LITERAtnRE OF THE ARABS. lOt 



•Which the l)iirh;irizod nations of the West rekindled 

 the torch of science and philosophy; and thus the 

 ravages occasioned by their -wars were, in some 

 degree, expiated by their scattering the germs of 

 social and intellectual improvement over the wide 

 regions which they successively occupied. In the 

 colleges of Cordova, Seville, and Toledo, the scho- 

 lars of Italy, France, Germany, and England drank 

 from the copious fountain of Arabian literature. 

 Among the number of their distinguished students 

 tvere Adelard, a monk of Bath, in the eleventh cen- 

 tury, Morley, a native of Norfolk, and our country- 

 tnan, the celebrated ^lichael Scott, who is only 

 known in Scotland by his reputation as a wizard. 



By the command of Charlemagne, the principal 

 Arabic books were translated into Latin, for the use 

 of the people in the various provinces of his empire. 

 For several centuries medicine found a secure re- 

 treat at Salerno and INIontpellier, whither students 

 flocked from all quarters of Europe, and where the 

 Christians became acquainted with the works of 

 Galen and Hippocrates. Even the Greeks and Jews 

 did not disdain to learn the healing krt from the. 

 Saracens, many of w^hom were induced by the 

 liberality of Alphonso X. to settle at Toledo. The 

 Arabian arithmetic, introduced by Gerbert, was im- 

 proved by Leonardo, a merchant of Pisa, who learned 

 the art during his residence at Algiers, about the 

 commencement of the thirteenth century ; and to 

 that commercial republic may be attributed the dis- 

 tinction of being the first among the Christian states 

 of the West which employed this system of nota- 

 tion. In short, without exaggerating the labours of 

 the Arabs, it may be said that we are indebted to 

 them, not only for the revival of the exact and phy- 

 sical sciences, but for most of those useful arts and 

 inventions that have wrought so total a change, and 

 given so beneficial aii impulse to the literature and 

 civilization of Europe. 



