OP THE UNIVERSE. THE ARABIANS. 215 



Bagdad subsequently became a central point of power and 

 civilisation, the Arabs, in the short space of seventy years, 

 extended their conquests over Egypt, Gyrene, and Carthage, 

 and through the whole of northern Africa to the distant 

 Iberian peninsula. The low state of cultivation of the armed 

 masses and of their leaders, may indeed have rendered occa- 

 sional outbreaks of a rude spirit not altogether improbable. 

 The tale of the burning of the Alexandrian library by Amru, 

 40,000 baths being heated for six months by its contents, 

 rests, however, solely on the testimony of two writers who 

 lived 580 years after the supposed event. ( 329 ) We need not 

 here describe how, in more peaceful times, but without 

 the mental cultivation of the mass of the nation having 

 attained any free development, in the brilliant epoch of 

 Al-Mansur, Harun Al-Raschid, Mamun, and Motasem, the 

 courts of princes and the public scientific institutions 

 were able to assemble a considerable number of highly 

 distinguished men. We cannot attempt in these pages to 

 characterise the extensive, varied, and unequal Arabic litera- 

 ture ; or to distinguish that which springs from the hidden 

 depths of the particular organisation of a race and the natural 

 unfolding of its faculties, from that which is dependent on 

 external incitements and accidental conditions . The solution 

 of this important problem belongs to a different sphere of 

 ideas. Our historical considerations are limited to a frag- 

 mentary notice of what the Arabian nation has contributed, 

 by mathematical and astronomical knowledge, and in the 

 physical sciences, to the more general contemplation of the 

 Universe. 



The true results of investigation are indeed here, as elsp> 

 where in the middle ages, alloyed by alchemy, supposed 



