Saracen

Arabian writers.

After the decline of the Roman Empire, the cultivation of physical science was first revived with some success by the Saracens about the middle of the 8th century of our era.

The works of the most eminent classic writers were purchased at great expense from the Christians and translated into Arabic, and Al-Mamun, son of the famous Harun al-Rashid, the contemporary of Charlemagne, received with marks of distinction at his court at bagdad astronomers and men of learning from different countries this caliph and some of his successors encountered much opposition and jealousy from the doctors of the mahammedan law who wished the moslems to confine their studies to the koran dreading the effects of the diffusion of a taste for the physical sciences avicenna almost all the works of the early arabian writers are lost amongst those of the tenth century of which fragments are now extant is a short treatise on the formation and classification of minerals by avicenna a physician in whose arrangement there is considerable merit the second chapter on the cause of mountains is remarkable for mountains he says are formed some by essential others by accidental causes in illustration of the essential he instances a violent earthquake by which land is elevated and becomes a mountain of the accidental the principle he says is excavation by water whereby cavities are produced and adjoining lands made to stand out and form eminences omar cosmogony of the koran in the same century also omar surnamed el alem or the learned wrote a work on the retreat of the sea it appears that on comparing the charts of his own time with those made by the indian and persian astronomers two thousand years before he had satisfied himself that important changes had taken place since the times of history in the form of the coasts of asia and that the extension of the sea had been greater at some former periods he was confirmed in this opinion by the numerous salt springs and marshes in the interior of asia a phenomenon from which pallas in more recent times has drawn the same inference von hoff has suggested with great probability that the changes in the level of the caspian some of which there is reason to believe have happened within the historical era and the geological appearances in that district indicating the desertion by that sea of its ancient bed had probably led omar to his theory of a general subsidence but whatever may have been the proofs relied on his system was declared contradictory to certain passages in the koran and he was called upon publicly to recant his errors to avoid which persecution he went into voluntary banishment from samarkand the cosmological opinions expressed in the koran are few and merely introduced incidentally so that it is not easy to understand how they could have interfered so seriously with free discussion on the former changes of the globe the prophet declares that the earth was created in two days and the mountains were then placed on it and during these and two additional days the inhabitants of the earth were formed and in two more the seven heavens there is no more detail of circumstances and the deluge which is also mentioned is discussed with equal brevity the waters are represented to have poured out of an oven a strange fable said to be borrowed from the persian magi who represented them as issuing from the oven of an old woman all men were drowned save noah and his family and then god said o earth swallow up thy waters and thou o heaven withhold thy rain and immediately the waters abated we may suppose omar to have represented the desertion of the land by the sea to have been gradual and that his hypothesis required a greater lapse of ages than was consistent with moslem orthodoxy for it is to be inferred from the koran that man and this planet were created at the same time and although mahomet did not limit expressly the antiquity of the human race yet he gave an implied sanction to the mosaic chronology by the veneration expressed by him for the hebrew patriarchs a manuscript work entitled the wonders of nature is preserved in the royal library at paris by an arabian writer mohammed kazwini who flourished in the seventh century of the hegira or at the close of the thirteenth century of our era besides several curious remarks on aerolites earthquakes and the successive changes of position which the land and sea have undergone we meet with the following beautiful passage which is given as the narrative of keeds an allegorical personage i passed one day by a very ancient and wonderfully populous city and asked one of its inhabitants how long it had been founded it is indeed a mighty city replied he we know not how long it has existed and our ancestors were on this subject as ignorant as ourselves five centuries afterwards as i passed by the same place i could not perceive the slightest vestige of the city i demanded of a peasant who was gathering herbs upon its former site how long it had been destroyed In sooth, a strange question, replied he the ground here has never been different from what you now behold it.

Was there not of old, said I, a splendid city here? Never, answered he, so far as we have seen, and never did our fathers speak to us of any such.

Chapter 12.

The Coming of the Saracens.

After the peace of 628, the Roman and the Persian empires, drained of men and money and ravaged from end to end by each other's marauding armies, sank down in exhaustion to heal them of their deadly wounds.

Never before had either power dealt its neighbor such fearful blows as in this last struggle.

For the future we shall not treat lightly the armies of the early caliphs, nor scoff with Gibbon at the feebleness of the troops who were routed by them.

If the soldiers of Queen Victoria, armed with modern rifles and artillery, found the fanatical Arab a formidable foe, let us not blame the soldiers of Heraclius who faced the same enemy with pike and sword alone.

