitely, the importance of experiment

than any other early chemist. Thus he was enabled to make note-
worthy advances in both the theory and practice of the subject.
His influence can be traced throughout the whole historic
course of European alchemy and chemistry.
On the practical side, 'Jabir' described improved methods for
and
evaporation, filtration, sublimation, melting, distillation,
crystallization.
He described the preparation many
of chemical
substances, e.g. cinnabar (sulphide of mercury), arsenious oxide,
and others. He knew how to obtain nearly pure vitriols, alums,
alkalis, sal-ammoniac, and saltpetre, how to produce so-called
'liver' and 'milk' of sulphur by heating sulphur with alkali, and
so on. He prepared fairly pure mercury oxide and sublimate, as
well as acetates of lead and other metals, sometimes crystallized.
He understood the preparation of crude sulphuric and nitric
acids as well as a mixture of them, aqua regia, and the solubility
of gold and silver in this acid.
Several technical terms have passed from 'JabirY Arabic
writings through Latin into the European languages. Among

these are realgar (red sulphide of arsenic), tutia (zinc oxide),
alkali, antimony (Ar: ithmid), alembic for the upper, and aludel
for the lower part 'of a distillation vessel. new chemical A
substance unknown to the Greeks which appears in 'JabirY
works is sal-ammoniac. The ammoniacon of the Greeks was
rock-salt, and it seems that the transference of the old name
to a new salt was effected by the Syrians. A
appreciationfull
of 'JabirY merits in chemistry will only be possible when the
bulk of his chemical writings have been published, particularly
his great Book of the Seventy. This composition of seventy
'
discourses was till recently known only in an inferior and

incomplete Latin version. The author of this article has
had the good fortune to find the almost complete Arabic
original.
The chemical writings to which JabirY name is attached were
'
soon translated into Latin. The first such version, the Book of
the Composition of Alchemy, was made
by the Englishman Robert
of Chester, in A. D. 1144. The translation of the Book of the
Seventy into Latin was one of the achievements of the famous
Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187, see p. 347). A work entitled the
Sun of Perfection is ascribed to 'Jabir' by the English translator
Richard Russell (1678) who describes nim as 'Geber, the Most
Famous Arabian Prince and Philosopher'. Much evidence linking
'Geber' of the Latin writers with the Arabic alchemists has
recently appeared from the pen of Dr. E. J. Holmyard.

In the Eastern caliphate there arose a generation of prominent
physicians of whom we will first mention the Persian Muslim
known Haly Abbas (d. 994). He composed an
to the Latins as
excellent and compact encyclopaedia, The Whole Medical Art,
known also to the Latins as Liber regius (al-Kitdb al-Maliki).
It deals with both the theory and practice of medicine. It
begins with a most interesting chapter containing an explicit
critique of previous Greek and Arabic medical treatises. This

book was twice translated into Latin at an early date, but it was
superseded by the Canon of the great Avicenna.
Abu 'All al-Husaynibn Sina, known universally to the West as
Avicenna (980-103 7), was one of the greatest scholars of the Islamic
world, though less remarkable as a physician than as a philosopher
and Nevertheless his influence on European medicine
physicist.
has been overwhelming. Ibn Sma concentrated the legacy of
Greek medical knowledge with the addition of the Arabs' con-
tribution in his gigantic Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun ff t-Tibb),
which is the culmination and
masteiiece_o^
tion. This medical encyclopaedia deals with general medicine,
simple drugs, diseases affecting all parts of the body from the
head to the pathology and pharmacopoeia.
feet, special
The system of classification adopted in the Canon is most
complex, and is in
part responsible for the mania for subdivision
which affected Western scholasticism. The book was translated
into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the twelfth century (p. 348)
and his version exists in innumerable manuscripts. The demand
for it may be gleaned from the fact that in the last thirty years
of the fifteenth century it was issued sixteen times fifteen
editions being in Latin and one in Hebrew, and that it was
reissued more than twenty times during the sixteenth century.
These figures do not include editions of parts of the work.
Commentaries on it in Latin, Hebrew, and the vernaculars,
both in manuscript and in print, are without number, and the
book continued to be printed and read into the second half
of the seventeenth century. Probably no medical work ever
written has been so much studied, and it is still in current use in
the Orient.
Some fifteen other medical works of Avicenna are known,
together with about hundred writings by him on theology,
a
metaphysics, astronomy, and philology. Nearly all are written in

Arabic except some poems which are in Persian, a language
which acquired new importance during the tenth century. With
'
Avicenna 'the Prince and Chief of ^Physiciaris Islamic medicine
reached itsênlth In the East. To this day pious veneration
surrounds the tomb of the great physician and philosopher at
Hamadan in western Persia.
While the eastern Islamic world was gradually acquiring
supremacy in medicine, western Islam developed also as a
centre of this science. In Spain during the glorious reigns of the
caliphs 'Abd al- Rahman III and al-Hakam II of Cordoba, Has-

day ben Shaprut (d.c. 990), a Jew, was at once minister, court-
physician, and patron of science. In his younger years he trans-
lated into Arabic, with the help of the monk Nicholas, the
splendid manuscript of the Materia Medica of Dioscurides
which had been sent as a diplomatic present from the Byzantine
emperor Constantine VII. Later Ibn Juljul, court-physician and
medical historian, corrected this versionand wrote a commen-
tary on it.
The Muslim known to the Latins as Abulcasis (d.c. A.D. 1013)

was likewise court-physician in Cordoba. His name is associated
with a great Medical Fade mecum (at-Tasrif) in thirty sections,
the last of which deals with surgery, an art which had till then
been neglected by Islamic authors. The surgical treatise of
Abulcasis based largely on the sixth book of Paul of Aegina,
is
but with numerous additions. His work contained illustrations

of instruments which influenced other Arabic authors and
especially helped to lay the foundations of surgery in Europe It
was early translated into Latin, Provencal, and Hebrew. The
celebrated French surgeon Guy de Chauliac (1300-68) appended
the Latin version to one of his works.
In Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia there was much medical
activity in the eleventh century A. D. 'All ibn Ridwan of Cairo
(d.c. 1067) known to the Latins as Haly Rodoam, produced a
finemedical topography of Egypt and was an ardent follower of
Galen and the Greek authors. He declared that one could
become a good physician solely by the study of the ancient
works, which opinion gave rise to a long and violent polemic
with his contemporary Ibn Butlan of Baghdad (d.c. 1063). Ibn
Ridwan's commentary on Galen's Ars parva, as well as Ibn
Butlan's Synoptic Tables of Medicine, a scholastic masterpiece,
were translated into Latin.
Before leaving this period of Islamic medicine we have to
consider some productions which are peculiar to it.
First come the treatises on simple drugs which form parts of
the great encyclopaedias, but which were also composed as
separate monographs by a series of other authors. Such treatises

are still highly esteemed in the Orient. Abu Mansur Muwaffaq
of Herat in Persia wrote about 975 in Persian, The Foundations
of the True Properties of Remedies describing 585 drugs. It con-
tains besides Greek and Syriac, Arabic, Persian, and Indian
knowledge. It is, moreover, the first monument of modern Per-
sian prose. There were many treatises of the same type in

Arabic. Among them we may mention those of Masawayh al-
Maridml of Baghdad and Cairo (d. 1015) and Ibn Wafid in
Spain (d.c. 1074). Both are well known in their Latin transla-
tions and were printed together some fifty or more times. In
Latin they appeared as De Medicinis unwersalibus et particulari-
bus by 'Mesue' the younger, and De Medicamentis simplicibus
by 'Abenguefit'.
Ophthalmology was another branch of medicine which
reached its height about A.D. 1000. The Christian oculist 'All
f
ibn lsa of Baghdad known to the Latins as Jesu Haly, and the
Muslim 'Ammar of Mosul, known as 'CanamusalP, left two
excellent treatises, increasing the Greek canon of ophthal-
mology with numerous additions, operations, and personal
observations. Both were translated into Latin. They were the
best text-books on eye-diseases until the first half of the eigh-
teenth century when the Renaissance of ophthalmology set in
in France.
In science we have mentioned the achievements of Rhazes and
Alchemy. The two greatest spirits of the age, Avicenna
'Jabir' in
and al-Birum, were firmly opposed to the subject. On the other
hand we owe to Avicenna a treatise on the formation of
mountains, stones, and^minerals. It is important for the history of
geology as discussing the influence of earthquake, wind, water,
temperature, sedimentation, desiccation, and other causes of
solidification.
Abu Rayhan Muhammad al-Blrunl (973-1048) called 'the
Master' (al-Ustadti), a Persian physician, astronomer, mathema-
tician, physicist, geographer, and historian, is perhaps the most
prominent figure in the phalanx of those universally learned

Muslim scholars who characterize the Golden Age of Islamic
science. His Chronology of Ancient Nations and his Indian
studies are known in good English translations. Most of his
mathematical works and many other writings are waiting for

publication. In physics his greatest achievement is the nearly
exact determination of the specific weight of eighteen precious
stones and metals. A
voluminous unedited lapidary by al-Birum
isextant in a unique manuscript in the Escorial Library. It con-
tains a description of a great number of stones and metals from
the natural, commercial, and medical point of view. He com-
posed, moreover, pharmacology (saydala). Important informa-

a
tion could certainly be obtained from his unedited works on the
origin of Indian and Chinese stones and drugs which appear

early in Arabic scientific works.
f
Al-Mas udi (d. in Cairo c.
957) is in a restricted sense the
'Pliny of the Arabs'. In his Meadows of Gold he described an

earthquake, the waters of the Dead Sea, and the first windmills,
which are perhaps an invention of the Islamic peoples, and he
also gives what has been described as the rudiments of a theory
of evolution.
The 'Brethren of Purity' (Ikhwdn as-Safd), a secret philoso-
phical society founded in Mesopotamia in the tenth century,

wrote an encyclopaedia composed of fifty- two treatises, seventeen
of which deal with natural science, mainly on Greek lines. We find
here discussions on the formation of minerals, on earthquakes,
tides, meteorological phenomena, and the elements, all brought
into relation with the celestial spheres and bodies. The work of
the Brethren, although burnt as heretical by the orthodox
clergy in Baghdad, spread as far as Spain where it influenced
philosophic and scientific thought. Water-clocks jwerejjre-

One example was
the .Islainic-coujitiie^
presented to Charlemagne by an embassy sent by Harun ar-

Rashid.
The famous philosopher al-Farabi, a Turkish Muslim (d.c.
A. D. 951),must be mentioned here for his treatise On Music,the
most important oriental work on the theory of music. He also
wrote an important book on the classification of sciences. Two
similar works of classification were composed some time after.
One was the Keys of Sciences, written in 976 by Muhammad al-
Khawarizmi. The other was the famous work Fihrist al-Ulnm,
i.e. Index of Sciences (988), by Ibn an-Nadim. The latter is of
primary importance for our knowledge of early Islamic (and

