This technical Arabesque, therefore, is much more ancient than any Arabian or Moorish decoration, and has really nothing in common'with it except the mere symmetrical principles of its arrangement. Pliny and Vitruvius give us no name for the extravagant decorative wall-painting in vogue in their time, to which the early Italian revivers of it seem to have given the designation of grotesque, because it was first discovered in the arched or underground chambers {grotte) of Roman ruins—as in the golden house of Nero, or the baths of Titus. What really took place in the Italian revival was in some measure a supplanting of the Arabesque for the classical grotesque, still retaining the original Arabian designation, while the genuine Arabian art, the Saracenic, was distinguished as Moresque or Moorish. So it is now the original Arabesque that is called by its specific names of Saracenic, Moorish, and Alhambresque, while the term Arabesque is applied exclusively to the style developed from the debased classical grotesque of the Roman empire.

There is still much of the genuine Saracenic element in Renaissance Arabesques, especially in that selected for book-borders and for silver-work, the details of which consist largely of the conventional Saracenic foliations. But the Arabesque developed in the Italian Cinquecento work repudiated all the original Arabian elements and devices, and limited itself to the manipulating of the classical elements, of which the most prominent feature is ever the floriated or foliated scroll; and it is in this Cinquecento decoration, whether in sculpture or in painting, that Arabesque has been perfected.

We will first briefly describe the Saracenic, as the elder sister of the two styles, which was ingeniously developed by the Byzantine Greek artists for their Arabian masters in the early times of Mahometan conquest. Every natural object-was proscribed; the artists were, therefore, reduced to making symmetrical designs from forms which should have no positive meaning ; yet the Byzantine Greeks, who were Christians, managed to work even their own ecclesiastical symbols, in a disguised manner, into their tracery and diapers; as the lily, for instance. The cross was not so introduced; this, of course, was inadmissible; but neither was the crescent ever introduced into any of this early work in Damascus or Cairo. The crescent was itself not a Mahometan device till after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 a.d. The crescent, as the new moon, was the symbol of Byzantium; and it was only after that capital of the Eastern empire fell into the hands of the Turks that this symbol was adopted by them. The crescent and the cross became antagonist standards, therefore, first in the 15 th century. And the crescent is not an element of original Moorish decoration.

The Alhambra diapers and original Majolica (Majorca) ware afford admirable specimens of genuine Saracenic or Moorish decoration. A conventional floriage is common in these diaper3; tracery also is a great feature in this work, in geometrical combinations, whether rectilinear or curvilinear; and the designs are rich in colour: idolatry was in the reproduction of natural forms, not in the fanciful combination of natural colours. These curves and angles, therefore, or interlacings, chiefly in stucco, constitute the prominent elements of an Arabian ornamental design, combining also Arabic inscriptions; composed of a mass of foliation or floral forms conventionally disguised, as the exclusion of all natural images was the fundamental principle of the style in its purity. The Alhambra displays almost endless specimens of this peculiar work, all in relief, highly coloured, and profusely enriched with gold. The mosque of Touloun, in Cairo, 876 a.d., the known work of a Greek, affords the completest example of this art in its early time; and Sicily contains many remains of this same exquisite Saracenic decoration.

Such is the genuine Arabesque of the Arabs, but a very different style of design is now implied by the term—the Arabesque of the Cinquecento, a purely classical ornamentation. This owes its origin to the excavation and recovery of ancient monuments, and was developed chiefly by the sculptors of the north, and the painters of Central Italy; by the Lombardi of Venice, by Agostino Busti of Milan, by Bramanti of Urbino, by Raphael, by Giulio Romano, and others of nearly equal merit.

Very beautiful examples in sculpture of this Cinquecento Arabesque are found in the churches of Venice, Verona, and Brescia; while in painting, the most complete specimens are those of the Vatican Loggie, and the Villa Madama at Rome and the ducal palaces at Mantua. The Vatican Arabesques, chiefly executed for Raphael by Giulio Romano, Gian Francesco Penui, and Giovanni da Udine, though beautiful as works of painting, are often very extravagant in their composition, ludicrous, and sometimes aesthetically offensive; as are also many of the decorations of Pompeii. The main features of these designs are balanced scrolls in panels; or standards variously composed, but symmetrically scrolled on either side, and on the tendrils of these scrolls are suspended or placed birds and animals, human figures and chimeras, of any or all kinds, or indeed any objects that may take the fancy of the artist. But he is limited by the laws of aesthetics; his designs must be symmetrical or they will want harmony, and they must not offend against mechanical possibility or the principle of gravitation, or they will be ridiculous: nothing that outrages aesthetic sensibility can ever be beautiful. The most perfect specimens of Cinquecento Arabesque aro certainly found in sculpture. As specimens of exquisite work may be mentioned the Martinengo tomb, in the church of the Padri Ri formati at Brescia, and the façade of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli there, by the Lombardi; and many of the carvings of the Château de Gaillon, France—all of which fairly illustrate the beauties and capabilities of the style.

