26 JOHN READE ON LANGUAGE AND CONQUEST. 
far less happily endowed than the Greeks. To attempt any survey of the character and 
work of Egyptian civilization would require a paper (rather a library, indeed) to itself. 
Among the moral conquests of the Semitic languages, mention has already been made 
of Arabic. In this case, as in that of Hebrew, those who were brought beneath its sway 
were, in the main, affected by the enforcement of new ideas, not by the adoption of a new 
language. There were exceptions, indeed, as with the Turks, North Africans and others, 
who made the language, as well as the faith, of the victors their own. But in few, if any, 
cases did the new language entirely, as in the conquests of Rome, displace the old. 
Generally contented with stagnancy, the Arabs have proved that, when some grand 
common impulse urges them to unwonted action, they can display an energy which 
carries all before it. In the spread of their civilization, the sword went first, ruthlessly 
hewing a way for the enthusiasts, and, when there was no more to subdue, the pen 
followed on a mission at once soothing and elevating. DuBois Reymond thus describes 
the course of Arab civilization in the day ofits greatest energy: “ While beneath the sign of 
the cross the night of barbarism had settled down on the western world, in the Hast, under 
the green standard of the Prophet, an original form of civilization had been developed, 
which not only preserved what had been won by the classical peoples in mathematics, 
astronomy and medicine, but even itself made no mean acquisitions in those sciences.” 
The stages through which they passed in attaining that result were remarkable. First, 
they appear as rude warriors, ignorant and despising learning, only full of a fanatic and 
sanguinary zeal. Not till the close of the 7th century, did the leaders begin to show some 
regard for culture. Then the Ommiades and Abbassides gathered to their courts the most 
distinguished scholars of their time, and, under the glorious sceptre Haroun al Raschid, 
the contemporary of Charlemagne, literary merit, met with an encouragement worthy of 
the most fruitful days of ancient Greece. At that time, in both east and west, there 
seemed to be a sure promise of the revival of all that was best in the old learning, and of a 
new life for physical science. The Arabs excelled in poetry and in prose that is akin to 
it 
They also cultivated history with success and, indeed, as Sismondi says, had a passion for 
every species of composition (except epic poetry, comedy and tragedy) and such a desire to 
leave no subject untouched that Benzaid of Cordova and Abd-ul-Monder, of Valencia, 
wrote a serious history of celebrated horses, as did Alasueco of camels that had risen to 
distinction. But the study by which they most influenced the West was that of philoso- 
phy. They read with eagernes the works of Aristotle, which they translated and 
expounded, and there is little doubt that, as their lyric and didactic poetry affected the 
style of the Romance writers (see Fauriel’s “ History of Provencal Poetry,” translated by 
Dr. G. J. Adler, chapter xiii.) so their allegorical interpretation of the great philosopher 
had a marked influence on the schools of the West. To them, also, we owe, indirectly, at 
least, our numerical notation, our initiation into algebraic methods, the first impulse to 
the study of chemistry, and the foundation of nearly all the knowledge that Europe long 
possessed of botany, of scientific agriculture, of astronomy, and of other sciences in which 
the pupils were afterwards destined to so far surpass their masters. But, if we except the 
small Arabic element in the Spanish language, and a few words added to the vocabularies 

tales marked by gorgeousness of imagination, and narrated with rare dramatic skill. 
of the other western nations, with the names of some rivers, hills and towns in the Iberian 
peninsula, there is nothing left to remind the student of the great influence once exerted 
