282 
HISTORY OF BOTANY. 
fiction, seemed to have little taste for sciences which required 
assiduous application, and patient investigation. Under Maho- 
met, urged on by fanaticism, they were the conquerors and 
scourges of the civilized world. Alexandriaexperiencedtheirruth- 
less violence ; this city, by turns the asylum and the tomb of 
letters, had witnessed, under the first of the Caesars, the de- 
struction of the library collected by the Ptolemies ; under 
Aurelian, that founded by Augustus ; under Theodosius, that 
which Antony had given to Cleopatra; and for the fourth time 
in possession of an immense collection of books, acquired 
through her love for philosophy, this city saw her magnificent 
library reduced to ashes by the victorious Saracens. 
This barbarous but noble race at length became imbued with 
the love of science; a succession of caliphs, (among whom was 
Haroun Alraschid, already spoken of as the friend of Charle- 
magne,) by their devotion to learning, rendered Bagdad the 
most enlightened city of the earth. Their learned men began 
to construct maps of conquered countries, and to describe ob- 
jects of natural history; distant voyages extended and multi- 
plied their commercial relations ; and mathematics, medicine, 
and natural history, were cultivated with ardour. 
When the Arabs had conquered Spain, they carried thither 
letters and arts, and their schools became celebrated throughout 
the world. In the lltli century the French, Italians, Germans 
and English, went to them to learn the elements of science. The 
Arabians preserved their superiority in the sciences, at least, if 
not in literature, until towards the close of the loth century. 
But when this people, divested gradually of their European 
conquests, were at last driven from Spain into Africa, they seem- 
ed, as if by instinct, to replunge into the savage ignorance 
from which they had been drawn by the efforts of a few great 
minds. 
The Arabs had considered plants more as physicians and ag- 
riculturalists, than as botanists ; but although their descriptions 
of plants were imperfect, their labors were not useless to botan- 
ical science. They discovered many plants of Persia, India, 
and China, which were unknown to the ancients. They, how- 
ever, fell into the error of dwelling more upon the works of 
Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, than of obser- 
ving nature : almost believing, nature herself must be wrong, 
when she deviated from those celebrated philosophers. 
The Crusades , commencing at the close of the 11th century, 
and continuing until towards the middle of the 13th, prove the 
Haroun Alraschid — Schools of Arabs in Spain — Their labors of some use 
to botanical science — Crusades. 
