154 THE WORLD MACHINE 



of camel-loads of manuscripts. The spirit of collection eventu- 

 ally extended over the whole empire. Its rival divisions vied 

 with each other in their accumulation. The Fatimite Library 

 at Cairo numbered, it is said, 600,000 volumes figures which 

 may be taken perhaps with some reserve. Yet its catalogue 

 alone was said to occupy forty-four. In Andalusia that is to 

 say, in Mohammedan Spain there were seventy public libraries 

 recorded. The collection of private individuals was often ex- 

 tensive. A modest physician Draper reports as having refused 

 the invitation of a Sultan of Bokhara because the carriage of 

 his books would have required four hundred camels. 



Retribution for their evil deeds in the earlier time fell upon 

 the Mohammedan when the hordes of Christendom swept 

 through his dominions. A great library at Tripoli was burnt 

 by the Crusaders. It was fancifully said to contain three 

 million volumes. When the Moors were driven from Spain, so 

 the story runs, the Cardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the 

 squares of Granada of 80,000 Arabic manuscripts, many of them 

 translations of classical authors The position of the nations 

 had become strangely reversed. The aforetime foes of learning 

 had become its protectors. The legitimate heritors of the Greek 

 tradition had become its implacable enemies. 



The Saracenic civilisation, indeed, presented a singular 

 contrast to the sodden and seemingly irretrievable stagnation 

 which had settled upon the rest of Europe. By a curious and 

 violent paradox, the like of which has seldom been known, a 

 fierce, ignorant, and warlike race, dominated by as intolerant 

 a religion as perhaps had ever been known, became the con- 

 servators of such science and such knowledge as yet remained 

 among men. They had not merely libraries ; the empire was 

 dotted with colleges, with great universities and medical schools. 

 The first of the latter established in Europe was said to have 

 been that of the Saracens at Salerno in Italy. The first 

 astronomical observatory was that erected by them at Seville 

 in Spain. 



The order of culture that obtained for a time among the 

 Saracens was high. For two or three hundred years, from the 

 time of the Khalif Al-Maimun, the wide area from Samarcand to 

 Fez and Cordova was the theatre of a rich and varied life. 

 Letters were again cultivated; a taste for the classics was 

 revived. All the stores of ancient learning were exhumed, were 



