From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

We entered Bagdad in the full glory of a Mesopotamian sunset. Her mosques glowed with amber and light primrose; her minarets with the most delicate rose and gold. The noble crowns of stately palm trees cast masses of shade over gardens and fountains and, trembling under a gentle breeze from Oman’s Sea, played almost mystically in the quivering and departing sunlight. Throngs of Turks and Arabs, Kurds and Persians pressed feverishly through the narrow streets. The color notes of the red and green, blue and white robes of the men and women struck a pleasant harmony with the drab of the walls and the maroon and olive green of the fretted bay windows which projected over the gradually darkening thoroughfares of the picturesque city of Harun-al-Rashid.

We felt ourselves at once in the thrall of the quiet and subtle spell which the famed home of the Caliphs had cast over us, but, notwithstanding this, we lost no time in repairing to the home of the Carmelite Fathers, who had been advised of our arrival and who gave us a welcome such as is accorded only by the generous and warm-hearted missionaries of the Orient. Once under their hospitable roof we felt that we were a member of their religious family. So fully was our every want foreseen and our every desire anticipated that we saw at a glance that our sojourn among these devoted fathers would be fully as pleasant and as profitable as had been our stay among the whole-souled Capuchins of Urfa and the zealous and scholarly Dominicans of Mosul. Nor were we mistaken, for every hour we spent with the good Carmelite priests of Bagdad was replete with pleasure, instruction, and edification.

The story of the going of the Carmelites to Bagdad and the record of their labors since their arrival there is as interesting as it is inspiring. Their formal taking possession of the Mission of Bagdad, the Carmelites tell us, took place in the first decade of the seventeenth century, under the most dramatic circumstances. The zealous Father Paul-Simon, superior of their mission in Persia, who had been sent by the Shah as an envoy to the Sovereign Pontiff, arrived at Bagdad so exhausted by the fatigues of a long and trying journey and the inroads of disease that, when he reached the gate of the city, he prostrated himself on the ground and gave up the ghost.

A little more than a quarter of a century after this tragic occurrence, was created the Latin bishopric of Bagdad, usually known as the See of Babylon. This was due to the progress which the Church had made in Persia—a progress that was the result of the fruitful missionary labors in that land of Carmelites, Jesuits, and Dominicans and to the protection and liberty which had been accorded them by the wise and enlightened Shah, Abbas the Great. Recognizing the necessity of a bishop as head of the Persian mission, Abbas, in 1830, sent Father Thaddée, a Carmelite, to Rome, to request the Holy Father to create a Latin bishopric in Ispahan, his capital, with a permanent coadjutorship which should guarantee the new episcopate from too long vacancies. As a result of the Persian monarch’s interest in the Church, Father Thaddée was promoted to the new See of Ispahan. He received as coadjutor Father Perez, likewise a Carmelite, who was given the specially created title of Bishop of Babylonia, which at that time was a part of the Persian Empire.

In the meantime, a pious lady of Meaux, France—Marie Ricouard—put at the disposition of the Holy See six thousand Spanish doubloons for the creation and endowment of a bishopric in partibus infidelibus, on the double condition that to the donor should be reserved the presentation of the first titular and that the following bishops should always be of French nationality.

Pope Urban VIII by his bull, Super Universas, decreed in June 1838, that the sum named should be appropriated to the See of “Babylon or Bagdad,” with the formal stipulation that all future incumbents of this bishopric should be obliged to reside there personally under pain of forfeiting all right to the fruits of the Ricouard foundation. At the same time the Sovereign Pontiff named as the first bishop of the new see Father Bernard de Sainte-Thérèse, of Paris, who had been proposed by the donor of the fund mentioned, and ordained that thenceforth no one should be promoted to this see unless he had been born in France. This wish of the Pope and of the pious donor has thus far never been transgressed, and there is no reason to doubt that it will continue to assure to France the honor of seeing one of her sons occupy the See of Bagdad.[420]