Greek) scientists and philosophers.
Optics was developed to its highest degree by Abu 'All al-
334 ' Science and Medicine
Hasan ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) of Basra (965). He moved to
Cairo where he entered the service of the Fatimid caliph al-
Hakim (996-1020) and tried to discover a method of regulating
the annual Nile inundation. Failing in this task he had to hide
?
from the caliph's wrath and simulate madness until al-Hakim s
death. He
nevertheless found time not only to copy ancient
treatises on mathematics and physics, but also himself to com-
pose many works on these subjects and on medicine, his original
profession. His main work is On Optics the original Arabic
:
is lost, but the book survives in Latin. Alhazen opposes the

theory of Euclid and Ptolemy that the eye sends out visual rays
to the object of vision. He discusses the propagation of light
and colours, optic illusions and reflection, with experiments for
testing the angles of incidence and reflection. His name is still
associated with the so-called 'Alhazen's problem' 'In a spherical :
concave or convex, a cylindrical or conical mirror to find the

point from which an object of given position will be reflected to
an eye of given position.' It leads to an equation of the fourth
degree which Alhazen solved by the use of a hyperbola.
Alhazen examines also the refraction of light-rays through
transparent mediums (air, water). In detailing his experiments
with spherical segments (glass vessels filled with water), he comes
very near to the theoretical discovery of magnifying lenses,
which was made practically in Italy three centuries later, whilst
more than six centuries were to pass before the law of sines was
established by Snell and Descartes. Roger Bacon (thirteenth
century) and all medieval Western writers on optics notably
the Pole Witelo or Vitellio base their optical works largely on
Alhazen's Opticae Thesaurus. His work also influenced Leonardo
da Vinci and Johann Kepler. The latter modestly entitled
hisfundamental work on dioptrics Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena
(Frankfort 1604).
Commentaries on Alhazen's Optics were written by Oriental
authors, but most of his successors did not adopt his theory of
vision; nor did the oculists of later periods of Islamic science.
Al-Blruni however and Avicenna share independently and fully
Alhazen's opinion that 'it is not a ray that leaves the eye and
meets the object that gives rise to vision. Rather the form of the
perceived object passes into the eye and is transmuted by its
transparent body (i.e. the lens)'.

Alhazen left several minor writings on physical optics, among
them one On Light. He
regards light as a kind of fire that is
reflected at the spheric limit of the atmosphere. In On Twilight
Phenomena, which is extant only in Latin, he calculates that

this atmosphere is about ten English miles in height. Other of
his treatises deal with the rainbow, the halo, and with spheri-
cal and parabolic mirrors. These and some other books on
shadows and eclipses are of a highly mathematical character.
On the basis of his calculations he constructed such mirrors of
metal. Most of these works were products of the last ten years
of Alhazen's life, as was his fundamental study On the Burning
glass, inwhich he created a dioptric far superior to that of the

Greeks. The work exhibits a profound and accurate conception
of the nature of focussing, magnifying, and inversion of the image,
and of formation of rings and colours by experiments. Alhazen
wrote moreover a commentary on the optical works of Euclid
and Ptolemy, on the Physics of Aristotle, and on the Aristo-
telian Problemata. He observed the semi-lunar shape of the
image of the sun during eclipses on a wall opposite a fine hole
made in the window-shutters the first record of the camera
obscura.
We may glance at the scientific institutions during, this golden
age of Islamic science. Hospitals were early founded, probably
on the models of the old and celebrated academy-hospital of
Jundeshapur. From the Persian name for this is derived the
title used for a hospital throughout the Islamic world (bimari-
stan). We have authentic information concerning at least thirty-

four such institutions. They were distributed through the
Islamic world, from Morocco, from northern Syria to
Persia to
Egypt. In Cairo the hospital was founded by the governor

first
Ibn Tulun about A. D. 872 and still existed in the fifteenth

century, and several others were later established there.
In Baghdad the first hospital was created at the order
of Harun ar-Rashid at the beginning of the ninth century, and
five others were installed during the tenth. Travelling hospitals
were known in the eleventh century. The Islamic chronicles

give very exact information concerning the administration of
these institutions. We
know not only their budgets but even the
amount of the salariesof physicians, oculists, and employees.
The chief physicians and surgeons gave lectures to students and
graduates, examined them, and gave diplomas (ijaza). Medical

men, druggists, and barbers became subject to inspection. The
orthopaedists were, for example, examined as to whether they
were acquainted with the anatomy and surgery of Paul of Aegina.
Arrangements were made for practical instruction. The hospitals
were divided into two sections, for men and women, and each
had its own wards and a dispensary. Some hospitals possessed
a library. Many physicians were trained by an apprenticeship
in the practice of a master, often their father or uncle. Others
journeyed to foreign towns in order to follow the lessons of some

celebrated practitioner. A
report from Spain says that a physi-
cian at Cadiz installed in the parks of the governor a botanical
garden in which he cultivated rare medicinal plants brought

back from his travels.
Sciences other than medicine werejnostljLtaught ii
In the early centuries of Islam these were liberally placed at the
disposal of scholars. There are also records of academic libraries
founded by caliphs, princes, and other prominent men. The
Arabic chronicles furnish abundant information concerning
these institutions.
Every important mosque had and still has its library not only
of theological, but also of philosophical and
Science and Medicin* 337
We have already mentioned the 'House of Wisdom', created in
Baghdad by the Caliph al-Ma'mun about A. D. 830. His nephew
al-Mutawakkil followed his example, as did many grandees of
his court. The caliph's friend and secretary 'All ibn Yahya
(d. 888) had a beautiful library in his country seat. In Cairo
the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim founded in A.D. 935 a 'House of
Science' the. budget of which is known exactly. As orthoHox
theology became supreme it was suspended because of the

danger of heresy.
The
pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, the duty of every
Muslim, favoured the spread of science, since it compelled
students from India and Spain, from Asia Minor and Africa, to
pass through many lands where they could visit mosques and
academies and have intercourse with prominent scholars. More-
over many came from Tunis to Persia, and from the Caspian
Sea to Cairo and Cordoba, to follow the courses of famous
teachers. The actual process of teaching was much as it is
to-day. The professor sat with his
back to a column, and round
him gathered of disciples. In the al-Azhar mosque of
a ring
ancient fame in Cairo the tourist may usually see twenty or
thirty such groups within the great hypostyle hall, giving what
isin all probability a true picture of academic lessons as they
were held in the days of ancient Greece and Cordoba.
4. Age of Decline from about noo

Whilst the orthodoxy of early Islam tolerated the sciences,
we may say that, from the time of the famous religious teacher
al-Ghazall (d. mi) onwards, this tolerance gave place to
persecution of these studies 'because they lead to loss of belief in
the origin of the world and in the creator'. Whether or no this
attitude was alone sufficient to prevent the rise of great indepen-
dent thinkers, it was
certainly a very important factor in their
suppression. The twelfth century marks a standstill. The works
3385 z
of Rhazes, Avicenna, and 'Jabir' are reproduced, summarized,
commented on, but outstanding and independent works are
becoming rare.
Among the physicians an increasing number of Jews is to be

observed, particularly at the courts of Baghdad and Cairo, and
in Spain, perhaps because Jews were relatively free from the
restraintsof orthodox Islam. The prototype of the eminent
Jewish court physician, practitioner, philosopher, and religious
teacher, is Maimonides (1135-1204). Born in Spain, he spent
most of his active life in Cairo under the great Saladin and his
sons. His best medical work is hisAphorisms in which he even
ventured to criticize the opinions of Galen himself. As a court
official he wrote hygienic treatises for the sultan which
are very typical specimens of medical literature during the later
centuries of Islam. The influence of orthodoxy on the other-
wise rather liberal court of Cairo is evident from the excuse
given by Maimonides at the end of one of his tracts, in which
he has a lengthy scientific apology for his advice to the sultan
that he should indulge in the forbidden wine and music as a cure
for his melancholy.
e
Maimonides' younger contemporary, the Muslim Abd al-
Latif, travelled from Baghdad to Cairo to see renowned scholars
and the land of Egypt, of which he then gave his famous descrip-
tion. After describing the famines and earthquakes in Egypt
from A. D. 1200 to 1202 he gives an interesting account of his
osteological studies in an ancient cemetery in the north-west
of Cairo.He checked and corrected Galen's description of the
bone of the lower jaw and of the sacrum.
Pharmacological treatises abounded at this period. They were
either on simple drugs, the most famous of which was that
by Ibn al-Baytar (d. 1248), or on compound remedies. The
latter treatises were called Aqrdbddhln (mutilation of Greek
graphidion, i.e. small treatise). The word masquerades very

frequently in Latin manuscripts and early printed books as
Grabadin. A Drugs was composed by Ibn
Collection of Simple
al-Baytar, who collected plants and drugs on the Mediterranean

littoral, from Spain to Syria, described more than 1,400
medicinal drugs, and compared them with the records of
more than 150 ancient or Arabian authors. It is a work of
extraordinary erudition and observation, and is the greatest of
the Arabic books on botany.
Later Arabic books on compound remedies are still in favour
with.the native druggists throughout the Islamic world. Among
the most popular at the present day is the Management of the
?
Drug Store by the Jew Kohen al- Attar I4(th century) and the
Memorial by Dawud al-Antaki (d. 1599), both composed in
Cairo. Many of the old and complicated recipes of these books
passed into the European dispensaries. Several names of remedies
came thus to the West from the East. Among these we may
note rob for a conserve of inspissated fruit- juice with honey,
julep (Persian guldb rose-water) for a medicinal aromatic drink,

and sirup (Arabic sharab).
With the beginning of the fourteenth century magic and
superstitious practices began to creep into the medical works of

the Muslim writers, whose medical knowledge was often derived
from religious writings. There is thus a further deterioration
of the general standard of the material.
In Spain, the philosophical bias predominated among medical
men. The prototypes of this combination are the two Muslims,
Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). The former (d.
in Seville 1162) was an aristocratic physician at the court of one
of the Almohade rulers. He displayed disdain for surgery and
surgeons and was more a consulting physician than a general
practitioner. His chief work is the Facilitation of Treatment
known by its Arabic name al-Taysir, translated into Latin as
Theisir in 1280 by Paravicius, with the help of a Jew, in Venice,
where it was later
repeatedly printed. This book gives proof of
remarkable independence of thought, being largely based on
z 2
34-O Science and Medicine
personal experience. It perhaps, which caused
is this, it to enjoy
less success with the Arabs than in Europe.
Averroes (d. in Morocco in 1198), disciple and friend of

