CHAPTER IV. 



PROGRESS AMONG THE ARABS. 

 (From the IXth to the XVth Century^ 



THE next group of scientific facts belongs to the Arabian 

 period. Science had migrated to Persia after 415 A.D., when 

 Bishop Cyril caused the destruction of the Alexandrian 

 Museum. The Greek men of science,, Nestorian and Jewish, 

 escaped death at the hands of the fanatical Christians by 

 flight, and carried away with them the sciences of which they 

 were the teachers. Protected by the Persian kings, science 

 survived the Alexandria catastrophe, and the Persians became 

 its custodians for two centuries until they were overcome by 

 the Moslem conquerors, the Arabs (641). The Arabs, their cycle 

 of conquest over, assimilated the Greek learning flourishing in 

 Persia, and in their turn became the representatives, guardians, 

 and teachers of ancient knowledge. Civilisation, or what was 

 of great value in the Greek world, was not dead ; it had 

 gyrated ; and the Arabs, having received science from the 

 ancients, gave to every branch of it an accuracy and enlarge- 

 ment at once unforeseen and substantial. The following 

 sketch will enable us to see that their triumphs in philosophy, 

 mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine were both 

 glorious and durable. 



In order, however, fully to understand the part which the 

 Arabs have played in the progress of mankind, it is necessary 

 to see what sort of civilisation theirs was and this necessi- 

 tates a short description. A similar description was not 



