26 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



made it out that throiigli his studies of the old philosophers 

 his judgment had become warped, and he was no longer a 

 good Mussulman : and so he with some others, narrowly 

 escaping death, was banished from Cordova, but he was 

 shortly recalled. He died at Morocco, 1198. 



Thieteenth Century. 



This is a period of copying, when there were very few 

 original writers. Having reached its climax in the foregoing 

 century, Arab learning now began to decline, and continued 

 to do so until its extinction. 



Mansur Ben Abul-Fadhl Ben Ali, a learned Syrian 

 physician, who died 1241, wrote for the Sultan al-Malik 

 al-Muaddhem ' De Medicamentis Simplicibus,' in which he 

 introduced much that was new or had not been noticed by 

 his predecessors. 



We now come to the most eminent of Arab botanists, Ebn 

 al-Beitar, who was born at Malaga. He went to Egypt, 

 where he was received with much honour, and travelled 

 afterwards in Greece and Asia Minor, for the increase of 

 his botanical knowledge. Ebn Abu Oseibia (the biographer 

 already mentioned and to be shortly noticed) was acquainted 

 with him in 1235, and often made botanical excursions with 

 him in the neighbourhood of Damascus, receiving great 

 benefit from his instructions. After other travels Ebn al- 

 Beitar returned to Damascus, where he died suddenl}^ 1248. 



I have at the outset mentioned Ahmed Ben Ibrahim and 

 Ebn Abu Zaher, as botanists who wrote on plants as dis- 

 tinguished from the study of physic. Since that time 

 (eighth century) Botany should rather be called simpling ; 

 but in Ebn al-Beitar we seem to have more of what we 

 should now call a botanist. Probably he stands thus 

 prominently before us because the historian, Ebn Abu 

 Oseibia, was intimately acquainted with him ; and it is 



