The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1795]
[Footnote 62: See the Astronomical Tables of Ulugh Begh, with the preface of Dr. Hyde in the first volume of his Syntagma Dissertationum, Oxon. 1767.]
[Footnote 63: The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar, and the best of the Arabian astronomers, who drew their most certain predictions, not from Venus and Mercury, but from Jupiter and the sun, (Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 161 - 163.) For the state and science of the Persian astronomers, see Chardin, (Voyages en Perse, tom. iii. p. 162 - 203.)]
[Footnote 64: Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438. The original relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless, practitioner.]
[Footnote 65: In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was cured by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom. i. p. 318.)]
[Footnote 66: The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and judgment by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii. p. 932 - 940) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p. 119 - 127.)]
[Footnote 67: See a good view of the progress of anatomy in Wotton, (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208 - 256.) His reputation has been unworthily depreciated by the wits in the controversy of Boyle and Bentley.]
[Footnote 68: Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275. Al Beithar, of Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into Africa, Persia, and India.]
[Footnote 69: Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17, &c.) allows the original merit of the Arabians. Yet he quotes the modest confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century, (D'Herbelot, p. 387,) that he had drawn most of his science, perhaps the transmutation of metals, from the ancient sages. Whatever might be the origin or extent of their knowledge, the arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to have been known in Egypt at least three hundred years before Mahomet, (Wotton's Reflections, p. 121 - 133. Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376 - 429.)
Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 336) rejects the claim of the Arabians as inventors of the science of chemistry. "The formation and realization of the notions of analysis and affinity were important steps in chemical science; which, as I shall hereafter endeavor to show it remained for the chemists of Europe to make at a much later period." - M.]
But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought. Confident in the riches of their native tongue, the Arabians disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters were chosen among their Christian subjects; they formed their translations, sometimes on the original text, more frequently perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of astronomers and physicians, there is no example of a poet, an orator, or even an historian, being taught to speak the language of the Saracens. ^70 The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion; and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced to a short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin schools may have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and I am not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have