LITERATURE

the literature of arabia has its origin in the songs, improvisations, recitations and stories of the pre-mahommedan arabs. of written literature in those days there was, so far as we know, none. but where books failed memory was strong and the power of retaining things heard was not confined to a professional class. at every festive meeting many could contribute a poem or a story, many could even improvise the one or the other. when members of different tribes met in peace (as at the fair of 'ukaz) the most skilful reciters strove to maintain the honour of their own people, and a ready improviser was held in high esteem. the smartest epigrams, the fairest similes, the keenest satires, spoken or sung on such occasions, were treasured in the memory of the hearers and carried by them to their homes. but the experience of all peoples in that memory requires to be helped by form. sentences became balanced and were made clear by some sort of definite ending. the simplest form of this in arabian literature is the _saj'_ or rhymed prose, in which the sentences are usually (though not always) short and end in a rhyme or assonance. mahomet used this form in many parts of the koran (e.g. _sura_, 81). the next step was the introduction of metre into the body of the sentence and the restriction of the passages to a definite length. this in its simplest form gave rise to the _rajaz_ verses, where each half-line ends in the same rhyme and consists of three feet of the measure /u - u -. other metres were introduced later until sixteen altogether were recognized. in all forms the rhyme is the same throughout the poem, and is confined to the second half of the line except in the first line where the two halves rhyme. while, however, these measures were in early use, they were not systematically analysed or their rules enunciated until the time of khalil ibn ahmad in the 8th century. two other features of arabian poetry are probably connected with the necessity for aiding the memory. the first of these is the requirement that each line should have a complete sense in itself; this produces a certain jerkiness, and often led among the arabs to displacement in the order of the lines in a long poem. the other feature, peculiar to the long poem (_qasida_, elegy), is that, whatever its real object, whatever its metre, it has a regular scheme in the arrangement of its material. it begins with a description of the old camping-ground, before which the poet calls on his companion to stop, while he bewails the traces of those who have left for other places. then he tells of his love and how he had suffered from it, how he had journeyed through the desert (this part often contains some of the most famous descriptions and praises of animals) until his beast became thin and worn-out. then at last comes the real subject of the poem, usually the panegyric of some man of influence or wealth to whom the poet has come in hope of reward and before whom he recites the poem. _poetry._--the influence of the poet in pre-mahommedan days was very great. as his name, _ash-sha'ir_, "the knowing man," indicates, he was supposed to have more than natural knowledge and power. panegyric and satire (_hija'_) were his chief instruments. the praise of the tribe in well-chosen verses ennobled it throughout the land, a biting satire was enough to destroy its reputation (cf. i. goldziher's _abhandlungen zur arabischen philologie_, i. pp. 1-105). before mahomet the ethics of the arabs were summed up in _muruwwa_ (custom). hospitality, generosity, personal bravery were the subjects of praise; meanness and cowardice those of satire. the existence of poetry among the northern arabs was known to the greeks even in the 4th century (cf. st nilos in migne's _patrologia graeca_, vol. 79, col. 648, and sozomen's _ecclesiastical history_, bk. 6, ch. 38). women as well as men composed and recited poems before the days of the prophet (cf. l. cheikho's _poetesses of the jahiliyya_, in arabic, beirut, 1897). the transmission of early arabic poetry has been very imperfect. many of the reciters were slain in battle, and it was not till the 8th to the 10th centuries and even later that the earliest collections of these poems were made. many have to be recovered from grammars, dictionaries, &c., where single lines or groups of lines are quoted to illustrate the proper use of words, phrases or idioms. moreover, many a reciter was not content to declaim the genuine verses of ancient poets, but interpolated some of his own composition, and the change of religion introduced by islam led to the mutilation of many verses to suit the doctrines of the new creed.[3] the language of the poems, as of all the best arabian literature, was that of the desert arabs of central arabia; and to use it aright was the ambition of poets and scholars even in the abbasid period. for the man of the towns its vocabulary was too copious to be easily understood, and in the age of linguistic studies many commentaries were written to explain words and idioms. of the pre-mahommedan poets the most famous were the six whose poems were collected by asma'i about the beginning of the 9th century (ed. w. ahlwardt, _the diwans of the six ancient arabic poets_, london, 1870). single poems of four of these--amru-ul-qais, tarafa, zuhair and 'antara--appear in the mo'allakat (q.v.). the other two were nabigha (q.v.) and 'alqama (q.v.). but besides these there were many others whose names were famous; such as ta'abbata sharran, a popular hero who recites his own adventures with great gusto; his companion shanfara, whose fame rests on a fine poem which has been translated into french by de sacy (in his _chrestomathie arabe_) and into english by g. hughes (london, 1896); aus ibn hajar of the bani tamin, famous for his descriptions of weapons and hunting scenes (ed. r. geyer, vienna, 1892); hatim ta'i, renowned for his open-handed generosity as well as for his poetry (ed. f. schulthess, leipzig, 1897, with german translation); and 'urwa ibn ul-ward of the tribe of 'abs, rival of hatim in generosity as well as in poetry (ed. th. noldeke, gottingen, 1863). among these early poets are found one jew of repute, samau'al (samuel) ibn adiya (cf. th. noldeke's _beitrage_, pp. 52-86; art. _s.v._ "samuel ibn adiya" in _jewish encyc._ and authorities there quoted), and some christians such as 'adi'ibn zaid of hira, who sang alike of the pleasures of drink and of death (ed. by louis cheikho in his _les poetes arabes chretiens_, pp. 439-474, beirut, 1890; in this work many arabian poets are considered to be christian without sufficient reason). one poet, a younger contemporary of mahomet, has attracted much attention because his poems were religious and he was a monotheist. this is umayya ibn abi-s-salt, a meccan who did not accept islam and died in 630. his poems are discussed by f. schulthess in the _orientalische studien_ dedicated by th. noldeke, giessen, 1906, and his relation to mahomet by e. power (in the _melanges de la faculte orientale de l'universite saint-joseph_, beirut, 1906). mahomet's relation to the poets generally was one of antagonism because of their influence over the arabs and their devotion to the old religion and customs. ka'b ibn zuhair, however, first condemned to death, then pardoned, later won great favour for himself by writing a panegyric of the prophet (ed. g. freytag, halle, 1823). another poet, a'sha (q.v.), followed his example. labid (q.v.) and hassan ibn thabit (q.v.) were also contemporary. among the poetesses of the time khansa (q.v.) is supreme. in the scarcity of poets at this time two others deserve mention; abu mihjan, who made peace with islam in 630 but was exiled for his love of wine, which he celebrated in his verse (ed. l. abel, leiden, 1887; cf. c. landberg's _primeurs arabes_, 1, leiden, 1886), and jarwal ibn aus, known as al-hutai'a, a wandering poet whose keen satires led to his imprisonment by omar (poems, ed. by i. goldziher in the _journal of the german oriental society_, vols. 46 and 47). had the simplicity and religious severity of the first four caliphs continued in their successors, the fate of poetry would have been hard. probably little but religious poetry would have been allowed. but the omayyads (with one exception) were not religious men and, while preserving the outward forms of islam, allowed full liberty to the pre-islamic customs of the arabs and the beliefs and practices of christians. at the same time the circumstances of the poet's life were altered. poetry depended on patronage, and that was to be had now chiefly in the court of the caliph and the residences of his governors. hence the centre of attraction was now the city with its interests, not the desert. yet the old forms of poetry were kept. the _qasida_ still required the long introduction (see above), which was entirely occupied with the affairs of the desert. thus poetry became more and more artificial, until in the abbasid period poets arose who felt themselves strong enough to give up the worn-out forms and adopt others more suitable. the names of three great poets adorn the omayyad period: akhtal, farazdaq and jarir were contemporaries (see separate articles). the first was a christian of the tribe of taghlib, whose christianity enabled him to write many verses which would have been impossible to a professing moslem. protected by the caliph he employed the old weapons of satire to support them against the "helpers" and to exalt his own tribe against the qaisites. farazdaq of the bani tamim, a good moslem but loose in morals, lived chiefly in medina and kufa, and was renowned for his command of language. jarir of another branch of the bani tamim lived in irak and courted the favour of hajjaj, its governor. his satires were so effective that he is said to have crushed forty-three rivals. his great efforts were against farazdaq, who was supported by akhtal (cf. _the naka'id of jarir and al-farazdaq_, ed. a.a. bevan, leiden, 1906 foll.). among many minor poets one woman is conspicuous. laila ul-akhyaliyya (d. 706) was married to a stranger. on the death of her lover in battle, she wrote numerous elegies bewailing him, and so became famous and devoted the rest of her life to the writing of verse. two poets of the koreish attained celebrity in arabia itself at this time. qais ur-ruqayyat was the poet of 'abdallah ibn uz-zubair (abdallah ibn zobair) and helped him until circumstances went against him, when he made his peace with the caliph. his poems are chiefly panegyrics and love songs (ed. n. rhodonakis, vienna, 1902). 'umar ibn abi rabi'a (c. 643-719) was a wealthy man, who lived a life of ease in his native town of mecca, and devoted himself to intrigues and writing love songs (ed. p. schwarz, leipzig, 1901-1902). his poems were very popular throughout arabia. as a dweller in the town he was independent of the old forms of poetry, which controlled all others, but his influence among poets was not great enough to perpetuate the new style. one other short-lived movement of the omayyad period should be mentioned. the _rajaz_ poems (see above) had been a subordinate class generally used for improvisations in pre-mahommedan times. in the 7th and 8th centuries, however, a group of poets employed them more seriously. the most celebrated of these were 'ajjaj and his son ru'ba of the bani tamim (editions by w. ahlwardt, berlin, 1903; german trans. of ru'ba's poems by ahlwardt, berlin, 1904). with the establishment of the abbasid dynasty, a new epoch in arabian poetry began. the stereotyped beginning of the _qasida_ had been recognized as antiquated and out of place in city life even in the omayyad period (cf. goldziher, _abhandlungen_, i. 144 ff). this form had been ridiculed but now it lost its hold altogether, and was only employed occasionally by way of direct imitation of the antique. the rise of persian influence made itself felt in much the same way as the norman influence in england by bringing a newer refinement into poetry. tribal feuds are no longer the main incentives to verse. individual experiences of life and matters of human interest become more usual subjects. cynicism, often followed by religion in a poet's later life, is common. the tumultuous mixture of interests and passions to be found in a city like bagdad are the subjects of a poet's verse. one of the earliest of these poets, muti' ibn ayas, shows the new depth of personal feeling and refinement of expression. bashshar ibn burd (d. 783), a blind poet of persian descent, shows the ascendancy of persian influence as he openly rails at the arabs and makes clear his own leaning to the persian religion. in the 8th century abu nuwas (q.v.) is the greatest poet of his time. his language has the purity of the desert, his morals are those of the city, his universalism is that of the man of the world. abu-l-'atahiya (q.v.), his contemporary, is fluent, simple and often didactic. muslim ibn ul-walid (ed. de goeje, leiden, 1875), also contemporary, is more conservative of old forms and given to panegyric and satire. in the 9th century two of the best-known poets--abu tammam (q.v.) and buhturi (q.v.) --were renowned for their knowledge of old poetry (see hamasa) and were influenced by it in their own verse. on the other hand ibn ul-mo'tazz (son of the caliph) was the writer of brilliant occasional verse, free of all imitation. in the 10th century the centre of interest is in the court of saif ud-daula (addaula) at aleppo. here in motanabbi (q.v.) the claims of modern poetry