This kind of decoration need not, however, be limited to architectural panels and pilasters; it is applicable for large surface decoration, and for manufactures, whether in wood or metal, or textile. It affords as much room also for the display of colour as of form: some of the surface decorations of Gaertner, in Munich, are splendid examples of delicacy of colour, showing how much may be effected by harmonious combinations in scroll-work of the most delicate gradations and tints. Good specimens of Arabesque, in manufactures, in casts, and in copies in colour, may now be seen in the South Kensington Museum. For fuller details of styie, see Wornum, Analysis of Ornament, <tc., 4to edition, 1874, illustrated. (r. n. w.)

Arabia is a peninsula stretching from north-west to south-east, between 30° and 12° 45' N. lat., and between 32° 30' and 60° E. long. Its form is that of an irregular parallelogram, almost a triangle indeed, bounded on the W., S., and E. by the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf respectively; on the N., where runs its narrowest limit, it joins on to the mainland of Syria. Its correct boundary in this direction would be assigned by a line drawn transversely, west and east, from Suez to the head of the Persian Gulf. But some writers, Burckhardt included, add to this extent all the Syrian desert behind Palestine, and the valleys of the Jordan and Orontes up to the village of Anah, on the Euphrates, 34° N. lat.; and then down again by the right bank of that river to where, joined by the Tigris, it takes the name of Shatt-el-Arab, and so to the Persian Gulf again. Roman geographers make Arabia the further present of Mesopotamia; and Abul-Feda, an Aleppine of the 13th century, would even bring its denomination so far north as to include Aleppo. We will, however, accept the first-mentioned as the most correct line of demarcation. According to this, the extreme length of the Arabian peninsula, from the head of the gulf of Akabah to the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb would be about 1300 miles; its greatest breadth, in 23° N. lat., from the Red Sea coast, west, to Ras-el-Hadd, east, 1500 miles; and its apex, where it joins on to the continent of Asia, rather under 900 miles.

The western coast is washed by the Red Sea. It exhibits a range of low mountains, seldom exceeding 2000 feet in height, abrupt in outline, and generally barren; between them and the sea is a narrow and sandy strip fringed along the margin with coral reefs. Its aspect from the sea is almost everywhere desolate in the extreme. Nor does the entire coast-line present a single harbour, properly speaking, where anything larger than an ordinary schooner could find entry; only roadsteads, the approaches to which are often rendered difficult by shoals and reefs. The Arab side of the Red Sea, especially in the southern half, is thickly studded with small islands, some of which— Kotembel and Pebel Tar in particular—are of volcanic origin. A few fishermen inhabit some of them; but none —the island of Perim, near the entrance of the Bab-el-Mandeb straits, lately occupied by a British garrison, alone excepted—are of any importance.

The south-eastern coast, extending from Bab-el-Mandeb up to Ras-el-Hadd, is not less dreary than that of Hejaz in appearance, and, like it, presents a low and barren mountain range, diversified only by jagged rocks amid tracts of sand; but it possesses several good harbours—that of Aden in particular, now a British coaling station, about 100 miles east of Bab-el-Mandeb; that of Dafar, further up; and that of Keshum; though the two last, owing to the want of traffic with the interior, now serve as mere ports of refuge. Along this shore lie several islands, the largest being that of Mozeyrah, near Ras-el-Hadd, but they are only the haunts of a few half-savage fishermen, or are wholly desert.

The third coast, reaching from Ras-el-Hadd to the top of the Persian Gulf, is of a more cheerful character. Its easterly half, from Ras-el-Hadd to Cape Musandam, is in general fertile, well-cultivated, and backed up by the lofty forest-sprinkled chain of Jebel Akhdar, or the “Green Mountain.” Here is situated the excellent harbour of Mascat, one capable of admitting the largest vessels to an almost land-locked shelter; besides other smaller but secure ports. Passing Cape Musandam to the west and north, the coast, though low and sandy in some places, is in others palm-fringed and cultivated; and the neighbourhood of the shallow harbour of Kateef, opposite Bahreyn, is especially fertile. Near the head of the gulf is the harbour, a very good one, of Koweyt, called also Grane. It furnishes the best ships and sailors of these seas. Many islands stud the Gulf Ormuz, famous in Persian and, later, in Portuguese history. Near the narrow entrance, by Cape Musandam, not far off, extends Iishm, a large and fertile island; higher up lie side by side the sister islands of Bahreyn, Menaneh, and Moharrik, where commence, and continue eastward all along the neighbouring coast of Katar, the most productive pearl fisheries in the world, But countless shoals and reefs render the navigation of the Persian Gulf scarcely less dangerous than that of the Red Sea; storms, too, often arise suddenly on its waters, and shipwrecks are of frequent occurrence.

