220 
HISTOEY OF BOTAKY. 
and medicine. Tlie Arabs, fond of mysteries, and led by their 
genius and ardent imaginations to the cultivation of poetry ana 
works of fiction, seemed to have little taste for sciences which 
required assiduous application and patient investigation. Urged 
on by fanaticism, under Mahomet they were the conquerors and 
scourges of the civilized world. Alexandria experienced their 
ruthless violence. This city, by turns the asylum and tomb of 
letters, had witnessed under the first of the Cesars the destruc- 
tion of the library collected by the Ptolemies ; under Aurelian, 
that founded by Augustus ; under Theodosius, that which An- 
tony had given to Cleopatra ; and for the fourth time in pos- 
session of an immense collection of books, acquired through her 
love for philosophy, this city saw her magnificent library re- 
duced to ashes by the victorious Saracens. This barbarous 
but noble race at length became imbued with the love of 
Bcience ; a succession of califs (among whom was Haroun 
Alraschid, the friend of Charlemagne), by their devotion to 
learning, rendered Bagdad the most enlightened city of the 
earth. Their learned men began to construct maps of con 
quered countries, and to describe objects of natural history; 
distant voyages extended and multiplied their commercial rela- 
tions ; and mathematics, medicine, and natural history were 
cultivated with ardor. When the Arabs had conquered Spain, 
they carried thither letters and arts, and their schools became 
celebrated throughout the world. In the liiL century the 
French, Italians, Germans, and English went to them to learn 
the elements of science. The Arabians preserved their supe- 
riority in the sciences at least, if not in literature, until towards 
the close of the 15th century. But when this people, divested 
gradually of their European conquests, were at last driven from 
Spain into Africa, they seemed, as if by instinct, to replunge 
into the savage ignorance from whence they had been drawn 
by the efforts of a few great minds. The Arabs had considered 
plants more as physicians and agriculturists than as botanists ; 
but although their descriptions of plants were imperfect, their 
labors were not useless to botanical science. They discovered 
many plants of Persia, India, and China, which were unknown 
to the ancients. They, however, fell into the error of dwelling 
more upon the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, 
and Pliny, than of observing nature ; believing that nature her- 
self must be wrong when she deviated from those celebrated 
philosophers. 
336. The Crusades^ commencing at the close of the 11th cen- 
tury, and continuing until towards the middle of the 13th, 
Liteiature carriGd among the Arabs— Destruction of the Alexandrian Library — Bagdad famons fot 
#arnin2 — Scliools of Arabs in Spain — Remarks upon the Arabian botanists. — 336. T^e Crjsadea 
