3 IX. DUCTION OF THE SCIENCES. ployed and invited by the generals of Rome,' and CHAP. made triumphant by its incurable vices, spread every where that havoc and desolation, which extirpated INTROthe Roman manners, letters and language, from their parent soil. In England, the barbarous Northmen ARABIAN pursued the civilizing Anglo-Saxons and the Franks; and the merciless Huns, the German nations; when these several peoples began to derive their mental education from the Roman literature. Rather than that this should be re-established, it was better that the intellect of the European nations should for a season lie wholly fallow, visited only by the dews of heaven, and agitated by the tempests of their stormy life, till the time should arrive, in which a superior vegetation could from other sources be introduced. But it was necessary to raise somewhere this superior vegetation, from which society was to derive a new intellectual life-knowlege, new empires-and human happiness, new hopes. We learn from the Lombard historian, Paulus Diaconus, that Narses, preparing to attack Totila, the king of the Goths, who had retaken Rome, invited the assistance of the Lombards. Their sovereign, Alboin, sent a chosen body, who, after the defeat of the Goths, returned to their national settlements in Hungary. De Gest. Langob. 1. 2. c. 1. 2 Narses released Rome from the Gothic dominion, and also repressed the Huns. His reward for these services, more decisively beneficial to the Romans than even those of Belisarius, was their base and invidious applications to the court of Constantinople for his removal. In revenge, he stated to have urged the Lombards to invade Italy. Paul. Diac. 1. 2. c. 5. If his avarice occasioned his unpopularity (4 Gibb. p. 427) and his treason the Lombard irruptions, the vices of the greatest man of his day are but a stronger exhibition of Roman depravity. 3 See Vol. i. p. 6.-Tiraboschi, and his pleasing abridgers Landi and Zeno, as well as Muratori, paint forcibly the devastations of the Lombards; and yet so thoroly spoilt had the Italian population been, that in the tenth century, Ratherius describes the Italians as peculiarly profligate, as using incentives to make themselves so, continually drinking wine, and neglecting education. Murat. Ant. 832. Some of the popes of this century, and their patronesses, harmonize with this political description. Even Baronius, who can varnish most things plausibly, abandons these in despair. BOOK VI. ENGLAND. Progress of the conquering Arabs. At the very period when the Lombards were destroying the last vestiges of the Roman empire, an LITERARY obscure people, little known before, was raised to HISTORY OF sudden greatness from a corner of Asia, under an energetic individual, who combined the warrior with the Theistical reformer, to perform the same work of destructive conquest, but with more beneficial consequences, in the eastern or Grecian empire. After Mohamed had suggested the idea, given the excitement, and began the conflict, the Arabians in the seventh century overran Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Africa, and in the next age, Spain, with that facility which can only be explained by the superiority of mental energy, self-devoting enthusiasm, and the hardy virtues over moral debility and corrupted religion, and acting in the execution of the divine will. The literature of the Greeks, their proud and turbulent hierarchy, their civil and religious factions, their polemical theology, and unprincipled manners, expired wherever the Mussulmen triumphed. To human eyes, the alarming revolution seemed the annihilation of knowlege, and the establishment of ignorance In 568, Alboin crossed the Alps, and invaded Rome. In 569, Mohamed was born. Some deduce the name Arab from Araba, a city near Medina; but Ebn Said thinks, that the truest of all opinions, is that which derives it from Araba, a town built by Jarab, the son of Joktan. The Arabs were in two branches; those from Jarab, who called themselves the Arab al Araba, the Arab of Arabs, the pure and genuine ones; and those who have sprung from Ishmael, who have been termed Arab almostareba, or the adventitious Arabs. Casiri, v. 2. p. 18. The cadi of Toledo, Saad Ben-Amed, divides also the Arabs into two classes. The origin of the first preceded Abraham, and from these came the tribes of Themud, Ad, Sesm, Jades, and others, but these have long since disappeared in the consumptions of time and accident. The existing Arabs have arisen from two principal branches, Cahtan and Adnan, who were descendants of Ishmael. The scheiks, who had the chief government before Mohamed, were from the Cahtan line. He was of the Adnan genealogy. Conde's Arabes en Espagne, Marles' Translation, v. 1. p. 31-9. IX. DUCTION ARABIAN SCIENCES. and imposture in the government of the world. It CHAP. was indeed a period of severe discipline and distress; but it emancipated Christianity from the bondage, INTROfeuds and perversions, that were destroying its true spirit and utilities, and from the spreading infidelity that was undermining its fabric. The awful dispensation uprooted the effeminate vices that would have. made