other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury, was a tree of gold and silver spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery affected spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural harmony. Through this scene of magnificence, the Greek ambassador was led by the vizir to the foot of the caliph's throne."* In the West, the Ommiades of Spain supported, with equal pomp, the title of Commander of the faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in honour of his favourite sultana, the third and greatest of the Abdelrahmans constructed the city, palace, and gardens, of Zehra. Twenty-five years, and above three millions sterling, were employed by the founder; bis liberal taste invited the artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and architects of the age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by twelve hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian marble. The hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls, and a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one of these basins and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate, was replenished, not with water, but with the purest quicksilver. The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three hundred persons; and he was attended to the field by a guard of twelve thousand horse, whose belts and scymetars were studded with gold.t over the fiercest animals. In a private condition, our desires are perpetually re* Abulfeda, p. 237. D'Herbelot, p. 590. This embassy was received at Bagdad, A.H. 305, A.D. 917. In the passage of Abulfeda, I have used, with some variations, the English translation of the learned and amiable Mr. Harris of Salisbury. (Philological Inquiries, p. 363, 364.) + Cardonne, Histoire de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 330-336. A just idea of the taste and architecture of the Arabians of Spain, may be conceived from the description and plates of the Alhambra of Grenada. (Swinburne's Travels, p. 171-188. [Since Gibbon wrote, several fine works on the Alhambra and the Moorish architecture of Spain have been published; especially Murphy's great work, entitled the Arabian Antiquities of Spain; Owen Jones's Alhambra; Coste, Architecture Arabe; and L'Espagne Artistique. See also, Condé, vol. i. p. 417-419, a glowing description of the Medina Azahra, its gardens and pavilions, its natural beauties and costly splendours, among which Abderahman 142 CONSEQUENCES OF THE [CH. LII. pressed by poverty and subordination; but the lives and labours of millions are devoted to the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture; and whatever may be the cool dictates of reason, there are few among us who would obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and the cares of royalty. It may, therefore, be of some use to borrow the experience of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps excited our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen :-O man! place not thy confidence in this present world!"* The luxury of the caliphs, so useless to their private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal 66 delighted to repose. All parts of his dominions were decorated by his munificence. Ib. p. 454.-ED.] * Cardonne, tom. i. p. 329, 330. This confession, the complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world (read Prior's verbose but eloquent poem), and the happy ten days of the emperor Seged (Rambler, No. 204, 205), will be triumphantly quoted by the detractors of human life. Their expectations are commonly immoderate; their estimates are seldom impartial. If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty), my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to the pleasing labour of the present composition. [Such labourers may well be happy, and deserve to be Their pursuits must not be degraded by a comparison with those which are prompted only by ambition and wealth. See the close of ch. 48, vol. v. p. 353. Yet Abderahman was not indifferent to intellectual enjoyments. The picture left us of the last months of his life exhibits to us a cultivated mind and refined taste. Withdrawn from the cares of government, he retired to Medina Azahra, and there "passed the shadowy hours of twilight in the orange groves and amid the citron bowers of his gardens," conversing with the learned, the lovely, and the witty, whom he had collected around him. It was in one of these conversations, that he made to Suleiman, or Abu Ayub, the confession, said by Cardonne to have been found in his closet. Condé, vol. i. p. 457.-ED.] and spiritual conquest had been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet; and after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The Abbassides were impoverished by the multitude of their wants, and their contempt of economy. Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their leisure, their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by pomp and pleasure; the rewards of valour were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was encumbered by the luxury of the palace. A similar temper was diffused among the subjects of the caliph. Their stern enthusiasm was softened by time and prosperity; they sought riches in the occupations of industry, fame in the pursuits of literature, and happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life. War was no longer the passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the repetition of donatives, were insufficient to allure the posterity of those voluntary champions who had crowded to the standard of Abubeker and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of paradise. Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems were confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence and poetry of their native tongue. A people continually exposed to the dangers of the field must esteem the healing powers of medicine, or rather of surgery; but the starving physicians of Arabia murmured a complaint, that exercise and temperance deprived them of the greatest part of their practice. After their civil and domestic wars, the subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from this mental lethargy, found leisure, and felt curiosity, for the acquisition of profane science. This spirit was first encouraged by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his knowledge of the Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to the study of astronomy. But when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather, and invited the Muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors at Con The Gulistan (p. 239) relates the conversation of Mahomet and a physician. (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius, Bibliot. Græc. tom. i. p. 814.) The prophet himself was skilled in the art of medicine; and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 394-405) has given an extract of the aphorisms which are extant under his name. 144 INTRODUCTION OF LEARNING [CH. LII. stantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, collected the volumes of Grecian science; at his command they were translated by the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic language; his subjects were exhorted assiduously to peruse these instructive writings; and the successor of Mahomet assisted with pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and disputations of the learned. "He was not ignorant," says Abulpharagius, "that they are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties. The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in the industry of their hands, or the indulgence of their brutal appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless emulation, the hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a bee-hive;* these fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness of the lions and tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments, they are much inferior to the vigour of the grossest and most sordid quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the true luminaries and legislators of a world, which, without their aid, would again sink in ignorance and barbarism."+ The zeal and curiosity of Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas; their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain, were the patrons of the learned, as well as the commanders of the faithful; the same royal prerogative was claimed by their independent emirs of the provinces; and their emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez and Cordova. The vizir * See their curious architecture in Reaumur. (Hist. des Insectes tom. v. Memoire 8.) These hexagons are closed by a pyramid; the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid, such as would accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity possible of materials, were determined by a mathematician, at one hundred and nine degrees twenty-six minutes for the larger, seventy degrees thirty-four minutes for the smaller. The actual measure is one hundred and nine degrees twenty-eight minutes, seventy degrees thirty-two minutes. Yet this perfect harmony raises the work at the expense of the artist; the bees are not masters of transcendent geometry. + Saed Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died a.í. 462, a.d. 1069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 160) with this curious passage, as well as with the text of Pocock's Specimen Historiæ Arabum. A number of literary anecdotes of philosophers, physicians, &c. who have flourished under each caliph, form the principal merit of the dynasties of Abulpharagius. of a sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of the mechanic; a sufficient allowance was provided for the indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors was repaid with adequate stipends. In every city the productions of Arabic literature were copied and collected by the curiosity of the studious, and the vanity of the rich. A private doctor refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels. The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the great irruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals ; but since the sun of science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and declined.* *These literary anecdotes are borrowed from the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana (tom. ii. p. 38. 71. 201, 202), Leo Africanus (de Arab. Medicis et Philosophis, in Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom, xiii. p. 259-298, particularly 274), and Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 274, 275, 536, 537), besides the chronological remarks of Abulpharagius. [The literary history of Spain, under the Ommiades, may be collected from many of Condé's chapters. He relates their special care for the education of their sons, and their general provisions for that of their subjects; their patronage of learned men, and their anxiety to collect for the use of others, as well as for their own study, the works of the best authors. Al Hakem II., the son of the great Abderahman III., was eminent for these pursuits. He had agents in various countries to purchase or copy MSS. for him, and thus collected the extensive L VOL. VI. |