Arabia, taking it as a whole, cannot be called a fertile country. Its general features are those of an elevated table-land, backed up by low mountains to the west, and gradually rising in the direction of the east and south, where we find it bordered by a second and loftier mountain range. The mountains, if we except Jebel Akhdar in Oman, are almost wholly barren on their sea side; but are occasionally fertile enough on their inner ranges, especially in Yemen and the southerly districts. Their outlines are rugged and precipitous to a degree that, joined with the refraction of an over-heated atmosphere, gives them from a distance an appearance of being of a much greater height than they really are. Behind them lies an uninterrupted ring of sterile desert, broadest on the south and east, where it expands into a huge waste of burning sand; narrower towards the west and north, where it is more rocky in its character. Within this belt rises a series of table-lands,, undulating in long slopes, and intersected with deep valleys; the former rich in pasturage, the latter in field and garden produce. This central plateau constitutes about one-third of the total superficies of the peninsula; the desert ring another third; the coast ranges make up the rest.

In describing Arabia, the ancients, whose knowledge on the subject was slight, were accustomed to lay down an imaginary tripartite division, founded on the natural qualities of those districts with which they were more or les3 acquainted; and accordingly portioned off Arabia into Petraea, Deserta, and Felix, or the Stony, the Desert, and the Happy; without, however, assigning any very distinct boundaries to these regions. More modern geographers, Eastern and European, have, with better but still inadequate information, either multiplied or confounded the main divisions of the peninsula. Much indeed of its surface is even now unknown to us, except by the uncertain hearsay of Arab narrators. However, the ground-plan laid down by Niebuhr, the most accurate and painstaking of travellers, is substantially correct, and has been so often confirmed, never invalidated, by later discoveries, that we may safely follow its indications.

Beginning from the north-west, the first district we meet with is that of the Sinaitic peninsula, a small triangle having its apex on the Red Sea, its base on Palestine, and its sides formed by the Gulf of Suez on the west, and that of Akabah on the east. It is a mere collection of naked rocks and craggy precipices, intersected by long narrow defiles and sandy valleys, in which tamarisk bushes, dwarf acacias, thorny shrubs, and some kinds of euphorbia, are almost the only vegetation; in a few favoured spots a cluster of wild date-palms may occasionally be met with; and the scanty soil after the spring rains becomes sprinkled over with thin blades of grass that the summer suns soon wither. Running water, except a few rivulets, the result of the spring or autumn rains, none of which outlast the summer, there is none; but in its stead the traveller meets with a stagnant and brackish pool here and there under the shelter of some overhanging rock, or a not less brackish well. In the centre of this dreary district rises the famous mountain group, one particular summit of which, though not the highest, is conjectured to have been the Biblical Sinai. At its foot lies Wadi Feyran, a valley several miles in extent, and the only tolerably fertile piece of ground in the whole region. The climate, allowing for the increase of heat consequent on a southerly latitude, resembles in the main that of Syria,—rainy in the winter and early spring, with passing storms in autumn; at other times it is uniformly dry and clear. The summer temperature reaches in the valleys, and particularly in the great desolate gully called the “Ghowr,” which is a continuation of the Dead Sea hollow, a height of 118° Fahr, in the shade; during the night it often falls to 70°, or even lower. Winter is cold, but ice and snow seldom occur except upon the heights, where the Sinai group in particular becomes snow-capped every year for a period varying from a few days to over two months. The atmosphere is healthy, except in autumn and in early spring.

Between the gulfs of Akabah and Suez the geological formations are almost exclusively plutonic or volcanic,— the latter occupying in general a lower range than the former; metamorphic belts, chiefly of gneiss and slate, are also to be met with. Basalt and greenstone are the most usual volcanic forms, and the subterraneous action that once produced them does not yet seem to be wholly exhausted, for hot springs are of frequent occurrence throughout the region, and earthquakes, accompanied by loud underground noises, are by no means uncommon. The hot wells near Suez, called “Eyoon Moosa,” or the “Fountains of Moses,” are well known; as also are those entitled “Hammam Pharaoon,” or the “Bath of Pharaoh,” the waters of which resemble in their constituents those of the Dead Sea. These volcanic phenomena cease, however, in the zone to the east of Akabah, where rises the great and barren mountain range of Shera (the “Seir” of the Bible), a system wholly jurassic in its composition, though its strata lie at various and often at abrupt angles.

The plants and animals tenanting this district are, with slight modifications, common to the next, where, however, they in general obtain a fuller development, and under which they may accordingly be more appropriately described.