In the early engagements between the East Romans and the Saracens, the superior discipline and more regular arms of the one were not a sufficient counterpoise to put against the mad recklessness of the other.

The Moslem wanted to get killed, that he might reap the fruits of martyrdom in the other world, and cared not how he died if he had first slain an enemy.

The Pope looked beyond the Alps for the succor which was not to be found in the Emperor or the Exarch.

Charles Martel the Frank, mayor of the palace in name but king in power, had earned the gratitude of Christendom by his great victory over the Saracens at Tours, A.D. 732.

The deliverer of Gaul from the dreaded Saracen was implored to save Rome from the detested Lombard.

The appeal, accompanied by an offer of the title of consul, was graciously received, and although it was so soon followed by the deaths of Charles and of the Pope, 741, that nothing directly came of it, yet nonetheless was it an event of extreme significance.

At the close of the solemn service in St. Peter's on Christmas Day, the pope advanced to the king as he knelt before the high altar, and placed a crown upon his head, while the multitude broke forth into a shout.

To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the great and pacific emperor, be life and victory.

Charles, the King of the Franks, the conqueror of the Lombards, the Saxons, and the Avars, the protector of Christendom against the Saracens and the Northmen, rose from his knees on that wonderful day bearing a title greater than all others, a title laden with mighty memories of the past and charged with mighty consequences for the future.

End of section one.

As Gibbon characteristically wrote, A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire.

The repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the highlands of Scotland.

The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.

Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and the pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

The feudal system.

For about two centuries, Europe passed through an epoch of the deepest misery.

Danes and Scandinavians ravaged her from the northwest, Saracens from the south, so that only the upper Rhine and Danube, harboring a rich Teutonic civilization, escaped destruction.

The Carlovingian Empire broke into pieces, Frankish, Lothringian, or Burgundian, and Germanic, with the last of which went the imperial title.

You recollect particulars of his married life.

When he passed to glory, under the scimitars of a thousand Saracens, there was a smile of pure happiness on his forbidding features.

As for my own career, had I not wedded his lady's serving-maid, I should be a homestaying man at this moment.

Be sure that your wife will welcome you with awakened affection when you see her again next September, said Sir Jasper kindly.

But, man...

I just want to say a big thank you to all the Saracens as well.

I watch a lot of stuff on social media about how accommodating they are.

So, no, I reckon the tour was a success.

The few instances in which in the 14th and 15th centuries the ecclesiastical and civil authorities granted the right to make dissections only prove the contention that the practical study of human anatomy did not gain recognition until the 16th century.

When Mondino began his dissections, the epoch of Saracen learning had ended but the influence of Arab medicine exerted by the writings of Albuqatsis, Avicenna, and Razzes had not declined.

The Arabian physicians had accomplished little for anatomy.

In this line, the influence of Galen was more potent and was rarely questioned until the publication of the Fabrica of Vesalius in 1543.

Yet for his own sake, because he was a very gentle knight, fair spoken and full of courtesy, and a good man of his hands withal, they doted upon him.

So he began to tell them tales of many things that have been done in the world, by clean knights and faithful squires, of the wars against the Saracens and misbelieving men, of the discomfiture of the Romans when they came to take truage of King Arthur, of the strife with the eleven kings and the battle that was ended but never finished, of the questing beast and how King Pellinore and then Sir Palomides followed it, of Balin that gave the dolorous stroke unto King Pelham, of Sir Tor that sought the lady's brachet and by the way overcame two knights and smote off the head of the outrageous Caitiff Abelius, of these and many like matters of pith and moment, full of blood and honor, told Sir Lancelot, and the people had marvel of his words.

Now among them that listened to him gladly was a youth of good blood and breeding, very fair in the face and of great stature.

His name was Martemore.

within thy sacred heart and oh happy man a hymn to Saint Joseph by the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles The last and greatest monastery Benedict founded was magnificent Monte Cassino Abbey, which sits atop a hill more than 1,700 feet high between Rome and Naples, commanding a stunning view of three verdant valleys.

The abbey was lovingly restored by attacks by barbarian Lombards in the 6th century and Saracens in the 9th, an earthquake in the 13th, and a totally needless and tragic Allied bombing in World War II.

Today, Monte Cassino remains one of the most famous monasteries and most popular international pilgrim and tourist destinations on earth.

And finally, the Rule of St. Benedict is one of the most widely read religious documents ever written.