II THE ARREST OF ENQUIRY 73 



Indian sages completed the eclecticism of that en- 

 lightened monarch. Then came the ruthless Arab, 

 and philosophy and science were eclipsed. But with 

 the advent of the Abbaside Khalifs, who number the 

 famous Haroun al-Raschid among them, there came 

 revival of the widest toleration, and consequent 

 return of intellectual activity. Baghdad arose as 

 the seat of empire. Situated on the high road of 

 Oriental commerce, along which travelled foreign 

 ideas and foreign culture, that city became also the 

 Oxford of her time. Arabic was the language of 

 the conquerors, and into that poetic, but unphilo- 

 sophic, tongue, Greek philosophy and science were 

 rendered. Under the rule of those Khalifs, says 

 Renan, * non-tolerant, non-reluctant persecutors/ free 

 thought developed; the Motecallenim or 'disputants' 

 held debates, where all religions were examined in 

 the light of reason. Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, and 

 Ptolemy were text-books in the colleges, the repute of 

 whose teachers brought to Baghdad and Naishapur 

 (dear to lovers of ' old Khayyam ') students eastward 

 from Spain, and westward from Transoxiana. 



* Arab ' philosophy, therefore, is only a name. 

 It has been well described as ' a system of Greek 

 thought expressed in a Semitic tongue ; and modified 

 by Oriental influences called into existence by the 

 patronage of the more liberal princes, and kept alive 

 by the zeal of a small band of thinkers.' In the 

 main, it began and ended with the study of Aristotle, 

 commentaries on whom became the chief work of 

 scholars, at whose head stands the great name of 

 Averroes. Through these, a handful of Jews and 

 Moslems, knowledge of Greek science, of astronomy, 



