Much more might be written on the subject of Muslim or Saracenic literature, but it would exceed the limits of our present work. Enough has been said to show that, notwithstanding their barbarous origin, they in due time became the patrons of literature and science. They cannot, however, claim a high rank as inventors and discoverers, for many of their best and most useful works were but translations from the Greek. Too much has been made of the debt which the Western world owes, or is supposed to owe, to its Saracen conquerors for their patronage of literature. It would have been strange if a race of conquerors, who came suddenly and rapidly into possession of some of the most cultivated and refined regions of the earth, had not kindled new lights at those ancient beacons of literature and science which smouldered beneath their feet.

In the Kashfu ʾz̤-Z̤unūn, it is related that when Saʿd ibn Abū Waqqāṣ conquered Persia, he wrote to the K͟halīfah ʿUmar and asked him what he should do with the philosophical works which they had found in the libraries of the cities of Persia, whether he should keep them or send them to Makkah; then ʿUmar replied, “Cast them into the rivers, for if in these books there is a guidance (of life), then we have a still better guidance in the book of God (the Qurʾān), and if, on the contrary, there is in them that which will lead us astray, then God protect us from them”; so, according to these instructions, Saʿd cast some into the rivers and some into the fire. So was lost to us the Philosophy of Persia! (Kashfu ʾz̤-Z̤unūn, p. 341.)

Such was the spirit in which the early Muslims regarded the literature of the countries they conquered, and which gave rise to the frequently repeated story that ʿUmar ordered the destruction of the libraries of Alexandria, Cæsarea, and Ispahan, while even the enlightened Maʾmūn is said to have committed to the flames the Greek and Latin originals of the books he caused to be translated. It therefore seems probable that the world of literature lost quite as much as it gained by the Saracen conquest of the West. What the attitude of the Muslim world now is towards science and literature, the condition of the Muslim in North Africa, in Turkey, in Afghanistan, and in India, will declare. A condition of things arising from peculiarities of religious belief. If we study carefully the peculiar structure of Islām as a religious system, and become acquainted with the actual state of things amongst Muḥammadan nations now existing, we shall feel compelled to admit that the patronage of literature by the Muslim K͟halīfahs of Cordova, Cairo, and Bag͟hdād, must have been the outcome of impulses derived from other sources than the example and precept of the Arabian legislator or the teachings of the Qurʾān.

(See Ibn K͟hallikān’s Biographical Dict.; Crichton’s Arabia; D’Herbelot’s Bibl. Orient.; Al-Makkari’s Muhammadan Dynasties in Spain; Pocock; Muir’s Mahomet; Abū ʾl-Fidāʾ; Toderini’s Lit. des Turcs; Kashfu ʾz̤-Z̤unūn; Sir William Jones’s Asiatic Res.; Schnurrer’s Bibl. Arab.; Ibn al-Jazwī’s Talqīḥ; M. de Sacey; T̤abaqātu ʾsh-Shāfiʿīyīn.)

LITURGY. [[PRAYER].]

LIWĀʾ (لواء‎). A banner; a standard. [[STANDARDS].]

LOCUSTS (Arabic jarād, جراد‎) are lawful food for Muslims without being killed by ẕabḥ. [[FOOD].]

LOGIC. Arabic ʿIlmu ʾl-mant̤iq (علم المنطق‎), “the science of rational speech,” from nat̤aq, “to speak”; ʿIlmu ʾl-mīzān (علم الميزان‎), “the science of weighing” (evidence), from mīzān, “scales.”

The author of the Ak͟hlāq-i-Jalālī says “the ancient sages, whose wisdom had borrowed its lustre from the loop-hole of prophecy, always directed the seeker after excellence to cultivate first ʿIlmu ʾl-ak͟hlāq, ‘the science of moral culture,’ then ʿIlmu ʾl-mant̤iq, ‘the science of logic,’ then ʿIlmu ʾl-riyāẓīyāt, ‘mathematics,’ then ʿIlmu ʾl-ḥikmah, ‘physics,’ and, lastly, ʿIlmu ʾl-Ilāhī, ‘theology.’ But Ḥakīm Abū ʿAlī al-Mas̤qawī (A.D. 10), would place mathematics before logic, which seems the preferable course. This will explain the inscription placed by Plato over the door of his house, ‘He who knows not geometry, let him not enter here.’ ” (See Thompson’s ed. p. 31.)

The Arabs, being suddenly called from the desert of Arabia to all the duties and dignities of civilized life, were at first much pressed to reconcile the simplicity of the precepts of their Prophet with the surroundings of their new state of existence; and consequently the multitude of distinctions, both in morals and jurisprudence, they were obliged to adopt, gave the study of dialectics an importance in the religion of Islām which it never lost. The Imām Mālik said of the great teacher Abū Ḥanīfah, that he was such a master of logic, that if he were to assert that a pillar of wood was made of gold, he would prove it to you by the rules of logic.