THE MEDIAEVAL MIND 70 



of universal lawlessness. The apparent quiet which 

 ultimately settled on them was not that of peace but 

 of exhaustion. Ease, wealth, trade, literature and 

 science, all eventually disappeared from the sphere 

 of influence of the Mahommedan domination. 



It was in Spain, the farthest province of the Mahom- 

 medan conquest, that the first fruits of the inter- 

 course of Arabian, Jewish and Christian civilizations 

 became appreciable. For three centuries, from 418 

 to 711, the West Gothic kingdom had established and 

 maintained law and order from its capital at Toulouse. 

 The Sephardim Jews, originally deported from 

 Palestine to Spain under Titus, had preserved tradi- 

 tions of Alexandrian learning, amassed wealth, and 

 kept open communications with the East. But 

 the persecutions of the Jews, which set in after the 

 West Gothic kings exchanged the more tolerant 

 Arianism for the orthodox Roman Christianity, pre- 

 disposed the Jews for a change of governors, an 

 attitude which helped to turn what might have been 

 a mere Mahommedan plundering raid into a successful 

 conquest. 



The tolerance of thought accorded by the Arabs, 

 as long as their supremacy remained unquestioned, 

 led the way for the establishment of schools and colleges, 

 which, however, owed their continued existence, not 

 to the general intelligence of the people as a whole, 

 but to the occasional and spasmodic patronage of a 

 liberal-minded or free-thinking ruler. 



The course of Arabian philosophy developed on 

 much the same lines as that of the Christian schools, 

 which followed it a hundred years later. There was 

 the same attempt to harmonize the sacred literature 