not only to equal but to excel the ancient were put forward and in part at any rate recognized. abu firas (932-968) was a member of the family of saif ud-daula, a soldier whose poems have all the charm that comes from the fact that the writer has lived through the events he narrates (ed. by r. dvorak, leiden, 1895). many arabian writers count motanabbi the last of the great poets. yet abu-l-'ala ul-ma'arri (q.v.) was original alike in his use of rhymes and in the philosophical nature of his poems. ibn farid (q.v.) is the greatest of the mystic poets, and busiri (q.v.) wrote the most famous poem extant in praise of the prophet. in the provinces of the caliphate there were many poets, who, however, seldom produced original work. spain, however, produced ibn 'abdun (d. 1126), famous for the grace and finish of his style (ed. with commentary of ibn badrun by r.p.a. dozy, leiden, 1846). the sicilian ibn hamdis (1048-1132) spent the last fifty years of his life in spain (_diwan_, ed. moacada, palermo, 1883; _canzoniere_, ed. schiaparelli, rome, 1897). it was also apparently in this country that the strophe form was first used in arabic poems (cf. m. hartmann's _das arabische strophengedicht_, weimar, 1897), and ibn quzman (12th century), a wandering singer, here first used the language of everyday life in the form of verse known as _zajal_. _anthologies._--as supplemental to the account of poetry may be mentioned here some of the chief collections of ancient verse, sometimes made for the sake of the poems themselves, sometimes to give a _locus classicus_ for usages of grammar or lexicography, sometimes to illustrate ancient manners and customs. the earliest of these is the _mo'allakat_ (q.v.). in the 8th century ibn mofaddal compiled the collection named after him the _mofaddaliyat_. from the 9th century we have the hamasas of abu tammam and buhturi, and a collection of poems of the tribe hudhail (second half ed. in part by j.g.l. kosegarten, london, 1854; completed by j. wellhausen in _skizzen und vorarbeiten_, i. berlin, 1884). the numerous quotations of ibn qutaiba (q.v.) in the 'uyun ul-akhbar (ed. c. brockelmann, strassburg, 1900 ff.) and the _book of poetry and poets_ (ed. m.j. de goeje, leiden, 1904) bring these works into this class. in the 10th century were compiled the _jamharat ash'ar al arab_, containing forty-nine poems (ed. bulaq, 1890), the work _al-'iqd ul-farid_ of ibn' abdi-r-rabbihi (ed. cairo, various years), and the greatest work of all this class, the _kitab ul-aghani_ ("book of songs") (cf. abu-l faraj). the 12th century contributes the _diwan mukhtarat ush-shu'ara'i_ with fifty qasidas. the _khizanai ul-adab_ of abdulqadir, written in the 17th century in the form of a commentary on verses cited in a grammar, contains much old verse (ed. 4 vols., bulaq, 1882). _belles-lettres and romances._--mahomet in the koran had made extensive use of _saj'_ or rhymed prose (see above). this form then dropped out of use almost entirely for some time. in the 10th century, however, it was revived, occurring almost simultaneously in the _sermons_ of ibn nubata (946-984) and the _letters_ of abu bakr ul-khwarizmi. both have been published several times in the east. the epistolary style was further cultivated by hamadhani (q.v.) and carried to perfection by abu-l'ala ul-ma'arri. hamadhini was also the first to write in this rhymed prose a new form of work, the _maqama_ ("assembly"). the name arose from the fact that scholars were accustomed to assemble for the purpose of rivalling one another in orations showing their knowledge of arabic language, proverb and verse. in the _maqamas_ of hamadhani a narrator describes how in various places he met a wandering scholar who in these assemblies puts all his rivals to shame by his eloquence. each oration forms the substance of a _maqama_, while the _maqamas_ themselves are united to one another by the constant meetings of narrator and scholar. hariri (q.v.) quite eclipsed the fame of his predecessor in this department, and his _maqamas_ retain their influence over arabian literature to the present day. as late as the 19th century the sheik nasif ul yaziji (1800-1871) distinguished himself by writing sixty clever _maqamas_ in the style of hariri (ed. beirut, 1856, 1872). while this class of literature had devoted itself chiefly to the finesses of the language, another set of works was given to meeting the requirements of moral education and the training of a gentleman. this, which is known as "adab literature," is anecdotic in style with much quotation of early poetry and proverb. thus government, war, friendship, morality, piety, eloquence, are some of the titles under which ibn qutaiba groups his stories and verses in the _'uyun ul akhbar_. _jahiz_ (q.v.) in the 9th century and baihaqi (_the kitab al-mahasin val-masawi_, ed. f. schwally, giessen, 1900-1902) early in the 10th, wrote works of this class. a little later a spaniard, ibn 'abdrabbihi (abdi-r-rabbihi), wrote his _'iqd ul-farid_ (see section _anthologies_). the growth of city life in the abbasid capital led to the desire for a new form of story, differing from the old tales of desert life. this was met in the first place by borrowing. in the 8th century ibn muqaffa', a convert from mazdaism to islam, translated the pahlavi version of bidpai's fables (itself a version of the indian _panchatantra_) into arabic with the title _kalila wa dimna_ (ed. beirut, various years). owing to the purity of its language and style it has remained a classic work. the _book of the 1001 nights_ (_arabian nights_) also has its basis in translations from the indian through the persian, made as early as the 9th century. to these stories have been added others originating in bagdad and egypt and a few others, which were at first in independent circulation. the whole work seems to have taken its present form (with local variations) about the 13th century. several other romances of considerable length are extant, such as the _story of 'antar_ (ed. 32 vols., cairo, 1869, &c., translated in part by terrick hamilton, 4 vols., london, 1820), and the _story of saif ibn dhi yezen_ (ed. cairo, 1892). (g. w. t.) _historical literature._--arabian historians differ from all others in the unique form of their compositions. each event is related in the words of eye-witnesses or contemporaries transmitted to the final narrator through a chain of intermediate reporters (_rawis_), each of whom passed on the original report to his successor. often the same account is given in two or more slightly divergent forms, which have come down through different chains of reporters. often, too, one event or one important detail is told in several ways on the basis of several contemporary statements transmitted to the final narrator through distinct lines of tradition. the writer, therefore, exercises no independent criticism except as regards the choice of authorities; for he rejects accounts of which the first author or one of the intermediate links seems to him unworthy of credit, and sometimes he states which of several accounts seems to him the best. a second type of arabian historiography is that in which an author combines the different traditions about one occurrence into one continuous narrative, but prefixes a statement as to the lines of authorities used and states which of them he mainly follows. in this case the writer recurs to the first method, already described, only when the different traditions are greatly at variance with one another. in yet a third type of history the old method is entirely forsaken and we have a continuous narrative only occasionally interrupted by citation of the authority for some particular point. but the principle still is that what has been well said once need not be told again in other words. the writer, therefore, keeps as close as he can to the letter of his sources, so that quite a late writer often reproduces the very words of the first narrator. from very early times story-tellers and singers found their subjects in the doughty deeds of the tribe on its forays, and sometimes in contests with foreign powers and in the impression produced by the wealth and might of the sovereigns of persia and constantinople. the appearance of the prophet with the great changes that ensued, the conquests that made the arabs lords of half the civilized world, supplied a vast store of new matter for relations which men were never weary of hearing and recounting. they wished to know everything about the apostle of god. every one who had known or seen him was questioned and was eager to answer. moreover, the word of god in the koran left many practical points undecided, and therefore it was of the highest importance to know exactly how the prophet had spoken and acted in various circumstances. where could this be better learned than at medina, where he had lived so long and where the majority of his companions continued to live? so at medina a school was gradually formed, where the chief part of the traditions about mahomet and his first successors took a form more or less fixed. soon men began to assist memory by making notes, and pupils sought to take written jottings of what they had heard from their teachers. thus by the close of the 1st century many _dictata_ were already in circulation. for example, hasan of basra (d. 728 a.d.) had a great mass of such notes, and he was accused of sometimes passing off as oral tradition things he had really drawn from books; for oral tradition was still the one recognized authority, and it is related of more than one old scholar, and even of hasan of basra himself, that he directed his books to be burned at his death. the books were mere helps. long after this date, when all scholars drew mainly from books, the old forms were still kept up. tabari, for example, when he cites a book expresses himself as if he had heard what he quotes from the master with whom he read the passage or from whose copy he transcribed it. he even expresses himself in this wise: "'omar b. shabba has _related_ to me in his book on the history of basra." no independent book of the 1st century from the flight (i.e. 622-719) has come down to us. it is told, however, that moawiya summoned an old man named 'abid ibn sharya from yemen to damascus to tell him all he knew about ancient history and that he induced him to write down his information. this very likely formed the nucleus of a book which bore the name of that sheik and was much read in the 3rd century from the flight. it seems to be lost now. but in the 2nd century (719-816) real books began to be composed. the materials were supplied in the first place by oral tradition, in the second by the _dictata_ of older scholars, and finally by various kinds of documents, such as treaties, letters, collections of poetry and genealogical lists. genealogical studies had become necessary through omar's system of assigning state pensions to certain classes of persons according to their kinship with the prophet, or their deserts during his lifetime. this subject received much attention even in the 1st century, but books about it were first written in the 2nd, the most famous being those of ibn al-kalbi (d. 763), of his son hisham (d. 819), and of al-sharqi ibn al-qutami. genealogy, which often called for elucidations, led on to history. baladhuri's excellent _ansab al-ashraf_ (genealogies of the nobles) is a history of the arabs on a genealogical plan. the oldest extant history is the biography of the prophet by ibn ishaq (d. 767). this work is generally trustworthy. mahomet's life before he appeared as a prophet and the story of his ancestors are indeed mixed with many fables illustrated by spurious verses. but in ibn ishaq's day these fables were generally accepted as history--for many of them had been first related by contemporaries of mahomet--and no one certainly thought it blameworthy to put pious verses in the mouth of the prophet's forefathers, though, according to the _fihrist_ (p. 92), ibn ishaq was duped by others with regard to the poems he quotes. the original work of ibn ishaq seems to be lost. that which we possess is an edition of it by ibn hisham (d. 834) with additions and omissions (text ed. by f. wustenfeld, gottingen, 1858-1860; german translation by weil, stuttgart, 1864). the _life_ of the prophet by ibn oqba (d. 758), based on the statements of two very trustworthy men, 'urwa ibn az-zubair (d. 713) and az-zuhri (d. 742), was still much read in syria in the 14th century. fragments of this have been edited by e. sachau, berlin, 1904. we fortunately possess the _book of the campaigns_ of the prophet by al-waqidi (d. 822) and the important _book of classes_ of his disciple ibn sa'd (q.v.). waqidi had much more copious materials than ibn ishaq, but gives way much more to a popular and sometimes romancing style of treatment. nevertheless he sometimes helps us to recognize in ibn ishaq's narrative modifications of the genuine tradition made for a purpose, and the additional details he supplies set various events before us in a clearer light. apart from this his chief merits lie in his studies on the subject of the traditional authorities, the results of which are given by ibn sa'd, and in his chronology, which is often excellent. a special study of the traditions about the conquest of syria made by m.j. de goeje in 1864 (_memoires sur la conquete de la syrie_, 2nd ed., leiden, 1900), led to the conclusion that waqidi's chronology is sound as regards the main events, and that later historians