Avenzoar, was among the very greatest of Aristotelian philoso-
phers. He also wrote some sixteen medical works, one of which
is well known in its Latin translation. This is the General Rules
of Medicine (Kulliyyat fi't-Tibb) translated in 1255 by the

Paduan Jew Bonacosa under the title of Colliget. It was several
times printed, in conjunction with Avenzoar's Tbeisir. Every-
where in his book Averroes reveals himself as an Aristotelian
thinker, particularly in the second part where he deals with

physiology and psychology. Often he pits the opinions of Rhazes
and Avenzoar against those of Hippocrates and Galen.
Thegreat plague of the fourteenth century, the 'Black
Death', furnished an occasion for Muslim physicians in Spain
to free themselves from theological prejudice which regarded
plague as a divine punishment and to consider the epidemic

as a contagion. The celebrated Arab statesman, historian,
and physician Ibn al-Khatib of Granada (1313-74) described
it in a famous treatise On Plague. In it we find, for example,
the remarkable passage:
'The existence of contagion is established by experience, study, and
the evidence of the senses, by trustworthy reports on transmission by
garments, vessels, ear-rings by the spread of it by persons from one
;
house, by infection of a healthy sea-port by an arrival from an infected

land ... by the immunity of isolated individuals and . . nomadic .
Beduin tribes of Africa. ... It must be a principle that a proof taken

from the Traditions has to undergo modification when in manifest
contradiction with the evidence of the perception of the senses.'
This was a very bold statement in the days of darkest

orthodoxy.
The Moorish physician Ibn Khatima (d. 1369) wrote a book
on the plague which ravaged Almeria in Spain in 1348-9. This
treatise is far superior to all the numerous plague tracts edited
in Europe between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries.
He says:
'The result of that if a person comes into contact
my long experience is
with a patient, he immediately attacked by the disease with the same
is
symptoms. If the first patient expectorated blood, the second will do

so. ... If the first
developed buboes, they will appear on the other in the
same places. If the first had an ulcer, the second will get the same ;
and the second patient likewise transmits the disease.'
To appreciate the teaching of these writers it must be remem-

bered that the doctrine of the contagious character of disease
isnot emphasized by the Greek physicians and is almost passed
over by most medieval medical writers.
In the sciences other than medicine the output of books
during the period of decline was very great, but the deteriora-
tion no less marked. Thus there are known books of some forty
Arabic and Persian alchemists after the eleventh century. Yet
their works add very little to the subject. It is noteworthy that
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) the talented Arabian philosopher of
history, the greatest intellect of his century, was a violent

opponent of alchemy.
Mineralogy stood in close relation to alchemy. Nearly fifty
Arabic lapidaries have been named. The best known of them is
the Flowers of Knowledge of Stones, by Shihab al-Din al-Tifashl
(d. in Cairo A. D. 1154).
It gives in twenty-five chapters exten-
sive information on the subject of the same number of precious
stones, their
origin, geography, examination, purity, price,
application for medicinal and magical purposes, and so on.
Except for Pliny and the spurious Aristotelian lapidary he

quotes only Arabic authors.
The only important Muslim work on Zoology is the Life of
Animals by Muhammad ad-Damirl (d. 1405 in Cairo). The
author was a religious teacher, and therefore his book is not the
result of personal experience but a compilation from all the
available literary sources. Although a purely scholastic book it
34 2 Science and Medicine
achieved a great reputation in the Orient. In some parts it
contains useful information on folklore, popular medicine and
racial psychology, but always overgrown with a bewildering
mass of incoherent narratives.
The manycosmographical encyclopaedias of the Arabs and
Persians contain sections on animals, plants, and stones. The
all
best known is that of Zakariyya al-Qazwini (d. 1283) still im-
perfectly edited. Many manuscripts of this work are beautifully

illustrated.
There exists a considerable number of books and sections of
encyclopaedias dealing with the subject of physics, most of them

from a philosophical point of view.
Metrological studies were much in favour with the Muslims
of the later centuries, particularly those on balances. Al-
Khazinl, originally a Greek slave who lived about 1200 in Merv
(Persia), left a voluminous book The Balance of Wisdom, of which
parts only have been edited. He takes up and continues Thabit

b. Qurra's investigations of the so-called 'Roman' balance, or
steelyard, which is itself of Greek origin. His work comprises,
moreover, valuable remarks on specific gravity and the specific
weight of alloys. Khazini also dealt with the problem of the
greater density of water when nearer to the centre of the earth,
shortly before Roger Bacon propounded and proved the same
hypothesis.
Very fine manuscripts, full of good illustrations, exist on
hydrostatic automatons and on clocks, particularly such as were
moved by water, mercury, weights, or burning candles. Al-Jazarl
finished, in 1206, in Mesopotamia, book on mechanics
a great
and clocks, the best extant in the Islamic world. At the same
time (in 1203) the Persian Ridwan described the water-clock
constructed by his father Muhammad ibn All near one of the
f
gates of Damascus, an artifice much admired throughout the

Islamic world, the memory of which survived until the sixteenth
century. The authors refer to Archimedes, Apollonius, and

Ktesibius, but are remarkable in their exact description of all
the mechanical details.

Prominent was the Persian Kamal ad-Din (d. about
in optics
1320). He repeated and improved on Alhazen's experiments

with the camera obscura (p. 335). He also observed the path of
the rays in the interior of a glass sphere in order to examine the
refraction of sunlight in raindrops. This led him to an explana-
tion of the genesis of the primary and secondary rainbows.
A, curious example of the lively interest shown by laymen in
scientific questions is seen in the optical book of Shihab al-Din
al~Qarafi, a theologian and judge in Cairo (d. c. 1285). He

discusses in a more speculative than scientific manner fifty
optical problems, three of which are of special interest because

they concern questions put to Muslim scholars by 'the Emperor
the king of the Franks in Sicily'. This was no other than
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen who between 1220 and 1230 set
philosophical and geometrical problems for Muslim scholars in
Spain and Egypt. The three questions on optics are: Why do
oars and lances, partly covered with water, appear to be bent ?
Why does Canopus appear bigger when near the horizon, whereas
the absence of moisture in the southern deserts precludes
moisture an explanation? What is the cause of the illusion of
as
floating specks before the eyes of those suffering from incipient

cataract and other eye trouble?'
Finally we must cast a glance at two bio-bibliographical

works of high importance for the history of Islamic medicine
and science. First the History of Philosophers by Ibn al-Qifti
(d. in Damascus 1248), containing 414 biographies of Greek,
Syrian, and Islamic physicians, astronomers, and philosophers. It
is a mine of information for the knowledge of Greek literature
possessed by the Arabs and it tells us much about Greek

antiquity which has not survived .in classical sources. No
less important is the Valuable Information on the Classes of
Physicians by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, a very learned physician

and oculist who lived chiefly in Cairo (d. 1270). He deals
with the life and work of more than 600 medical men,
taking his information partly from works now lost, partly from
his intimate knowledge of many thousands of medical books.
All the modern histories of Arabian medicine are based on this
work, which also contains valuable classical traditions.

The dependence of the Copts in Egypt, and the Armenians,
on Arabic medical science is evident from such of their works
as are available in modern dress. Lack of space prevents the
author from giving an analysis of them.
5. The Legacy
We turn now from the storehouse of Arabic science to its
passage to the West. The legacy of the Islamic world in medicine
and natural science is the
legacy of Greece, increased by many
additions, mostly practical. Rhazes, the Persian, was a talented
clinical observer,but not a Harvey. 'Abd al-Latif, the Arab,
was a diligent seeker in anatomy, but in no way to be compared
to Vesalius. The Muslims possessed excellent translations of the
works of the Hippocratic Corpus and of Galen. All, even the
long theoretical explanations of the latter, were well under-
stood and well rendered by such intelligent and polyglot
Hunayn. But the additions of the Islamic physicians
scholars as
refer almost solely to clinical and therapeutic experience. The
theory and the thought of the Greeks were left untouched and
treasured up after careful systematization and classification. It
must be remembered that Muslims were strictly prohibited
from dissecting either human bodies or living animals. Thus
experiment was practically impossible in medicine, so that none
of Galen's anatomical and physiological errors could be corrected.
On the other hand, they received some impetus from the
experience of Persian, Indian, and Central Asian scholars con-
cerning particular lines of treatment, operations, and the know-
ledge of drugs and minerals. This knowledge helped them to
make progress in chemistry, although we are, as a matter of fact,
not yet sufficiently informed to be able to state what is the share
of Greece and what that of the Orient in the development of
alchemy.
In other sciences some of the best Greek works were unknown
to the Muslims, as, for example, the botany of Theophrastus.
Their own share in this branch is a considerable one, but again,
of purely practical importance. The Muslim scholars, although
acute observers, were thinkers only in a restricted sense. It is
the same in zoology, mineralogy, and mechanics. The glory of
Muslim science is in the field of optics. Here the mathematical
ability of an Alhazen and a Kamal al-Dm outshone that of
Euclid and Ptolemy. Real and lasting advances stand to their
credit in this department of science.
When Islamic medicine and science came to a standstill,
about noo, they began to be transmitted to Europe in Latin
translations. The state of monkish medicine at that period is
vigorously described by Charles Singer in his Short History of

'
Medicine: Anatomy and Physiology perished. Prognosis was
reduced to an absurd rule of thumb. Botany became a drug-
list.
Superstitious practices crept in, and Medicine deteriorated
into a collection of formulae, punctuated by incantations. The
scientific stream, which is its life-blood, was dried up at its
source.'
Only in one corner of Europe, at Salerno near Naples, a

medical school preserved some traces of Greek medicine, and it
was here that the Tunisian adventurer and renegade, Constantine
the African, passed several years before he became a monk at the
famous convent Monte Cassino in Campania. There he took up
the work of translation about 1070 to continue it until his death
(1087). Constantine's Latin versions are corrupt, confused,
full of misunderstood Arabic terms, in parts incomprehen-
sible, the true prototype of the Barbaro-Latin literature of the

Middle Ages. But they had the merit of planting the first
sparse seed of Greek learning in the sterile soil of medieval
Europe.
Constantine was a shameless plagiarist claiming for himself
many works which he had translated from Arabic into Latin.

