in Spain. Astounding as was the grand march of conquest by the Arabs, still more so was the ease with which they put aside their former nomadic life, adopted a higher civilisation, and assumed the sovereignty over cultivated peoples. Arabic was made the written language throughout the conquered lands. With the rule of the Abbasides in the East began a new period in the history of learning. The capital, Bagdad, situated on the Euphrates, lay half-way between two old centres of scientific thought,—India in the East, and Greece in the West. The Arabs were destined to be the custodians of the torch of Greek and Indian science, to keep it ablaze daring the period of confusion and chaos in the Occident, and afterwards to pass it over to the Europeans. Thus science passed from Aryan to Semitic races, and then back again to the Aryan. The Mohammedans have added but little to the knowledge in mathematics which they received. They now and then explored a small region to which the path had been previously pointed out, but they were quite incapable of discovering new fields. Even the more elevated regions in which the Hellenes and Hindoos delighted to wander—namely, the Greek conic sections and the Indian indeterminate analysis—were seldom entered upon by the Arabs. They were less of a speculative, and more of a practical turn of mind.
The Abbasides at Bagdad encouraged the introduction of the sciences by inviting able specialists to their court, irrespective of nationality or religious belief. Medicine and astronomy were their favourite sciences. Thus Haroun-al-Raschid, the most distinguished Saracen ruler, drew Indian physicians to Bagdad. In the year 772 there came to the court of Caliph Almansur a Hindoo astronomer with astronomical tables which were ordered to be translated into Arabic. These tables, known by the Arabs as the Sindhind, and
