266 Epidemics. 



632 A.D., as religious fanatics and earnest disciples, to 

 demand the acceptance of the Koran as an obligatory con- 

 dition of peace from Egypt and North Africa to Spain and 

 the South of France, all of which lie to the west of Arabia 

 and to the west of Acre ; and, to the east of the same point, 

 from Asia Minor to Persia and India, Arabian power asserted 

 its supremacy. 



With a stoicism, mingled with a fanaticism, the Arabian 

 nomad spread, by his conquests and his abstract sciences, a 

 species of adventurous chivalry and philosophical indifference, 

 with undoubted military prowess and daring, that placed the 

 Saracen at the head of the nations of the world as a 

 conquering power, Cordova being their Athens, and nursery 

 of refinement and learning. 



It was a species of barbaric civilization which gave to 

 Europe its present numerals, and to mathematics all 

 its earlier algebraic signs, which is the true source 

 of our great advance over the ancients in the physical 

 sciences. 



The Saracenic empire, as a conquering and ruling power, 

 lasted from 632 to 1237 m Spain, when their cousins, the 

 Moors of Africa, overthrew them; and in Asia till 1258, when 

 the Tartars took Bagdad. But their blood and their 

 customs still, more or less, remain in the nations they 

 conquered and overran. 



Its duration was between 600 and 700 years, and all they 

 have left behind them belongs to the scientific world, and 

 the world of blind credulity in an impostor ; whilst the 

 Romans have left us as the basis of our laws their system of 

 jurisprudence, which is engrafted upon that inimitable 

 institution of Gothic origin, the jury ; whilst the Greeks 

 have influenced our oratory, sculpture, and architecture, and 

 almost every department of art, science, and government, 

 more than any other nation. Nay, the genius of the Greek 



