as the

person

From the remarks of Geber, and his various experiments in chemical science, it is clear that distillation was well understood in his time, and that the mode of conducting pharmaceutical preparations, both vegetable and mineral, had attained considerable perfection. Avicenna, who flourished after Geber, describes the method of distillation, and particularly mentions distilled water of roses. Avicenna is also reputed who discovered the art of making sugar, till then unknown amongst his countrymen. About this period, a knowledge of the arts and sciences was greatly cultivated, and continued to extend in proportion to the conquests of the caliphs; the example and influence of whom diffused a love of literature over an empire, that spread in Asia from the Gulf of Persia, and the confines of Tartary to the Mediterranean and Indian Seas, and comprised all the habitable parts of Africa, from the Isthmus of Suez to the Atlantic ocean.

During the reign of the Abassides, at Bagdad, the mass of human knowledge collected within the walls of that city was astonishing. The shelves of its schools and colleges were bent under the weight of Grecian, Persian, Roman and Arabian literature, and the taste for collections of that nature was carried to such a height, even by private individuals, that we are told of a doctor who refused the invitation of the Sultan of Bochara to reside at his court, because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels. At Cairo, in Egypt, the Caliph's library consisted of 100,000 volumes, which were elegantly transcribed and bound; these were cheerfully lent, without any pecuniary consideration, to the students of the city. In Spain, the Caliphs had formed a library of 600,000 volumes, fortyfour of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Cordova, the capital of the Spanish Caliphs, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, gave birth to more than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries were opened in the Andalusian kingdom. Amidst such a profusion of information, we need not be surprised at the acquirements of the Saracens. In chemistry, they certainly excelled all the nations which had gone before them; that comprehensive branch of human research was greatly illustrated and enlarged by their discoveries; and, although it may be lamented, that a great portion of their knowledge lay concealed under the occult mysteries of alchymy, yet, according to Gibbon, the real science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to that people. That elegant writer says, that "they first invented and named the alembic for the purpose of distillation; analized the substances of the three kingdoms of nature; tried the distinctions and affinities of alkalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary

medicines."

Their speculative and visionary hope of finding an elixir of immortal health, is said to have led them to the discovery of alcohol, and entailed upon posterity the manufacture of a beverage, which, under the more modern name of aqua vita, has since proved to many a blessing, but to millions a curse.

Although these are the opinions generally recorded and handed to us, respecting the arts, industry, and knowledge of the Saracens, yet, I am far from believing, that they are entitled to be accounted the inventors of almost any of those discoveries, which are attributed to them. The East, being the cradle of the human race, and of all the arts, it is clear that the Arabians must have received their knowledge from that quarter. With the Egyptians and Indians, they had early intercourse, and these nations, it is well known, were far advanced in civilization long before, and in the practice of most of the arts, in which the Saracens, afterwards, became famous. The very style of architecture followed in the Eastern countries, was the model of the West, as is confirmed by the excavations of Pompeii, which had been buried nearly twenty centuries in the bowels of the earth. So skilled were the inhabitants, of that unfortunate city, in every thing that related to the comforts, and even the luxuries of life, that a house was found with windows of glass, as fine and transparent, as that made in modern times; besides ornaments of gold and specimens of art, of exquisite workmanship. The Arabs, it cannot be denied, were ignorant and barbarous, when various other portions of Asia, as well as some parts of the North of Africa, more particularly Egypt, were highly polished; and from those sources they must have acquired, in a great measure, the whole extent of their knowledge, in every department of literature. Strabo informs us, that the Arabians built their houses and temples after the model of the Egyptians; and that the Egyptians knew distillation, at a more remote period, than the Arabs, can scarcely be questioned, since Pliny has nearly described the process. If, as has been said, that this art was invented by a Grecian physician, and that the vessel first used in the practice was called embic, to which the Arabians afterwards prefixed their definite article al, why attribute the invention to them? Since the very derivation of the term is purely Greek, and as the Arabians were, for the most part, indebted to the Grecians for their proficiency in medicine and chemistry. From these considerations, and the known acquirements of the Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, and other Oriental nations with whom the Arabians had intercourse, and among

whom a knowledge of distillation appears to have previously existed, it is evident that this art was handed to them by others, and that they were only pupils, not teachers in geography, astronomy, algebra, chemistry, and architecture, as is generally maintained.

In speaking of the Arabians in this manner, I do not wish to be understood as depriving them of merits to which they are confessedly entitled, and of which so extensive a view has been just taken; but the discovery of the art under consideration, having been usually attributed to them, I was induced to examine minutely the grounds on which this assumption was founded; and although it cannot be decisively ascertained who were really the inventors of distillation, yet I am led to conclude, that the Arabians were the mere improvers, and not those to whom the art owed its origin; and from an attentive perusal of the various articles in this volume bearing on this point, but more particularly the observations on India and China, it is very probable the reader will come to the same conclusion. In addition to these remarks, it may be observed, that while we love alterations and changes, the orientals preserve uniformity; among us, a dress which was in fashion thirty years ago, is now ridiculous; among them, the same dress, manners, and customs prevail, that were in use a thousand years since; the arts which are progressive with us, are, with them, stationary. The physical and moral character of the orientals reposes on principles like those that existed thousands of years past, making a powerful contrast with those now in the west.Our mode of life is refined and changeable, theirs simple and permanent; with us there is a constant incitement to civilization, with them rather an inclination to barbarism. Man exists in the east, as it were, among the shades of antediluvian devices; in the west, amidst the glare of modern improvements-hence the Chinese, Persians, and Hindoos are entitled to be considered the inventors of the arts and sciences, and the teachers of them to those who visited them in the remoter ages of antiquity, not the scholars of a few itinerants, nor from having acquired their knowledge from other nations then in a comparative state of barbarism.

