Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/59

 In the same century lived Ahudemmeh who became bishop of Tagrit in A.D. 559, and introduced the commentary of John Philoponus as the regular manual of instruction amongst the Syriac speaking Monophysites. He is said to have composed treatises on the definitions of logic, on the freedom of the will, on the soul, on man considered as a microcosm, and on the composition of man as of soul and body, this last in part preserved in MS. Brit. Mus. Addit. 14620.

Amongst the Nestorian scholars of the sixth century was Paul the Persian who produced a treatise on logic which he dedicated to King Khusraw and has been published in M. Land's Analecta Syriaca (iv).

This has brought us to the period of the Muslim invasion. In 638 Syria was conquered, and the conquest of Mesopotamia followed in the course of the same year, that of Persia four years later. In 661 the Umayyad dynasty of Arab rulers was established in Damascus; but all this did not greatly affect the internal life of the Christian communities who lived on in perfect liberty, subject only to the payment of the poll tax.

About 650 the Nestorian Henanieshu' wrote a treatise on logic (cf. Budge: Thomas of Marga. i. 79) and commented on John Philoponus.

The Monophysites had no great schools like the Nestorians, but their convent at Qensherin, on the left bank of the Euphrates, was a great centre of Greek studies. Its most famous product was Severus Sebokt who flourished on the eve of the Muslim