have gone astray by forsaking his guidance. this result has been confirmed by certain contemporary notices found by th. noldeke in 1874 in a syriac ms. of the british museum. and that ibn ishaq agrees with waqidi in certain main dates is important evidence for the trustworthiness of the former also. for the chronology before the year 10 of the flight waqidi did his best, but here, the material being defective, many of his conclusions are precarious. waqidi had already a great library at his disposal. he is said to have had 600 chests of books, chiefly _dictata_ written by or for himself, but in part real books by abu mikhnaf (d. 748), ibn ishaq (whom he uses but does not name), 'awana (d. 764), abu mashar (d. 791) and other authors. abu mikhnaf left a great number of monographs on the chief events from the death of the prophet to the caliphate of walid ii. these were much used by later writers, and we have many extracts from them, but none of the works themselves except a sort of romance based on his account of the death of hosain (husain) of which wustenfeld has given a translation. with regard to the history of irak in particular he was deemed to have the best information, and for this subject he is tabari's chief source, just as madaini, a younger contemporary of waqidi, is followed by preference in all that relates to khorasan. madaini's _history of the caliphs_ is the best, if not the oldest, published before tabari; but this book is known only by the excerpts given by later writers, particularly baladhuri and tabari. from these we judge that he had great narrative power, with much clear and exact learning, and must be placed high as a critical historian. his plan was to record the various traditions about an event, choosing them with critical skill; sometimes, however, he fused the several traditions into a continuous narrative. a just estimate of the relative value of the historians can only be reached by careful comparison in detail. this has been essayed by brunnow in his study on the kharijites (leiden, 1884), in which the narrative of mubarrad in the kamil is compared with the excerpts of madaini given by baladhuri and those of abu mikhnaf given by tabari. the conclusion reached is that abu mikhnaf and madaini are both well informed and impartial. among the contemporaries of waqidi and madaini were ibn khidash (d. 838), the historian of the family muhallab, whose work was one of mubarrad's sources for the _history of the kharijites_; haitham ibn 'adi (d. 822), whose works, though now lost, are often cited; and saif ibn 'omar at-tamimi, whose book on the revolt of the tribes under abu-bekr and on the mahommedan conquests was much used by tabari. his narratives are detailed and often tinged with romance, and he is certainly much inferior to waqidi in accuracy. wellhausen has thoroughly examined the work of saif in _skizzen und vorarbeiten_, vi. besides these are to be mentioned abu 'ubaida (d. 825), who was celebrated as a philologist and wrote several historical monographs that are often cited, and azraqi, whose excellent _history of mecca_ was published after his death by his grandson (d. 858). with these writers we pass into the 3rd century of islam. but we have still an important point to notice in the 2nd century; for in it learned persians began to take part in the creation of arabic historical literature. ibn muqaffa' translated the great _book of persian kings_, and others followed his example. tabari and his contemporaries, senior and junior, such as ibn qutaiba, ya'qubi, dinawari, preserve to us a good part of the information about persian history made known through such translations.[4] but even more important than the knowledge conveyed by these works was their influence on literary style and composition. half a century later began versions from the greek either direct or through the syriac. the pieces translated were mostly philosophical; but the arabs also learned something, however superficially, of ancient history. the 3rd century (816-913) was far more productive than the 2nd. abu 'ubaida was succeeded by ibn al-a'rabi (d. 846), who in like manner was chiefly famous as a philologist, and who wrote about ancient poems and battles. much that he wrote is quoted in tabrizi's commentary on the _hamasa_, which is still richer in extracts from the historical elucidations of early poems given by ar-riyashi (d. 871). of special fame as a genealogist was ibn habib (d. 859), of whom we have a booklet on arabian tribal names (ed. wustenfeld, 1850). azraqi again was followed by fakihi, who wrote a _history of mecca_ in 885,[5] and 'omar b. shabba (d. 876), who composed an excellent history of basra, known to us only by excerpts. of the works of zubair b. bakkar (d. 870), one of tabari's teachers, a learned historian and genealogist much consulted by later writers, there is a fragment in the koprulu library at constantinople, and another in gottingen, part of which has been made known by wustenfeld (_die familie al-zobair_, gottingen, 1878). ya'qubi (ibn wadih) wrote a short general history of much value (published by houtsma, leiden, 1883). about india he knows more than his predecessors and more than his successors down to beruni. ibn khordadhbeh's historical works are lost. ibn 'abdalhakam (d. 871) wrote of the conquest of egypt and the west. extracts from this book are given by m'g. de slane in his _histoire des berberes_, from which we gather that it was a medley of true tradition and romance, and must be reckoned, with the book of his slightly senior contemporary, the spaniard ibn habib, in the class of historical romances. a high place must be assigned to the historian ibn qutaiba or kotaiba (d. 889), who wrote a very useful _handbook of history_ (ed. wustenfeld, gottingen, 1850). much more eminent is baladhuri (d. 893), whose book on the arab conquest (ed. m.j. de goeje, leiden, 1865-1866) merits the special praise given to it by mas'udi, and who also wrote a large work, the _ansab al-ashraf_. a contemporary, ibn abi tahir taifur (d. 894), wrote on the abbasid caliphs and was drawn on by tabari. the sixth part of his work is in the british museum. the universal history of dinawari (d. 896), entitled _the long narratives_, has been edited by girgas (1887). all these histories are more or less thrown into the shade by the great work of tabari (q.v.), whose fame has never faded from his own day to ours. the _annals_ (ed. m. de goeje, leiden, 1879-1901) are a general history from the creation to 302 a.h. (= a.d. 915). as a literary composition they do not rank very high, which may be due partly to the author's years, partly to the inequality of his sources, sometimes superabundant, sometimes defective, partly perhaps to the somewhat hasty condensation of his original draft. nevertheless the value of the book is very great: the author's selection of traditions is usually happy, and the episodes of most importance are treated with most fulness of detail, so that it deserves the high reputation it has enjoyed from the first. this reputation rose steadily; there were twenty copies (one of them written by tabari's own hand) in the library of the fatimite caliph 'aziz (latter half of the 4th century), whereas, when saladin became lord of egypt, the princely library contained 1200 copies (maqrizi, i. 408 seq.). the _annals_ soon came to be dealt with in various ways. they were published in shorter form with the omission of the names of authorities and of most of the poems cited; some passages quoted by later writers are not found even in the leiden edition. on the other hand, some interpolations took place, one in the author's lifetime and perhaps by his own hand. then many supplements were written, e.g. by ferghani (not extant) and by hamadhani (partly preserved in paris). 'arib of cordova made an abridgment, adding the history of the west and continuing the story to about 975.[6] ibn mashkawaih wrote a history from the creation to 980, with the purpose of drawing the lessons of the story, following tabari closely, as far as his book is known, and seldom recurring to other sources before the reign of moqtadir; what follows is his own composition and shows him to be a writer of talent.[7] in 963 an abridgment of the _annals_ was translated into persian by bal'ami, who, however, interwove many fables.[8] ibn al-athir (d. 1234) abridged the whole work, usually with judgment, but sometimes too hastily. though he sometimes glided lightly over difficulties, his work is of service in fixing the text of tabari. he also furnished a continuation to the year 1224. later writers took tabari as their main authority, but sometimes consulted other sources, and so add to our knowledge--especially ibn al-jauzi (d. 1201), who adds many important details. these later historians had valuable help from the biographies of famous men and special histories of countries and cities, dynasties and princes, on which much labour was spent from the 4th century from the flight onwards. the chief historians after tabari may be briefly mentioned in chronological order. razi (d. a.d. 932) wrote a _history of spain_; eutychius (d. 940) wrote _annals_ (ed. l. cheikho, paris, 1906), which are very important because he gives the christian tradition; suli (d. 946) wrote on the abbasid caliphs, their viziers and court poets; mas'udi (q.v.) composed various historical and geographical works (d. 956). of tabari's contemporary hamza ispahani (c. 940) we have the annals (ed. gottwaldt, st petersburg, 1844); ibn al-qutiya wrote a _history of spain_; ibn zulaq (d. 997) a _history of egypt_; 'otbi wrote the _history of mahmud of ghazna_, at whose court he lived (printed on the margin of the egyptian edition of ibn al-athir); tha'labi (d. 1036) wrote a well-known _history of the old prophets_; abu nu'aim al-ispahani (d. 1039) wrote a _history of ispahan_, chiefly of the scholars of that city; tha'alibi (d. c. 1038) wrote, _inter alia_, a well-known _history of the poets of his time_, published at damascus, 1887; biruni (q.v.) (d. 1048) takes a high place among historians; koda'i (d. 1062) wrote a _description of egypt_ and also various historical pieces, of which some are extant; ibn sa'id of cordova (d. 1070) wrote a _view of the history of the various nations_. bagdad and its learned men found an excellent historian in al-khatib al-baghdadi (d. 1071), and spain in ibn hayan (d. 1076), and half a century later in ibn khaqan (d. 1135) and ibn bassam (d. 1147). sam'ani (d. 1167) wrote an excellent book on genealogies; 'umara (d. 1175) wrote a _history of yemen_ (ed. h.c. kay, london, 1892); ibn 'asaqir (d. 1176) a _history of damascus and her scholars_, which is of great value, and exists in whole or in part in several libraries. the _biographical dictionary_ of the spaniard ibn pascual (d. 1182) and that of dabbi, a somewhat junior contemporary, are edited in codera's _bibliotheca arab. hisp._ (1883-1885); saladin found his historian in the famous 'imad uddin (d. 1201) (arabic text, ed. c. landberg, leiden, 1888). ibn ul-jauzi, who died in the same year, has been already mentioned. abdulwahid's _history of the almohades_, written in 1224, was published by dozy (2nd ed., 1881). abdullatif or abdallatif (d. 1232) is known by his writings about egypt (trans. de sacy, 1810); ibn al-athir (d. 1233) wrote, in addition to the _chronicle_ already mentioned, a _biographical dictionary of contemporaries of the prophet_. qifti (d. 1248) is especially known by his _history of arabic philologists_. sibt ibn al-jauzi (d. 1256), grandson of the ibn al-jauzi already mentioned, wrote a great _chronicle_, of which much the larger part still exists. codera has edited (madrid, 1886) ibn al-'abbar's (d. 1260) _biographical lexicon_, already known by dozy's excerpts from it. ibn al-'adim (d. 1262) is famed for his _history of aleppo_, and abu shama (d. 1267) wrote a well-known _history of saladin and nureddin_, taking a great deal from 'imad uddin. ibn abi usaibia (d. 1269) wrote a _history of physicians_, ed. a. muller. the _history_ of ibn al-'amid (d. 1276), better known as elmacin, was printed by erpenius in 1625. ibn sa'id al-maghribi (d. 1274 or 1286) is famous for his histories, but still more for his geographical writings. the noted theologian nawawi (q.v.; d. 1278) wrote a _biographical dictionary of the worthies of the first ages of islam_. preeminent as a biographer is ibn khallikan (q.v.; d. 1282), whose much-used work was partly edited by de slane and completely by wustenfeld (1835-1840), and translated into english by the former scholar (4 vols., 1843-1871). abu 'l-faraj, better known as bar-hebraeus (d. 1286), wrote, besides his syriac _chronicle_, an arabic _history of dynasties_ (ed. e. pocock, oxford, 1663, beirut, 1890). ibn 'adhari's _history of africa and spain_ has been published by dozy (2 vols., leiden, 1848-1851), and the _qartas_ of ibn abi zar' by tornberg (1843). one of the best-known of arab writers is abulfeda (d. 1331) (q.v.). not less famous is the great _encyclopaedia_ of his contemporary nuwairi (d. 1332), but only extracts from it have been printed. ibn sayyid an-nas (d. 1334) wrote a full biography of the prophet; mizzi (d. 1341) an extensive work on the men from whom traditions have been derived. we still possess, nearly complete, the great _chronicle_ of dhahabi (d. 1347), a very learned biographer and historian. the geographical and historical _masalik al-absar_ of ibn fadlallah (d. 1348) is known at present by extracts given by quatremere and amari. ibn al-wardi (d. c. 1349), best known by his _cosmography_, wrote a _chronicle_ which has been printed in egypt. safadi (d., 1363) got a great name as a biographer. yafi'i (d. 1367) wrote a _chronicle of islam_ and _lives of saints_. subki (d. 1369) published _lives of the theologians of the shafi'ite school_. of ibn kathir's _history_ the greatest part is extant. for the history of spain and the maghrib the writings of ibn al-khatib (d. 1374) are of acknowledged value. another history, of which we possess the greater part, is the large work of ibn al-furat (d. 1404). far superior to all these, however, is the famous ibn khaldun (q.v.) (d. 1406). of the historical works of the famous lexicographer fairuzabadi (q.v.) (d. 1414) only a _life of the prophet_ remains. maqrizi (d. 1442) is the subject of a separate article; ibn hajar (d. 1448) is best known by his _biographical dictionary of contemporaries of the prophet_, published in the _bibliotheca indica_. ibn 'arabshah (d. 1450) is known by his _history of timur_ (leeuwarden, 1767). 