Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/99

 of the Muslims was beginning, at the end of the 'Umayyad period, to be leavened by Greek thought. It was, however, a period of indirect influence; there is no indication, save in a few instances in the study of natural science and medicine, of Muslim teachers or students availing themselves directly of Greek material, but only that they were in contact with those who were familiar with the work of Greek philosophers and jurists. It was a period of supended [sic] animation, to some extent, during which a new language and a new religion were being assimilated by the very diverse elements now comprised in the Khalifate, and those elements were being welded together in a common life. However great were the sectarian and political differences of later times, the church of Islam long remained, and to a great extent still remains, possessed with a common life in the sense that there is a mutual understanding between the several parts and that thus an intellectual or religious influence has been able to pass rapidly from one extreme to the other, and the religious duty of pilgrimage to Mecca has done much to foster this community of life and to promote intercourse between the several parts. Such an understanding has by no means always produced sympathy or friendliness, and the various movements as they have passed from one part to the other have often been considerably modified in the passage; but the motive power behind a movement in Persia has been intelligible in Muslim Spain—though perhaps intensely disliked