the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness" on the east coast
of Asia, and by his voyages became the prototype of Sinbad the Sailor.

The impulse given by Almamoun did not die with him. About 850 Alkendy
made a fresh version of Ptolemy; as early as 840 the Caliph Vatek-Billah
sent to explore the countries of Central Asia, and his results have been
preserved by Edrisi. A few years later (_c._ 890) Ibn-Khordadbeh, "Son
of the Magi," described the principal trade-routes, the Indian by the
Red Sea from Djeddah to Scinde, the Russian by the Volga and North
Caspian, the Persian by way of Balkh to China. It was by this last that
some have thought the envoys of the English King Alfred went in 883,
till they turned south to seek India and the Christians of San Thome.

The early scientific movement in Islam reached its height in Albateny
and Massoudy at the beginning of the tenth century. The former
determined, more exactly than before, various problems of astronomical
geography.[12] The latter visited every country from Further India to
Spain;--even China and Madagascar seem to have been within the compass
of his later travels; and his voyages in the Indian Ocean bring us to
the real Sinbad Saga of the tenth century.

[Footnote 12: "The Obliquity of the Ecliptic, the Eccentricity of the
Sun, the Precession of the Equinoxes."]

Sinbad, as his story appears in the _Arabian Nights_, has been traced to
an original in the Indian tales of _The Seven Sages_, in the voyages of
the age of Chosroes Nushirvan or of Haroun-Al-Rashid, but the tale
appears to be an Arabic original, the real account, with a little more
of mystery and exaggeration than usual, of the ninth-and tenth-century
travellers, from Solyman to Massoudy, reproduced in form of a series of
novels.[13]

[Footnote 13: "With the Sinbad story is connected the historical
extension of the Arab settlements in the East African coast through the
enterprise of the Emosaid family."]

With Massoudy begins also the formal discussion of geographical problems
affecting Islam. Was the Caspian a land-locked sea? Did it connect with
the Euxine? Did either or both of these join the Arctic Ocean? Was
Africa an island? If so, was there also an unknown Southern Continent?
What was the shape of South-Eastern Asia? Was Ptolemy's longitude to be
wholly accepted, and if not, how was it to be bettered? By a use of
Strabo and of Albateny rather than of Ptolemy, Massoudy arrived at
fairly accurate and very pla