'aini (d. 1451) wrote a _general history_, still extant. abu'l-mahasin ibn taghribirdi (d. 1469) wrote at length on the history of egypt; the first two parts have been published by juynboll and matthes, leiden, 1855-1861. flugel has published ibn kotlubogha's _biographies of the hanifite jurists_. ibn shihna (d. 1485) wrote a _history of aleppo_. of sakhawi we possess a bibliographical work on the historians. the polymath suyuti (q.v.) (d. 1505) contributed a _history of the caliphs_ and many biographical pieces. samhudi's _history of medina_ is known through the excerpts of wustenfeld (1861). ibn iyas (d. 1524) wrote a _history of egypt_, and diarbekri (d. 1559) a _life of mahomet_. to these names must be added maqqari (makkari) (q.v.) and hajji khalifa (q.v.) (d. 1658). he made use of european sources, and with him arabic historiography may be said to cease, though he had some unimportant successors. a word must be said of the historical romances, the beginnings of which go back to the first centuries of islam. the interest in all that concerned mahomet and in the allusions of the koran to old prophets and races led many professional narrators to choose these subjects. the increasing veneration paid to the prophet and love for the marvellous soon gave rise to fables about his childhood, his visit to heaven, &c., which have found their way even into sober histories, just as many jewish legends told by the converted jew ka'b al-ahbar and by wahb ibn monabbih, and many fables about the old princes of yemen told by 'abid, are taken as genuine history (see, however, mas'udi, iv. 88 seq.). a fresh field for romantic legend was found in the history of the victories of islam, the exploits of the first heroes of the faith, the fortunes of 'ali and his house. then, too, history was often expressly forged for party ends. the people accepted all this, and so a romantic tradition sprang up side by side with the historical, and had a literature of its own, the beginnings of which must be placed as early as the 2nd century of the flight. the oldest specimens still extant are the fables about the conquest of spain ascribed to ibn habib (d. 852), and those about the conquest of egypt and the west by ibn 'abd al-hakam (d. 871). in these truth and falsehood are mingled. but most of the extant literature of this kind is, in its present form, much more recent; e.g. the _story of the death of hosain_ by the pseudo-abu mikhnaf (translated by wustenfeld); the _conquest of syria_ by abu isma'il al-basri (edited by nassau lees, calcutta, 1854, and discussed by de goeje, 1864); the pseudo-waqidi (see hamaker, _de expugnatione memphidis et alexandriae_, leiden, 1835); the pseudo-ibn qutaiba (see dozy, _recherches_); the book ascribed to a'sam kufi, &c. further inquiry into the origin of these works is called for, but some of them were plainly directed to stirring up fresh zeal against the christians. in the 6th century of the flight some of these books had gained so much authority that they were used as sources, and thus many untruths crept into accepted history. (m. j. de g.; g. w. t.) _geography._--the writing of geographical books naturally began with the description of the moslem world, and that for practical purposes. ibn khordadhbeh, in the middle of the 9th century, wrote a _book of roads and provinces_ to give an account of the highways, the posting-stations and the revenues of the provinces. in the same century ya'qubi wrote his _book of countries_, describing specially the great cities of the empire. a similar work describing the provinces in some detail was that of qudama or kodama (d. 922). hamdani (q.v.) was led to write his great geography of arabia by his love for the ancient history of his land. muqaddasi (mokaddasi) at the end of the 10th century was one of the early travellers whose works were founded on their own observation. the study of ptolemy's geography led to a wider outlook, and the writing of works on geography (q.v.) in general. a third class of arabian geographical works were those written to explain the names of places which occur in the older poets. such books were written by bakri (q.v.) and yaqut (q.v.)[9] _grammar and lexicography._--arab tradition ascribes the first grammatical treatment of the language to abu-l-aswad ud-du'ali (latter half of the 7th century), but the certain beginnings of arabic grammar are found a hundred years later. the arabs from early times have always been proud of their language, but its systematic study seems to have arisen from contact with persian and from the respect for the language of the koran. in irak the two towns of basra and kufa produced two rival schools of philologists. bagdad soon had one of its own (cf. g. flugel's _die grammatischen schulen der araber_, leipzig, 1862). khalil ibn ahmad (718-791), an arab from oman, of the school of basra, was the first to enunciate the laws of arabic metre and the first to write a dictionary. his pupil sibawaihi (q.v.), a persian, wrote the grammar known simply as _the book_, which is generally regarded in the east as authoritative and almost above criticism. other members of the school of basra were abu 'ubaida (q.v.), asma'i (q.v.), mubarrad (q.v.) and ibn duraid (q.v.). the school of kufa claimed to pay more attention to the living language (spoken among the bedouins) than to written laws of grammar. among its teachers were kisa'i, the tutor of harun al-rashid's sons, ibn a'rabi, ibn as-sikkit (d. 857) and ibn ul-anbari (885-939). in the fourth century of islam the two schools of kufa and basra declined in importance before the increasing power of bagdad, where ibn qutaiba, ibn jinni (941-1002) and others carried on the work, but without the former rivalry of the older schools. persia from the beginning of the 10th century produced some outstanding students of arabic. hamadhani (d. 932) wrote a book of synonyms (ed. l. cheikho, beirut, 1885). jauhari (q.v.) wrote his great dictionary the _sahah_. tha'alibi (q.v.) and jurjani (q.v.) were almost contemporary, and a little later came zamakhshari (q.v.), whose philological works are almost as famous as his commentary on the koran. the most important dictionaries of arabic are late in origin. the immense work, _lisan ul arab_ (ed. 20 vols, bulaq, 1883-1889), was compiled by ibn manzur (1232-1311), the _qamus_ by fairuzabadi, the _taj ul'arus_ (ed. 10 vols., bulaq, 1890), founded on the _qamus_, by murtada uz-zabidi (1732-1790). _scientific literature._--the literature of the various sciences is dealt with elsewhere. it is enough here to mention that such existed, and that it was not indigenous. it was in the early abbasid period that the scientific works of greece were translated into arabic, often through the syriac, and at the same time the influence of sanskrit works made itself felt. astronomy seems in this way to have come chiefly from india. the study of mathematics learned from greece and india was developed by arabian writers, who in turn became the teachers of europe in the 16th century. medical literature was indebted for its origin to the works of galen and the medical school of gondesapur. many of the arabian philosophers were also physicians and wrote on medicine. chemistry proper was not understood, but arabian writings on alchemy led europe to it later. so also the literature of the animal world (cf. damiri) is not zoological but legendary, and the works on minerals are practical and not scientific. see arabian philosophy and historical sections of such scientific articles as astronomy, &c. (g. w. t.) footnotes: [1] for the general history of the succeeding period see caliphate; egypt: _history_, s "mahommedan." [2] for further details of this period, see egypt: _history_, "mahommedan period," s 8. [3] on the subject of transmission cf. th. noldeke's _beitrage zur kenntniss der poesie der alten araber_ (hanover, 1804); and w. ahlwardt's _bemerkungen uber die aechtheit der alten arabischen gedickte_ (greifswald, 1872). [4] for details see the introduction to noldeke's translation of tabari's _geschichte der perser und araber zur zeit der sasaniden_ (leiden, 1879). [5] published in excerpt by wustenfeld along with azraqi (leipzig, 1857-1859). [6] of this work the gotha library has a portion containing 290-320 a.h., of which the part about the west has been printed by dozy in the bayan, and the rest was published at leiden in 1897. [7] a fragment (198-251 a.h.) is printed in de goeje, _fragm. hist. ar._ (vol. ii., leiden, 1871). [8] the first part was rendered into french by dubeux in 1836. there is an excellent french translation by zotenberg (1874). [9] the chief arabian geographical works have been edited by m.j. de goeje in his _bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum_ (leiden, 1874 ff.). arabian philosophy. what is known as "arabian" philosophy owed to arabia little more than its name and its language. it was a system of greek thought, expressed in a semitic tongue, and modified by oriental influences, called into existence amongst the moslem people by the patronage of their more liberal princes, and kept alive by the intrepidity and zeal of a small band of thinkers, who stood suspected and disliked in the eyes of their nation. their chief claim to the notice of the historian of speculation comes from their warm reception of greek philosophy when it had been banished from its original soil, and whilst western europe was still too rude and ignorant to be its home (9th to 12th century). origin. in the course of that exile the traces of semitic or mahommedan influence gradually faded away, and the last of the line of saracenic thinkers was a truer exponent of the one philosophy which they all professed to teach than the first. the whole movement is little else than a chapter in the history of aristotelianism. that system of thought, after passing through the minds of those who saw it in the hazy light of an orientalized platonism, and finding many laborious but narrow-purposed cultivators in the monastic schools of heretical syria, was then brought into contact with the ideas and mental habits of islam. but those in whom the two currents converged did not belong to the pure arab race. of the so-called arabian philosophers of the east, al-farabi, ibn-sina and al-ghazali were natives of khorasan, bokhara and the outlying provinces of north-eastern persia; whilst al-kindi, the earliest of them, sprang from basra, on the persian gulf, on the debatable ground between the semite and the aryan. in spain, again, where ibn-bajja, ibn-tufail and ibn rushd rivalled or exceeded the fame of the eastern schools, the arabians of pure blood were few, and the moorish ruling class was deeply intersected by jewish colonies, and even by the natives of christian spain. thus, alike at bagdad and at cordova, arabian philosophy represents the temporary victory of exotic ideas and of subject races over the theological one-sidedness of islam, and the illiterate simplicity of the early saracens. islam had, it is true, a philosophy of its own among its theologians (see mahommedan religion). it was with them that the moslem theology--the science of the word (_kalam_)--first came into existence. its professors, the _mutakallimun_ (known in hebrew as _medabberim_, and as _loquentes_ in the latin versions), may be compared with the scholastic doctors of the catholic church. driven in the first instance to speculation in theology by the needs of their natural reason, they came, in after days, when greek philosophy had been naturalized in the caliphate, to adapt its methods and doctrines to the support of their views. they employed a quasi-philosophical method, by which, according to maimonides, they first reflected how things ought to be in order to support, or at least not contradict, their opinions, and then, when their minds were made up with regard to this imaginary system, declared that the world was no otherwise constituted. the dogmas of creation and providence, of divine omnipotence, chiefly exercised them; and they sought to assert for god an immediate action in the making and the keeping of the world. space they looked upon as pervaded by atoms possessing no quality or extension, and time was similarly divided into innumerable instants. each change in the constitution of the atoms is a direct act of the almighty. when the fire burns, or the water moistens, these terms merely express the habitual connexion which our senses perceive between one thing and another. it is