HINDU, ARABIAN AND MOORISH SCIENCE 165 



active scientific interest, founding a fine observatory at Meraga 

 near the northwest frontier of modern Persia. The instruments 

 used here are said to have been superior to any used in Europe until 

 the time of Tycho Brahe in the sixteenth century. The principal 

 achievement of this observatory was the issue of a revised set of 

 astronomical tables for computing the motions of the planets, 

 together with a new star catalogue. The excellence of their work 

 may be inferred from a determination of the precession of the 

 equinoxes within 1". This development lasted only a few years 

 in the latter half of the thirteenth century. A similar brief out- 

 burst of astronomical activity occurred among the Tartars at 

 Samarcand (Russian Turkestan) nearly 200 years later, that is, a 

 little before the time of Copernicus, and here the first new star 

 catalogue since that of Ptolemy was compiled. It is noteworthy 

 that there was no hostility between science and the Moham- 

 medan church. One of the uses of astronomy indeed was to de- 

 termine the direction of Mecca. 



No great original idea can be attributed to any of the Arab and 

 other astronomers here discussed. They had, however, a remark- 

 able aptitude for absorbing foreign ideas, and carrying them slightly 

 further. They were patient and accurate observers, and skilful 

 calculators. We owe to them a long series of observations, and 

 the invention or introduction of several important improvements 

 in mathematical methods. . . . More important than the actual 

 contributions of the Arabs to astronomy was the service that they 

 performed in keeping alive interest in the science and preserving the 

 discoveries of their Greek predecessors. Berry. 



THE MOORS IN SPAIN. We have already touched above upon 

 the rapid spread of Mohammedanism westward from its home 

 in Arabia, and the remarkable conquests of its followers in Spain 

 and western France. These western Mohammedans included 

 not only some of pure Arabian stock, but more of mixed descent, 

 especially from that part of northern Africa once known as Maure- 

 tania, whence the term Moors, generally applied to the con- 

 quering Mohammedans of the west. The Moors entered Spain 



