Part 2

One of the princes of the Ommiades who had escaped made his way to Spain and there re-established the power of his family, with Cordova as a centre, about A.D. 755. Thus it was that the Saracenic power was divided into an Eastern and a Western Caliphate.

It was under the prosperous rule of the Abassides that such an impulse was given to learning of every kind, and that the Arabian school of philosophy, which has left behind it such glorious records of its greatness, was founded. The Caliph Al-Mansour was the first, so far as we know, who earnestly encouraged the cultivation of learning; but it was to Haroun Al-Raschid, A.D. 786-808 (?), that the Arabians owed the establishment of a college of philosophy. He invited learned men to his kingdom from all nations, and paid them munificently; he employed them in translating the most famous books of the Greeks and others, and spread abroad throughout his dominions numerous copies of those works.

His second son, Al-Mamoon, while governor of the province of Kohrassan, we are told, formed a college of learned men from every country, and appointed as the president John Mesue, of Damascus. It is said that his father, complaining that so great an honour had been conferred on a Christian, received the reply--"That Mesue had been chosen, not as a teacher of religion, but as an able preceptor in useful arts and sciences; and my father well knows that the most learned men and the most skilful artists in his dominions are Jews and Christians."

That this was the case can scarcely be doubted when we consider that the Jews had always been familiar with many arts and sciences, and that, as is well known, at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when the Jews were dispersed in every direction, they spread over, not alone the countries under the Roman rule, but to Greece, Egypt, and the Mediterranean coast, as well as great part of Asia Minor, carrying with them, not only their peculiar religious traditions, but also their arts, which, we know, especially as regards the working of metals, were of no mean order, and their sciences, of which the so-called magic and astrology had been assiduously cultivated.

In Asia the dispersed Jews established patriarchates at Tiberias in the west, and at Mahalia, and afterwards at Baghdad, for the Jews who were beyond the Euphrates.

Seminaries were founded at these centres for the rabbis, and constant intercourse was kept up between them. It was in these schools that the Talmud was compiled from the traditionary exposition of the Old Testament, between A.D. 200 and A.D. 500, when it was completed, and received as a rule of faith by most of the scattered Jews.

That the cultivation of science was not neglected we may be sure from the keen interest taken in all ages by the Jews in magical and astrological inquiries. We read in Apuleius, in his defence on the accusation of magic brought against him, that of the "four tutors appointed to educate the princes of Persia, one had to instruct him specially in the magic of Zoroaster and Oromazes, which is the worship of the gods." Apuleius wrote about 200 A.D., and his works teem with references to magic and astrology.

The fact that Jews and Christians were looked on as learned men will not surprise us, when we find that the Jews had established schools so long anterior to the foundation of the college of Baghdad. The rapid progress made by the Arabians, and the wise policy of the Abasside Caliphs, under whose judicious rule learning was so liberally encouraged, aided by the position of Baghdad, which formed, as it were, a centre to which the wisdom of both eastern and western minds gravitated, attracted to their schools all those of every nation who boasted themselves philosophers.

The first translations from the Greek authors are supposed to have been made about A.D. 745, and are known to have been on the subjects of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. These translations are understood to have been made by Christian or Jewish physicians.

As we have seen, the Jews had already established themselves at Baghdad, and had founded schools of their own previous to the formation of the college under Caliph Al-Mansour; but further than this we find the Christians spread widely over the countries of Asia Minor, and we are told, on the authority of Cosmo-Indicopleustes, that so early as A.D. 535 there was in almost every large town in India a Christian Church under the Bishop of Seleucia.

With these facts before us--1st, that Christian physicians were the leaders of the Arabian school in the eighth century; 2nd, that large numbers of Christian churches were actually in existence in India at least two hundred years previously to the establishment of the college at Baghdad; and 3rd, that Baghdad was almost, as it wore, the central point of the great caravan route which from time immemorial had been the course of communication between the East and West, can we doubt that an extensive intercourse must have taken place, and should we not expect to find some traces, if not the effects, of Indian science on the teaching of the Arabian school.

In Vol. VIII. of the Journal of Education we find a notice that "Professor Dietz, of the University of Königsberg, who had spent five years of his life in visiting the principal libraries of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, France, and England, in search of manuscripts of Greek, Roman, and Oriental writers on medicine, is now engaged in publishing his 'Analecta Medica.'

"The work contains several interesting papers on the subject of physical science among the Indians and Arabians, and communicates several introductory notices and illustrations from native Eastern writers. Dietz proves that the late Greek physicians were acquainted with the medical works of the Hindus, and availed themselves of their medicaments; but he more particularly shows that the Arabians were familiar with them, and extolled the healing art, as practised by the Indians, quite as much as that in use among the Greeks.

"It appears from Ibn Osaibe's testimony (from whose biographical work Dietz has given a long abstract on the lives of Indian physicians), that a variety of treatises on medical science were translated from the Sanscrit into Persian and Arabic, particularly the more important compilations of Charaka and Susruta, which are still held in estimation in India; and that Manka and Saleh--the former of whom translated a special treatise on poisons into Persian--even held appointments as body-physicians at the Court of Harun-al-Raschid."

As the age of the medical works of Charaka and Susruta is incontestably much more ancient than that of any other work on the subject (except the Ayur Veda)--as we shall see when we come to consider the science of the Hindoos--this in itself would be sufficient to show that the Arabians were certainly not the originators of either medical or chemical science.