not the man that throws a stone who is its real mover: the supreme agent has for the moment created motion. if a living being die, it is because god has created the attribute of death; and the body remains dead, only because that attribute is unceasingly created. thus, on the one hand, the object called the cause is denied to have any efficient power to produce the so-called effect; and, on the other hand, the regularities or laws of nature are explained to be direct interferences by the deity. the supposed uniformity and necessity of causation is only an effect of custom, and may be at any moment rescinded. in this way, by a theory which, according to averroes, involves the negation of science, the moslem theologians believed that they had exalted god beyond the limits of the metaphysical and scientific conceptions of law, form and matter; whilst they at the same time stood aloof from the vulgar doctrines, attributing a causality to things. thus they deemed they had left a clear ground for the possibility of miracles. but at least one point was common to the theological and the philosophical doctrine. carrying out, it may be, the principles of the neo-platonists, they kept the sanctuary of the deity securely guarded, and interposed between him and his creatures a spiritual order of potent principles, from the intelligence, which is the first-born image of the great unity, to the soul and nature, which come later in the spiritual rank. of god the philosophers said we could not tell what he is, but only what he is not. the highest point, beyond which strictly philosophical inquirers did not penetrate, was the active intellect,--a sort of soul of the world in aristotelian garb--the principle which inspires and regulates the development of humanity, and in which lies the goal of perfection for the human spirit. in theological language the active intellect is described as an angel. the inspirations which the prophet receives by angelic messengers are compared with the irradiation of intellectual light, which the philosopher wins by contemplation of truth and increasing purity of life. but while the theologian incessantly postulated the agency of that god whose nature he deemed beyond the pale of science, the philosopher, following a purely human and natural aim, directed his efforts to the gradual elevation of his part of reason from its unformed state, and to its final union with the controlling intellect which moves and draws to itself the spirits of those who prepare themselves for its influences. the philosophers in their way, like the mystics of persia (the sufites) in another, tended towards a theory of the communion of man with the spiritual world, which may be considered a protest against the practical and almost prosaic definiteness of the creed of mahomet. arabian philosophy, at the outset of its career in the 9th century, was able without difficulty to take possession of those resources for speculative thought which the latins had barely achieved at the close of the 12th century by the slow process of rediscovering the aristotelian logic from the commentaries and verses of boetius. what the latins painfully accomplished, owing to their fragmentary and unintelligent acquaintance with ancient philosophy, was already done for the arabians by the scholars of syria. in the early centuries of the christian era, both within and without the ranks of the church, the platonic tone and method were paramount throughout the east. their influence was felt in the creeds which formulated the orthodox dogmas in regard to the trinity and the incarnation. but in its later days the neo-platonist school came more and more to find in aristotle the best exponent and interpreter of the philosopher whom they thought divine. it was in this spirit that porphyry, themistius and joannes philoponus composed their commentaries on the treatises of the peripatetic system which, modified often unconsciously by the dominant ideas of its expositors, became in the 6th and 7th centuries the philosophy of the eastern church. but the instrument which, in the hands of john of damascus (damascenus), was made subservient to theological interests, became in the hands of others a dissolvent of the doctrines which had been reduced to shape under the prevalence of the elder platonism. peripatetic studies became the source of heresies; and conversely, the heretical sects prosecuted the study of aristotle with peculiar zeal. the church of the nestorians, and that of the monophysites, in their several schools and monasteries, carried on from the 5th to the 8th century the study of the earlier part of the organon, with almost the same means, purposes and results as were found among the latin schoolmen of the earlier centuries. up to the time when the religious zeal of the emperor zeno put a stop to the nestorian school at edessa, this "athens of syria" was active in translating and popularizing the aristotelian logic. their banishment from edessa in 489 drove the nestorian scholars to persia, where the sassanid rulers gave them a welcome; and there they continued their labours on the organon. a new seminary of logic and theology sprang up at nisibis, not far from the old locality; and at gandisapora (or nishapur), in the east of persia, there arose a medical school, whence greek medicine, and in its company greek science and philosophy, ere long spread over the lands of iran. meanwhile the monophysites had followed in the steps of the nestorians, multiplying syriac versions of the logical and medical science of the greeks. their school at resaina is known from the name of sergius, one of the first of these translators, in the days of justinian; and from their monasteries at kinnesrin (chalcis) issued numerous versions of the introductory treatises of the aristotelian logic. to the isagoge of porphyry, the categories and the hermeneutica of aristotle, the labours of these syrian schoolmen were confined. these they expounded, translated, epitomized and made the basis of their compilations, and the few who were bold enough to attempt the analytics seem to have left their task unaccomplished. the energy of the monophysites, however, began to sink with the rise of the moslem empire; and when philosophy revived amongst them in the 13th century, in the person of gregorius bat-hebraeus (abulfaragius) (1226-1286), the revival was due to the example and influence of the arabian thinkers. it was otherwise with the nestorians. gaining by means of their professional skill as physicians a high rank in the society of the moslem world, the nestorian scholars soon made bagdad familiar with the knowledge of greek philosophy and science which they possessed. but the narrow limits of the syrian studies, which added to a scanty knowledge of aristotle some acquaintance with his syrian commentators, were soon passed by the curiosity and zeal of the students in the caliphate. during the 8th and 9th centuries, rough but generally faithful versions of aristotle's principal works were made into syriac, and then from the syriac into arabic. the names of some of these translators, such as johannitius (hunain ibn-ishaq), were heard even in the latin schools. by the labours of hunain and his family the great body of greek science, medical, astronomical and mathematical, became accessible to the arab-speaking races. but for the next three centuries fresh versions, both of the philosopher and of his commentators, continued to succeed each other. to the arabians aristotle represented and summed up greek philosophy, even as galen became to them the code of greek medicine. they adopted the doctrine and system which the progress of human affairs had made the intellectual aliment of their syrian guides. from first to last arabian philosophers made no claim to originality; their aim was merely to propagate the truth of peripateticism as it had been delivered to them. it was with them that the deification of aristotle began; and from them the belief that in him human intelligence had reached its limit passed to the later schoolmen (see scholasticism). the progress amongst the arabians on this side lies in a closer adherence to their text, a nearer approach to the bare exegesis of their author, and an increasing emancipation from control by the tenets of the popular religion. under the caliphate. secular philosophy found its first entrance amongst the saracens in the days of the early caliphs of the abbasid dynasty, whose ways and thoughts had been moulded by their residence in persia amid the influences of an older creed, and of ideas which had in the last resort sprung from the greeks. the seat of empire had been transferred to bagdad, on the highway of oriental commerce; and the distant khorasan became the favourite province of the caliph. then was inaugurated the period of persian supremacy, during which islam was laid open to the full current of alien ideas and culture. the incitement came, however, not from the people, but from the prince: it was in the light of court favour that the colleges of bagdad and nishapur first came to attract students from every quarter, from the valleys of andalusia as well as the upland plains of transoxiana. mansur, the second of the abbasids, encouraged the appropriation of greek science; but it was al-ma'mun, the son of harun al-rashid, who deserves in the mahommedan empire the same position of royal founder and benefactor which is held by charlemagne in the history of the latin schools. in his reign (813-833) aristotle was first translated into arabic. orthodox moslems, however, distrusted the course on which their chief had entered, and his philosophical proclivities became one ground for doubting as to his final salvation. in the eastern provinces the chief names of arabian philosophy are those known to the latin schoolmen as alkindius, aliarabius, avicenna and algazel, or under forms resembling these. the first of these, alkindius (_see_ kindi), flourished at the court of bagdad in the first half of the 9th century. his claims to notice at the present day rest upon a few works on medicine, theology, music and natural science. with him begins that encyclopaedic character--the simultaneous cultivation of the whole field of investigation which is reflected from aristotle on the arabian school. in him too is found the union of platonism and aristotelianism expressed in neo-platonic terms. towards the close of the 10th century the presentation of an entire scheme of knowledge, beginning with logic and mathematics, and ascending through the various departments of physical inquiry to the region of religious doctrine, was accomplished by a society which had its chief seat at basra, the native town of al-kindi. this society--the brothers of purity or sincerity (ikhwan us safa'i)--divided into four orders, wrought in the interests of religion no less than of science; and though its attempt to compile an encyclopaedia of existing knowledge may have been premature, it yet contributed to spread abroad a desire for further information. the proposed reconciliation between science and faith was not accomplished, because the compromise could please neither party. the fifty-one treatises of which this encyclopaedia consists are interspersed with apologues in true oriental style, and the idea of goodness, of moral perfection, is as prominent an end in every discourse as it was in the alleged dream of al-ma'mun. the materials of the work come chiefly from aristotle, but they are conceived in a platonizing spirit, which places as the bond of all things a universal soul of the world with its partial or fragmentary souls. contemporary with this semi-religious and semi-philosophical society lived alfarabius (see farabi), who died in 950. his paraphrases of aristotle formed the basis on which avicenna constructed his system, and his logical treatises produced a permanent effect on the logic of the latin scholars. he gave the tone and direction to nearly all subsequent speculations among the arabians. his order and enumeration of the principles of being, his doctrine of the double aspect of intellect, and of the perfect beatitude which consists in the aggregation of noble minds when they are delivered from the separating barriers of individual bodies, present at least in germ the characteristic theory of averroes. but al-farabi was not always consistent in his views; a certain sobriety checked his speculative flights, and although holding that the true perfection of man is reached in this life by the elevation of the intellectual nature, he came towards the close to think the separate existence of intellect no better than a delusion. avicenna. unquestionably the most illustrious name amongst the oriental moslems was avicenna (980-1037). his rank in the medieval world as a philosopher was far beneath his fame as a physician. still, the logic of albertus magnus and succeeding doctors was largely indebted to him for its formulae. in logic avicenna starts from distinguishing between the isolated concept and the judgment or assertion; from which two primitive elements of knowledge there is artificially generated a complete and scientific knowledge by the two processes of definition and syllogism. but the chief interest for the history of logic belongs to his doctrine in so far as it bears upon the nature and function of abstract ideas. the question had been suggested alike to east and west by porphyry, and the arabians were the first to approach the full statement of the problem. farabi had pointed out that