the continuance of the Greek empire a perpetuity of degeneracy, and a dissolution of all improving virtue. It was a temporary swoon and bondage, from which the mind awakened with new powers, and has since soared to brighter regions. The intellectual and moral benefits of the tem- Their utilities and porary predominance of the Arabian fanatics, were virtues. durable and manifest. It abolished the Magian fireworship of Persia, which the Parthian empire had been upholding, and might have established in the East. It terminated the idolatry that prevailed in many parts of Arabia and its vicinity, and even still in Syria. It obliterated the wild, ascetic superstitions of ever-dreaming Egypt; the arrogant and profligate hierarchy, and the contentious theology and practical irreligion of the Greeks, Christians in name, but worse than Pagans in conduct. And as its victories spread, the debased manners, the wretched polity, the corrupt jurisprudence, and the imbecile administration of the court of Constantinople, expired, by which its provinces had been long oppressed, and their population spoilt. The hardy zealots of Arabia combined their imposture and their fierceness with so much personal merit, that they edified the conquered world with new examples of virtues then almost obsolete-of temperance, frugality, love of ENGLAND. BOOK justice, constancy that no difficulties could repress, VI. liberality scarcely credible, piety reverential and ferLITERARY Vent, and an activity of practical mind so efficacious HISTORY OF and irresistible, that their triumphs seemed half miraculous, from their rapidity and repetition. But no people that was on the earth, when the Arabians first emerged, comprised so many qualities then wanted for its improvement, as these energetic descendants of Ishmael and Joktan. They had their vices, and they headed a calamitous imposture; but the virtues in their national character, and even some of the principles of their mental errors, were then prolific of advantage to the progress of society. In the present state of man, the good of the human character, cannot be had unmixed with evil. In every generation the shades are diminishing, the lights increasing; but while they are still commingled, the very instruments of human progress will only partially benefit; and all that can be done as yet seems to be, that in every age, the nation most calculated to advance the general improvement, shall be the most predominant while its utilities continue operative, When the Arabians sprang from their secluded deserts, to triumph over the East, they obtained the successes by which the ameliorating progress of our species was then most effectually advanced. All the benefit being communicated, which their agency 5 Of the peculiar love of justice of the ancient Saracens, we have the strong testimony of a contemporary Christian chronicler: In legalitate Saraceni, et in justitia omnes alias mundi superant nationes. Anon. Ital. ap. Murat. p. 490. Their own writers display abundant instances of the other virtues mentioned in the text. The Arab Christians in Mohamed's time, were Jacobitæ; who blended the divine and human natures of Christ, into a single compositious mixture of both. Casiri, v. 2. p. 19. IX. DUCTION OF THE SCIENCES. could impart, their triumphs ceased. The vices of CHAP. their ardent temperament, fermenting with their prosperity, and the mischiefs of their false system, opera- INTROting more extensively as their moral qualities declined, their political, intellectual, and social utilities ARABIAN departed with their virtues. Competent to produce only temporary good, the empire of the Saracens was restricted to its efficacy. When it ceased to be advantageous to mankind, it was broken up; and new kingdoms, with new qualities, new tendencies, and new contemporary utilities, were raised unexpectedly to existence and to greatness, to produce and to undergo the new vicissitudes of influence, conquest and power, and the internal modifications and revolutions, which in succeeding time would most contribute, and which have most contributed, to meliorate the world. 6. literature When the Arabs emerged from their deserts, under Ancient the caliphate of Abubeker, to attack the Grecian em- feat pire, they had no literature but poetry with wild ima- Arabs. gery and strong feeling, and no science, but a slight tincture of that knowlege of the stars which their pastoral observations or ancient superstitions had preserved. These scanty attainments almost perished in their fanaticism for their Koran, whose heterogeneous composition they admired so fervently, that their prophet appealed to it as a miraculous authen Their poets were accustomed to hang up their verses on the sacred Caaba. Seven of these poems, older than Mohamed, have been translated and published by sir William Jones, in his Moallakat, Lond. 1783. In parts, they resemble very much the Song of Solomon, especially those of Tarafa and Lebeid. The poem of Hareth has more affinity to the Proverbs. When I read these poems, I am tempted to believe that the Provençal Troubadours may have derived some part of their inspirations from Arabian Spain. |