and many an Arab, after the Caliphate was
settled in power from the Oxus to the Pyrenees, journeyed to and fro
with the joy of a master going over vast estates, shewing his dreaded
turban to subjects of every nation.

This, however, was not geographical science, or even pseudo-science.
Before Mohammed the Arabs had possessed some knowledge of the stars and
used it for astrology; but it was at the Court of Almamoun (813-833)
that their inquiring spirits first set themselves to answer the great
question of geography--Where? Through the ninth and tenth centuries
there arose a succession of travellers and thinkers who, with all their
wild dreamings, preserved the best results of Greek maps and would have
made much greater advances but for their helplessness in original work.
As they could not recast Aristotle in philosophy, so they could not with
all their new knowledge of the Further East recast the geography of
Ptolemy and Strabo.

A few great ages, the age for instance of Almamoun in Bagdad (A.D. 830),
of Mahmoud in Ghazneh (A.D. 1000), of Abderrahman III. in Cordova (A.D.
950), give us the history of Arabic geography.

Beginning in the latter years of the eighth century, Moslem science was
reformed and organised, in the New Empire, by the patronage of the
Caliphs of the ninth. Itineraries of victorious generals, plans and
tables prepared by governors of provinces, and a freshly acquired
knowledge of Greek and Indian and Persian thought, made up the
subject-matter of study. The barbarism of the first believers was
passing away, and Mohammed's words were recalled: "Seek knowledge, even
in China." By the end of the eighth century Ptolemy's Geography and the
now lost work of Marinus of Tyre had already been translated. Almamoun
drew to his Court all the chief "mathematicians" or philosophers of
Islam, such as Mohammed Al-Kharizmy, Alfergany, and Solyman the
merchant. Further he built two observatories, one at Bagdad, one at
Damascus, and procured a chart fixing the latitude and longitude of
every place known to him or his savants. Al-Kharizmy interpolated the
new Arabic Ptolemy with additions from the Sanscrit, and made some use
of Indian trigonometry. Alfergany wrote the first Arab treatise on the
Astrolabe and adopted the Greek division of the seven Climates to the
new learning. Solyman, at the time of closest intercourse between
China, India, and the Caliphate, travelled in every country of the
Further East, sailed in