Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/16

12 every twenty years or so. The thirteenth century is so far removed from us, that we only see its larger features and the main trend of its current. Could we take a nearer view all would be complexity. The conclusion is as true of moslem as of Christian Europe.

Hakim II., caliph of Cordova in the tenth century, had a library of six hundred thousand manuscripts. The catalogue alone filled fortyfour volumes. He kept agents in residence at Alexandria, Cairo, Bagdad and Damascus to procure for him, at any price, books ancient or modern. Works composed in Persia or in Syria were thus often read in Spain before they were known in the city of the author—witness the Anthology of Abul-faradj of Isfahan, for which Hakim paid a thousand gold dinars. His eagerness to acquire was something more than the instinct of the collector, for there are authentic anecdotes of his extensive acquaintance with the biography and history of his times. Even before the reign of Hakim the Moors of Andalusia were inclined to liberal studies. From the tenth to the thirteenth century was the golden age of learning in Spain. Moors, Jews and Christians cooperated in scholarly works under the patronage of princes. The mosques of Cordova were crowded with students. The Giralda tower of Seville (1196) was built for Geber's observatory. The picture is alluring; but we must not fail to recognize that it presents only a part of the truth. In Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, these were the dark ages.

The wealth of manuscripts in the whole of the moslem world was immense. There were, it is said, above seventy public libraries in Moorish pain alone. The library of the Fatimite caliphs in Cairo contained 100,000 manuscripts, of which G,500 were devoted to medicine and astronomy. When the Crusaders took Tripoli in Syria (1109) 100,000 manuscripts were destroyed. Private libraries were often extensive. Faizi, the poet-laureate of Akbar, the Great Mogul, had a private collection of 4,600 manuscripts.

Europeans of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had a veritable passion for collecting manuscripts also. Charles the Wise in 1373 had a library of 900 manuscripts in the Louvre. Boccaccio, in the middle of the next century, complains that libraries were then falling into decay. The Vatican library was founded in 1453 and the Medicean collection at Florence a little earlier. The library of the Duke of Urbino (1474) cost 30,000 ducats and contained all known classic books. We ask with wonder where these manuscripts came from. We must remember that the library at Alexandria possessed every treasure. Its manuscripts were removed to Rome, and thence to Constantinople, and in the meanwhile copied, recopied and copied again. They passed from hand to hand as precious possessions, valued almost as sacred things. The Sortes Virgilianæ attributed magical powers to the mere manuscript. Pieces of Homer were sold for charms.