We may, however, remember that the rights of authorship were
but lightly regarded in those times. He translated into Latin
Hippocrates' Aphorisms from Hunayn's Arabic version, with
Galen's commentary from Hubaysh's version; Hippocrates'
Prognostica and Diaeta Acutorum; together with many works

of Galen. The fate of one book issued as Constantine's De
Oculis is characteristic of the times. It was
turned again
later
into Latin by a certain Demetrius, perhaps in Sicily. In
reality it is nothing but Hunayn's book The Ten Treatises

on the Eye. Constantino was, however, the first to render
Greek scientific works accessible. He also placed the works of
Haly Abbas and Isaac Judaeus in the hands of his successors.
The alchemical Liber Experimentorum of Rhazes was translated
into Latin by Constantine, who had disciples among the monks
of Monte Cassino. One of these was Johannes Afflacius 'the
Saracen', who helped him in the translation of Arabic works

into Latin.
During Constantine's lifetime the struggle between Christen-

dom and Islam was active both in Spain and in Sicily. In 1085,
Toledo, the greatest centre of Muslim learning in the West,
fell before the Spanish Christians. Latin students began to come
to the new capital to admire the remains of Moorish civilization

and to study the Artes Arabum. The intermediaries for the
learning and later on the translation work were native Jews and
former Muslim subjects (Mozarabs). Charles and Dorothea
Singer, in another volume of this series, have painted a lively
picture of this collaboration, which gives a clear idea of a curious
The first prominent European man of
scientific syncretism.
science who came Toledo was Adelard of Bath, an English

to
mathematician and philosopher. On the other hand a Spanish
Jew converted to Christianity, Petrus Alphonsi, went to England
where he became physician to Henry I and spread the science
of the Muslims there for the first time. Both scholars translated
Arabic astronomical and mathematical works into Latin during
the first half of the twelfth century. Many others followed their
example.
The scientific life which expanded in Toledo during the
twelfth century is reminiscent in many ways of the translation
period of Baghdad three centuries before. Just as the Caliph

al-Ma'mun 'House of Wisdom', so Archbishop
installed the
Raymond founded, under the direction of the Archdeacon

Dominico Gundisalvi, a school of translation which flourished
in Toledo until the thirteenth century. The part of the poly-
glot Christian and Sabian translators of Baghdad was played in

Toledo by the Jews who spoke Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and
sometimes Latin. The converted Jew Avendeath (Ibn Dawud,
i.e.son of David) translated a great many mathematical, astro-
nomical, and astrological works of the Arabs into Latin, as the
Sabian Thabit ibn Qurra had turned those of the Greeks into
Arabic. Gerard ofCremona did for the Latins what Hunayn ibn
Ishaq did for the Arabs in translating the works of philosophers,
mathematicians, physicists, and physicians.
Gerard, born in Cremona in Italy in 1114, came to Toledo to
find Ptolemy's Almagest.He translated it into Latin in 1 175. He
soon became the most prominent and prolific of all the trans-
latorsfrom Arabic, being helped in his task by a native Christian
and a Jew. In the two decades before his death in 1187 he pro-
duced nearly eighty translations, some of them of the utmost
importance. By opening wide the doors of the treasure-house of
Greek and Arabic learning, at the same time he gave many
followers the impulse to imitate his example. He is the real father
of 'Arabism' in Europe.
In medicine we owe to Gerard versions of the works of
Hippocrates, of Galen, of nearly all Hunayn's translations, of
works of al-Kindi, of Avicenna's vast Canon, and of the
important and influential Surgery of Abulcasis. In physics he
rendered from the Arabic many of the works of Aristotle,
including the apocryphal Lapidary ascribed to the great philoso-
pher, as well as writings by al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Isaac Judaeus,
and Thabit.
Mark, Canon of Toledo, perhaps a younger contemporary of
Gerard, also did good service. He translated the treatise on A irs,
Waters, and Places of Hippocrates and many works of Galen,
all from Hubaysh and Hunayn's Arabic versions. Hunayn's
famous Quaestiones medicae were translated by Rufino, a scholar
of Alessandria in Italy who lived at Murcia in Spain. Abraham,
a Jew of Tortosa, helped Simon of Genoa (Januensis) to translate
Abulcasis' Liber Servitoris and Serapion the Younger's De
Simplicibus.
Other portions of Abulcasis' output were translated by a
certain Berengar of Valencia, and by Arnald of Villanova
(d. c. 1313). The latter is the last renowned medical translator
of Spain. We owe to him the versions of works of Avicenna,
al-Kindi, Avenzoar, and others.

Sicily, which had been under Muslim control for 130 years,
fell definitely into the hands of the Normans in 1091, and
became a fertile centre for the spread of Arabic science. Among

the population Greek, Arabic, and Latin were in constant use
as vernacular dialects, but some scholars, particularly Jews, also
knew the literary form of these languages. The kings, from

Roger I to Frederick II, Manfred, and Charles I of Anjou, drew
learned men to Palermo regardless of language or religion. Here,
as in Toledo, a troop of learned translators began to make Latin
versions from Greek and Arabic. These translations mainly
deal with astronomy and mathematics.
In medicine no important translations in
wer^ccomplished
Sicily during the twelfth century. In the following century, in
the reign of Charles of Anjou, however (1266-85), we
the great Jewish translator 'Farragut' of Girgenti and his
translation of Rhazes' Continens (p. 324). He finished his task,
which would have occupied half a normal lifetime, in 1279.
Another Jew, Moses of Palermo, was trained as a Latin trans-
lator at the order of King Charles. Of his works we know only
the version of a pseudo-Hippocratic work on the diseases of
horses. Michael Scot (d. 1235), favourite of Frederick II, trans-
lated into Latin from Arabic and Hebrew versions the entire
biological and zoological works of Aristotle, particularly the

abstract of De Animalibus with Avicenna 's commentary which
he dedicated to the emperor in 1232.
It is known that Frederick II exhibited great interest in
well
zoology, that he used his wealth and his friendly relations with
Muslim rulers to keep a menagerie of elephants, dromedaries,
lions, leopards, falcons, owls, &c., which he then took with him
on his travels. The emperor himself wrote a work on hunting,
De Arte Venandi^ largely based on a work of Michael Scot, and
on the same scholar's translation of Aristotle's zoology. (With
regard to Frederick's interest in optical questions see p. 343.)

The influence of the Crusades on the transmission of the
Islamic sciences to Europe was surprisingly little. The only
important work we can trace to that movement was by a certain

Stephen of Pisa, who was trained in Salerno and in Sicily. He
came to Antioch and translated there in A. D. 1127 the Liber
regalis of Haly Abbas. In it he severely criticizes the former

translation of the same work made by Constantine the African.
We may suppose that the foundation of hospitals throughout
Europe during the thirteenth century, hospitals which were no

longer under clerical supervision alone, was partly due to the
influence of the Crusades. They may well have been imitations
of such splendidly installed Bimaristdns as that of the con-
temporary Seljuq ruler Nur al-Din in Damascus, and that of
the Mamluk sultan al-Mansur Qalawun in Cairo. The latter
institution was much admired by European travellers of later
Science and Medicine
centuries, and after a period of
decay has seen a renaissance in
our time. In ItalyPope Innocent III founded in Rome at the
beginning of the thirteenth century the Hospital San Spirito

from which a network of kindred institutions soon spread over
western Europe. The asylum and hospital 'Les Quinze-Vingt'
was founded in Paris by Louis IX after his return from his
unhappy crusade in 1254-60. Originally intended for three
hundred poor blind men, it had added to it later a hospital
for eye-diseases which is now one of the most important in
the French capital.
The Muslims who came in touch with Frank physicians
during the Crusades expressed much scorn for their professional
skill.This appears for instance from anecdotes related by the
Syrian prince Usama based on the reports of his Arabic Chris-
tian physician Thabit. This man about A. D. 1140 observed two
cases which ended fatally owing to the barbarous surgery of a
Frank.
Some of the Latin translators worked in northern Italy.
Here, for instance, Burgundio of Pisa had made translations of
ten Galenic works direct from the Greek (c.
A. D. 1180). Accur-
sius of Pistoia translated Galen's De Viribus Alimentorum from
Hubaysh's Arabic version about 1200; the Jewish convert Bona-

cosa translated Averroes' Colliget into Latin in Padua in 1255,
and Paravicius rendered Avenzoar's Taysir in Venice, with the
help of the Jew Jacob, in 1280.
Of other translators the period and origin are unknown, as
for example, of David Hermenus who translated Canamusalrs
ophthalmology. Many works too are extant in Latin transla-

tions by anonymous among them being treatises by
authors,
Maimonides, Avicenna, Geber, Rhazes, and Alhazen. We note
particularly that most of the alchemical writings are anony-
mously rendered.
The process of translation went on well into the sixteenth
century. Thus Andrea Alpago of Belluno in Italy (d. 1520)

must be mentioned as a prominent translator of Avicenna's
Canon, Apborismi, De Anima, and minor works of Averroes

and Johannes Serapion, and Ibn al Qifti's biographical lexicon.
There are many translations of even later date which were
widely used in the universities, especially in those of northern
Italy and France.
In this way hundreds of translations from the Graeco- Arabic
literature descended on the barren of Europe.
scientific soil
The effect was that of In Salerno, under the
a fertilizing rain.
influence of Constantine's versions, arose a generation of pro-
minent medical teachers. Anatomy showed signs of revival.
Better text-books of surgery were produced. Gynaecology and
obstetrics, hitherto the monopoly of midwives, became the sub-
ject of scientific study. Ophthalmology passed from the hands of
wandering cataract-couchers to those of learned physicians.
Universities were established in numbers from the twelfth
century onwards and became the centres of the new learning.

