idyl, something like what we call a canzonet or sonnet, containing from fourteen to twenty-six lines, alternately rhyming.3 The Casside is a heroic poem of from forty to two hundred lines; a scrap of history epically treated, or a story in verse. The Divan is a collection of Ghazeles compiled according to particular and arbitrary rules. It is particularly interesting to observe the influence of this early Arabian poetry upon the literature of Western Europe. We trace it in the subjects and the structure of the French fabliaux and chansons de geste of the jongleurs and trouvères; and even later, in the charming stanzas of Ariosto and, in epic handling at least, in the twice told tales of Boccacio. It is to be particularly noticed in Le Gai Saber of the Provençal troubadours; in a word, the entire Provençal literature owes as much to the Arabic for matter and form, as it does to the Latin for language. Extended specimens of Arabian verse would be out of place in such a digest as this: a few examples will illustrate the genre. Ibnu-1-Faraj writes to a friend for some old wine, in such words as these;"Send me some of that wine, sweet as thy love and more transparent than the tears which fall down thy cheeks. Send me, O my son, some of that liquor, the soul's own sister, that I may comfort my debilitated stomach." An amusing anti-climax that. "Name to me," says an Andalusian, boasting of the authorship of his region, name to me one of your poets who has described the color which a draught of pure wine imparts to the cheek of the drinker in verses equal to these,—The wine has colored his cheeks like a rising sun shining upon his face: the west is his mouth, the east is the lively cup-bearer's hand; when the sun had set behind his mouth, it left upon his cheeks a rosy twilight.'' So much for the praise of wine, which although forbidden by the Koran, was used much more commonly in Spain than at the East. Let us take now one of the Ghazeles of Ben Hamad el Taharti, of which this is the argument: The Khalif had shut himself up in his seraglio, in luxurious ease, away from the cares of business, and denied himself to all comers, whatever their errand. Ben 3 The Arabians used assonances and imperfect rhymes, a feature permanently embodied in Spanish poetry. Hamad greatly desired to see him, but was disappointed. He therefore sent in his poem with a fine bunch of roses. The fair, the witching fair, They, even though slaves, Do rule their lord and render him their thrall. They make the bane of man, yet seek we roses When neither field nor garden more supplies them; The lovely flower; on their bright cheek we find them, Being with roses written, I do look To have received with favor, since 'tis formed On that which is the image of their cheeks- I shall not continue to present extracts which can give no fair notion of Arabian poetry. Whatever estimate we may now make of their verses, their influence upon the people who heard them can hardly be exaggerated. When a popular poet appeared and chanted his love songs to the multitude, it was a common saying that "all men's ears grew to his tunes as if they had eaten ballads." STORY-TELLERS. Akin to their powers and their taste in poetry was their fondness for story-telling. Men of the greatest literary eminence prided themselves upon the number of entertaining tales they had invented or learned, and their ready language and dramatic skill in telling them. Such men were eagerly sought out by the Khalif and the grandees, to beguile their ennui or to recreate them after their fatigues. Naturally gifted with a good memory, these raconteurs increased its power like actors in the modern drama; but they often improvised, while in the fervor of narration, charming plots of episodical adventure like the curious stories of the Arabian nights. Indeed, one of these Spanish collections would, from the praises of bibliographers, were it translated, divide our interest with the "Thousand and one nights." Its title is The Book of Routes and Stations in the adventures of Abu-l-halyi. There are numerous other collections of a similar kind. METAPHYSICS. There was a distinct Arabian school of Logic and Intellectual Philosophy, but the chief debt of Europe to them was not so much for original investigation, as for reproducing, in Arabic translations, the great works of the ancients, and send ing them through Spain into benighted Western Europe. Thus it was that Mohammed Abu-l-Walid Ibu Roshd, whose patronymic is corrupied into Averroes, came into popular notice. He was born at Cordova in the twelfth century, and he translated the works of Aristotle into Arabic, while they were unknown in the west, illustrating the literary character of Moslem Spain with the glories of the age of Alexander. And yet so little did he rise above the function of a respectable usher, that it is evident from his commentaries he did not fully understand his author. The most profound thinker in the domain of mental philosophy was Al Ghazali, who was born in the year 1058. He was a divine as well as a philosopher, and for his learning and penetration was called the Imaum of the world. In a consideration of that very difficult and subtle question,-the mode of intercourse between the mind and the body,—it was he who first advanced the doctrine known as the hypothesis of Divine assistance or occasional causes : from him it passed to the Western schools. He solved the mystery of causation by asserting that God is the only sufficient cause in nature, a postulate that was afterwards attacked by Averroes. His individual experience was interesting and sad. He argued himself into an almost hopeless condition. The