The second geographical district is that of the Hejaz, lying between 28° and 21° N. lat. along the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and extending inland for a distance varying from sixty to a hundred and fifty miles. It consists of a continuation of the Sherâ mountain range, with a narrow sandy slip of level ground towards the sea, and a hilly plateau on the inland side, broken by bare and fantastic rocks. Its surface is, with few exceptions, barren; stony to the north, sandy to the east and south; what little irrigation it possesses is wholly from wells, deep sunk and brackish; the spring rains supply a few streams that soon dry up in summer. Along its length lie the great Syrian and Egyptian pilgrim-routes, mere camel tracks, of which the direction is determined by the scanty wells and a few villages. In the neighbourhood of Medinah alone, 25° N. lat., and at the station of Kholeys, a few days’ journey north of Mecca, is any considerable cultivation to be found, the result of springs; elsewhere all is drought and sterility.

The southernmost extremity of this region, marked off as the “Haram” or Sacred Territory, but in its physical characteristics identical with the rest, contains the town of Mecca. South-east of this tract rises the upland district called “Jebel Kora,” or “Mountain of Villages,” fertile and copiously watered; celebrated too for the excellence of its fruits and the salubrity of its climate; whereas the Hejaz, particularly along its western or seaward slope, has the reputation of being unhealthy and feverish. Due south of Mecca the mountains rise still higher, up to the precipitous fastnesses of Jebel Aseer, intersected by countless narrow but fertile valleys.

With Hejazwe may also reckon, topologically speaking, the oases of Jowf and Douma, situated to the north-east, both formed by broad and abrupt depressions in the inland plateau, and surrounded by a wide-spread wilderness of rock and sand. The geological formation of this region is chiefly calcareous and jurassic, though isolated traces of volcanic outbursts are seen near Medinah and Mecca; some also of the wells in the Hejaz—that of Zemzem, for example, at Mecca—are tepid; and one distinct eruption of lava is stated to have occurred in the neighbourhood of Medinah as recently as the middle of the 13th century.

Of plants there is an endless variety, but insufficiently known, for Arab botany has yet to be investigated. “Samh,” a small mesembryanthemum, from the grain of which the Bedouins prepare a sort of porridge that serves them in lieu of bread; “Mesaa,” a thorny bush that bears a subacid berry not unlike a currant in appearance and flavour; “Nebek,” the Rhamnus lotus of botanists; many kinds of euphorbia, absinthium, and the bitter colocynth, used by the Arabs for medicine, grow wild everywhere. The tamarisk or “Talh,” the southern larch or “Ithel,” the chestnut, the sycamore, and several other trees, the wood of which is, however, too porous and brittle for use as timber, are natives of Hejaz; so also is the w ild dwarf date-palm, the almond, the pomegranate, and the “gum-arabic” tree, a graceful and delicate acacia. Fine grass, intermingled with various aromatic herbs, springs up in patches between the stones and among the sand; but the w ant of sufficient rainfall and the dryness of the atmosphere prevent any really profitable vegetation, except in the few oases already mentioned. Taking it as a w hole, the Hejaz is, with the exception of the actual and rccc∙g-nised desert alone, the most hopelessly sterile district in the whole Arabian peninsula.

Following the Red Sea coast down to its southernmost extremity at Aden, we have in view the third great geographical section, that of Yemen. It includes two regions, sea-shore and inland, the former of which is commonly called the “Tehamah.” This is a wide strip of coast left by the mountain chain, which, continuing on from the Hejaz, runs down as far as Aden, but hereabouts recedes somewhat to the east, thus forming an arc, in the curve of which lies the Tehamah. The mountainous district extends far inland, and gives out several minor branches, some of which reach about three hundred miles to the east.

Tehamah is, as might be expected from its topical and geographical conditions, a very hot region; it is one also of but moderate fertility, though the soil, an agglomeration principally of coral debris, is less absolutely barren than that of the Hejaz. The rains here are periodical, their fall coinciding with the epoch of the Indian monsoon; they give rise to numerous torrents, that traverse the plains, and gome of which hardly dry up throughout the year. The coast-line is indented by several small harbours and roadsteads; intricate coral reefs render the approach everywhere difficult, often dangerous.

Yemen, under which name the whole south-western quarter of the peninsula is popularly included, possesses many advantages, both of climate and soil, denied to the greater portion of Arabia. It is a highland country, formed by a labyrinth of precipitous hills and fertile valleys. The air is pure and even cool; the seasons are as regular as those of eastern India, and succeed each other in much the same order. No accurate survey has yet been made to determine the elevation of its mountains, some of which have been roughly, but perhaps incorrectly, estimated at five thousand feet in height; their general direction is from north-west to south-east. The largest plains, or rather plateaus, inclosed by them are that of Nejran on the north, that of Sanaâ to the south, and that of Mareb to the east, on the frontier of the great desert. The oasis of the southern Jowf, a basin-like depression occurring in the sandy waste that reaches inland from the high grounds of Yemen up to Oman, on the other side of Arabia, may also be reckoned as belonging to Yemen.