Such were Bologna, Padua, Montpellier, and Paris. As in Byzan-
tine Alexandria and in the Baghdad of the caliphs, teaching
consisted entirely of readings of ancient authors, at last access-
ible in Latin. Experimental science did not yet exist, and
botany, zoology, physics, and alchemy followed the lines of the

Graeco- Arabic tradition entirely. It was not until the end of the
sixteenth century that human bodies were publicly dissected at
Bologna, and at first only to obtain evidence for legal processes
(Singer). They served in no way to correct the anatomical and

physiological errors of Galen as transmitted by Avicenna. Tradi-
tion remained stronger than autopsy.
On the practical side, however, in surgery, hygiene, and per-
haps above all in the provision of hospitals, some progress was
made. Guy de Chauliac (d. 1368), the surgeon of Montpellier,
took up the scorned operations for rupture and cataract. Lan-
franchi of Milan, who established himself in France, introduced
advanced methods in ligature of blood-vessels and suture of
wounds. For some time in northern Italy the non-suppurathre
treatment of wounds with wine-compresses was practised.
Natural science had its home in the University of Paris. The
Aristotelian science as introduced from Toledo with Averroes*
commentaries was the foundation of learning. Roger Bacon and
his scientific opponent Albert of Bollstaedt (Albertus Magnus),
among others, here expounded the works of the great Muslim

scientists.We have already seen how Roger Bacon's Optics was
based on Alhazen's Thesaurus Opticae. Albert repeated the
4 '
alchemical teachings of Jabir (Geber) and other Arabic writers
in his De Mineralibus. He is original only in his zoological and
botanical studies, and even in these he relies greatly on trans-
lations from Arabic. The influence of Geber is very pronounced
in the encyclopaedia Speculum Naturale by Vincent de Beauvais.
The alchemical tracts ascribed to Arnald of Villanova and to
Raymund Lull are full of quotations from Geber.
Arabic
alchemy, associated as was with astrology, predominated
it
throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

After the sixteenth century medicine and science, particu-
larly in northern Italy, begin to refer more and more to transla-
tions from the Greek rather than the Arabic. 'Hellenism' was
opposed to 'Arabism', though there was no fundamental

difference between them. As long as the books of the Ancients
formed the almost exclusive of scientific research, Scholas-
basis
ticism maintained supremacy. After the invention of the art

its
of printing, in the second half of the fifteenth century, all the

Graeco- Arabic works on medicine and science were eagerly and
repeatedly printed. It was in the period 1530 to 1550 that
Arabism received its death-blow. Simultaneously with the
revolution of astronomy by Copernicus (d. 1543), Paracelsus
(d. 1541) reformed alchemy and medicine, and incessantly
urged his students to abandon Galen and Avicenna and to return
to the observation of nature: Experimenta et ratio auctorum loco
mibi suffragantur! In the same year, 1543, in which Copernicus
published his De Revolutionibus Orbium
caelestium, Andreas
Vesalius edited his fundamental new anatomy. This year
marks the end of the Middle Ages in medicine and science, and
with it the effective end of the direct influence of Arabian
science.
Still Arabism lingered on. In Vienna in 1520, and in
Frankfurt on the Oder in 1588, the medical curriculum was
still
largely based on Avicenna's Canon and on the ninth book
Ad Aimansorem of Rhazes. Even in the seventeenth century
in France and Germany some scholars kept to Arabic erudition,
whilst the struggle between Hellenists and Arabists went
on in northern Italy until both were crushed by the advent
of the modern scientific method. Arabic pharmacology sur-
vived until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Parts of
the Latin version of Ibn al-Bay tar's Simplicia were printed as late
as 1758 at Cremona; Serapion and Mesue the younger were
studied and summarized for the use of European pharmacopoeias
until about 1830. The Armenian compilation of medicine from
Greek, Arabic, and Persian sources composed by Mechithar in
A. D. 1184 was reprinted in Venice in 1832. In an old German
treatise I have found all the legends relating

on zoology of 1838
to the poisonous nature of the gecko a harmless oriental house-
lizard which are to be read in ad-Damlrfs Life of Animals.
In certain branches of medicine the Graeco- Arabic tradition
survived long, even in practice. Vesalius himself left several
errors of Galen and Avicenna concerning the anatomy of the
eye unchanged, and they were not corrected before c. A. D. 1600.

The real nature of cataract as a solid opacation of the lens,
not as a congealed liquid, was discovered by Pierre Brisseau, a
French practitioner, in 1 604. And the old couching operation for

cataract, with a needle, as described by Antyllos of Alexandria
f
and as handed down by Rhazes and 'All ibn lsa, was still prac-
tised by Percivall Pott in England about 1780, and in Germany
even as late as 1820.
3385 Aa
In the Islamic Orient the old scientific and medical tradition
is still
fully alive in popular medicine and among village barbers.
The author saw in Cairo, on the very day on which he wrote
these lines, a man operated on for cataract by a wandering
Sudanese charlatan in accordance with the directions of Antyllos
and Avicenna. The native druggists from Morocco to India
habitually compose their remedies in accordance with the
Aqrdbddhlns (p. 338) of the Arabic physicians.
Looking back we may say that Islamic medicine and science
reflected the light of the Hellenic sun, when its day had fled,
and that they shone like a moon, illuminating the darkest night
of the European Middle Ages; that some bright stars lent their
own light, and that moon and stars alike faded at the dawn of
a new day the Renaissance. Since they had their share in the
direction and introduction of that great movement, it
may
reasonably be claimed that they are with us yet.
MAX MEYERHOF.
SOME BOOKS OF REFERENCE
This article should be read in conjunction with that by C. and D. Singer on
'The Jewish Factor in Medieval Thought' in 'The Legacy of Israel.
i. ARABIC MEDICINE AND SCIENCE.

F. Wiistenfeld, Geschickte der arabischen Aerxte und Naturforscher,
Gottingen, 1840, is still an indispensable standard work on the subject, as
are Leclerc, Histoire de la medecine arabe, 2 vols., Paris, 1876, and

L.
C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, 2 vols., Weimar, 1898-
1902. Works covering a wide area in a more readable fashion are Baron Carra
de Vaux, Les penseurs de V Islam, 5 vols., Paris, 1921-6; Joseph Hell,
The Arab Civilization, Cambridge, 1926; M. Meyerhof, Le monde islamique,
Paris, 1926; De Lacy O'Leary, Arabic Thought and
Place in History, its
London, 1926. In special departments the following are of value: E. G.

Browne, Arabian Medicine, Cambridge, 1921; E. J. Holmyard, Book of
Knowledge concerning cultivation of gold by Abulqasim Muhammad ibn
Ahmad, Paris, 1923; and Avicennae De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum,
Paris, 1927; O. von Lippmann, Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Alchemie,
Berlin, 1919; H. Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber,
Leipzig, 1900; J. Berendes, Die Pharmacie lei den alten Culturvolkcrn,
z vols., Halle, 1891 5 J. Stephenson, Zoological Section of the Nu%batu-l~Qulub
of .
Qaxwini, London, 1928; H. Duhem, Le Systeme du Monde, 5 vols.,
. . al
Paris, J. Hirschberg, Geschichte der Augenheilkunde bei den Arabern,

1913-17;
Leipzig, 1905; Abu Mansur Muwaffak, Liber fundamen torn m pharmacologiae,
ed. R. Seligmann, Vindobonae, 1830-3; G. Bergstrasser, Hunain ibn Ishaqiiber
die syriscben und arabischen Galeniibersetzungen, Leipzig, 1925. O. C. Gruner,
A Treatise on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna, London, 1930.
2. TRANSMISSION TO THE WEST.

The is M. Steinschneider, Die
indispensable reference book Europdischen
Uebersetzungen dem Arabischen bis Mitte des 17 jfahrhunderts, 2 parts,
aits
Vienna, 1904-5. There is also much valuable information in E. Wiedemann,

Beitrdge %ur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, 69 fasc., Erlangen, 1904-29;
G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Baltimore, 1927; and Lynn
Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 2 vols., 2nd edition,
Cambridge, Mass., 1927. Works covering a wide area in a more readable
fashion are Charles Singer, From Magic to Science, London, 1928; and Studies
in the History and Method of Science, vol. ii, Oxford, 1921; C. H. Haskins,
Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Mass., 1927.
In special departments the following are of value Charles Singer, Short
:
History of Medicine, Oxford; Max Neuburger, History of Medicine, z vols,

Translation, Oxford, 1910-25; D. Campbell, Arabian Medicine, 2 vols,
London, 1926; F. H. Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine,
4th edition, Philadelphia, 1929; E. J. Holmyard, Chemistry to the Time of
Dalton, Oxford, 1925; E. Darmstaedter, Die Alchemie des Geber, Berlin, 1922;
Dorothea Waley Singer, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manu-
scripts inGreat Britain and Ireland, 3 vols., Brussels, 1928-9; H. Schelenz,
Geschichte der Pbarmazie, Berlin, 1904; Julius Ruska, Arabische Alchemisten,
2 vols., Heidelberg, 1924; J. Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina, Heidelberg,
1926; G. Sobhy, The Book of al-Dbakbira, Cairo, 1928; Hirschberg, Die
arabischen Augenarzte, 2 vols., Berlin, 1904-5; Max Meyerhof, The Ten
Treatises on the Eye, by Hunain b. Ishaq, Cairo, 1928; E. Wiedemann, Al-
Kimiya, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. ii, 1927 (Leyden and London); L. Le-
clerc, Traite des simples par Ibn al Be'ithar, 3 vols., Paris, 1877; Jayakar, Al-
Damirfs Hayatal-Hayawan, a zoological Lexicon, 2 vols., London and Bombay,
1906-8; M. Berthelot, La chimie au Moyen-Age, vol. iv, Paris, 1895; J. Ruska
and P. Kraus, Der Zusammenbruch der aschabir-Legende, Berlin, 1930.
The author is very much indebted to Dr. Charles Singer for his revision of
this section, for his corrections, and for some suggestions.
MUSIC
WHEN we consider the wide gulf which separates the Eastern
and Western arts of music, it is difficult to realize that there
could be any Arabian or Islamic legacy to music in Europe at

all. We Europeans conceive music vertically whilst the Arabs
apprehend it horizontally. That is, broadly, the cognizable
differencebetween the harmonic and melodic principles which
underlie the art of music in the West and East respectively.
Further, the Arabian notions of a tonic, of rhythm, and of
ornamenting the melody, are quite alien to ours. Before the
tenth century, however, the separation between the two arts
was not so great. Indeed, there was actually very little differ-
ence between them, since they could both be reduced to a com-
mon denominator. At one period they both had the same
Pythagorean scale, and both had inherited certain Greek and
Syrian elements. Above all, harmony, such as we understand
the term to-day, was unknown. The outstanding difference
between them was that the Arabs possessed a system of mensural
music as well as a definite conception of the 'gloss' or ornament
to the melody, both of which were eventually to influence the
West.
The source of Arabian music was the Semitic theory and
earlier date, both of which had influenced, if they
practice of an
had not been the actual foundations of, Greek theory and prac-
tice. At a period just prior to Islam, the Arab kingdoms of al-
Hira and Ghassan were doubtless influenced by Persian and

Byzantine customs respectively, and both probably possessed the
Pythagorean scale, which had originally come from the Semites.
In the early days of Islam we find that al-Hijaz, then the
political centre,
had adopted mensural music which was called
iqc?
or 'rhythm'. About the same time the Arabs adopted a new
theory of music at the hands of a musician named Ibn Mis j ah
Music 357
(d. c.705-14). This theory contained both Persian and Byzan-
tine elements, but, as the late Dr. J. P. N. Land remarked, 'The
Persian and Byzantine importations did not supersede the
national music, but were engrafted upon an Arabic root with
a character of its own'. This system, the scale of which appears
to have been Pythagorean, obtained until the fall of Baghdad
(1258).
Meanwhile, several changes took place, and in the scale these
were so disturbing that Ishaq al-Mausill (d. 850) found it neces-
sary to recast the theory in its former Pythagorean mould. This
held good until the time of al-Isfaham (d. 967), when the above
ideas again asserted themselves. These latter were the Zalzalian
and Khurasanian scales. What helped to keep the older system
as the basis was the acquisition of ancient Greek theory by means
of translations of Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Euclid (or pseudo-