the universal and individual are not distinguished from each other as understanding from the senses, but that both universal and individual are in one respect intellectual, just as in another connexion they play a part in perception. he had distinguished the universal essence in its abstract nature, from the universal considered in relation to a number of singulars. these suggestions formed the basis of avicenna's doctrine. the essences or forms--the _intelligibilia_ which constitute the world of real knowledge--may be looked at in themselves (metaphysically), or as embodied in the things of sense (physically), or as expressing the processes of thought (logically). the first of these three points of view deals with the form or idea as self-contained in the principles of its own being, apart from those connexions and distinctions which it receives in real (sensuous) science, and through the act of intellect. secondly, the form may be looked at as the similarity evolved by a process of comparison, as the work of mental reflection, and in that way as essentially expressing a relation. when thus considered as the common features derived by examination from singular instances, it becomes a universal or common term strictly so called. it is intellect which first makes the abstract idea a true universal. _intellectus in formis agit universalitatem._ in the third place, the form or essence may be looked upon as embodied in outward things (_in singularibus propriis_), and thus it is the type more or less represented by the members of a natural kind. it is the designation of these outward things which forms the "first intention" of names; and it is only at a later stage, when thought comes to observe its own modes, that names, looked upon as predicables and universals, are taken in their "second intention." logic deals with such second intentions. it does not consider the forms _ante multiplicitatem_, i.e. as eternal ideas--nor in _multiplicitate_, i.e. as immersed in the matter of the phenomenal world--but _post multiplicitatem_, _i. e._ as they exist in and for the intellect which has examined and compared. logic does not come in contact with things, except as they are subject to modification by intellectual forms. in other words, universality, individuality and speciality are all equally modes of our comprehension or notion; their meaning consists in their setting forth the relations attaching to any object of our conception. in the mind, e.g., one form may be placed in reference to a multitude of things, and as thus related will be universal. the form animal, e.g., is an abstract intelligible or metaphysical idea. when an act of thought employs it as a schema to unify several species, it acquires its logical aspect (_respectus_) of generality; and the various living beings qualified to have the name animal applied to them constitute the natural class or kind. avicenna's view of the universal may be compared with that of abelard, which calls it "that whose nature it is to be predicated of several," as if the generality became explicit only in the act of predication, in the _sermo_ or proposition, and not in the abstract, unrelated form or essence. the three modes of the universal before things, in things, and after things, spring from arabian influence, but depart somewhat from his standpoint. the place of avicenna amongst moslem philosophers is seen in the fact that shahrastani takes him as the type of all, and that ghazali's attack against philosophy is in reality almost entirely directed against avicenna. his system is in the main a codification of aristotle modified by fundamental views of neo-platonist origin, and it tends to be a compromise with theology. in order, for example, to maintain the necessity of creation, he taught that all things except god were admissible or possible in their own nature, but that certain of them were rendered necessary by the act of the creative first agent,--in other words, that the possible could be transformed into the necessary. avicenna's theory of the process of knowledge is an interesting part of his doctrine. man has a rational soul, one face of which is turned towards the body, and, by the help of the higher aspect, acts as practical understanding; the other face lies open to the reception and acquisition of the intelligible forms, and its aim is to become a reasonable world, reproducing the forms of the universe and their intelligible order. in man there is only the susceptibility to reason, which is sustained and helped by the light of the active intellect. man may prepare himself for this influx by removing the obstacles which prevent the union of the intellect with the human vessel destined for its reception. the stages of this process to the acquisition of mind are generally enumerated by avicenna as four; in this part he follows not aristotle, but the greek commentator. the first stage is that of the hylic or material intellect, a state of mere potentiality, like that of a child for writing, before he has ever put pen to paper. the second stage is called _in habitu_; it is compared to the case of a child that has learned the elements of writing, when the bare possibility is on the way to be developed, and is seen to be real. in this period of half-trained reason, it appears as happy conjecture, not yet transformed into art or science proper. when the power of writing has been actualized, we have a parallel to the _intellectus in actu_--the way of science and demonstration is entered. and when writing has been made a permanent accomplishment, or lasting property of the subject, to be taken up at will, it corresponds to the _intellectus adeptus_--the complete mastery of science. the whole process may be compared to the gradual illumination of a body naturally capable of receiving light. there are, however, grades of susceptibility to the active intellect, i.e. in theological language, to communication with god and his angels. sometimes the receptivity is so vigorous in its affinity, that without teaching it rises at one step to the vision of truth, by a certain "holy force" above ordinary measure. (in this way philosophy tried to account for the phenomenon of prophecy, one of the ruling ideas of islam.) but the active intellect is not merely influential on human souls. it is the universal giver of forms in the world. in several points avicenna endeavoured to give a _rationale_ of theological dogmas, particularly of prophetic rule, of miracles, divine providence and immortality. the permanence of individual souls he supports by arguments borrowed from those of plato. the existence of a prophet is shown to be a corollary from a belief in god as a moral governor, and the phenomena of miracles are required to evidence the genuineness of the prophetic mission. thus avicenna, like his predecessors, tried to harmonize the abstract forms of philosphy with the religious faith of his nation. but his arguments are generally vitiated by the fallacy of assuming what they profess to prove. his failure is made obvious by the attack of ghazali on the tendencies and results of speculation. ghazali. to ghazali (q.v.) it seemed that the study of secular philosophy had resulted in a general indifference to religion, and that the scepticism which concealed itself under a pretence of piety was destroying the life and purity of the nation. with these views he carried into the fields of philosophy the aims and spirit of the moslem theologian. his restless life was the reflex of a mental history disturbed by prolonged agitation. revolting, in the height of his success, against the current creed, he began to examine the foundations of knowledge. the senses are contradicted by one another, and disproved by reason. reason, indeed, professes to furnish us with necessary truths; but what assurance have we that the verdicts of reason may not be reversed by some higher authority? ghazali then interrogated all the sects in succession to learn their criterion of truth. he first applied to the theological schoolmen, who grounded their religion on reason; but their aim was only to preserve the faith from heresy. he turned to the philosophers, and examined the accepted aristotelianism in a treatise which has come down to us--_the destruction of the philosophers_. he assails them on twenty points of their mixed physical and metaphysical peripateticism, from the statement of which, in spite of his pretended scepticism, we can deduce some very positive metaphysical opinions of his own. he claims to have shown that the dogmas of the eternity of matter and the permanence of the world are false; that their description of the deity as the demiurgos is unspiritual; that they fail to prove the existence, the unity, the simplicity, the incorporeality or the knowledge (both of species and accidents) of god; that their ascription of souls to the celestial spheres is unproved; that their theory of causation, which attributes effects to the very natures of the causes, is false, for that all actions and events are to be ascribed to the deity; and, finally, that they cannot establish the spirituality of the soul, nor prove its mortality. these criticisms disclose nothing like a sceptical state of mind, but rather a reversion from the metaphysical to the theological stage of thought. he denies the intrinsic tendencies, or souls, by which the aristotelians explained the motion of the spheres, because he ascribes their motion to god. the sceptic would have denied both. g.h. lewes censures renan for asserting of ghazali's theory of causation--"_hume n'a rien dit plus_." it is true that ghazali maintains that the natural law according to which effects proceed inevitably from their causes is only custom, and that there is no _necessary_ connexion between them. but while hume absolutely denies the necessity, ghazali merely removes it one stage farther back, and plants it in the mind of the deity. this, of course, is not metaphysics, but theology. having, as he believed, refuted the opinions of the philosophers, he next investigated the pretensions of the allegorists, who derived their doctrines from an imam. these arabian ultramontanes had no word for the doubter. they could not, he says, even understand the problems they sought to resolve by the assumption of infallibility, and he turned again, in his despair, to the instructors of his youth--the sufis. in their mystical intuition of the laws of life, and absorption in the immanent deity, he at last found peace. this shows the true character of the treatise which, alike in medieval and modern times, has been quoted as containing an exposition of his opinions. the work called _the tendencies of the philosophers_, translated in 1506, with the title _logica et philosophia algazelis arabis_, contains neither the logic nor the philosophy of ghazali. it is a mere abstract or statement of the peripatetic systems, and was made preliminary to that _destruction_ of which we have already spoken. this indictment against liberal thought from the standpoint of the theological school was afterwards answered in spain by averroes; but in bagdad it heralded the extinction of the light of philosophy. moderate and compliant with the popular religion as alfarabius and avicenna had always been, as compared with their spanish successor, they had equally failed to conciliate the popular spirit, and were classed in the same category with the heretic or the member of an immoral sect. the 12th century exhibits the decay of liberal intellectual activity in the caliphate, and the gradual ascendancy of turkish races animated with all the intolerance of semi-barbarian proselytes to the mahommedan faith. philosophy, which had only sprung up when the purely arabian influences ceased to predominate, came to an end when the sceptre of the moslem world passed away from the dynasty of persia. even in 1150 bagdad had seen a library of philosophical books burned by command of the caliph mostanjid; and in 1192 the same place might have witnessed a strange scene, in which the books of a physician were first publicly cursed, and then committed to the flames, while their owner was incarcerated. thus, while the latin church showed a marvellous receptivity for ethnic philosophy, and assimilated doctrines which it had at an earlier date declared impious, in islam the theological system entrenched itself towards the end of the 12th century in the narrow orthodoxy of the asharites, and reduced the votaries of greek philosophy to silence. in spain. the same phenomena were repeated in spain under the mahommedan rulers of andalusia and morocco, with this difference, that the time of philosophical development was shorter, and the heights to which spanish thinkers soared were greater. the reign of al-hakam the second (961-976) inaugurated in andalusia those scientific and philosophical studies which were simultaneously prosecuted by the society of basra. from cairo, bagdad, damascus and alexandria, books both old and new were procured at any price for the library of the prince; twenty-seven free schools were opened in cordova for the education of the poor; and intelligent knowledge was perhaps more widely diffused in mahommedan spain than in any other part of europe at that day. the mosques of the city were filled with crowds who listened to lectures on science and literature, law and religion. but the future glory thus promised was long postponed. the usurping successor of hakam found it a politic step to request the most notable doctors of the sacred