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 eruption 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. [54]

[Footnote 51: The Guliston (p. 29) relates the conversation of Mahomet
and a physician, (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. 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.]

[Footnote 52: See their curious architecture in Reaumur (Hist. des
Insectes, tom. v. Memoire viii.) 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 109] degrees 26
minutes for the larger, 70 degrees 34 minutes for the smaller. The
actual measure is 109 degrees 28 minutes, 70 degrees 32 minutes. Yet
this perfect harmony raises the work at the expense of the artist he
bees are not masters of transcendent geometry.]

[Footnote 53: Saed Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died A. H. 462, A.D.
069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 160) with this curious
passage, as well as with the text of Pocock's Specimen Historiae Arabum.
A