In the year 1677 a special act, signed at Constantinople by the Ambassador of Louis XIV, named the superior of the Carmelites in Basra consul of France, in perpetuum. At a later date the French King gave the title and prerogatives of consul to the Bishop of Bagdad. This was an immense help to the bishop in his ministry for it gave him increased power with the civil government and enhanced immensely his prestige among the Mohammedans. From the time of Francis I, when a treaty of peace and amnity and commerce was signed by the French Government and the Sublime Porte, the French had enjoyed full religious liberty throughout the Ottoman Empire and France continued for centuries to be with the Moslem the favored nation of Europe.[421]

But, although the consular positions which were held by the Carmelite superior of Basra and the bishop of Bagdad and, still more, the treaty of amnity which had been established between the French and Ottoman governments—especially after the Ottoman Turks gained possession of Mesopotamia in A. D. 1534—had given the French missionaries in the Near East increased power and prestige, they still had to confront difficulties innumerable and sacrifices that were calculated to appall all but the noblest heroes.

Their difficulties, however, did not proceed from the followers of Mohammed so much as from lack of material resources and from the paucity of subjects for the ever-expanding work of the mission. So many calls were made on their charity by the poor that they were at times forced to live on only a single piece of dry bread a day, with nothing to flavor it but a small clove of garlic. Then both priests and bishops were decimated by the plague while ministering at the bedside of the stricken members of their flock. On one occasion the Carmelite superior of Bagdad saw himself without any assistants whatever. Age and disease had taken them all from him one after another. In this extremity he wrote letter after letter to his superior general in Rome, conjuring him to send him men. “I have none, was the general’s answer; if you want them, come and seek them.”

The superior, Father Marie-Joseph, took the general at his word. Poor as Job, he borrowed money enough to hire a camel and alone, with a single Arab and a sack of dates and a leather bottle of water, he started for Aleppo on the long journey—nearly eight hundred miles—through the inhospitable Arabian and Syrian deserts. Twice his alertness and eloquence saved him from bands of marauding Bedouins. But, finally, after untold difficulties and sufferings he reached Aleppo and Rome. His superior general in the Eternal City was so impressed by the magnificent audacity of the zealous missionary that he found a means of procuring for him the assistants he so much needed and sent him back to his flock rejoicing. Among these assistants was Father Damien, formerly a practicing physician, who soon proved to be a godsend to the suffering poor of Bagdad, whom he gladly treated and supplied with medicine without any compensation whatever.[422]

As in the missions of Edessa and Mosul, the missionaries of Bagdad are nobly assisted in their moral and civilizing work by devoted nuns from France. But the life of these devoted sisters is one of the greatest self-sacrifice. They may not, as did the Carmelite priests, have attempted to imitate St. Peter of Alcantara, who took but one repast and that of the most frugal kind, only once every three days; but the privations which they for years had to endure would daunt all but the most courageous souls. Even before they reached the scene of their missionary activities they had to pass through an experience that, for delicately reared women as they were, was truly disheartening for any but those engaged in the service of the Master. This was their long journey on horseback—in great part—through a wild and forbidding desert from Beirut to Bagdad. They were twenty-four days in the saddle. The nights they had to spend in the filthy, noisy, dilapidated caravansaries which were scarcely fit shelter for the beasts that carried them. And yet these heroic religieuses always maintained the same cheerfulness during this long and trying journey as ever characterizes them in the performance of their arduous labors in the schoolroom and at the bedside of the sick and suffering.[423]

But the labors of these ardent souls is not without compensation, even in this world. Notwithstanding all the drawbacks that confront them they have the comfort of knowing that their sacrifices are not in vain. The number of their pupils, Mohammedans and Jews, as well as Christians of all the numerous rites in Mesopotamia, is so rapidly augmenting, that it is difficult for the good nuns to house them and secure enough teachers to take care of them. For, in addition to the ordinary branches of an elementary education, they teach their young charges various kinds of needlework and the simpler principles of domestic economy.

“The children of Bagdad are very bright and very eager to learn,” said one of the sisters to me in answer to a question I had asked, “and nowhere will you find pupils who are more studious or more grateful for the opportunities they have of improving their minds. Our great grief is that our school-buildings are not larger and that we have not more sisters to meet the constantly increasing demands that are made on us in our class-rooms. But,” she said, in sweet resignation, “the Bon Dieu will provide in His own good time.”

