520 ORIENTAL ELEMENTS OF CULTURE IN THE OCCIDENT. 



by the invention of g-unpowder, which gave to the intellectual element 

 the sole mastery in warfare. The a priori conviction of many that 

 only the Greeks or Romans could have invented gunpowder led to a 

 dire confusion in this question. Combustibles like naphtha, etc., to 

 which class also Greek fire belongs, were in use in the armies of the 

 Califs" and were confounded with explosives. Marcus Graecus, who 

 had a receipt for making gunpowder from saltpeter, coal, and sulphur, 

 being credited to the ninth century, while he actually wrote al)out 1250, 

 and this under Arabic influence. The monk Berthold Schwarz is 

 naturall}" a counterpart to the pretended inventor of the compass, 

 Flavio Gioja, the historical facts about both l)eing in doubt. In any 

 case, their lives are placed in a time when the inventions which the}" 

 are said to have made had long been known. Those who would recon- 

 cile this discrepancy try to reserve for these men some improvement 

 which they might have applied, but as a rule with little success. 

 A critical sifting- of the evidence begins only with liomocki's excel- 

 lent history of explosives, ^^ followed by a summarizing lecture by 

 Dr. Ednuind O. von Lippmann at Halle.'' Both specialists arrived at 

 the same conclusion, that saltpeter was first known in China, but not 

 before about the middle of the twelfth century. We have old Chinese 

 accounts of the brave and successful defense of the Chinese cit}" of 

 Pian-king (K'ai-fuug) on the Lower Hwang--ho against the Mongols 

 under Ogotai in 1232.'^ Here we first find explosives, blasting bodies, 

 and rockets employed 1)}^ the Chinese against the enem}". Of their 

 form we get an idea from the cuts in Chinese fire books. In the 

 thirteenth century the Arabs became acquainted with saltpeter, 

 through China, for they designate it as thelg as-Sin (Chinese snow), 

 and the rockets as sahm Khatai (Chinese arrow). In the fire book of 

 Hasan ar-Ranuuah (Paris National Library, de Slane's catalogue No. 

 2825 fi\), which originated l)etween 1275 and 1295, saltpeter already 

 forms the 'Mjasis of fireworks'' (Komocki). The same Hasan ar- 

 Rammah for the first time describes a torpedo as ])aida takhrug wa-tah- 

 ru(( (an egg which comes forth burning) with a cut in one of the Paris 

 manuscripts, reproduced ])y Romocki,p. 71.' 



More important for us, however, than the compass and gunpowder 



« Comp. on their naphtha division my Arabischer Berichterstatter, 3d ed., p. 66-67. 



^S. J. von Ronioeki, Genchichteder Explonivstoffe: I. Geschichte der Spreng.stoff- 

 cliemie, der Sprengtechnik and des Torpedowcseiis 1)iH znm I>e<iiim der lU'iiesten 

 Zcit, I'.orlin, LS95. 



'Zur (ieschiclite des Schiessimlvfis imd der Friicrwal'I'cii, /citsflirit't I'i'ir Xutnr- 

 wissi'iischaft, vol. 71, 1898, pp. 295-;}til. 



'' I'^ully translated by Stanislas Julien in Kciiiaud vi Vnvr, l>u leu t;ivj^eois, des iVux 

 de j^iierre et des origines de la pond re a caiinii cliez les Ar-abes, les Persans et les 

 Chinois: Journal Asiatique, oetobre bsl'.i, p. '_'S4 ff., reprinted l)y Romocki, p. 45 ff. 



<'Conip. also Max Jilhns, Ilandbnt^li einer <ieschichto des Kriegswesens, Leipzig, 

 1880, p. 518 ff.; ru'schiehteder Kriegswisst'iiscluiften, INTiinehen, 1889, i, pp. 179-182. 



