On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art | Page 3

who established themselves at Damascus; and with them began that cultivation of the arts and sciences which has thrown such lustre on the Arabian school.
One of the princes of the Ommiades who had escaped made his way to Spain and there re-established the power of his family, with Cordova as a centre, about A.D. 755. Thus it was that the Saracenic power was divided into an Eastern and a Western Caliphate.
It was under the prosperous rule of the Abassides that such an impulse was given to learning of every kind, and that the Arabian school of philosophy, which has left behind it such glorious records of its greatness, was founded. The Caliph Al-Mansour was the first, so far as we know, who earnestly encouraged the cultivation of learning; but it was to Haroun Al-Raschid, A.D. 786-808 (?), that the Arabians owed the establishment of a college of philosophy. He invited learned men to his kingdom from all nations, and paid them munificently; he employed them in translating the most famous books of the Greeks and others, and spread abroad throughout his dominions numerous copies of those works.
His second son, Al-Mamoon, while governor of the province of Kohrassan, we are told, formed a college of learned men from every country, and appointed as the president John Mesue, of Damascus. It is said that his father, complaining that so great an honour had been conferred on a Christian, received the reply--"That Mesue had been chosen, not as a teacher of religion, but as an able preceptor in useful arts and sciences; and my father well knows that the most learned men and the most skilful artists in his dominions are Jews and Christians."
That this was the case can scarcely be doubted when we consider that the Jews had always been familiar with many arts and sciences, and that, as is well known, at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when the Jews were dispersed in every direction, they spread over, not alone the countries under the Roman rule, but to Greece, Egypt, and the Mediterranean coast, as well as great part of Asia Minor, carrying with them, not only their peculiar religious traditions, but also their arts, which, we know, especially as regards the working of metals, were of no mean order, and their sciences, of which the so-called magic and astrology had been assiduously cultivated.
In Asia the dispersed Jews established patriarchates at Tiberias in the west, and at Mahalia, and afterwards at Baghdad, for the Jews who were beyond the Euphrates.
Seminaries were founded at these centres for the rabbis, and constant intercourse was kept up between them. It was in these schools that the Talmud was compiled from the traditionary exposition of the Old Testament, between A.D. 200 and A.D. 500, when it was completed, and received as a rule of faith by most of the scattered Jews.
That the cultivation of science was not neglected we may be sure from the keen interest taken in all ages by the Jews in magical and astrological inquiries. We read in Apuleius, in his defence on the accusation of magic brought against him, that of the "four tutors appointed to educate the princes of Persia, one had to instruct him specially in the magic of Zoroaster and Oromazes, which is the worship of the gods." Apuleius wrote about 200 A.D., and his works teem with references to magic and astrology.
The fact that Jews and Christians were looked on as learned men will not surprise us, when we find that the Jews had established schools so long anterior to the foundation of the college of Baghdad. The rapid progress made by the Arabians, and the wise policy of the Abasside Caliphs, under whose judicious rule learning was so liberally encouraged, aided by the position of Baghdad, which formed, as it were, a centre to which the wisdom of both eastern and western minds gravitated, attracted to their schools all those of every nation who boasted themselves philosophers.
The first translations from the Greek authors are supposed to have been made about A.D. 745, and are known to have been on the subjects of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. These translations are understood to have been made by Christian or Jewish physicians.
As we have seen, the Jews had already established themselves at Baghdad, and had founded schools of their own previous to the formation of the college under Caliph Al-Mansour; but further than this we find the Christians spread widely over the countries of Asia Minor, and we are told, on the authority of Cosmo-Indicopleustes, that so early as A.D. 535 there was in almost every large town in India a Christian Church under the Bishop of Seleucia.
With these facts before us--1st, that Christian physicians were the leaders of the Arabian school in the eighth century;