THE ARABS AND THE COMPASS. 109 



dilating forms, and such dreams of beauty as had never 

 before been known appeared amid the groves and gardens 

 of Granada. 



If the Spanish Moors built any great ships or made any 

 long voyages on blue water, all have escaped record as 

 completely as has the memory of the mariner's compass, 

 with which their advocates say their apocryphal vessels of 

 the tenth and eleventh centuries were provided. 



We shall look in vain through the encyclopaedic astro- 

 nomical work of Ibn Younis the great Hakemite Tables 

 (1007 A. D.) for any reference to this instrument, ines- 

 timable as is its importance in observations of the heavens. 

 Equally in vain will the works of Cherif Edrisi (1153 A. 

 D.) the most famous of all Arabian geographers be 

 searched for it ; nor has the grammatical and historical 

 lexicon of the Byzantine Greek, Suidas, full as it is in its 

 reference to the magnet, a word which reveals the slight- 

 est knowledge of the directing needle. 



If the Saracens had constructed large vessels and had 

 made extensive voyages in them upon the open sea, it is 

 reasonably certain that some clear and indisputable records 

 thereof would long since have come to light. But the 

 only craft of unusual magnitude which they built were 

 flatboats for the transportation of troops or goods over 

 short distances, while their ships were of inconsiderable 

 dimensions. Out of eighteen hundred, which they sent 

 against Constantinople, only twenty were large enough to 

 carry one hundred men each, and all of them were de- 

 stroyed by the Greek fire showered upon them by the 

 besieged, in a single night. On a succeeding venture 

 most of the seven hundred and sixty ships composing the 

 attacking fleet met a like fate. 



Thus it appears that the compass had no early existence 

 among the Arabs of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, 

 nor among the highly civilized Saracens of Spain. There 

 still remain the Arabs who traded in the Eastern part of 

 the Mediterranean; but here our quest is short, for in the 