Though the mountains are well supplied with water, no considerable rivers or streams find their way from them to the Red Sea, tropical evaporation combining with the light and porous quality of the soil to dry up the torrent beds; nor do any natural lakes exist, though artificial pools and tanks, in which water is preserved all the year round, have been constructed in plenty. Indications of volcanic action, long since extinct, abound throughout Yemen, where basalt formations compose a considerable and the most fertile portion of the coffee-bearing district; in other places jurassic rock predominates, while granite occurs in patches here and there. Spar, agate, onyx, and carnelian are exported from Yemen; silver and gold are reported to have been found on its hills, but on doubtful authority.

It is in this region that Arabian vegetation obtains its most varied, as also its most valuable development. North of Medinah the parched and niggard soil, chiefly composed of marl, flint, and sand, with a supply of rain alike scanty and uncertain, produces little more than varieties of acacia, euphorbias, and thorny shrubs,—a valueless crop. But in the neighbourhood of Medinah commences the great date-palm belt that crosses the peninsula, and extends southward as far as lat. 23° in full vigour. A hundred and more varieties of this tree are said to grow in the immediate vicinity of Medinah alone: the quality of the fruit varies for each kind, as also do its size, colour, and flavour. The poorest of all, the “sihanee” date, a yellow, stringy fruit, is much eaten by the Bedouins; the “birnee” is red and succulent; the “jebelee,” an upland date, is a staple article of export. Nejd is, however, the favoured land of date-palms: every valley that intersects its vast plateaus waves with them; and the fruit, which often attains a length of two inches, with a proportionate thickness, far surpasses the best products of Hejaz in lusciousness as in size. Eaten fresh or stewed with butter, they form the staff of Arab food; and the pulp, after the kernels have been extracted, close-pressed and half dried, is exported under the name of ajweh to almost every part of the East. In general a latitude varying from 27° to 22° N., and a sufficient distance from the sea to preclude its atmospheric influences, seem to be the most favourable circumstances for bringing this fruit to perfection; and hence it comes that the produce of the Jowf and of Hareek—which, though inland, lie too far. the one to the north, the other to the south,—of the Hejaz on the Red Sea, and of Rateef on the Persian Gulf coast, is decidedly inferior to that of the inland districts of Kaseem and Nejd. Yet an exception must be made in favour of the “kliolas” date, as it is called, that grows in Hasa, an amber-coloured date of exquisite flavour, the king of dates: the tree itself that bears it is readily distinguished from every other species by the delicacy of its stem and foliage. But in the greater number of instances, whatever the variation in the fruit, the palm trees themselves are to an unpractised eye undistinguishable the one from the other.

Besides the date tree, the “doom,” a fan-leaved palm bearing a large fibrous and sweetish fruit, is not of uncommon growth in the central and southern districts; while the cocoa-nut and betel are planted, though not to such an extent as to reckon among the articles of ordinary cultivation, along the southern and eastern coast. So are also the banana, the papay, and the Indian fig; but all these are of recent importation from the opposite coast of India. Vines are cultivated throughout Arabia, and have been so from time immemorial; and though since the well-known prohibition of the Koran the grapes are no longer pressed for wine, they are in great request as an article of consumption, both fresh and dried. The best fruit is that of Yemen; Oman, where the heat is such that the vintage is gathered in April, comes next, both for the quantity and the quality of its produce. In peaches, apricots, pomegranates, and oranges, the district of Taif, near Mecca, excels all others. Senna, an article much used by the Arabs in their rough medicine, grows in the southern Hejaz and the Tehamah; so also does the balsam tree, the best of which is indigenous to the district of Safra, near Mecca; its gum is sold even within Arabia itself at a high price. The incense tree,...