Euclid), Nicomachus, Ptolemy, and others. Yet, in spite of
borrowings, we know from al-Kindi (d. c. 874), al-Isfahanl, and
the Ikhwan al-Safa' (loth century), that the Arabian, Persian,
and Byzantine systems of music were different. By the eleventh
century Persian and Khurasanian ideas had been adopted,
noticeably in the modes. Later, a theorist named Safi al-Dm
'Abd al-Mu'min 1294) introduced or systematized a new
(d.
theory (the Systematist Theory), while before the close of the

Middle Ages another scale found acceptance, the Quarter-Tone
System, which obtains to-day among the Arabs of the East.
That Arabian music was influenced by Persian and Byzantine
practice is
openly admitted by the Arabs. In turn, the Persians
and Byzantines also borrowed from the Arabian art.
The Practice of Music

What music meant to the Arabs is
illuminatingly revealed in
the Thousand and One Nights. The best insight, however, into
the Arab's intense appreciation of the art is to be gained from
f
such works as Ibn Abd Rabbihi's Unique Necklace, al-Isfaham's
358 Music
Great Book of Songs, both written in the tenth century, and
al-Nuwairl's The Extreme Need, composed in the thirteenth
century, all of which, unfortunately, are still only available in

Arabic. Here we see that music accompanied the Arab from
the cradle to the grave, from the lullaby to the elegy. Every
moment of his life seems to have had its particular music joy
and sorrow, work and play, battle-throng and religious exercise.
Almost every Arab of substance in those days had his singing-
girl, who appears to have been as much in evidence in the house-
hold as the pianoforte is with us to-day.
It not, however, the music of 'the people' that we are
is
primarily concerned with here. As Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) says,

no art really begins until there are artists. We
see a professional
class of musician in pre-Islamic days, and with the rise of the
caliphate, in spite of the ban of Islam which did not regard
'listening to music' with favour, this class was held in the highest
esteem. Indeed, the cultivation of music by the Arabs in all its
branches reduces to insignificance the recognition of the art in
the history of any other country.
Vocal music has always been more keenly appreciated by the
Arabs than purely instrumental music. Their ardent taste for
poetry determined this to some extent, although the pressure
of legal opinion which frowned on instrumental music (per se),
also contributed to the preference. Among the verse forms of
vocal music there were, besides the ode or qasida, many shorter
forms such as the qif a or fragment, the gbazal or love song, and
the more popular mawdl. In the West, later forms, such as the
zajal and muwashsb.ah, were introduced. The melody, which
was set to certain modes or might be
scales,in mensural form,
i.e. set to
rhythm (*##'), or ^ might not. Every performer sang
or played in unison or octave. Harmony was unknown in the
form in which we understand the term. In its place the Arabs
had the 'gloss' or ornamentation of the melody, which sometimes
included the striking of a note of the melody simultaneously
Music 359
with fourth, fifth, or octave, a procedure known as the tarkib
its
or compound. The instrumental accompaniment, which

followed the melodic scheme, was invariably furnished by the
lute (al-ud) from which our word is
derived), pandore (tanbur),
psaltery (qdnun), or flute (qasaba, ndy)^ whilst the drum (tabl),
tambourine (duff), or wand (qadib) strengthened the rhythm.
There were also instrumental pieces, but far oftener they were
used preludes or interludes to vocal items. Perhaps the most
as
important musical form was the nauba, a sort of vocal and instru-
mental suite of several movements, which was especially de-
veloped in the West. So far, the music dealt with is what might
be termed chamber-music, for although we sometimes read of
very large orchestras, the general rule was for quite small
numbers.
Open-air music, appropriate to a procession or military dis-
play, was usually confined to such instruments as the reed-pipe
(zamr, surnay), horn or clarion (buq) y trumpet (nafir), drum
(tabl), kettledrum (naqqara, qaia), and cymbal (kasa). The
military band played an important part in Muslim martial dis-
play, and it was recognized as a
special part of military tactics.
Senior officers had bands allotted to them, the size of which
depended on their rank, as did also the number of movements
or fanfares in the military nauba.
In spite of the legal condemnation of music and musical
instruments, especially the latter, the spiritual effects of music
were clearly recognized. The suft looked upon it as a means of
revelation attained through ecstasy, whilst the dervish and
marabout fraternities regulated their rituals by it. Al-Ghazall
quotes: 'Ecstasy means the state that comes from listening to
music'. Elsewhere in his treatise on Music and Ecstasy he
gives seven reasons for holding that singing is more potent in
producing ecstasy than the Quran itself. As we read in the

Thousand and One Nights: 'To some people music is meat, and
to others medicine'.This conceit grew out of the doctrine of
360 Music
the 'influence of music', which, with the belief in the principles
of the ethos, the harmony of the spheres, and the theory of
numbers, attracted unusual attention. This doctrine of musi-
cal therapeuticshad a fairly wide acceptance.
Among the people at large on festive occasions all sorts of
musical instruments were to be found, while with the women
the tambourine was a special favourite. The itinerant minstrel
also had his place. He was generally equipped with a tabor
(fabl) and pipe (sjmhin), one hand beating the former and the
other fingering the latter, whilst he shook his head which was
crowned by a cap furnished with small bells.
That the Arabs contributed to the practical art in the East
there ample evidence in the technical nomenclature from
is
Samarqand to the Atlantic.
Musical Instruments
The names of musical instruments in Arabic are legion, and it
would be impossible here to deal with even a tithe of them.

The Arabs carried the manufacture of musical instruments to
a fine art. Treatises were written on their manufacture, and
some towns, like Seville, were famous for their production. In
the lute family alone there were all sorts of species and sizes.
Besides their pre- Islamic lute (mizhar) with a skin belly, they
had their classical lute (*ud qadwi), which approximated to the
modern mandoline, as well as a larger instrument called the
perfect lute (*ud kdmil). Their shabrud was an archlute, and

we have pictorial designs of some enormous instruments. In the
pandore group they possessed instruments as large as the tanbur
turkl and as small as the tanbur bighilma. Then there was the
guitar, known as the murabba. It was a flat-chested rectangular

instrument. Later it came to be known as the qitara. More
important to us were their bowed instruments, known at first

under the generic term rabdb. These, too, were found in all
shapes and sizes, and among them those known as the kamdnja
Music 361
andghishak. Among the instruments with open strings were the

harp (jank, sanj), psaltery (qanun, nuzba), and dulcimer (sinfir).
The wood-wind family included flutes in many sizes, from the
nay bamm and others, which were about three feet in length, to
the smaller shabbdba andjuwaq, about a foot long and even less.
The saffara was a flute a bee. Among the reed-blown types
were the zamr, surndy, zuldmi, and ghaita, as well as the reed-
blown bug which was made of metal.
The, term duff stood for any tambourine, but specifically it
was the square instrument. The round instrument had a dozen
different names according to its size or construction, such as tar,
daira, &c. The drums, also, were to be found in many varieties

under such names as tabl, naqqdra, qafa, &c. The cymbal was
the kasa, a name also given to the bowl-shaped castanet, the flat
form of which was called sinj.

Both the pneumatic organ (urghanuri) and the hydraulis
were known to the Arabs, and probably also the organistrum
(dulab), well known in medieval European art and resembling
the modern hurdy-gurdy, and the eschaquiel (al-shaqira).
That the Arabs were both inventors and improvers of musical
instruments we have various statements to prove. Al-Farabi
(d. 950) is said to have 'invented' (? improved) the rabab and
qdnun'y al-Zunam gth century) designed a wood-wind
(early
instrument called the nay zundml or zuldml\ Zalzal (d. 791)
introduced the 'ud al-^habbut', al-Hakam II (d. 976) improved
the reed-blown buq\ Ziryab (early gth century) added to the
range of the lute both al-Bayyasi and Abu'l-Ma jd (i I th century)
;
were organ constructors, whilst Safi al-Dln 'Abd al-Mu'min

(d. 1294)
invented a square psaltery called the nuzha, as well as
an instrument known as the mughm.

Although some sort of musical notation existed from the
early years of the ninth century, most of the performers learned
their music by ear. Some of the composers believed that their
works were inspired by the genii. The dress and general appear-
362 Music
ance of the Arab minstrel is
worthy of notice. Long hair,
painted face and hands, and bright colours, appear to have been
affected by this class, a relic perhaps, of the effeminate mukban-
nathun of early Islamic days. Many of the singers were evirati,
some as a punishment, others probably because of the popularity
of the boy's voice. The singer was patronized at the caliph's
court not only on account of his art, but also because of his
political use. The musician's vocation took him into many house-
holds, where the wine-cup often revealed a secret of political
import. Further, there was many an opinion that could be more
effectively propagated by means of a song than otherwise, as the
jongleurs of the heretical troubadours of Provence, who imi-
tated the Arabs, found eventually to their cost.
Writers on Music
An enormous amount of Arabic literature was written about

music histories, collections of songs, books on musical instru-
ments, the legal aspect of music, aesthetics, and the lives of
musicians. The greatest of all these writers were al-Mas'udi
(d. c. 957) and al-Isfaham (d. 967). In the former's Meadows

of Gold we
get interesting data on the early practice of Arabian
music, whilst in his other books the author dealt with the music
of foreign lands. More valuable still is the monumental work
of al-Isfaham the Great Book of Songs in twenty-one volumes,
which Ibn Khaldun has called 'the diwan of the Arabs'. This
author also wrote four other books on music. A mine of informa-
tion regarding writers on the theory and science of music, as
well as on the general literature of music, is The Index of
Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Warraq (d. c. 995-6).
In the West we have much the same. The Unique Necklace
'
of Ibn Abd Rabbihi (d. 940) contains the lives of the celebrated
musicians, as well as a spirited defence of music against the
puritans. Yahya al-Khudujj al-Mursi (i2th century) wrote a
Book of Songs in imitation of al-Isfahanl in the East. Ibn al-
Music 363
'Arabi (d. 1151) and others contributed works on the 'permissi-
bility' of music, at the same time furnishing much information

about musical instruments.
After the fall of Baghdad (1258) the 'fine writers' on music
almost ceased to exist. Their place was taken by a host of legists
who argued for or against the 'permissibility' of music. The few
who did write on music in the older manner included it as
part
of a larger work, as we see in the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun
(d. 1406), and the Mustatrafof al-Ibshihi (d. 1446).
Theorists
The first writer on the theory of music of whom we have

definite information is Yunus al-Katib, (d. c. 765). He was
followed by al-Khalil (d. 791), the îgystematizer of Arabian
prosody and the first Arabic lexicographer. His Book of Notes

-
and Book of Rhythms are catalogued in The Index (late loth

century). Probably it was al-Khalil's theories that Ibn Firnas
(d. 888) introduced into Spain. The latter was 'the first who
taught the science of music in al-Andalus'. Ishaq al-Mausill
(d. 850) recast the 'Old Arabian System',
and his theories were
put forward in a Book of Notes and Rhythms.
Between the eighth and tenth centuries many of the treatises

of the Greeks on the theory of music and the science of sound
were translated into Arabic. A work attributed to Pythagoras
was known in Arabic, as well as Plato's Timaeus, the latter having
been translated by Yuhanna ibn al-Batriq (d. 815), and again
by Hunain ibn Ishaq (d. 873). Among Aristotelian writings the
Arabs possessed the Problemata and De anima, both translated
by Hunain ibn Ishaq. Among the commentaries on De anima
by Greek writers known in Arabic were those of Themistius and
Simplicius, the former having been
rendered by the same
Hunain who was also responsible for Galen's De voce. It was
from these works that the Arabs derived their more scientific
ideas on the theory of sound.

