ool.

One of the princes of the Ommiades who had escaped made his way to Spain
and there re-established the power of his family, with Cordova as a
centre, about A.D. 755. Thus it was that the Saracenic power was divided
into an Eastern and a Western Caliphate.

It was under the prosperous rule of the Abassides that such an impulse
was given to learning of every kind, and that the Arabian school of
philosophy, which has left behind it such glorious records of its
greatness, was founded. The Caliph Al-Mansour was the first, so far as
we know, who earnestly encouraged the cultivation of learning; but it
was to Haroun Al-Raschid, A.D. 786-808 (?), that the Arabians owed the
establishment of a college of philosophy. He invited learned men to his
kingdom from all nations, and paid them munificently; he employed them
in translating the most famous books of the Greeks and others, and
spread abroad throughout his dominions numerous copies of those works.

His second son, Al-Mamoon, while governor of the province of Kohrassan,
we are told, formed a college of learned men from every country, and
appointed as the president John Mesue, of Damascus. It is said that his
father, complaining that so great an honour had been conferred on a
Christian, received the reply--"That Mesue had been chosen, not as a
teacher of religion, but as an able preceptor in useful arts and
sciences; and my father well knows that the most learned men and the
most skilful artists in his dominions are Jews and Christians."

That this was the case can scarcely be doubted when we consider that the
Jews had always been familiar with many arts and sciences, and that, as
is well known, at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when the Jews
were dispersed in every direction, they spread over, not alone the
countries under the Roman rule, but to Greece, Egypt, and the
Mediterranean coast, as well as great part of Asia Minor, carrying with
them, not only their peculiar religious traditions, but also their arts,
which, we know, especially as regards the working of metals, were of no
mean order, and their sciences, of which the so-called magic and
astrology had been assiduously cultivated.

In Asia the dispersed Jews established patriarchates at Tiberias in the
west, and at Mahalia, and afterwards at Baghdad, for the Jews who were
beyond the Euphrates.

Seminaries were founded at these centres for the rabbis, and constant
intercourse was kept up between them.