We should not forget that it is only to their own works and their translations, chiefly by the Greeks, we owe our knowledge of the state of Arabian science, and that it is only in rare cases that we have given a list of works consulted, so that we can gather the sources from which their knowledge was derived. It would scarcely be imagined, from reading the works of Roger Bacon, or of Newton, that they had derived some, at least, of their knowledge from Arabian sources; and yet such is known to have been the case with them both.

Let us now glance backwards from the Arabians to the Greeks.

It is supposed that the first translations from the Greek authors were made for the Caliphs about 745 A.D., and were first translated into Syriac, and then into Arabic. The works of Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides are known to have been translated under the reign of Al-Mansour.

Granting for the moment that the first knowledge of the sciences was obtained by the Arabians from the Greeks, we are at once face to face with the question. From whence did the Greeks obtain their knowledge? To any careful reader it will be clear that Grecian science and philosophy, like Grecian theology, was not of native birth. It is comparatively well known that the Greeks were indebted to the Egyptians for much of their theology as well as science. The great truths which really underlay the mysterious religious rites of Egypt seem to have been altogether lost when the Greeks wove their complicated system of theology; and we read that the Egyptian priests looked on the Greeks as children who failed to understand the great mysteries involved in their religious rites, disguised as they were in symbolic form. But, besides their indebtedness to Egypt, we will find that they also owed much to Persia, and through it again to Indian sources of knowledge.

There was constant communication between the Grecian and Persian nations. We learn that it was not uncommon for Grecian generals to take service under the Persian Satraps, tempted by the liberal recompence with which their services were rewarded. About the year 356 B.C. this system of Greeks accepting service under Persian Satraps nearly caused the outbreak of war between Greece and Persia--Chares, a Grecian commander, having assisted with his fleet and men, Artabanus, the Satrap of Propontis, who was then in revolt against the Persian king. But before this, during the great plague which desolated Athens in 430 B.C., and which also extended to Persia, Hippocrates was invited to go to the Persian Court; and it is on record that Ctesias was for seventeen years physician at the Persian Court about 400 B.C., during which period he wrote his history of Persia, and an account of India, which Professor Wilson, in a paper read to the Ashmolean Society of Oxford, has shown to contain notices of the natural productions of the country, "which, although often extravagant and absurd, are, nevertheless, founded on truth."

There were, too, Grecian soldiers employed as paid auxiliaries, and a colony of Greeks who had been taken prisoners of war was founded within a day's journey of Susa.

The great expedition to Persia, and the graphic description of the retreat of the "ten thousand" Greeks, given by Xenophon in his Anabasis, must have been well known to Alexander the Great when he set out on his career of conquest. He overthrew the Persian empire in 331 B.C., having destroyed Tyre and subdued Egypt in the previous year and carried his triumphant progress to the banks of the Indus, and there he "held intercourse with the learned sages of India." On Alexander's death Seleucus succeeded to the throne of Persia in 307 B.C., and not long after he forced his way beyond the Indus, and ultimately as far as the sacred river Ganges. He formed an alliance with the Indian king Sandrocottus (otherwise known as Chandra-gupta), which was maintained for many years, and it is said, also, that he gave his daughter in marriage to the Indian king, and aided him with Grecian auxiliaries in his wars.

He sent an expedition by sea, under the command of Patrocles his admiral, who visited the western shores of India, and a little later he despatched an embassy under Megasthenes and Onesicrates, the former of whom resided for some years at the "great city" of Palibothra (supposed to be Patna).

Not long after Megasthenes was at Palibothra, Ptolemy Philadelphus sent an expedition overland through Persia to India, and later Ptolemy Euergetes, who lived between 145-116 B.C., sent a fleet under Eudoxius on a voyage of discovery to the western shores of India, piloted, as is said, by an Indian sailor who had been shipwrecked, and who had been found in a boat on the Red Sea. Eudoxius reached India safely, and returned to Egypt with a cargo of spices and precious stones.

The proof of very ancient communication between Greece and India is quite clear, both by way of Persia and Egypt, and we find that the Greeks, who were in the habit of calling all other nations barbarians, speak constantly with respect of the gymnosophists--called "Sapientes Indi" by Pliny. We read also of the Greek philosophers constantly travelling eastward in search of knowledge, and on their return setting up new schools of thought. Thales, it is affirmed, travelled in Egypt and Asia during the sixth century B.C., and it is said of him that he returned to Miletus, and transported that vast stock of learning which he had acquired into his own country.

He is generally considered as the first of the Greek philosophers. Strabo says of him that he was the first of the Grecian philosophers who made inquiry into natural causes and the mathematics.

The doctrine of Thales, that water was the first elementary principle, is exactly that of the ancient Hindoos, who held that water was the first element, and the first work of the creative power. This idea was not completely exploded even up till the 18th century. We find Van Helmont affirming that all metals, and even rocks, may be resolved into water; and Lavoisier, so lately as 1770, thought it worth while to communicate an elaborate paper "On the nature of water and the experiments by which it has been attempted to prove the possibility of converting it into earth."

Pythagoras, perhaps the greatest of all Greek philosophers, it is known, travelled very widely, spending no less than twenty-two years in Egypt. He also spent some considerable time at Babylon, and was taught the lore of the Magi.