Never before did I so much regret that I was not a millionaire as I did when I visited the schools of these perfervid and laborious religieuses and saw what splendid results they were achieving with the very limited resources at their disposal and learned how much more they could accomplish if they had the necessary means. If the good and generous people of America could only realize the noble work which the good Sisters of the Presentation are achieving in Bagdad and how very worthy they are of assistance, I am sure that many would open wide their purses for the benefit of both teachers and pupils. I know of few places where money could be spent to better purpose. When one remembers that these ardent souls are condemned to perpetual exile by the atrocious Association Laws of their mother country and that they frequently lack the ordinary necessities of life because they are unable to reach a public that would gladly succor them in their needs and coöperate with them in their admirable work, one cannot help sympathizing with them and feel that it is one’s duty to help them in every way possible.

The school for boys under the direction of the Carmelite Fathers is recognized as the best in Bagdad. It, with the church and monastery of the Fathers, occupies a capital position in the center of the city and is pronounced by foreigners to be “a French oasis in the midst of the desert.”

It will interest the reader to know that the study of French is obligatory from the lowest to the highest classes of the school. The result is that many of the pupils speak the language with wonderful facility and correctness. At the commencement exercises at the end of the year they exhibit their proficiency before a large audience made up of the élite of the city by giving a play from Racine. It is in consequence of their thorough knowledge of the language of Molière and Bossuet that after leaving school they are given high positions in the leading houses of commerce and in all the administrative offices of the government. The traveler is often surprised at the extent to which French is spoken in the Near East; but when one remembers that the schools and colleges in the Ottoman Empire, which are under the direction of French priests, sisters, and laymen are numbered by the thousand, the wonder ceases. It is for this reason that the empire is, in the words of Pierre Loti—presque un pays de langue française—almost a country of the French language.[424]

The missionaries in Bagdad—from the Archbishop down to the humblest nun—are greatly attached to the city in which Divine Providence has called them to labor and—to suffer. Not the least reason for this attachment is the glorious position which Bagdad so long occupied in the history of the world. Until the late war the average reader knew little about it except that it was in some way associated with the “Arabian Nights.” And this association was so vague in his mind that he was not sure whether Bagdad ever had an actual existence or whether it, like the famous characters in Thousand and One Nights, belonged only to fable land.

For this reason it seems this chapter would be incomplete without some account of the famous city which, during five hundred years, was the capital of the Abbasside Caliphs; which, there is reason to believe, was for a considerable period the largest city in the world; which, during many centuries bore rule from the Oxus to the Nile and from the Caucasus to the Gulf of Oman; and which, during a half millennium, was to Islam what Rome is to Christendom.

Bagdad was founded A. D. 762, by Al-Mansur, the second of the Abbasside Caliphs. Before deciding on a site for his capital Al-Mansur made many journeys and carefully examined all the available locations along the Tigris from Jarjaraya to Mosul. Moslem historians inform us that the Caliph was finally induced to select the spot on which Bagdad now stands by the advice of those who had lived there both in winter and in summer and who assured him that “among all the Tigris lands this district especially was celebrated for its freedom from the plague of mosquitoes and that the nights, even in the height of summer, were cool and pleasant.” “We are, furthermore, of the opinion,” they continued, “that thou shouldst found the city here because thou shalt thereby live amongst palms and near water, so that if one district fail thee in its crops, or be late in its harvest, in another will the remedy be found. Also thy city being on the Sarat Canal, provisions will be brought thither by the boats of the Euphrates and by the caravans through the plains, even from Egypt and Syria. Hither, up from the sea will come the wares of China, while down the Tigris from Mosul will be brought goods from the Byzantine lands. Thus shall thy city be safe standing between all these streams, and thine enemy shall not reach thee, except it be by a boat or by a bridge, and across the Tigris or the Euphrates.”

