CH. in., $$ 55, 5 o The Bagdad School 77 



the capital of the Caliphs, rapidly developed into a centre of 

 literary and scientific activity. Al Mansur, who reigned 

 from A.D. 754 to 775, was noted as a patron of science,, 

 and collected round him learned men both from India and 

 the West. In particular we are told of the arrival at his 

 court in 772 of a scholar from India bearing with him an 

 Indian treatise on astronomy,* which was translated into 

 Arabic by order of the Caliph, and remained the standard 

 treatise for nearly half a century. From Al Mansur's time 

 onwards a body of scholars, in the first instance chiefly 

 Syrian Christians, were at work at the court of the Caliphs 

 translating Greek writings, often through the medium of 

 Syriac, into Arabic. The first translations made were of 

 the medical treatises of Hippocrates and Galen ; the 

 Aristotelian ideas contained in the latter appear to have 

 stimulated interest in the writings of Aristotle himself, and 

 thus to have enlarged the range of subjects regarded as 

 worthy of study. Astronomy soon followed medicine, and 

 became the favourite science of the Arabians, partly no doubt 

 out of genuine scientific interest, but probably still more for 

 the sake of its practical applications. Certain Mahometan 

 ceremonial observances required a knowledge of the 

 direction of Mecca, and though many worshippers, living 

 anywhere between the Indus and the Straits of Gibraltar, 

 must have satisfied themselves with rough-and-ready 

 solutions of this problem, the assistance which astronomy 

 could give in fixing the true direction was welcome in 

 larger centres of population. The Mahometan calendar, 

 a lunar one, also required some attention in order that 

 fasts and feasts should be kept at the proper times. More- 

 over the belief in the possibility of predicting the future 

 by means of the stars, which had flourished among the 

 Chaldaeans (chapter i., 18), but which remained to a great 

 extent in abeyance among the Greeks, now revived rapidly 

 on a congenial oriental* soil, and the Caliphs were probably 

 quite as much interested in seeing that the learned men of 



* The data as to Indian astronomy are so uncertain, and the 

 evidence of any important original contributions is so slight, that I 

 have not thought it worth while to enter into the subject in any 

 detail. The chief Indian treatises, including the one referred to in 

 Ihe text, bear strong marks of having been based on Greek writings. 



