Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/445

301 THE SPANISH ARABS. 301 • part to them nobler ideas of the independence and chapter moral dignity of man, than are to be found in the L-- slaves of eastern despotism. Under these favorable circumstances, provisions Provi^'on^ ' r for learning. for education were liberally multiplied, colleges, academies, and gymnasiums springing up spontane- ously, as it were, not merely in the principal cities, but in the most obscure villages of the country. No less than fifty of these colleges or schools could be discerned scattered over the suburbs and popu- lous plain of Granada. Seventy public libraries, if we may credit the report, were counted within the narrow limits of the Moslem territory. Evpry place of note seems to have furnished materials for a lit- erary history. The copious catalogues of writers, still extant in the Escurial, show how extensively the cultivation of science was pursued, even through its minutest subdivisions ; while a biographical no- tice of blind men, eminent for their scholarship in Spain, proves how far the general avidity for knowl- edge triumphed over the most discouraging obsta- cles of nature. ^^ The Spanish Arabs emulated their countrymen of the east in their devotion to natural and mathe- matical science. They penetrated into the re- motest regions of Africa and Asia, transmitting an exact account of their proceedings to the na- tional academies. They contributed to astronom- ical knowledge by the number and accuracy of their observations, and by the improvement of 38 Andres, Letteratuia, part. 1, Escurialensis, torn. ii. pp. 71, 251, cap. 8, 10. — Casiri, Bibliotheca et passim.