“The practical foresight shown by the Caliph,” in the selection of the site of his capital, “has been amply confirmed by the subsequent history of Bagdad. The city called into existence as by an enchanter’s wand was, during the Middle Ages, second in size only to Constantinople, and throughout Western Asia was long unrivalled for splendor. It at once became and remained for all subsequent centuries the capital of Mesopotamia. Wars, sieges, the removal for a time by the Caliphs of the seat of government to Samara, higher up the Tigris, even the almost entire destruction of the city by the Mongols in A. D. 1258, none of these have permanently affected the supremacy of Bagdad as the capital of the Tigris and the Euphrates country, and now, after the lapse of over twelve centuries, the new Arabic King of Mesopotamia still resides in the city founded by the Caliph Al-Mansur.”[425]

Many etymologies, most of them fanciful, have been given of the name Bagdad. It is said that when Al-Mansur finally selected the site for his capital he found it occupied by several monasteries, most of them Nestorian, and that the capital derived its appellation from the Arabic word bagh—garden,—and Dad—the name of a certain monk who had a garden there. Others aver that the name is derived from two Persian words, Bagh—God,—and Dadh—founded—signifying a city founded by God. The official name, however, given, we are told by the Caliph Al-Mansur himself, was Medina-as-Salam, which signifies the “City of Peace.” But among the Saracens it was more generally known as Dar-as-Salam, which also signifies City or Home of Peace. The Greeks gave it a name—Eirenopolis—which is a literal translation of the Arabic Dar-as-Salam. But it is by the older and more common name—Bagdad—which is variously spelt—that the city of Al-Mansur has generally been known from its foundation to the present day.

It was long thought that the capital of the Caliphs had been founded on ground which had not previously been occupied by a dense population. But a discovery made in 1848 by Sir Henry Rawlinson, when the waters of the Tigris were exceptionally low, disclosed the surprising fact that Al-Mansur had founded his capital on the site of a city that antedated the Christian era by at least seven centuries. An extensive facing of brickwork, which still exists, was then found to line the western bank of the river, and each brick of this facing bore the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar. No less remarkable, in this connection, is a later discovery in the Assyrian geographical catalogues, belonging to the reign of Asurbanipal, of a name very similar to Bagdad “which probably refers to the town then standing on the site afterwards occupied by the capital of the Caliphs.”

Al-Mansur founded his capital, known from its peculiar form as “The Round City,” on the right bank of the Tigris, but it was not long until the palaces of the Caliphs and the government offices were transferred to the eastern side of the river, where the capital has since remained, while the part of the city on the western bank, especially the quarter called Karkh, was given over to markets and merchants, where “every merchant and each merchandise had an appointed street: and there were rows of shops, and of booths and of courts in each of the streets; but men of one business were not mixed up with those of another, nor one merchandise with merchandise of another sort. Goods of a kind were only sold with their kind, and men of one trade were not to be found except with their fellows of the same craft. Thus each market was kept single and the merchants were divided according to their merchandise, each craftsman being separated from others not of his own class.”[426]

What greatly contributed towards the rapid development of Bagdad and towards making it the great emporium of the East, was the admirable system of canals which intersected the rich alluvial plains of lower Babylonia and which enabled the inhabitants of this region to utilize the surplus waters of the Euphrates for irrigating the fertile lands which lay between this river and the Tigris. Contrary to what is so often thought, the Arabs, under the Caliphs, gave as much attention to the canalization of Mesopotamia as had their predecessors, the Persians and the Babylonians.

But these canals, besides being used for purposes of irrigation, likewise served for the transportation of merchandise from distant regions. Thus, to give a single instance of their use for this purpose, we are informed that “great boats and barges were loaded at Rakkah, ‘the port,’ as it was called, of the Syrian desert on the Upper Euphrates, there taking over from the land-caravans the corn of Egypt and the merchandise from Damascus; and these boats, coming down the great river, and then along the Isa Canal, discharged their cargoes at the wharves on the Tigris banks at the lower harbor in Karkh.”[427]

To give some idea of the fertility of the irrigated region of Mesopotamia during the reign of the Caliphs it suffices to quote the words of an Arabic writer regarding certain cornlands in the vicinity of Bagdad, where, we are told, “the crops never failed, neither in winter nor in summer,” and of the report given of a certain mill in which there were no fewer than a hundred millstones which produced the extraordinary annual rental of a hundred million dirhams, a sum that was equivalent to several million dollars of our money.

Marco Polo, that king of mediæval travelers, who, by the vast compass of his journeys, was better qualified than any man of his time to express an opinion on the relative importance of the cities of Asia, declares that Bagdad—which he calls Baudas—is “the noblest and greatest city of these regions” and that it “used to be the seat of the Caliph of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the seat of the Pope of all the Christians.”[428] But the illustrious Venetian voyager did not visit Bagdad until several decades after the destruction of the city by the Mongol hordes under Hulagu Khan.

