220 HISTORY OF BOTANT. 



and medicine. The Arabs, fond of mysteries, and led by their 

 genius and ardent imaginations to the cultivation of poetry and 

 works of fiction, seemed to have little taste for sciences which 

 required assiduous application and patient investigation. Urged 

 on by fanaticism, under Mahomet they were the conquerors and 

 scourges of the civilized world. Alexandria experienced their 

 ruthless violence. This city, by turns the asjdum and tomb of 

 letters, had witnessed under the first of the Cesars the destruc- 

 tion of the library collected by the Ptolemies ; under Aurelian, 

 that founded by Augustus ; under Theodosius, that which An- 

 tony had given to Cleopatra ; and for the fourth time in pos- 

 session of an immense collection of books, acquired through her 

 love for philosophy, this city saw her magnificent library re- 

 duced to ashes by the victorious Saracens. This barbarous 

 but noble race at length became imbued with the love of 

 science ; a succession of califs (among whom was Haroun 

 Alraschid, the friend of Charlemagne), by their devotion to 

 learning, rendered Bagdad the most enlightened city of the 

 earth. Their learned men began to construct maps of con 

 quered countries, and to describe objects of natural history; 

 distant voyages extended and multiplied their commercial rela- 

 tions ; and mathematics, medicine, and natural history were 

 cultivated with ardor. When the Arabs had conquered Spain, 

 they carried thither letters and arts, and their schools became 

 celebrated throughout the world. In the iltL century the 

 French, Italians, Germans, and English went to them to learn 

 the elements of science. The Arabians preserved their supe- 

 riority in the sciences at least, if not in literature, until towards 

 the close of the 15th century. But when this people, divested 

 gradually of their European conquests, were at last driven from 

 Spain into Africa, they seemed, as if by instinct, to replunge 

 into the savage ignorance from whence they had been drawn 

 by the efi'orts of a few great minds. The Arabs had considered 

 plants more as physicians and agriculturists than as botanists ; 

 but although their descriptions of plants were imperfect, their 

 labors were not useless to botanical science. They discovered 

 many plants of Persia, India, and China, which were unknown 

 to the ancients. They, however, fell into the error of dwelling 

 more upon the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, 

 and Pliny, than of observing nature ; believing that nature her- 

 self must be wrong when she deviated from those celebrated 

 philosophers. 



336. The Omsades^ commencing at the close of the 11th cen- 

 tury, and continuing until towards the middle of the 13th, 



Literature carried araoiur tho Arabs — Destruction of tlie Alexandrian Library — Bagdad famous for 

 sarniiij — Schools of Arabs in Spain — Remarks upon the Arabian botanists. — 336, The Crusades 



