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 28 THE DECLINE AND FALL heroes are awed by the superior fierceness of the lions and tigers ; and in their amorous enjoyments they are much inferior to the vigour of the grossest and most sordid quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the true luminaries and legislators of a world which, without their aid, would again sink in ignorance and barbarism." ''' The zeal and curiosity of Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas ; their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain, were the patrons of the learned, as well as the commt^nders of the faithful ; the same royal prerogative was claimed by their independent emirs of the provinces ; and their emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez and Cordova. The visir of a sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of the mechanic ; a sufficient allow- ance was provided for the indigent scholars ; and the merit or industry of the professors was repaid with adequate stipends. In every citv the productions of Arabic literature were copied and collected by the curiosity of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A private doctor refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels. The royal library of the Fatimites con- sisted of one hundred thousand manuscripts, elegantly tran- scribed and splendidly bound, which were lent, with jealousy or avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, tiad given birth to more than three hundred AVTiters, and above seventy public libraries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the great irruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals ; but, since the sun of science has arisen in the ^3 Said Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died a.h. 462, a.d. 1069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast, p. 160) with this curious passage as well as with the text of Pocock's Specimen Historiae Arabum. A number of literary anecdotes of philosophers, physicians, &c. , who have flourished under each caliph, form the principal merit of the Dynasties of Abulpharagius.