The question now arises, if Bagdad was so great a metropolis only a half century after it was ravaged by the Mongols, what must it have been when at the zenith of its power and magnificence? Some authors estimate that the city counted no fewer than two million souls. D’Herbelot, the celebrated Orientalist, says that one can conjecture the number of the inhabitants of Bagdad from a statement made by Arab historians, who declare that the funeral of Eben Hanbal, a famous Moslem doctor who died with a great reputation for sanctity, was attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women.[429] Then again, Marco Polo tells us that the number of Christians in Bagdad, shortly before it was sacked by Hulagu, was more than a hundred thousand.[430] This would indicate that the population of this Saracen city, of which a very great majority was Mohammedan, must then, in the days of its decline, have exceeded a million. This seems clear from what historians tell us about the “horrible butchery of men, women and children,” which lasted forty days, when the city was sacked by the Mongols under Hulagu.

About the greatness and splendor of Bagdad before it was laid in ashes by the Mongol invader, there can be no question. The concurrent testimony of contemporary historians puts this beyond doubt. The walls which surrounded the city in its infancy were such as to rival those of ancient Babylon and Nineveh, as described by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. According to the noted Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Bagdad in the second half of the twelfth century, “the palace of the Caliph of Bagdad is three miles in extent.”

An idea of the magnificence of the Caliph’s palaces may be gained from an account that has come down to us of the brilliant reception accorded the Greek ambassadors who were sent to Bagdad, A. D. 917, by Constantine Porphyrogenitus.[432] Before being introduced to the Commander of the Faithful, the envoys were conducted in state through the various buildings within the palace precincts. Each of these buildings, of which there were twenty-three in number, was a separate palace.

One of these was the riding academy, adorned with porticoes of marble columns.

After all this, and leading to the very presence of the Caliph, came the officers of state and the pages of the privy council, all in gorgeous raiment, with their swords and girdles glittering with gold and gems. Near them were “the eunuchs and the chamberlains and the black pages.”

A hundred lions were brought out, every lion being held in by the hand of its keeper. Among other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver. The tree had eighteen branches, every branch having numerous twigs, on which sat all kinds of gold and silver birds, both large and small. Most of the branches of this tree were of silver, but some were of gold, and they spread into the air carrying leaves of divers colors. The leaves of the tree moved as the wind blew, while the birds, under the action of mechanical appliances, piped and sang. Through this scene of magnificence the Greek ambassadors were led to the foot of the Caliph’s throne.

The impression made on the ambassador and his suite at the sight of such a display of wealth and luxury was, we may well believe, not unlike that produced on the Spanish Conquistadores at the sight of the vast treasures of Cuzco and Cajamarca, or on the astonished ambassadors of foreign powers when they were admitted to the presence of Abd-al-Rahman III in his gorgeous audience chamber in the famed palace of Medina-al-Zahra.[435]

But Bagdad has more compelling claims to undying fame than those based on gorgeous palaces, superb mosques, boundless luxury, and ostentatious displays of fabulous wealth. This splendid capital of the Caliphs will always live in history’s page as the seat of numerous and splendid institutions of charity and education and as the home of Caliphs who were the most munificent patrons of science and letters of the Middle Ages.

Among the hospitals of Bagdad was a palatial structure with many rooms and wards, which were furnished in elaborate style. Here the patients were gratuitously provided with food and medicine and regularly visited by the physicians of the city. It was here that Rhazes, the most celebrated Mussulman physician of his time, gave his lectures and founded the great medical school which drew students from all parts of Western Asia. Rhazes is famous not only for his eminence as a physician but also as a voluminous writer on medicine and for having described smallpox nearly nine hundred years before Jenner began his noted investigations on this dread disease.