senses and the reason, he said, were not sure guides to truth, and in the verisimilitude of dreams he found a token of the uncertainty of our best and brightest waking visions. Thus thrown, by the unreality of philosophy, upon religion,-an untrammeled faith superior to the Koran,-he spent his later years in retirement, conquering his passions, controlling his desires, and preparing for a better world.4 HISTORY. Under this head we enter upon the most successful and voluminous labors of the Spanish Saracens. Industrious in collecting statistics, they enwreathed the facts with allegory and imagery, and displayed great elegance in composition. Among these reproductions of the past is a General History by Ibnu Hayyan of Cordova. It is in sixty volumes and is entitled Kitabu-lmatin, “The book of Solidity;" certainly an appropriate name. 4 Avicenna, another Arabian, explains the process of mental causation by an irradiation of divine light through which the recovered cognition is infused into the intellect. See the references to the Arabian metaphysics in Sir William Hamilton's treatise. Another is named, "The embroidery of the bride on the History of the Khalifs who reigned in Andalus;" a supplement to this is, "The Book of the Sphere," divided into two parts, one relating to Eastern History, entitled, "The light of the rising Sun on the beauties of the East," and the other, "The eloquent speaker on the beauties of the West." This is not the place for a bibliographical list of books, most of them beyond our reach, both on account of the rareness of the copies, and on account of the language in which they are sealed to most modern eyes; but it is the place to say, that when Spanish scholars cast off their sloth, and their false pride of blood,-when they are ready to do simple justice to the Arab-Moors whom they have tried in vain to ignore-such books as these will shed rare light upon the Saracenic dominion, and give the historian valuable material with which to work." ARITHMETIC AND MATHEMATICS. In considering the tributes of the Spanish Moors to exact science, we must begin with the numeral symbols which we use in Arithmetic,—the simple but magical open sesame to the treasure-house of calculation. There is reason to believe that Pope Sylvester II. who was the first to introduce them, or rather a knowledge of them, into Italy in the eleventh century, learned them as the priest Gerbert at the Moorish university of Cordova." When we remember that the Arabic symbols from 1 to 10, including the cypher, were not fully introduced into Germany until the beginning of the fifteenth century, nor into England until some time later, we are ready to give due praise to those to whom Europe owes the great boon of their introduction. Simple as they are, and easy as it may now seem to have invented them, they are not of Arabian origin, nor did the Arabians claim that they were. 5 There were, in 1870, 6,000 Arabic manuscripts lying boxed in the basement of the Escorial, scarcely ever, if ever, consulted. If Spain should ever fix upon a permanent form of government, let us hope its public spirit will be shown by putting Spanish archives in order: and by unburying and translating such papers as those. With the exception of Gayangos and Condé, I know no Spanish historian who has drawn his material from unpublished Arabic sources. 6 He composed works on arithmetic and geometry, and made some astronomical instruments with his own hand, They are of Indian device, and were doubtless brought from the farther East to Baghdad, in the days of Almansur or Haroun Al Rashid. The Arabians improved and named them. To them we owe our name for the cypher, that potent nothing which disproves the rule, ex nihilo nihil fit: they called it Tsaphara. The numerals as we have them, were constructed within circles, the figure 1 being only a vertical diameter; 2 being formed by a diagonal and two chords. An experiment will show the simplicity of the construction for all. What an immense improvement upon the Roman numeral letters, and the cumbrous sexagesimal arithmetic of the Greeks, -the mode of computing by the sexagenary scale, or by sixties! It is easy to form an opinion of the value of the Arabic figures, by performning some of the simpler operations of arithmetic by the use of the Roman numerals. The Arabic figures seem to be the starting point of a new progress, and it was by their use that the Arabians led the world in mathematics, analytical mechanics and astronomy. In Algebra, which owes its name to them, they accomplished much that was new, but in geometry there was really less left for them to accomplish. They however presented to the Western world, in translations, the treatises of Euclid on the properties of plane figures, on the theory of ratios, and on the elements of solids. If they added little that was new, they collected and annotated all that was known. Euclid, let it be remembered, was not translated from the original Greek text until the sixteenth century, after the influx of Greek learning incident to the fall of Constantinople; but he had already appeared in Latin dress. Adelard of Bath translated his work from an Arabic version which he found in Spain in the twelfth century. Towards the end of the ninth century Ben Musa Ben Geber Albatani introduced the sine, or half the chord of the double arc, instead of the arc itself, and it was immediately used in astronomical and geodetical investigations. In a word, the well-instructed Arabian youth studied almost as much geometry as is now taught in our colleges. If we pass from pure mathematics to astronomy we shall find 7 From jabara (to bind parts together). |