364 Music
Aristoxenus was known in two works in Arabic The Principles
[of Harmony] and a book On Rhythm, the former title bearing
out the opinion that the Elements of Harmony that we now

possess in Greek was originally made up of two works the
Principles (dpâi) and the Elements (crrotêta). In Arabic

Euclid had two books on music attached to his name The
Introduction to Harmony and The Section of the Canon. Nicoma-
chus was read in a Grand Book on Music and in several compen-
dia, which seems to show that Nicomachus did write that 'larger
work' which he refers to in his Manual of Harmony, the latter
being made up of his compendia, as we know it in Greek. His
Introduction Arithmetic, which incidentally deals with music,
to
was translated by Thabit ibn Qurra (d. 901). Ptolemy was

known by a Book on Music, which was probably his Treatise on
Harmony that we know to-day. Other works from the Greek
that have come down to us in Arabic are the treatises on hydrau-
lic organs attributed to Archimedes and Apollonius Pergaeus,
and those by a certain writer known in Arabic as Murtus or

Muristus, who wrote on the pneumatic organ, the hydraulis,
and the chimes.
The earliest extant works on the theory of music in Arabic
showing the influence of the Greek writers are those of al-Kindl

(d. c. 874). Seven treatises on the theory of music were com-
posed by him, and three, if not four, have been preserved, viz. :
The Essentials of Knowledge in Music-, On the Melodies-, The

Necessary Book in the Composition of Melodies, and another.
Al-Sarakhsi (d. 899) and Mansur ibn Talha ibn Tahir were his
disciples. Contemporary were Thabit ibn Qurra

theorists
(d. 901), Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi (d. 923), and

Qusta ibn Luqa (d. 932). These were followed by the greatest
of all the Arabic theorists al-Farabi. Among his books on
music were the Grand Book on Music, Styles in Music, and On
the Classification of Rhythm. Besides these, he dealt with music
in two of his celebrated compendia of the sciences The
Music 365
Classification of the Sciences and The Origin of the Sciences.
Al-Farabi tells us that he wrote his Grant Book on Music
because he found lacunae as well as obscurities in what the
Greeks had written on music, at least as he found them in Arabic
translation. After him came al-Buzjani (d. 998), the greatest
of Arabic writers on mathematics, who composed a Compendium
on the Science of Rhythm. At the same time there lived the
encyclopaedists known as the Ikhwan al-Safa' (loth century)

whose treatise on music was widely read, and Muhammad ibn
Ahmad al-Khwarizmi (loth century), the author of the Keys of
the Sciences, one of which unlocked the theory of music.
Of particular fame was Ibn Sina o*r Avicenna (d. 1037) who,
after al-Farabi, contributed the most important works on the
theory of music in Arabic. These are to be found in the Shifa

and the Najat. He also wrote an Introduction to the Art of Music,
whilst a few definitions are to be found in his Divisions of the
Sciences. Ibn Zaila (d. 1048), his disciple, wrote a Book of
Sufficiency in Music, whilst a contemporary, Ibn al-Haitham

(d. 1039), a brilliant mathematician and physicist, compiled two
studies of the works attributed to Euclid a Commentary on the
Introduction to
Harmony, and a Commentary to the Section of the
Canon. He wrote in Egypt where another gifted author,
Abu'1-Salt Umayya (d. 1134), composed a Treatise on Music.
Other theorists who crowd into the twelfth century are Ibn al-
Naqqash (d. 1178), al-Bahill and his son Abu'1-Majd (d. 1180),
and Ibn Man' a (b. 1156). The thirteenth century brought
theorists of even greater renown. 'Alam al-Dln Qaisar (d. 1251)
was looked upon as the most eminent mathematician in Egypt and
Syria, and was especially famed in the theory of music. Further
east similar celebrity was accorded Nasir al-Dm (d. 1274), whose
fragment on music has been preserved.

In Muslim Spain, after Ibn Firnas (d. 888), we read of
Maslama al-Majriti (d. 1007) and al-Kirmani (d. 1066),
who popularized the treatises of the Ikhwan al-Safa*, whilst
366 Music
other theorists were Abu'1-Fadl Hasday (nth century), a Jew,
and Muhammad ibn al-Haddad (d. 1165). Greater merit as a
writer on the theory of music was reserved for Ibn Bajja or
Avempace (d. 1138). His treatise on music enjoyed the same

reputation in the West as that of al-Farabi in the East. Ibn
Rushd or Averroes (d. 1198) wrote the famous Commentary on
Aristotle* s De anima, dealing perspicuously with the theory of
sound. In the thirteenth century there followed the famous
Ibn Sab'm (d. 1269) and his contemporary al-Raquti, who
after the fall of Murcia to the Christians was engaged by them
to teach the quadrivium.
In the thirteenth century the new Systematist School was
founded by Safi al-Dm 'Abd al-Mu'min (d. 1294). His theories
were expounded in the famous Sharafiyya and in a Book of
Musical Modes. Hajjl Khalifa says that he was amongst those
'taking the front rank' in the writers on the theory of music.
Most of the names that follow here belong to his school. Shams
al-Dm Muhammad ibn al-Marhum (c. 1329) wrote a treatise
in verse entitled The Jewels of Arrangement in the Knowledge of
the Melodies, and Muhammad ibn 'Isa ibn Kara (d. 1358) com-
posed The End of the Enquiry into the Knowledge of the Melodies
and the Rhythms.
More imposing was a treatise known as the Mauldnd Mubarak-
shah Commentary on the Musical Modes, dedicated to ShahShuja*
(1359-84), which was one of the numerous commentaries written
on the theories of Safi al-Dm 'Abd al-Mu'min. Another treatise
dedicated to the same patron is the encyclopaedia known as the
Discourses on the Sciences. It contains a section on music. The
work was probably written by al-Jurjam (d. 1377).
'Amr ibn Khidr al-Kurdi (c. 1397) was the author of The
Treasure of the Enquiry into the Modes and the Rhythms. Ibn al-
Fanari (d. 1430) deals with music in his encyclopaedia of the
e
sciences. Shams al-Dm al- Ajami (iSth century) wrote a useful
Epistle on the Science of the Melodies. Al-Ladhiqi (d. 1445) com-

Music 367
posed an estimable work known as The Fathiyya. Hajji Khalifa

appears to rank this writer with Safi al-Din *Abd al-Mu'min
and 'Abd al-Qadir ibn Ghaibi. Lastly, and probably the most
important treatise since the works of the founder of the Syste-
matist School, is the anonymous Muhammad ibn Murdd Trea-
tise 1
(c. 1421-51), now in the British Museum.
Value of the Arabian Theorists

Most of the Arabic theorists, being skilled in the quadrivium,
were good mathematicians and physicists. The speculative
theory of music and the physical bases of sound, which the
Greek treatises had opened up to them, led many of these
theorists to make experiments on their own account. That is
one of the most interesting phases of their work. More than
once we find them saying that they had put such and such a
theory to practical test and experiment and found it wanting
or otherwise. The criticisms of Safi al-Din on the definitions of
al-Farabi and Ibn Sina reveal the temper of these inquirers,
who will not meekly bow the knee to the statements of their
predecessors, however great their names, if they are not correct.
Wehave seen that both al-Farabi and Ibn Sina are claimed
to have added to what the Greeks taught. Just as the Arabic
astronomers corrected Ptolemy and others, so the Arabic
musical-theorists improved on their Greek teachers. The
Introduction to al-Farabl's Grand Book on Music is certainly
equal, if not superior, to anything that has come down to us
from Greek sources. In the theory of the physical bases of
sound the Arabs certainly made some advance, especially in
the questio.n of the spherical propagation of sound. Indeed,
it is
highly probable that when the works of the Arabic
theorists have been edited with an adequate apparatus criticus,
1
I have given it this name because it is dedicated to the Sultan
Muhammad ibn Murad.
368 Music
many a debatable word or passage in the Greek writers will be
illuminated.
The careful descriptions of musical instruments made by the
Arabic theorists, which included measurements, enable us to
know the precise scales used. We have instruments of the lute,
pandore, harp, and wood-wind families described by al-Kind!
(d. c. 874), al-Farabl (d. c. 950), al-Khwarizmi (loth century),
and the Ikhwan al-Safa' (roth century), that is centuries before
we have any such attempt made in Europe. That they were not
content with Greek tuning is evident from their experiments
with the neutral third of Zalzal (f|) and the Persian third (||).
The Systematist School, fathered by Safi aKDm (d. 1294),
produced what Sir Hubert Parry considers to be 'the most
perfect scale ever devised', whilst Helmholtz says that 'their use
of the Major jth of the scale as a leading note to the tonic marks
a new conception, which admitted of being used for the further
development of the tonal degrees of the scale, even within the

domain of purely homophonic music'.
The Legacy of Arabian Music

The legacy left to the world of music by the Arabs was a sub-
stantial gift. Look where we will in the East, we find the influ-
ence of the Arabian practical art. That Persian, Turkish, and
other theorists also benefited there ample written evidence.
is
f
In Persia the Gladness ofthe Soulof Abdal-Mu'min (i 2th century),
the Assembling of the Sciences of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209),
the Precious Sciences of al-Amuli (i4th century), and the
e
Assembling of the Melodies and other works of Abd al-Qadir ibn

Ghaibl (d. 1435) reveal the Arabian legacy. In Turkey, we find
that the treatises of al-Farabi, Sail al-Din, and 'Abd al-Qadir
were translated into Turkish. The son of the latter, 'Abd al-
'Aziz, and a grandson, both of whom were in the service of the
'Uthmanll sultans, wrote treatises which show their dependence
'
on their Arabic masters, as do the works of Khidr ibn Abdallah
Music 369
and Ahmad Ughlu Shukrullah (iSth century). Even in India
we find that the Arabic treatises were drawn upon.
As which accrued from con-
for western Europe, the benefits
tact with Arabian culture were greater still. Europe received
its
legacy from the Arabs in two ways (i) by means of the
political contact, which brought the legacy of the practical art

by hand and by word of mouth, and (2) by means of the literary
and intellectual contact, which brought the bequest of the
theoretical art through translations from the Arabic and viva
voce through scholars who had studied at the Muslim schools in
Spain and elsewhere.

