EAST AND WEST 151 



parisons are hardly fair, for a few Greeks had reached, almost 

 suddenly, extraordinary heights. That is what we call the Greek 

 miracle. But one might speak also, though in a different sense, of 

 an Arabic miracle. The creation of a new civilization of inter- 

 national and encyclopedic magnitude within less than two cen- 

 turies is something that we can describe, but not completely ex- 

 plain. This movement, as opposed to the Greek, was perhaps 

 more remarkable for its quantity than for its quality. Yet it was 

 creative; it was the most creative movement of the Middle Ages 

 down to the thirteenth century. The Arabic-writing scientists 

 elaborated algebra (the name is telltale) and trigonometry on 

 Greco-Hindu foundations; they reconstructed and developed — 

 though, it must be said, very little — Greek geometry; they col- 

 lected abundant astronomical observations and their criticisms of 

 the Ptolemaic system, though not always justified, helped to pre- 

 pare the astronomical reformation of the sixteenth century; they 

 enriched enormously our medical experience; they were the dis- 

 tant originators of modern chemistry; they improved the knowl- 

 edge of optics, and meteorology, the measurement of densities; 

 their geographical investigations extended from one end of the 

 world to the other; they published a number of annals of capital 

 interest, dealing with almost every civilized country outside of 

 western Christendom; one of their historians, the Berber Ibn 

 Khaldun, expounded a philosophy of history which was by far 

 the most elaborate and the most original of medieval times; finally 

 they laid down the principles of Semitic philology. 



Surely these were no mean achievements. If they lacked the 

 supreme quality of the best ancient efforts, we must remember 

 that few men have ever come as near to perfection as the best of 

 the Greeks. On the other hand, if we place them in their own 

 environment and compare the Arabic with other medieval efforts, 

 the immense superiority of the former is obvious. We may say 

 that from the middle of the eighth century to the end of the 

 eleventh, the Arabic-speaking peoples (including within their 

 ranks, it is true, a number of Jews and Christians) were march- 



