582 COSMOS. 



in the short space of seventy years, over Egypt, Gyrene, and 

 Carthage, through the whole of Northern Asia to the far 

 remote western peninsula of Iberia. The inconsiderable 

 degree of cultivation possessed by the people and their 

 leaders, might certainly incline us to expect every demon- 

 stration of rude barbarism, but the mythical account of the 

 burning of the Alexandrian Library by Amru, including the 

 account of its application during six months, as fuel to heat 

 4000 bathing rooms, rests on the sole testimony of two 

 writers who lived 580 years after the alleged occurrence took 

 place.* We need not here describe how, in more peaceful 

 times, during the brilliant epoch of Al-Mansur, Haroun Al- 

 Raschid, Mamun, and Motasem, the courts of princes, and 

 public scientific institutions, were enabled to draw together 

 large numbers of the most distinguished men, although with- 

 out imparting a freer development to the mental culture of 

 the mass of the people. It is not my object in the present work 

 to give a characteristic sketch of the far extended and variously 

 developed literature of the Arabs, or to distinguish the ele- 

 ments that spring from the hidden depths of the organiza- 

 tion of races, and the natural unfolding of their character, 

 from those which are owing to external inducements and 

 accidental controlling causes. The solution of this important 

 problem belongs to another sphere of ideas, whilst our histo- 

 rical considerations are limited to a fragmentary enumeration 

 of the various elements which have contributed in mathema- 

 tical, astronomical, and physical science, towards the diffu- 

 sion of a more general contemplation of the universe amongst 

 the Arabs. 



Alchemy, magic, and mystic fancies, deprived by scho- 

 lastic phraseology of all poetic charm, corrupted here, as 

 elsewhere, in the middle ages, the true results cf enquiry; 

 but still the Arabs have enlarged the views of nature, and 

 given origin to many new elements of knowledge, by their in- 

 defatigable and independent labours, -while, by means of careful 

 translations into their own tongue, they have appropriated to 

 themselves the fruits of the labours of earlier cultivated 



* Gibbon, vol. ix. chap. 51, p. 392; Heeren, Gesch. des Studiums der 

 classisclien Litteratur, bd. i. 1797, s. 44 und 72; Sacy, Abd-Allatif, 

 p. 240; Parthey, Das alexandrinische Museum, 1838, s. 106. 