In spite of the very considerable Arabic literature on the
theory of music which existed in the Middle Ages, very little has
come down to us in Latin or Hebrew translations. Of the Greeks,
Aristotle's De
anima, translated by Johannes Hispalensis (d.
1157), and Galen's De voce, of which we have a thirteenth-
century MS., are known to have been rendered from the Arabic
into Latin. Of the Arabs, the two encyclopaedias by al-Farabi
(d.950) were translated into Latin by Johannes Hispalensis and
Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187) as De scientiis and De ortu scien-
tiarum. Avicenna (d. 1037) was also known in Latin by his
Compendium of Aristotle s De anima which was done by Johannes

9
Hispalensis. It was translated again by Andreas Alpagus (d.

1520), who also turned his encyclopaedia into Latin as De
divisione scientiarum. Of special value was the Great Commen-
tary on Aristotle's De anima by Averroes (d. 1198) which was

latinized by Michael Scot (d. 1232).
There was also much that appeared in Hebrew translation
from the Arabic which became accessible to western Europe.
Euclid's Section of the Canon had evidently been translated into
Hebrew from the Arabic, since we have a Commentary on the
Canon by Isaiah ben Isaac. Moses ibn Tibbon (d. 1283) was
responsible for a translation of the Problemata. There is also a
work on music in the Vatican attributed to Abraham ibn Hiyya
3385 Bb
370 Music
(d. 1136) which is said to be a translation from the Arabic.
Probably the Treatise on Music by Abu'1-Salt Umayya (d. 1134)

was also known in Hebrew. The Introduction to al-Farabfs
Grand Book on Music is recommended by Ibn 'Aqnin (fl. 1160-
1226). Shem-Tob Isaac of Tortosa (d. c. 1267) translated the
Middle Commentary on Aristotle's De anima by Averroes.
Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (d. c. 1328) made a version of al-
Farabl's Classification of the Sciences.
Afirst glimpse of the transmission of the Arabian
legacy in
music by means of literary contact is to be seen in Constantine
the African (d. 1087), one of the early translators of Arabic
works into Latin, who introduces the Arabian theories on the
influences of the planets and the curative effects of music in his
De bumana natura and De morborum cognitione. It had been a
maxim of Avicenna 'inter omnia exercitia sanitatis cantare
melius est\
Gundisalvus (fl. 1130-50) has a section on music in his De
divisione pkilosopkiae, much of which is a verbal reproduction
from al-Farabi's De scientiis and De ortu scientiamm, which he
may have had a hand in translating. Borrowings from the same
sourcemay be found in the treatise De musica, which bears the
name of [pseudo-] Aristotle, and in the Speculum doctrinale of
Vincent de Beauvais (d. 1264), where al-Farabi is quoted with
Boethius, Isidore of Seville, and Guido of Arezzo. From a
definition in the Ars music a of Johannes Êgidius (c. 1270),
a Spanish theoristwho was acquainted with the works of
Constantine the African, it would appear that al-Farabi was
again the source. The same may be said of Robert Kilwardby
(d. 1279), Raimundo Lull (d. 1315), Simon Tunstede (fl. 1300-
69), and Adam de Fulda (c. 1490).

Roger Bacon (d. 1280) quotes al-Farabi, in company with
Ptolemy and Euclid, in the section on music in the Opus
tertium, especially mentioning the book De scientiis. He also
draws on Ibn Sma on the question of the therapeutic value of
Index 4*5
Theophrastus, 345. Valencia, 5, 14, 126, 348.
Thousand and One Days, 200. Valla, George, 371.
Tiles, 122, 127, 128, 168, 172, 174; Van Berchem, M., 159.
coloured (azulejos), 14. Velvet, 137.
Timur, 120, 130. Venetian book-binding, 145, 146.
Toledo, 11-14, 18, 28-30, 44, 55, 93, Venetian glass-workers, 130.
115, 257, 267, 272, 280, 346-7, 352, Venice, 121, 144, 153, 170, 350, 353
395- Vercial, Clemente Sanchez de, 30.
Tortosa, 348, 370. Vesalius, Andreas, 344, 353.
Tota, queen of Navarre, 9. Vexin, the, 59.
Tournament, the, 59. Vienne, Council of, 65.
Toxicology, 322. Villancico, 189.

Trade, see Commerce, 150. Villanova, 348, 352.
Trade-routes, 61, 99-101, 103. Vincent de Beauvais, 352, 370.
Traffic (tafriq), 105. Violin, the, 16.
Tralles, 312. Virgilius Maro, 183.
Transoxania, 79, 86, 100, 377, 381. Visigoths, 156.
Travel-literature, 193. Vision ofMirza, 201.
Trebizond, 103. Vitellio, see Witelo.
Tree of life, 152. Volga, river, 100, 101.
Trigonometry, 389-90, 392, 396-7. Voltaire, Frangois, 201, 203, 379.
Tripoli, 47, 49.
Troubadour (trobary tarraba), 17, 188, Wddi-l-liijara, see Guadalajara.
362, 373- al-Walid I, Caliph, no.
Trumpet, the, 16, 359. Wall-t'les, glazed, 122, 127-8.
'Tudor' arch, 174, 178. Wand, the, 359.
Tulip, the, 129. Waqwaq, 95-6.
Tundal, Legend of, 198. al-Warraq, Muhammad ibn Ishaq, 362.
Tunis, 48, 97, 163. Warton, T., History of English Poetry,
Tunstede, Simon, 370. 202.
Turkey carpets, 138. Water-clocks, 333, 342, 387.

Turkish Tales, 200. Weaving, 133-5.
Turkish weavers, 136, 137. Wechsel, 105.
Turkistan, 156, 172, 377. William I, of Sicily, 54.
al-fusi, see Nasir al-Dln. William of Malmesbury, 115.
Tutia, 328. William of Moerbeke, 56.
William of Poitiers, 189-90.
William of Rubruquis, 49.
'Ubayda, ivory-carver, 143. William of Tripoli, 65.
al-Ubulla, 94. William of Tyre, 56, 65.
al-'iid, see Lute. Willibald, the Saxon, 81.
Ujjiyaini (Ozene), 93. Winchester, machicolation at, 168.
Ukhaidir, mosque at, 164. Windmills, 333.
Ulugh Beg, 394; Tables of, 397. Wissel, 105.
'Umar, Caliph, 286, 298. Witelo (Vitellio), 334.
al-'Umari, geographer, 92. Witiza, family of, 6.
Universities, 241 sqq., 351. Woepcke, F., 385, 392, 393.
Urban II, Pope, 46, 69. Wolsey, Cardinal, 138.
Usama, Prince, 350. Women, in literature, 185.
Usama ibn Munkidh, 66. Woodwork, Mudjar, 13.
Utility, 305-6.
'World summit', 93, 94.
416 Index
Wren, Sir Christopher, 174. Zabaj, 95.
Writing-cases, 119. Zahal, 189.
Zaila', 99.
Xime'nez, Cardinal, 15. Zalzal, 361, 368.
Zalzalian scale, 357.
Yahya the Barmecide, 380. 7,ambra (Ar. zamara), 17.
Yanair (Giner), 8. Zamora cathedral, 142.
al-Ya'qubl, 85. Zangi, 47.
Yaqut, his geographical dictionary, al-Zarkall, see Arzachel.
91. Zaytunah, Tunis, Mosque of, 163.
Yemen, 156. Zeno of Elea, 391.
Yuan dynasty, 135. Ziryab, 361.
Yufuf, Poema de, 37-8. Ziyada, 165.
Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, 316. Ziza, La, church architecture, 168.
Yunus al-Katib, 363. Zoology, 341-2, 345, 349, 35*~3-
Yusuf and Zatikha, 203. al-Zunam, 361.
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THE BOOK WAS

Tight Binding Book

some pages are missing

SIR THOMAS ARNOLD

CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

Legacy of the Middle Ages is the legacy of an epoch in the develop-

Jews that the complexion of the Legacy of Israel is derived,

religion ofMuhammad qua religion: the reader will learn* from

proved least valuablewhere religion has exerted the strongest

Arabic have often been used as interchangeable terms, and

comparatively rare. It follows almost inevitably that compound

suspicion that any strain is being put upon its resources.

augments without the aid of the supplementary verbs and

dawwara, to turn a thing round, ddwara, to walk about with

dawr, turning (noun). dawrab, one turning.

disposal of every verb and noun the Arabic language could

reasoning was not indigenous to their language they compen-

The triliteral root with its ramifications through a thousand

fonns, each of which has an assonance with the same form of

sotiusnor ad in English. But in Arabic the material is never more

paramount superiority of the Arabic language is

gentleman. Yet it is a remarkable fact that before the end of

periods of Cicero,it is also

unaff ectedness, and love of direct speech.

Professor Nicholson's Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose, Cam-

As soon Arabic became an imperial language the Jews per-

ceived its close affinity with Hebrew. In the third century

quent study of Hebrew among Christians, borrows a great deal

by countless centuries. Perplexing phenomena in Hebrew can

Indeed, no serious student of the Old Testament can afford to

outstanding example of what may be done by him who holds the

It is difficult to write calmly of the loss which our book has

subject was unique in England, and it has seemed fitting to

on the other hand, many far-reaching innovations have been

which will be found from time to time in the different chapters,

e.g. the diphthong ay may be written ai as in Hunain (Hunayn).

ISLAMIC MINOR ARTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON

SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

gained ground that oriental studies, and Islamic solutions for

century of invasion, civil war^ and unrest, ended in the Spanish-

cuperation, begun by 'the generation of 1898' and encouraged

contemporaries that the conclusion was drawn that a Romance

Spanish philology or Spanish art intrinsically more probable than

ing article was by Professor Miguel Asin.

Effects of Islam on political and economic history

of Islam that the Muslims were the cause, directly or indirectly,

of all the evils which afterwards befell the country. 'Without

'Spain would have followed the same course as France, Germany,

part in the tragi-comedy of history a role of and

vigilance, of sentinel and teacher, which had enormous

importance in the life of Europe, but which proved extremely

new states led a separate existence for something like

gaze in a different direction; they fought with one another again

ture in history, the most vigorous part of the Spanish population.

support of the majority of the Christian inhabitants; and when,

suddenly deprived of all its skilled workmen and several hundred

Europe in the Middle Ages. The French crusaders who had

'Islam, while it died out in al-Andalus, ended by poisoning Spain.