Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/430

286 286 THE SPANISH ARABS. PART when scarcely a " priest south of the Thames," in — the words of Alfred, " could translate Latin into his mother tongue " ; when not a single philoso pher, according to Tiraboschi, was to be met with in Italy, save only the French Pope Sylvester the Second, who drew his knowledge from the schools of the Spanish Arabs, and was esteemed a necro- mancer for his pains. ^' Such is the glowing picture presented to us of Arabian scholarship, in the tenth and succeeding centuries, under a despotic government and a sen- sual religion ; and, whatever judgment may be passed on the real value of all their boasted litera- ture, it cannot be denied, that the nation exhibited a wonderful activity of intellect, and an apparatus for learning (if we are to admit their own state- ments) unrivalled in the best ages of antiquity. Dismember. Thc Mahomctau govcmments of that period rest- mem of the ° 1 empire."" ^d ou SO uusouud a basis, that the season of their greatest prosperity was often followed by precipi- tate decay. This had been the case with the east- ern caliphate, and was now so with the western. During the life of Alhakem's successor, the empire of the Omeyades was broken up into a hundred 21 Storia della Letteralura Itali- bes, part. 2, cap. 93. — Among the ana, (Roma, 1782-97,) torn. iii. accomplished women of this peri- p. 231. — Turner, History of the od, Valadata, the daughter of the Anglo-Saxons, (London, 1820,) caliph Mahomet, is celebrated as vol. iii. p. 137. — Andres, Dell' having frequently carried away the Origine, de' Progressi e dello Stato palm of eloquence in her discus- Attuale d' Ogni Letteratura, (Vc- sions with the most learned acade- nezia, 1783,) part. 1, cap. 8, 9. — micians. Others again, with an in- Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, trepidity that might shame the de- tom. ii. p. 149. — Masdeu, Histo- generacy of a modern Wwc, plunged ria Critica, torn. xiii. pp. 165, 171. boldly into the studies of philoso- — Conde, Dominacion de los Ara- phy, history, and jurisprudence.