CHAPTER VII.
THE ARABS OR SARACENS.
PON many accounts the influence of the Arab civilization was important in this quarter of the musical world, and it may here well enough engage our attention, since its most important aspects are those in which it operates upon the European mind, awakening there ideas which but for this stimulus might have remained dormant centuries longer.
From the standpoint of the western world and the limited information concerning the followers of Mahomet which enters into our educational curricula, the Arab appears to us an inert figure, picturesque and imposing, upon the sandy carpet of northern Africa, but a force of little influence in the world of modern nineteenth-century thought.