We come now to the ages of darkness and lethargy, when the habit of original thought seems to die away, as the talent of original observation had done before. Commentators and mystics succeed to the philosophical naturalists of better times. And though a new race, altogether distinct in blood and character from the Greek, appropriates to itself the stores of Grecian learning, this movement does not, as might be expected, break the chains of literary slavery. The Arabs [365] bring, to the cultivation of the science of the Greeks, their own oriental habit of submission, their oriental love of wonder; and thus, while they swell the herd of commentators and mystics, they produce no philosopher.
Yet the Arabs discharged an important function in the history of human knowledge,[23] by preserving, and transmitting to more enlightened times, the intellectual treasures of antiquity. The unhappy dissensions which took place in the Christian church had scattered these treasures over the East, at a period much antecedent to the rise of the Saracen power. In the fifth century, the adherents of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, were declared heretical by the Council of Ephesus (a.d. 431), and driven into exile. In this manner, many of the most learned and ingenious men of the Christian world were removed to the Euphrates, where they formed the Chaldean church, erected the celebrated Nestorian school of Edessa, and gave rise to many offsets from this in various regions. Already, in the fifth century, Hibas, Cumas, and Probus, translated the writings of Aristotle into Syriac. But the learned Nestorians paid an especial attention to the art of medicine, and were the most zealous students of the works of the Greek physicians. At Djondisabor, in Khusistan, they became an ostensible medical school, who distributed academical honors as the result of public disputations. The califs of Bagdad heard of the fame and the wisdom of the doctors of Djondisabor, summoned some of them to Bagdad, and took measures for the foundation of a school of learning in that city. The value of the skill, the learning, and the virtues of the Nestorians, was so strongly felt, that they were allowed by the Mohammedans the free exercise of the Christian religion, and intrusted with the conduct of the studies of those of the Moslemin, whose education was most cared for. The affinity of the Syriac and Arabic languages made the task of instruction more easy. The Nestorians translated the works of the ancients out of the former into the latter language: hence there are still found Arabic manuscripts of Dioscorides, with Syriac words in the margin. Pliny and Aristotle likewise assumed an Arabic dress; and were, as well as Dioscorides, the foundation of instruction in all the Arabian academies; of which a great number were established throughout the Saracen empire, from Bokhara in the remotest east, to Marocco and Cordova in the west. After some time, the Mohammedans themselves began to translate and [366] extract from their Syriac sources; and at length to write works of their own. And thus arose vast libraries, such as that of Cordova, which contained 250,000 volumes.
[23] Sprengel, i. 203.
The Nestorians are stated[24] to have first established among the Arabs those collections of medicinal substances (Apothecæ), from which our term Apothecary is taken; and to have written books (Dispensatoria) containing systematic instructions for the employment of these medicaments; a word which long continued to be implied in the same sense, and which we also retain, though in a modified application (Dispensary).
[24] Sprengel, i. 205.
The directors of these collections were supposed to be intimately acquainted with plants; and yet, in truth, the knowledge of plants owed but little to them; for the Arabic Dioscorides was the source and standard of their knowledge. The flourishing commerce of the Arabians, their numerous and distant journeys, made them, no doubt, practically acquainted with the productions of lands unknown to the Greeks and Romans. Their Nestorian teachers had established Christianity even as far as China and Malabar; and their travellers mention[25] the camphor of Sumatra, the aloe-wood of Socotra near Java, the tea of China. But they never learned the art of converting their practical into speculative knowledge. They treat of plants only in so far as their use in medicine is concerned,[26] and followed Dioscorides in the description, and even in the order of the plants, except when they arrange them according to the Arabic alphabet. With little clearness of view, they often mistake what they read:[27] thus when Dioscorides says that ligusticon grows on the Apennine, a mountain not far from the Alps; Avicenna, misled by a resemblance of the Arabic letters, quotes him as saying that the plant grows on Akabis, a mountain near Egypt.
[25] Sprengel, i. 206.
[26] Ib. i. 207.
[27] Ib. i. 211.
It is of little use to enumerate such writers. One of the most noted of them was Mesuë, physician of the Calif of Kahirah. His work, which was translated into Latin at a later period, was entitled, On Simple Medicines; a title which was common to many medical treatises, from the time of Galen in the second century. Indeed, of this opposition of simple and compound medicines, we still have traces in our language: [367]