law to examine the royal library; and every book treating of philosophy, astronomy and other forbidden topics was condemned to the flames. but the spirit of research, fostered by the fusion of races and the social and intellectual competition thus engendered, was not crushed by these proceedings; and for the next century and more the higher minds of spain found in damascus and bagdad the intellectual aliment which they desired. at last, towards the close of the 11th century, the long-pent spiritual energies of mahommedan spain burst forth in a brief series of illustrious men. whilst the native spaniards were narrowing the limits of the moorish kingdoms, and whilst the generally fanatical dynasty of the almohades might have been expected to repress speculation, the century preceding the close of mahommedan sway saw philosophy cultivated by avempace, abubacer and averroes. even amongst the almohades there were princes, such as yusuf (who began his reign in 1163) and yaqub almansur (who succeeded in 1184), who welcomed the philosopher at their courts and treated him as an intellectual compeer. but about 1195 the old distrust of philosophy revived; the philosophers were banished in disgrace; works on philosophical topics were ordered to be confiscated and burned; and the son of almansur condemned a certain ibn-habib to death for the crime of philosophizing. avempace. arabian speculation in spain was heralded by avicebron or ibn gabirol (q.v.), a jewish philosopher (1021-1058). about a generation later the rank of moslem thinkers was introduced by abu-bakr muhammad ibn yahya, surnamed ibn-bajja, and known to the latin world as avempace. he was born at saragossa, and died comparatively young at fez in 1138. besides commenting on various physical treatises of aristotle's, he wrote some philosophical essays, notably one on the _republic or regime of the solitary_, understanding by that the organized system of rules, by obedience to which the individual may rise from the mere life of the senses to the perception of pure intelligible principles and may participate in the divine thought which sustains the world. these rules for the individual are but the image or reflex of the political organization of the perfect or ideal state; and the man who strives to lead this life is called the _solitary_, not because he withdraws from society, but because, while in it, he guides himself by reference to a higher state, an ideal society. avempace does not develop at any length this curious platonic idea of the perfect state. his object is to discover the highest end of human life, and with this view he classifies the various activities of the human soul, rejects such as are material or animal, and then analyses the various spiritual forms to which the activities may be directed. he points out the graduated scale of such forms, through which the soul may rise, and shows that none are final or complete in themselves, except the pure intelligible forms, the ideas of ideas. these the intellect can grasp, and in so doing it becomes what he calls _intellectus acquisitus_, and is in a measure divine. this self-consciousness of pure reason is the highest object of human activity, and is to be attained by the speculative method. the intellect has in itself power to know ultimate truth and intelligence, and does not require a mystical illumination as ghazali taught. avempace's principles, it is clear, lead directly to the averroistic doctrine of the unity of intellect, but the obscurity and incompleteness of the regime do not permit us to judge how far he anticipated the later thinker. (see munk, _melanges de phil. juive et arabe_, pp. 383-410.) the same theme was developed by ibn.-tufail (q.v.) in his philosophical romance, called _hayy ibn-yakdhan_ (the living, son of the waking one), best known by pococke's latin version, as the _philosophus autodidactus_. it describes the process by which an isolated truth-seeker detaches himself from his lower passions, and raises himself above the material earth and the orbs of heaven to the forms which are the source of their movement, until he arrives at a union with the supreme intellect. the experiences of the religious mystic are paralleled with the ecstatic vision in which the philosophical hermit sees a world of pure intelligences, where birth and decease are unknown. it was this theory which averroes (1126-1198), the last and most famous of the thinkers of moslem spain, carried out to his doctrine of the unity of intellect. averroes. for aristotle the reverence of averroes was unbounded, and to expound him was his chosen task. the uncritical receptivity of his age, the defects of the arabic versions, the emphatic theism of his creed, and the rationalizing mysticism of some oriental thought, may have sometimes led him astray, and given prominence to the less obvious features of aristotelianism. but in his conception of the relation between philosophy and religion, averroes had a light which the latins were without. the science, falsely so called, of the several theological schools, their groundless distinctions and sophistical demonstrations, he regarded as the great source of heresy and scepticism. the allegorical interpretations and metaphysics which had been imported into religion had taken men's minds away from the plain sense of the koran. god had declared a truth meet for all men, which needed no intellectual superiority to understand, in a tongue which each human soul could apprehend. accordingly, the expositors of religious metaphysics, ghazali included, are the enemies of true religion, because they make it a mere matter of syllogism. averroes maintains that a return must be made to the words and teaching of the prophet; that science must not expend itself in dogmatizing on the metaphysical consequences of fragments of doctrine for popular acceptance, but must proceed to reflect upon and examine the existing things of the world. averroes, at the same time, condemns the attempts of those who tried to give demonstrative science where the mind was not capable of more than rhetoric: they harm religion by their mere negations, destroying an old sensuous creed, but cannot build up a higher and intellectual faith. in this spirit averroes does not allow the fancied needs of theological reasoning to interfere with his study of aristotle, whom he simply interprets as a truth-seeker. the points by which he told on europe were all implicit in aristotle, but averroes set in relief what the original had left obscure, and emphasized things which the christian theologian passed by or misconceived. thus averroes had a double effect. he was the great interpreter of aristotle to the later schoolmen. on the other hand, he came to represent those aspects of peripateticism most alien to the spirit of christendom; and the deeply religious moslem gave his name to the anti-sacerdotal party, to the materialists, sceptics and atheists, who defied or undermined the dominant beliefs of the church. on three points averroes, like other moslem thinkers, came specially into relation, real or supposed, with the religious creed, viz. the creation of the world, the divine knowledge of particular things, and the future of the human soul. the real grandeur of averroes is seen in his resolute prosecution of the standpoint of science in matters of this world, and in his recognition that religion is not a branch of knowledge to be reduced to propositions and systems of dogma, but a personal and inward power, an individual truth which stands distinct from, but not contradictory to, the universalities of scientific law. in his science he followed the greeks, and to the schoolmen he and his compatriots rightly seemed philosophers of the ancient world. he maintained alike the claim of demonstrative science with its generalities for the few who could live in that ethereal world, and the claim of religion for all--the common life of each soul as an individual and personal consciousness. but theology, or the mixture of the two, he regarded as a source of evil to both--fostering the vain belief in a hostility of philosophers to religion, and meanwhile corrupting religion by a pseudo-science. the latent nominalism of aristotle only came gradually to be emphasized through the prominence which christianity gave to the individual life, and, apart from passing notices as in abelard, first found clear enunciation in the school of duns scotus. the arabians, on the contrary, emphasized the idealist aspect which had been adopted and promoted by the neo-platonist commentators. hence, to averroes the eternity of the world finds its true expression in the eternity of god. the ceaseless movement of growth and change, which presents matter in form after form as a continual search after a finality which in time and movement is not and cannot be reached, represents only the aspect the world shows to the physicist and to the senses. in the eye of reason the full fruition of this desired finality is already and always attained; the actualization, invisible to the senses, is achieved now and ever, and is thus beyond the element of time. this transcendent or abstract being is that which the world of nature is always seeking. he is thought or intellect, the actuality, of which movement is but the fragmentary attainment in successive instants of time. such a mind is not in the theological sense a creator, yet the onward movement is not the same as what some modern thinkers seem to mean by development. for the perfect and absolute, the consummation of movement is not generated at any point in the process; it is an ideal end, which guides the operations of nature, and does not wait upon them for its achievement. god is the unchanging essence of the movement, and therefore its eternal cause. a special application of this relation between the prior perfect, and the imperfect, which it influences, is found in the doctrine of the connexion of the abstract (transcendent) intellect with man. this transcendent mind is sometimes connected with the moon, according to the theory of aristotle, who assigned an imperishable matter to the sphere beyond the sublunary, and in general looked upon the celestial orbs as living and intelligent. such an intellect, named active or productive, as being the author of the development of reason in man, is the permanent, eternal thought, which is the truth of the cosmic and physical movement. it is in man that the physical or sensible passes most evidently into the metaphysical and rational. humanity is the chosen vessel in which the light of the intellect is revealed; and so long as mankind lasts there must always be some individuals destined to receive this light. what seems from the material point of view to be the acquisition of learning, study and a moral life, is from the higher point of view the manifestation of the transcendent intellect in the individual. the preparation of the heart and faculties gives rise to a series of grades between the original predisposition and the full acquisition of actual intellect. these grades in the main resemble those given by avicenna. but beyond these, averroes claims as the highest bliss of the soul a union in this life with the actual intellect. the intellect, therefore, is one and continuous in all individuals, who differ only in the degree which their illumination has attained. such was the averroist doctrine of the unity of intellect--the eternal and universal nature of true intellectual life. by his interpreters it was transformed into a theory of one soul common to all mankind, and when thus corrupted conflicted not unreasonably with the doctrines of a future life, common to islam and christendom. opponents of averoism. averroes, rejected by his moslem countrymen, found a hearing among the jews, to whom maimonides had shown the free paths of greek speculation. in the cities of languedoc and of provence to which they had been driven by spanish fanaticism, the jews no longer used the learned arabic, and translations of the works of averroes became necessary. his writings became the text-book of levi ben gerson at perpignan, and of moses of narbonne. meanwhile, before 1250, averroes became accessible to the latin schoolmen by means of versions, accredited by the names of michael scot and others. william of auvergne is the first schoolman who criticizes the doctrines of averroes, not, however, by name. albertus magnus and st thomas devote special treatises to an examination of the averroist theory of the unity of intellect, which they labour to confute in order to establish the orthodoxy of aristotle. but as early as aegidius romanus (1247-1316). averroes had been stamped as the patron of indifference to theological dogmas, and credited with the emancipation which was equally due to wider experience and the lessons of the crusades. there had never been an absence of protest against the hierarchical doctrine. berengar of tours (11th century) had struggled in that interest, and with abelard, in the 12th century, the revolt against authority in belief grew loud. the dialogue between a christian, a jew and a philosopher suggested a comparative estimate of religions, and placed the natural religion of the moral law above all positive revelations. nihilists and naturalists, who deified logic and science at the expense of faith, were not unknown at paris in the days of john of salisbury. in such a critical generation the words of averroism found willing ears, and pupils who outran their teacher. paris became the centre