Islam had, it is true, a philosophy of its own. There were Schoolmen amongst the believers in the Koran, not less than amongst the Latin Christians. At the very moment when Mahometanism came into contact with the older civilisations of Persia, Babylonia, and Syria, the intellectual habits of the new converts created difficulties with regard to its very basis, and showed themselves a prolific source of diversity in the details of interpretation. The radical questions on which these disputes turned were two. The first dealt with the possibility of ascribing manifold attributes to God—to a Being who was absolute unity. The other referred to the bearing of God’s omnipotence upon the freedom of the human will. Ere the second century of the Hegira, sturdy adherents of the literal truth of the Koran taught a gross anthropomorphism, applying to the Creator the very bodily attributes of his creatures. These were the Sefatites, or partisans of the attributes. Another sect represented Mahomet as the teacher of an unqualified fatalism. Opposed to these narrow-minded exponents stood the comparatively liberal sect of the Motazalites, the Dissidents, who first appeared about 750. As they maintained, on one hand, that man was in some degree a free agent, and on another, elevated the unity of the divine nature far above the diversity of attributes, they came to be styled the partisans of justice and unity. It was with them that the Mussulman theology—the science of the word (Calâin) — first came into existence. Its professors, the Motecallemin (known in Hebrew as Medabberim, and as Loqy,entes in the Latin versions) may be compared with the scholastic doctors of the Catholic Church. Driven in the first instance to speculation in theology by the needs of their natural reason, they came, in after days, when Greek philosophy had been naturalised in the Caliphate, to adapt its methods and doctrines to the support of their views. They employed a quasi-philosophical method, by which, according to Mauno-nides they first reflected how things ought to be in order to support, or at least not contradict, their opinions, and then, when their minds were made up with regard to this imaginary system, declared that the world was no otherwise constituted. The dogmas of creation and providence, of divine omnipotence, chiefly exercised them; and they sought to assert for God an immediate action in the making and°the keeping of the world. Space they looked upon as pervaded by atoms possessing no quality or extension, and time was similarly divided into innumerable instants. Each change in the constitution of the atoms is a direct act of the Almighty. When the fire burns, or the water moistens, these terms merely express the habitual connection which our senses perceive between one thing and another. It is not the man that throws a stone who is its real mover: the supreme agent has for the moment created motion. If a living being die, it is because God has created the attribute of death; and the body remains dead, only because that attribute is unceasingly created. Thus, on the one hand, the object called the cause is denied to have any efficient power to produce the so-called effect; and, on the other hand, the regularities or laws of nature are explained to be direct interferences by the Deity. God is the sole cause or agent in the universe: it is He who, directly, or by the mediation of His ministering angels, brings everything to pass. The supposed uniformity and necessity of causation is only an effect of custom, and may be at any moment rescinded. In this way, by a theory which, according to Averroes, involves the negation of science, the Moslem theologians believed that they had exalted God beyond the limits of the metaphysical and scientific conceptions of law, form, and matter; whilst they at the same time stood aloof from the vulgar doctrines, attributing a causality to things. Making the uniformity of nature a mere phantom due to our human customary experience, they deemed they had left a clear ground for the possibility of miracles.

But at least one point was common to the theological and the philosophical doctrine. Carrying out, it may be, the principles of the Neo-Platonists, they kept the sanctuary of the Deity securely guarded, and interposed between him and his creatures a spiritual order of potent principles, from the Intelligence, which is the first-born image of the great unity, to the Soul and Nature, which come later in the spiritual rank. Of God the philosophers said we could not tell what He is, but only what He is not. The highest point, beyond which strictly philosophical inquirers did not penetrate, was the active intellect,—a sort of soul of the world in Aristotelian garb—the principle which inspires and regulates the development of humanity, and in which lies the goal of perfection for the human spirit. In theological language the active intellect is described as an angel. The inspirations which the prophet receives by angelic messengers are compared with the irradiation of intellectual light, which the philosopher wins by contemplation of truth and increasing purity of life. But while the theologian incessantly postulated the agency of that God, whose nature he deemed beyond the pale of science, the philosopher, following a purely human and natural aim, directed his efforts to the gradual elevation of his part of reason from its unformed state, and to its final union with the controlling intellect which moves and draws to itself the spirits of those who prepare themselves for its influences. The philosophers in their way, like the mystics of Persia (the Su fites) in another, tended towards a theory of the communion of man with the spiritual world, which may be considered a protest against the practical and almost prosaic definiteness of the creed of Mahomet.

