Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/107

Rh study, to the twelfth century of our era; what we read of science and philosophy in Arabian historians,—Sáid of Tolèdo, Mohammed Ibn Ishak, Jémal-eddín Ibn al-Kifti, Ibn Abi-Oceibia, Abúl Pharágius—on the origin of various branches of knowledge, and concerning the lives of certain philosophers who have become subjects of fiction, together with the Mussulman legends of Edris, identified with Enoch, Hermes, Otarid; a sort of scientific mythology received by all learned Arabs, and which is not of Moslem origin; all proceed, I maintain, evidently from the same homogeneous school, sui generis, the writings of which were composed in an Aramaic dialect. A host of facts prove that Babylon was the theatre of a great upheaving of ideas