EAST AND WEST 149 



diversities. Muslims were brought closely into touch with all kinds 

 of unbelievers — in the East, Chinese, Mongols, Malays, Hindus; 

 further West, Magians, Syrians, Greeks, Copts; further still, 

 Berbers in Africa; Sicilians, Spaniards, and other Franks in south- 

 ern Europe; Jews everywhere. These contacts were generally 

 friendly, or at least not unfriendly, for the Muslims treated their 

 ra'aya (subjects) with kind and tolerant condescension. Under 

 their patronage, many important works were published in Arabic 

 by non-Muslims : Sabians, Christians, Jews, Samaritans. The 

 great chemist, Jabir ibn Haiyan, was probably a Sabian; al-Battani 

 was certainly of Sabian origin but had embraced Islam; the 

 physicians Hunain ibn Ishaq, Ibn Butlan and Ibn Jazla were 

 Christians. Down to the twelfth century Arabic was the philo- 

 sophic and scientific language of the Jews; for example, the 

 famous Quide of the Perplexed, the greatest Jewish treatise of 

 the Middle Ages, was written by Maimonides in Arabic. What is 

 more, the earliest Hebrew grammars were composed also in 

 Arabic, not in Hebrew. In other words the medieval Jews were so 

 deeply Arabicized, that they needed Arabic assistance for the 

 scientific study of their own sacred language.* 



During the first two centuries of the Hegira the whole of Islam 

 was ruled by the Ummayad and 'Abbasid caliphs, but after that 

 the caliphate was gradually broken into an increasing number of 

 independent kingdoms of all kinds and sizes. The political dis- 

 integration caused intense rivalries, intellectual ones as well as 

 others, between the different Muslim courts. Instead of one or 

 two centers of culture, like Baghdad and Cordova, there grew up 

 little by little a whole series of them : Ghazna, Samarqand, Marv, 

 Herat, Tus, Nlshapur, Ray, Isfahan, Shiraz, Musul, Damascus, 

 Jerusalem, Cairo, Qairawan, Fas, Marrakush, Toledo, Seville, 

 Granada, etc., etc. The obligation for every Muslim to perform, 

 if possible, the Pilgrimage to Mecca brought about incessant com- 

 munications between the different parts of Islam and originated 



* In a similar way, American Jews study Hebrew grammar in English books, but the 

 analogy ends here. Hebrew grammar was actually born in an Arabic cradle. 



