he religion and
learning of the nations they subdued; but when the age of rapine and
violence yielded at length to comparative security and quiet, and the
fair and splendid city of the Oriental caliphs arose, the Muses were
courted from their ancient temples, and by the milder and more graceful
achievements of literature and science, efforts were made to expiate
the guilt of former conquest, and to shed a purer lustre over the
Mohammedan name.

Almansor, the second of the dynasty of the Abbassides, whose reign
commenced A.D. 754, and lasted twenty-one years, was among the first of
the Arab princes to foster learning and the arts. {247} Jurisprudence
and astronomy were the principal subjects of his study, which, however,
through the instruction of a Greek physician in his court, he extended
to the art of healing, and probably to those kindred arts with which,
in all ages and countries, medical science has been connected. What
progress was made by himself or his subjects, we cannot now ascertain.
His two immediate successors seem not to have trodden in his steps,
though it is probable they did not undo what he had done; for the next
caliph, Haroun al Raschid, is renowned as one of the most munificent
patrons that literature ever enjoyed. He was fond of poetry and music:
he is said to have constantly surrounded himself with a great number of
learned men; and to him the Arabs were deeply indebted for the progress
in knowledge which they were enabled to make. Every mosque in his
dominions had a school attached to it by his order; and, as if his love
of learning were superior even to his hereditary faith, he readily
tolerated men of science who refused to yield to the bold pretensions
of the Prophet. A Nestorian Christian presided over his schools, and
directed the academical studies of his subjects. His successor
imitated his wise and generous course; and thus knowledge extended from
the capital to the most distant extremities of the empire.

{248}

But it was during the reign of Almamoun, the seventh of the Abbassidan
princes, A.D. 813-833, that literature flourished most among the Arabs.
Learned men, professors of the Christian faith, had multiplied at
Bagdad under the tolerant reigns of his predecessors, and they were now
liberally encouraged to unfold their ample stores of knowledge. The
copious language of Arabia was employed to communicate whatever that of
the Greeks had hitherto concealed, though, with a bar