Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/52

 natural science. Thus, on the eve of the Muslim conquest Alexandria had become a great home of scientific enquiry. To some extent this was unfortunate as the existing traditions in Egypt directed those investigations very much into obscurantist lines and tended to the use of magical forms, talismans, etc., and to introduce an astrological bias. This afterwards became the great defect of Arabic medicine as appears later even in mediæval Padua, but it was not the fault of Islam, it was an inheritance from Alexandria. Such material as remains of Syriac research shows us a saner and sounder method in vogue there, but Alexandria had eclipsed the Syrian scientists at the time of the Muslim invasion, at least in popular esteem, and this was a determining factor in directing Arabic research into these astrological by-paths.

Amongst the famous products of this school was Paul of Aegina, whose medical works formed the basis of much of the mediæval Arabic and Latin teaching, and the priest Ahrun (Aaron) who composed a manual of medicine which was afterwards translated into Syriac and became a popular authority, Alexandria was the centre also of chemical science. and as such was the parent of later Arabic alchemy. It appears from M. Berthelot's exhaustive study of Arabic chemistry (La chimie au moyen age: Paris. 1893) that the Arabic material may be divided into two classes, the one based upon, and mainly translated from, the Greek writers current in Alexandria, the other representing a later school of