BABYLOXIAX LITERATURE. 5 



tlic numerous facts which, can be deduced 

 from Arabian historians and general writers 

 on ancient Babylon, there exists in Arabic 

 a series of writings translated from the Ba- 

 bylonian or Nabatheean language. All these 

 translations were the work of one man. To- 

 wards the year 900 of our era, a descendant 

 of those ancient Babylonian families who 

 had fled to the marshes of Wasith and of 

 Bassora, where their posterity still dwell, 

 was struck with profound admiration for the 

 works of his ancestors, whose language he 

 understood, and probably spoke. Ibn "Wah- 

 shiya al-Kasdani, or the Chaldean (such 

 was the name of this individual), was a 

 Mussulman, but Islamism only dated in his 

 family from the time of his great-grand- 

 father; he hated the Arabs, and cherished 

 the same feeling of national jealousy towards 

 them as the Persians also entertained against 

 their conquerors. A piece of good fortune 

 threw into his hands a large collection of 

 Xabathfean writings, which had been rescued 

 made between the name of the Copts 



