18 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



I have ventured on this digression because I have found 

 myself that this short description of the A^rahic names removes 

 their entire incomprehensibility, and helps to bring these 

 physicians before my mind more really and more distinctly. 

 The names in full are, however, very long, and as they are 

 of no particular interest to us, fully expressed, I shall use 

 only the contracted forms by which the authors of whom I 

 write are most generally known. A single illustration will 

 show the advisabilit}^ of this course. The complete name 

 of Avicenna (I quote from Pocock) was " Abu Ali Al Hosain 

 Ebn Abdollahi Ebn Sina Al Shaich Al Rails (as you might 

 say chief doctor; hence he is commonty distinguished as 

 Princeps)." The contracted form is simply Ebn Sina, 

 which is sufficient, for, though titles of distinction are 

 interesting, if understood, they are not so if one does not 

 know what they mean. 



As early as 718, or thereabouts, Ahmed Ben Ibrahim, a 

 physician, wrote a work on herbs and plants used in medi- 

 cine ; and a botanist, who travelled far in his researches, 

 called Ebn Abu Zaher, also wrote a book on plants about 

 712, but it was in the following century that Arab learning 

 acquired a great impetus. 



About the year 820 the Caliph al-Mamum sent for all the 

 best books out of Chaldea, Greece, Egypt, and Persia, 

 relating to physic, astronomy, cosmography, chronology, 

 music, &c., and pensioned a number of learned men skilled 

 in the several languages and sciences, to translate them into 

 Arabic, by which means the foundation of modern Arabic 

 learning was laid. Also several of these works, the originals 

 of which are lost, have been preserved to us in these Arabic 

 translations.* 



•■' It is interesting to note the coincidence that wliile, or nearly at 

 the same time that, al-Mammn was encom-aging learning by the 

 means mentioned, and fomiding a seat of learning at Bagdad, om* own 



