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
Constantinople, 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 beehive: 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 vigor 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