etry of the city and of the palace. But another
element was added here,--the Western love for the softer beauties of
nature, and for their expression in finely worked out mosaics and in
graceful descriptions. It is this that brings the Spanish-Arabic poetry
nearer to us than the more splendid and glittering verses of the
Abbassides, or the cruder and less polished lines of the first
Muhammadans. The amount of poetry thus composed in Arab Spain may be
gauged by the fact that an anthology made during the first half of the
tenth century, by Ibn Faraj, contained twenty thousand verses. Cordova
under 'Abd-al-Rahman III. and Hakim II. was the counterpart of Bagdad
under Harun. "The most learned prince that ever lived," Hakim was so
renowned a patron of literature that learned men wandered to him from
all over the Arab Empire. He collected a library of four hundred
thousand volumes, which had been gathered together by his agents in
Egypt, Syria, and Persia: the catalogue of which filled forty-four
volumes. In Cordova he founded a university and twenty-seven free
schools. What wonder that all the sciences--Tradition, Theology,
Jurisprudence, and especially History and Geography--flourished during
his reign. Of the poets of this period there may be mentioned: Sa'id ibn
Judi--the pattern of the Knight of those days, the poet loved of women;
Yahyah ibn Hakam, "the gazelle"; Ahmad ibn 'Abd Rabbih, the author of a
commonplace book; Ibn Abdun of Badjiz, Ibn Hafajah of Xucar, Ibn Sa'id
of Granada. Kings added a new jewel to their crown, and took an honored
place among the bards; as 'Abd al-Rahman I., and Mu'tamid (died 1095),
the last King of Seville, whose unfortunate life he himself has pictured
in most beautiful elegies. Although the short revival under the
Almohades (1184-1198) produced such men as Ibn Roshd, the commentator on
Aristotle, and Ibn Tofeil, who wrote the first 'Robinson Crusoe' story,
the sun was already setting. When Ferdinand burned the books which had
been so laboriously collected, the dying flame of Arab culture in
Spain went out.

During the third period--from Ma'mun (813), under whom the Turkish
body-guards began to wield their baneful influence, until the break-up
of the Abbasside Empire in 1258--there are many names, but few real
poets, to be mentioned. The Arab spirit had spent itself, and the Mogul
cloud was on the horizon. There were 'Abd-allah ibn al-Mu'tazz, died
908; Abu Firas, died 967; al-Tughrai, die