THE RENAISSANCE OF SCIENCE. 13 



pean manuscripts were, at first, preserved in churches, and later, in 

 convents and abbeys, where they were copied and recopied and sold 

 at high prices. It is, finally, to the church that we owe their preser- 

 vation. Wars and strifes were not so fatal to manuscripts in 

 the west as in the east. When Constantinople was taken by the Cru- 

 saders (1204), thousands of manuscripts perished. Many others were 

 lost in its three great confiagrations, but in spite of these misfortunes 

 thousands of volumes were preserved and have come down to us. The 

 fragment that has been saved may give some notion of the magnitude 

 of the original collections. Ximenes in the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century burned 80,000 manuscripts in the public squares of Grenada. 

 The magnificent collection of the Escurial comes from Morocco, and at 

 least half of it was destroyed by the fire of 1671. 



The Abbaside caliphs were liberal patrons of learning, as was the 

 fashion of their time and race. Harun's quick intelligence was inter- 

 ested in scientific matters and he had very wise advisers. Al-Mamun 

 was even more interested. To patronize science and the arts was a part 

 of the state of a sultan. It had to do with Aristotle's virtue of mag- 

 nificence, now erased from our list of cardinal excellences. The 

 Almagest was first translated by learned Jews in the reign of Harun 

 al-Easchid (765-809), and an observatory had been maintained by his 

 predecessors at Damascus. His son, Al-Mamun (786-833) erected a 

 magnificent establishment at Bagdad in 829, sixty-seven years after the 

 foundation of the city. The Arab instruments were fashioned from 

 descriptions given by Ptolemy, but they were much larger and far more 

 accurate than those of the Greeks. Moreover, the Arab astronomers 

 observed the heavenly bodies continuously, and this habit led them to 

 a more precise knowledge of the elements of planetary motion. The 

 attitude of an oriental monarch towards learning is well illustrated by 

 a paragraph from the Memoirs of Tamerlane. Tamerlane was nearly 

 a savage, but he had learned from contact with polite nations the 

 fashion of kings, and it is interesting and significant that he cared to 

 be in the fashion. He says : 



Men learned in medicine and skilled in the art of healing, and astrologers 

 and mathematicians, who are essential to the dignity of empire, I drew around 

 me; and by the aid of physicians and surgeons I gave health to the sick; with , 

 the assistance of astrologers I ascertained the benign or malevolent aspect 

 of the stars, their motions, and the revolution of the heavens; and with the 

 aid of geometricians and architects I laid out gardens and planned and con- 

 structed magnificent buildings. At the Court of Akbar (1575) there were 

 thirty-eight doctors of the law and theologians, sixty-nine literati, fifteen 

 physicians, one hundred and fifty-three poets, besides historians, artists, 

 astrologers, three Jesuits, and translators, scribes and clerks without number. 



Arab history shows, however, that culture and the desire for culture 

 never penetrated the mass of the people. They were rigid Moslems; 



