Under the first Ottoman emperors we shall note the use by eminent writers of the old dialect of the Abbasids; but this is the last faint effulgence of a protracted period of glory. The tyranny of the sword is to usurp power over all the Asiatic continent—among the Manchurian Tatars in the east, the Usbegs in the north, the Sophia in Persia, and the Ottoman Turks in the west. From an intellectual point of view the Orient is to fall again into immobility and torpor, until the nations of the west, carrying out on a grander scale the work begun by the Arabs, shall so develop all the forces of science and of human industry as to react on Asia, and infuse into the swarming populations of those vast spaces the spirit of a new life.[b]
We have now seen the sceptre of Mohammed pass from his own race. It remains to resume the story of the Arabs in Spain.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[40] [Also spelled Harun-er-Rashid and Harun al-Rashid.]
CHAPTER IX. THE DECLINE OF THE MOSLEMS IN SPAIN
[961-1492 A.D.]