UNSYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE. 365 



oring, to the cultivation of the science of the Greeks, their own 

 oriental habit of submission, their oriental love of wonder ; and thus, 

 while they swell the herd of commentators and mystics, they produce 

 no philosopher. 



Yet the Arabs discharged an important function in the history of 

 human knowledge, 15 by preserving, and transmitting to more enlight- 

 ened times, the intellectual treasures of antiquity. The unhappy dis- 

 sensions which took place in the Christian church had scattered these 

 treasures over the East, at a period much, antecedent to the rise of the 

 Saracen power. In the fifth century, the adherents of Nestorius, 

 bishop of Constantinople, were declared heretical by the Council of 

 Ephesus (A.D. 431), and driven into exile. In this manner, many of 

 the most learned and ingenious men of the Christian world were 

 removed to the Euphrates, where they formed the Chaldean church, 

 erected the celebrated Nestorian school of Edessa, and gave rise to 

 many offsets from this in various regions. Already, in the fifth cen- 

 tury, Hibas, Curnas, and Probus, translated the writings of Aristotle 

 into Syriac. But the learned Nestorians paid an especial attention to 

 the art of medicine, and were the most zealous students of the works 

 of the Greek physicians. At Djondisabor, in Khusistan, they became 

 an ostensible medical school, who distributed academical honors as 

 the result of public disputations. The califs of Bagdad heard of the 

 fame and the wisdom of the doctors of Djondisabor, summoned some 

 of them to Bag-dad, and took measures for the foundation of a school 



O ' 



of learning in that city. The value of the skill, the learning, and the 

 virtues of the Nestorians, was so strongly felt, that they were allowed 

 by the Mohammedans the free exercise of the Christian religion, and 

 intrusted with the conduct of the studies of those of the Moslemin, 

 whose education was most cared for. The affinity of the Syriac and 

 Arabic languages made the task of instruction more easy. The Nes- 

 torians translated the works of the ancients out of the former into the 

 latter language : hence there are still found Arabic manuscripts of 

 Dioscorides, with Syriac words in the margin. Pliny and Aristotle 

 likewise assumed an Arabic dress ; and were, as well as Dioscorides, 

 the foundation of instruction in all the Arabian academies ; of which 

 a great number were established throughout the Saracen empire, from 

 Bokhara in the remotest east, to Marocco and Cordova in the west 

 After some time, the Mohammedans themselves began to translate and 



15 Sprengel, i. 203. 