of a sceptical society, which the decrees of bishops and councils, and the enthusiasm of the orthodox doctors and knights-errant of catholicism, were powerless to extinguish. at oxford averroes told more as the great commentator. in the days of roger bacon he had become an authority. bacon, placing him beside aristotle and avicenna, recommends the study of arabic as the only way of getting the knowledge which bad versions made almost hopeless. in duns scotus, averroes and aristotle are the unequalled masters of the science of proof; and he pronounces distinctly the separation between catholic and philosophical truth, which became the watchword of averroism. by the 14th century averroism was the common leaven of philosophy; john baconthorpe is the chief of averroists, and walter burley has similar tendencies. meanwhile averrcism had come to be regarded by the great dominican school as the arch-enemy of the truth. when the emperor frederick ii. consulted a moslem free-thinker on the mysteries of the faith, when the phrase or legend of the "three impostors" presented in its most offensive form the scientific survey of the three laws of moses, christ and mahomet, and when the characteristic doctrines of averroes were misunderstood, it soon followed that his name became the badge of the scoffer and the sceptic. what had begun with the subtle disputes of the universities of paris, went on to the materialist teachers in the medical schools and the sceptical men of the world in the cities of northern italy. the patricians of venice and the lecturers of padua made averroism synonymous with doubt and criticism in theology, and with sarcasm against the hierarchy. petrarch refuses to believe that any good thing can come out of arabia, and speaks of averroes as a mad dog barking against the church. in works of contemporary art averroes is at one time the comrade of mahomet and antichrist; at another he lies with arius and sabellius, vanquished by the lance of st thomas. the school of padua. it was in the universities of north italy that averroism finally settled, and there for three centuries it continued as a stronghold of scholasticism to resist the efforts of revived antiquity and of advancing science. padua became the seat of averroist aristotelianism; and, when padua was conquered by venice in 1405, the printers of the republic spread abroad the teaching of the professors in the university. as early as 1300, at padua, petrus aponensis, a notable expositor of medical theories, had betrayed a heterodoxy in faith; and john of jandun, one of the pamphleteers on the side of louis of bavaria, was a keen follower of averroes, whom he styles a "perfect and most glorious physicist." urbanus of bologna, paul of venice (d. 1428), and cajetanus de thienis (1387-1465), established by their lectures and their discussions the authority of averroes; and a long list of manuscripts rests in the libraries of lombardy to witness the diligence of these writers and their successors. even a lady of venice, cassandra fedele, in 1480, gained her laurels in defence of averroist theses. with pietro pomponazzi (q.v.) in 1495, a brilliant epoch began for the school of padua. questions of permanent and present interest took the place of outworn scholastic problems. the disputants ranged themselves under the rival commentators, alexander and averroes; and the immortality of the soul became the battle-ground of the two parties. pomponazzi defended the alexandrist doctrine of the utter mortality of the soul, whilst agostino nifo (q.v.), the averroist, was entrusted by leo x. with the task of defending the catholic doctrine. the parties seemed to have changed when averroism thus took the side of the church; but the change was probably due to compulsion. nifo had edited the works of averroes (1495-1497); but his expressions gave offence to the dominant theologians, and he had to save himself by distinguishing his personal faith from his editorial capacity. alessandro achillini, the persistent philosophical adversary of pomponazzi, both at padua and subsequently at bologna, attempted, along with other moderate but not brilliant averroists, to accommodate their philosophical theory with the requirements of catholicism. it was this comparatively mild averroism, reduced to the merely explanatory activity of a commentator, which continued to be the official dogma at padua during the 16th century. its typical representative is marc-antonio zimara (d. 1552), the author of a reconciliation between the tenets of averroes and those of aristotle. summary. meanwhile, in 1497, aristotle was for the first time expounded in greek at padua. plato had long been the favourite study at florence; and humanists, like erasmus, ludovicus vives and nizolius, enamoured of the popular philosophy of cicero and quintilian, poured out the vials of their contempt on scholastic barbarism with its "impious and thrice-accursed averroes." the editors of averroes complain that the popular taste had forsaken them for the greek. nevertheless, while fallopius, vesalius and galileo were claiming attention to their discoveries, g. zabarella, francesco piccolomini (1520-1604) and cesare cremonini (1550-1631) continued the traditions of averroism, not without changes and additions. cremonini, the last of them, died in 1631, after lecturing twelve years at ferrara, and forty at padua. the great educational value of arabian philosophy for the later schoolmen consisted in its making them acquainted with an entire aristotle. at the moment when it seemed as if everything had been made that could be made out of the fragments of aristotle, and the compilations of capella, cassiodorus and others, and when mysticism and scepticism seemed the only resources left for the mind, the horizon of knowledge was suddenly widened by the acquisition of a complete aristotle. thus the mistakes inevitable in the isolated study of an imperfect _organon_ could not henceforth be made. the real bearing of old questions, and the meaninglessness of many disputes, were seen in the new conception of aristotelianism given by the _metaphysics_ and other treatises. the former realism and nominalism were lifted into a higher phase by the principle of the universalizing action of intellect--_intellectus in formis agit universalitatem_. the commentaries of the arabians in this respect supplied nutriment more readily assimilated by the pupils than the pure text would have been. arabian philosophy, whilst it promoted the exegesis of aristotle and increased his authority, was not less notable as the source of the separation between theology and philosophy. speculation fell on irreligious paths. in many cases the heretical movement was due less to foreign example than to the indwelling tendencies of the dominant school of realism. but it is not less certain that the very considerable freedom of the arabians from theological bias prepared the time when philosophy shook off its ecclesiastical vestments. in the hurry of first terror, the church struck aristotle with the anathema launched against innovations in philosophy. the provincial council of paris in 1209, which condemned amalricus and his followers, as well as david of dinant's works, forbade the study of aristotle's _natural philosophy_ and the _commentaries_. in 1215 the same prohibition was repeated, specifying the _metaphysics_ and _physics_, and the _commentaries_ by the spaniard mauritius (i.e. probably averroes). meanwhile albertus magnus and thomas aquinas, accepting the exegetical services of the arabians, did their best to controvert the obnoxious doctrine of the intellect, and to defend the orthodoxy of aristotle against the unholy glosses of infidels. but it is doubtful whether even they kept as pure from the infection of illegitimate doctrine as they supposed. the tide meanwhile flowed in stronger and stronger. in 1270 etienne tempier, bishop of paris, supported by an assembly of theologians, anathematized thirteen propositions bearing the stamp of arabian authorship; but in 1277 the same views and others more directly offensive to christians and theologians had to be censured again. raymond lully, in a dialogue with an infidel thinker, broke a lance in support of the orthodox doctrine, and carried on a crusade against the arabians in every university; and a disciple of thomas aquinas drew up a list (_de erroribus philosophorum_) of the several delusions and errors of each of the thinkers from kindi to averroes. strong in their conviction of the truth of aristotelianism, the arabians carried out their logical results in the theological field, and made the distinction of necessary and possible, of form and matter, the basis of conclusions in the most momentous questions. they refused to accept the doctrine of creation because it conflicted with the explanation of forms as the necessary evolution of matter. they denied the particular providence of god, because knowledge in the divine sphere did not descend to singulars. they excluded the deity from all direct action upon the world, and substituted for a cosmic principle the active intellect,--thus holding a form of pantheism. but all did not go the same length in their divergence from the popular creed. the half-legendary accounts which attribute the introduction of arabian science to gerbert, afterwards pope sylvester ii., to constantinus africanus and to adelard of bath, if they have any value, refer mainly to medical science and mathematics. it was not till about the middle of the 12th century that under the patronage of raymond, archbishop of toledo, a society of translators, with the archdeacon dominicus gundisalvi at their head, produced latin versions of the _commentaries_ of avicenna, and ghazali, of the _fons vitae_ of avicebron, and of several aristotelian treatises. the working translators were converted jews, the best-known among them being joannes avendeath. with this effort began the chief translating epoch for arabic works. avicenna's _canon of medicine_ was first translated into latin by gerard of cremona (d. 1187), to whom versions of other medical and astronomical works are due. the movement towards introducing arabian science and philosophy into europe, however, culminated under the patronage of the emperor frederick ii. (1212-1250). partly from superiority to the narrowness of his age, and partly in the interest of his struggle with the papacy, this _malleus ecclesiae romanae_ drew to his court those savants whose pursuits were discouraged by the church, and especially students in the forbidden lore of the arabians. he is said to have pensioned jews for purposes of translation. one of the scholars to whom frederick gave a welcome was michael scot, the first translator of averroes. scot had sojourned at toledo about 1217, and had accomplished the versions of several astronomical and physical treatises, mainly, if we believe roger bacon, by the labours of a jew named andrew. but bacon is apparently hypercritical in his estimate of the translators from the arabic. another protege of frederick's was hermann the german (alemannus), who, between the years 1243 and 1256, translated amongst other things a paraphrase of al-farabi on the _rhetoric_, and of averroes on the _poetics_ and _ethics_ of aristotle. jewish scholars held an honourable place in transmitting the arabian commentators to the schoolmen. it was amongst them, especially in maimonides, that aristotelianism found refuge after the light of philosophy was extinguished in islam; and the jewish family of the ben-tibbon were mainly instrumental in making averroes known to southern france. see s. munk, _melanges de philosophie juive et arabe_ (paris, 1859); e. renan, _de philosophia peripatetica apud syros_ (1852), and _averroes et l'averroisme_ (paris, 3rd ed., 1867); am. jourdain, _recherches critiques sur l'age et l'origine des traductions latines d'aristote_ (paris, 2^me ed., 1843); b. haureau, _philosophie scolastique_ (paris, 1850), tome i. p. 359; e. vacherot, _ecole d'alexandrie_ (1846-1851), tome iii. p. 85; schmolders, _documenta philosophiae arabum_ (bonn, 1836), and _essai sur les ecoles philosophiques chez les arabes_ (paris, 1842); shahrastani, _history of religious and philosophical sects_, in german translation by haarbrucker (halle, 1850-1851); dieterici, _streit zwischen mensch und thier_ (berlin, 1858), and his other translations of the _encyclopaedia of the brothers of sincerity_ (1861 to 1872); t.j. de boer, _the history of philosophy in islam_ (london, 1903); k. prantl, _geschichte der logik_ (leipzig, 1861); and the histories of philosophy; also the literature under the biographies of philosophers mentioned. (w. w.; g. w. t.) arabian sea (anc. _mare erythraeum_), the name applied to the portion of the indian ocean bounded e. by india, n. by baluchistan and part of the southern persian littoral, w. by arabia, and s., approximately, by a line between cape guardafui, the north-east point of somaliland, and cape comorin in india. it has two important branches--at the south-west the gulf of aden, connecting with the red sea through the strait of bab-el-mandeb; and at the north-west the gulf of oman, connecting with the persian gulf. besides these larger ramifications, there are the gulfs of cambay and kach on the indian coast. an interest and importance belong to this sea as forming part of the chief highway between europe and india. its islands are few and insignificant, the chief being sokotra, off the african, and the laccadives, off the indian coast.