All the works of the Saracens appear to be translations or compilations from the Greek, Roman, Persian, and other oriental writings, little originality existing in any of them.-A late publication, at Madrid, of an Arabian Treatise on Agriculture, from an old manuscript in the Escurial, by Ibn' El Awam, in which one hundred and twenty authors are cited as the sources of his information, is a proof of this assertion. Among those authorities, he draws largely from M. Cato, Varro, Columella, Palladius, and adduces the various practices

of Egyptians, Persians, and other Easterns, in agriculture, from writings long since lost.* Mr. Mills says, "that as discoverers and inventors, the Saracens have few claims to praise; a grateful respect for antiquity was corrupted by them into a superstitious reverence, which checked all originality of ideas and freedom of thought. But they formed the link which unites ancient and modern letters; and as their relative situation with Europe somewhat resembles the relative situation between Europe and Greece, they are entitled to a portion of our respect and gratitude. The silence of the Greek writers is no proof that distillation was not known in the east before their time. It is not likely that a people, whose beverage was wine, in every variety, would think of submitting it to the alembic, in order to procure another kind of liquor, when they considered and accounted wine a drink worthy of the gods.

From the preceding recapitulation, and a consideration of the sources from whence the Saracens drew their stores of knowledge in Pharmacy, Chemistry, Mathematics, and the other arts and sciences, the deduction is natural, that the distillation of spirits is not their invention; and that the term alcohol is but another name for arrack, or rather for the improvement of that spirit by a higher rectification for alcohol with us, is always understood to signify spirit of wine, of the highest degree of volatilization, the particle al (the) being prefixed to express something grand or superlative: thus, alcohol means the pure spirit; alchymist, a chemist of the first order; alchymy, the highest degree of chemistry. Again, alcohol is compounded of the Arabic article al and the Hebrew word, Kaal, or Chaldaic, cohal, signifying to subtilize, make light or thin. Alembic is a compound of al with the Greek, außığ, an earthen vessel, or jar, called from its shape the cucurbit, or body. Alchymy is a compound of al and xe denoting the more sublime or occult part of chemistry. Hence the inference is plain, that as the Saracens borrowed those technical terms from foreign languages, they also derived from other nations a knowledge of the arts to which those appellations belonged. The word al-ka-hol, or alcohol, was originally applied to the powder, with which the Jewish, Syrian, and other Eastern ladies tinged their hair, and the edges of their eyelids, in order to heighten their beauty; and the name was, in consequence, subsequently transferred to spirits of wine rectified

Libro de Agricultura, su Autor el Doctor Excelente Abu Zacaria, Ebu El Awam Sevillano, traducido al Castellano y anotrado por Don Josef Antonio Bangueri. De Orden Superior y á Expensas de la Real Bibliotheca.

† History of Mahometanism, 8vo. p. 402.

to the highest perfection, intimating its improved state and fascinating qualities.

It is a well known historical fact, as given by Ebn Chalican, one of their writers, that at the time of the publication of the Koran, there was not to be found in the whole district of Yemen, a single person who could read or write Arabic, and the prophet himself, called the illiterate, was indebted to Warakan, his wife's kinsman, and a Christian, for the compilation of the Alcoran, at least so far as regards penmanship. In a country so uneducated, no art nor science of any importance could have flourished; and we find, even after the Saracens had arrived at considerable eminence as a nation, that one of their most enlightened caliphs, Al-Mamon, when reproved by his father for selecting Messue, a Christian physician, to conduct the pursuits of the learned men he had collected, with great frankness observed, "I have made choice of Messue, as an able preceptor in useful sciences and arts; and my father well knows that the most learned men, and the most skilful artists in his dominions, are Jews and Christians." Thus acknowledging the weight of obligation due to those foreign preceptors. The zeal of Al-Mamon, in collecting information, led Takiddin, a bigoted Mahometan, to say, that God would punish the caliph for daring by such studies to disturb the devotions of the Prophet's followers. Avicenna, one of their most eminent physicians, is said to have been indebted to Greek writers for the medical works for which he has been celebrated. Averroes is likewise under obligations to Aristotle, for his celebrity as a philosopher, though it is well known that he was unacquainted with the original, and perused the writings of that great man, by means of wretched Arabic translations. Galen and Hippocrates were the great guides in medicine; Dioscorides the director in botany. Under the withering influence of the Koran, it is surprising how any progress whatever could be made in the acquisition of knowledge. Divided by political dissensions, as well as heretical opinions, and engaged in almost continual warfare, the Saracens had not that independent spirit of research to think and speculate boldly for themselves, nor to rise superior to the trammels imposed on them by others: hence it may be asserted with truth, that the moderns owe little to their discoveries; and that the arts and sciences of the present day have received almost nothing from their industry, so that, in the language of an intelligent writer, it may be said, "Science would suffer no material loss, if the writings of the Saracens be permitted quietly to repose in that oblivion to which time has consigned them." Posterity, however, cannot but cast a grateful recollection to the period when,