Arabian philosophy, at the outset of its career in the 9th century, was able without difficulty to take possession of those resources for speculative thought, which the Latins had barely achieved at the close of the 12th century by the slow process of rediscovering the Aristotelian logic from the commentaries and versions of Boethius. What the Latins painfully accomplished, amid many senseless disputations and blind gropings after light, owing to their fragmentary and unintelligent acquaintance with ancient philosophy, was already done for the Arabians by the scholars of Syria. In the early centuries of the Christian era, both within and without the ranks of the church, the Platonic tone and method were paramount throughout the East. Their influence was felt in the creeds which formulated the orthodox dogmas in regard to the Trinity and the Incarnation. But in its later days the Neo-Platonist school came more and more to find in Aristotle the best exponent and interpreter of the philosopher whom they thought divine. It was in this spirit that Porphyry, Themistius, and Joannes Philoponus composed their commentaries on the treatises of the Peripatetic system which, modified often unconsciously by the dominant ideas of its expositors, became in the 6th and 7th centuries the philosophy of the Eastern Church. But the instrument which, in the hands of John of Damascus, was made subservient to theological interests, became in,the hands of others a dissolvent of the doctrines which had been reduced to shape under the prevalence of the elder Platonism. Peripatetic studies became the source of heresies; and conversely, the heretical sects prosecuted the study of Aristotle with peculiar zeal. The church of the Nestorians, and that of the Monophysites, in their several schools and monasteries, carried on from the 5th to the 8th century the study of the earlier part of the Organon, with almost the same means, purposes, and results as were found among the Latin schoolmen of the earlier centuries. Up to the time when the religious zeal of the Emperor Zeno put a stop to the Nestorian school at Edessa, this “Athens of Syria” was active in translating and popularising the Aristotelian logic. Their banishment from Edessa in 489 drove the Nestorian scholars to Persia, where the Sassanidae gave them a welcome; and there they continued their labours on the Organon. A new seminary of logic and theology sprung up at Nisibis, not far from the old locality; and at Gandisapora (orNisabur) in the east of Persia, there arose a medical school, whence Greek medicine, and in its company Greek science and philosophy, ere long spread over the lands of Iran. Meanwhile the Monophysites had followed in the steps of the Nestorians, multiplying Syriac versions of the logical and medical science of the Greeks. Their school at B,esaina is known from the name of Sergius, one of the first of these translators, in the days of Justinian; and from their monasteries at Kinnesrin (Chalcis) issued numerous versions of the introductory treatises of the Aristotelian logic. To the Isagoge of Porphyry, the Categories and the Herme-neutica of Aristotle, the labours of· these Syrian schoolmen were confined: these they expounded, translated, epitomised, and made the basis of their compilations; and the few who were bold enough to attempt the Analytics, seem to have laid down the pen with their task unaccomplished.

The energy of the Monophysites, however, began to sink with the rise of the Moslem empire; and when philosophy revived amongst them in the 13th century, in the person of Gregorius Barhebraeus (1226-1286), the revival was due to the example and influence of the Arabian thinkers. It was otherwise with the Nestorians. Gaining by means of their professional skill as physicians a high rank in the society of the Moslem world, the Nestorian scholars soon made Baghdad familiar with the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science which they possessed. But the narrow limits of the Syrian studies, which added to a scanty knowledge of Aristotle some acquaintance with his Syrian commentators, were soon passed by the curiosity and zeal of the students in the Caliphate. During the 8th and 9th centuries, rough but generally faithful versions of Aristotle’s principal works were made into Syriac, and then from the Syriac into Arabic. The names of some of these translators, such as Johannitius (Honein ibn-Ishak), were heard even in the Latin schools. By the labours of Honein and his family the great body of Greek science, medical, astronomical, and mathematical, became accessible to the Arabspeaking races. But for the next three centuries fresh versions, both of the philosopher and of his commentators, continued to succeed each other.

To the Arabians Aristotle represented and summed up Greek philosophy, even as Galen became to them the code of Greek medicine. They adopted the doctrine and system which the progress of human affairs had made the intellectual aliment of their Syrian guides. It was a matter of historical necessity, and not an act of deliberate choice. Just as the early poets of Rome, when they tried to naturalise the drama, reproduced the works of Euripides, the popular tragedian of their time, so the Arabians, when the need of scientific culture awoke amongst thém, accepted Aristotle. From first to last Arabian philosophers made no claim to originality; their aim was merely to propagate the truth of Peripateticism as it had been delivered to them. In medicine and astronomy, as well as in philosophy, they entertained an almost superstitious reverence for their Greek teachers. It was with them that the deification of Aristotle began; and from them the belief that in him human intelligence had reached its limit passed to the later schoolmen. The doctrine is fixed: truth has been ascertained: all that is needed is a faithful and skilful interpreter. Hence, their perpetual labour of exposition and illustration: their epitomes and paraphrases of Aristotelian doctrine. The progress amongst the Arabians on this side lies in a closer adherence to their text, a nearer approach to the bare exegesis of their author, and an increasing emancipation from control by the tenets of the popular religion.

Secular philosophy found its first entrance amongst the Saracens in the days of the early caliphs of the Abbaside dynasty, whose ways and thoughts had been moulded by their residence in Persia amid the influences of an older creed, and of ideas which had in the last resort sprung from the Greeks. The seat of empire had been transferred to Baghdad, on the highway of Oriental commerce; and the distant Khorassan became the favourite province of the caliph. Then was inaugurated the period of Persian supremacy, during which Islam was laid open to the full current of alien ideas and culture. The incitement came, however, not from the people, but from the prince: it was in the light of court favour that the colleges of Baghdad and Nisabur first came to attract students from every quarter, from the valleys of Andalusia, as well as the upland plains of Transoxiana. Al-Ma’nsûr, the second of the Abbasides, encouraged the appropriation of Greek science; but it was Al-Mamûn, the son of Harûn al-Rashid, who deserves in the Mahometan empire the same position of royal founder and benefactor which is held by Charlemagne in the history of the Latin schools. In his reign (813-833) Aristotle was first translated into Arabic. Legend told how Al-Mamûn had been induced to send to the Byzantine emperor for Greek books on philosophy, in consequence of a vision in which a venerable personage, who made himself known as Aristotle, had excited without gratifying the curiosity of the caliph. Orthodox Mussulmans, however, distrusted the course on which their chief had entered, and his philosophical proclivities became one ground for doubting as to bis final salvation.

