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BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
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study, to the twelfth century of our era;[1] what we read of science and philosophy in Arabian historians,—Sáid of Tolèdo,[2] Mohammed Ibn Ishak, Jémal-eddín Ibn al-Kifti, Ibn Abi-Oceibia, Abúl Pharágius—on the origin of various branches of knowledge, and concerning the lives of certain philosophers who have become subjects of fiction, together with the Mussulman legends of Edris, identified with Enoch, Hermes, Otarid; a sort of scientific mythology received by all learned Arabs, and which is not of Moslem origin; all proceed, I maintain, evidently from the same homogeneous school, sui generis, the writings of which were composed in an Aramaic dialect.[3] A host of facts prove that Babylon was the theatre of a great upheaving of ideas
- ↑ See the learned work of M. Chwolson: Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, St. Petersburgh, 1856.
- ↑ This source, less known than the others, will appear one of the most important, when M. Schefer has published the Kitáb tabacáth ul-úmem, of which he possesses a manuscript, the only complete one, I believe, in Europe.
- ↑ Journal Asiatique, March-April, 1854, p. 263; August-Sept., 1854, pp. 181, 187-188; Bar Hebræi Chron. Syriacum, pp. 176-177 of the text; pp. 180-181 of the translation.