In the Eastern provinces the chief names of Arabian philosophy are those known to the Latin schoolmen as Alkindius, Alpharabius, Avicenna, and Algazel, or under forms resembling these, or under other names derived from various parts of their complex Arabic designations. The first of these, Alkindius (Abu Jusuf Jacub ibn-Ishak al-Kencli), wrote in the reigns of Al-Mamûn and Al-Motassem (813-842). His claims to notice at the present day rest upon a few works on medicine and the astrological astronomy of his age,—the only remnant left of the 200 treatises which he is said to have composed on all the themes of science and philosophy. With him begins that encyclopaedic character—the simultaneous cultivation of the whole field of investigation which is reflected from Aristotle on the Arabian school. Towards the close of the 10th century the presentation of an entire scheme of knowledge, beginning with logic and mathematics, and ascending through the various departments of physical inquiry to the region of religious doctrine, was accomplished by a society which had its chief seat at Basra, the native town of Al-Kendi. This society—the Brothers of Purity or Sincerity—divided into four orders, wrought in the interests of religion no less than of science; and though its attempt to compile an encyclopaedia of existing knowledge may have been premature, it yet contributed to spread abroad a desire for further information. The proposed reconciliation between science and faith was not accomplished, because the compromise coιdd please neither party. The fifty-one treatises of w hich this encyclopaedia consists are interspersed with apologues in true Oriental style, and the idea of goodness, of moral perfection, is as prominent an end in every discourse as it was in the alleged dream of Al-Mamûn. Tho materials of the work come chiefly from Aristotle, but they are conceived in a Platonising spirit, which places as the bond of all things a universal soul of the world with its partial orifragmentary souls. Contemporary with this semireligious and semi-philosophical society lived Alfarabius (Abou-Nasr Mohammed ben-Mohammed ben-Tarkhan al-Farabi} or Abunasar. From Turkestan, the place of his birth, he passed southward to Baghdad where he studied, and died at Damascus in 950, after living for some time at Aleppo on the invitation of its prince. The legendary accounts of Al-Farabi describe him as a man of vast erudition, the master of seventy languages, and accomplished both in the theory and the practice of the musical art. Of his numerous waitings on all the branches of science only a few remain in Arabic or Hebrew versions, but his paraphrases of Aristotle formed the basis on which Avicenna constructed his system, and his logical treatises produced a permanent effect on the logic of the Latin scholars. He gave the tone and direction to nearly all subsequent speculations among the Arabians. His order and enumeration of the principles of being, his doctrine of the double aspect of intellect, and of the perfect beatitude which consists in the aggregation of noble minds when they are delivered from the separating barriers of individual bodies, present at least in germ the characteristic theory of Averroes. But Al-Farabi w as not alw ays consistent in his views; a certain sobriety checked his speculative flights; and although holding that the true perfection of man is reached in this life by the elevation of the intellectual nature, he came towards the close to think the separate existence of intellect no better than a phantasm and delusion.

Unquestionably the most illustrious name amongst the Oriental Moslems was Avicenna (980-1037). His fame in Europe rested more upon his medical canon than on his philosophical works; but even in logic and metaphysics his influence on the West was considerable. With him the encyclopaedic tendencies of the school of Baghdad reached their culmination. He was followed by Algazel (Abou-Hamed Mohammed ibn-Mohammed al-Ghazalι), whose name was the last that attained a European reputation. Born near Tûs in 1058, he studied there and at Nisabur; and having left his native province of Khorassan at the age of 36, he was appointed to a high educational post at Baghdad. There, as well as at Damascus, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, his lectures attracted crowds of eager listeners. Suddenly he withdrew from active life, assumed the habits of the Sufite mystic, and devoted himself to contemplation of religious truth; and although he was persuaded to resume for a while his duties in the college of Baghdad, he soon returned to seclusion, and passed his last days in a monastery which he had himself founded at Tûs (1111). To Algazel it seemed that the study of secular philosophy had resulted in a general indifference to religion, and that the scepticism which concealed itself under a pretence of piety was destroying the life and purity of the nation. With these views he carried into the fields of philosophy the aims and spirit of the Moslem theologian. In his Tendencies of the Philosophers (Makâcid al-Falâsifa) he gave a resumé of the contemporary state of...