It was, however, the colleges, of which there were more than thirty—“each more magnificent than a palace”—that gave Bagdad its greatest fame in the mediæval world. One of these, called the Nizamiyah, founded by an eminent vizier who was the friend of the poet Omar Khayyám, was, on account of its architectural splendor, and the celebrity of its professional staff, known as the “Mother of the colleges of Bagdad.” Among its most illustrious lecturers were Ghazzali, celebrated as a philosopher and a theologian, and Bohadin, who achieved eminence as a historian, as a statesman, and as the biographer of the Sultan Saladin. The endowment of the Nizamiyah was so princely that it sufficed not only to pay the salaries of the professors but also to pay for the board and tuition of indigent students.

Completely eclipsing the Nizamiyah College in its architectural grandeur, sumptuous equipment, and wealth of endowment was the College of the Mustansiriyah—the ruins of which still exist—which was founded by the Caliph Mustansir, the father of Mustasim, who was put to death by Hulago after the destruction of Bagdad. So great was the splendor of this college that it is said to have surpassed any similar institution in Islam. It was not only the most notable seat of learning in Bagdad, but was also its most beautiful and imposing edifice. When one recalls the many gorgeous palaces of the city—many of them costing fabulous sums—one can realize what munificent patrons were Bagdad’s Caliph and men of wealth and how well this fairy capital deserved its reputation as the Orient’s most famous center of science and letters. It had only one rival and that was the famous Ommaied metropolis in Spain, so celebrated for its riches and attractions, its schools and libraries and scholars—a city which Hroswitha, the gifted nun of Gandersheim, has so beautifully described in a single distich:

But no description of Bagdad is complete without some account of its more eminent Caliphs, especially of its immortal Harun-Al-Rashid, who is “inseparably associated with the most charming collection of stories ever invented for the solace and delight of mankind.” This brilliant Saracen ruler has long been ranked among the illustrious men of all time. For, notwithstanding the fact that from time immemorial legends have gathered around his name in greater number than about those of King Arthur, or Charlemagne, or Frederick Barbarossa, authentic history tells us enough of his character and achievements to make the romantic life of “Aaron the Just”—to Anglicize his name—one of supreme fascination and abiding interest.

Christians were the translators of the works of Plato and Aristotle; of Galen, Hippocrates, and Dioscorides; of Ptolemy, Euclid, and Apollonius Pergæus.

He was, indeed, as described by his biographers, “the most accomplished, eloquent and generous of the Caliphs,” and the stories that are told of his lavish generosity towards scholars who frequented his court proved that he was probably the most munificent patron of men of science and letters that ever lived.

And yet, sad to relate, there is a dark spot in the career of Harun-al-Rashid. This is due to his inhuman treatment of the Barmecides, whose tragic fate at the hands of the Caliph is one of the most shocking occurrences in oriental annals. One of this ill-fated family, Yaya ibin Barmek, was Harun’s vizier, who, by his consummate ability, had contributed more than any other man towards the success of the Caliph’s reign. It was he, and not the Commander of the Faithful, who directed the course of events that rendered the reign of Harun-al-Rashid the culminating point of Islamic history. His son Jaafer was the most cherished friend of the Caliph and his constant companion in his nightly incognito wanderings through the city of Bagdad. “Harun’s attachment to Jaafer was of so extravagant a character that he could never bear him to be absent from his side, and he went to the absurd length of having a cloak made with two collars, so that he and Jaafer could wear it at one and the same time.”[438]

But to wipe out a fancied indignity he did not hesitate foully to murder his friend and companion, “by far the most lovable and attractive character of the many that live for us in the Thousand and One Nights.[439] He cast his old and loyal vizier, the father of Jaafer, into prison. Not content with this barbarous treatment of men to whom he owed so much, he vented his fury on their family and did not abate his anger until he had slain more than a thousand of the Barmecides. So great an impression did Harun’s atrocious treatment of his best friends make on his contemporaries that it became “the proverbial example in oriental history of the change of fortune and the mutability of royal favor.” It is because of this barbarous cruelty and his revolting treachery that the Harun of history is so unlike the Harun of legend, in which he is always painted as a merry monarch—the patron of scholars and the boon companion of congenial friends. And it is because of this that we must refuse him his long-accorded title of “The Just” and “The Good,” although, in view of his achievements as a ruler and his unfailing and generous patronage of men of science and letters, we cannot deny him the epithet of “The Great.” Were it not for the stain on his escutcheon, due to his infamous treatment of the Barmecides, we could, with some semblance of truth, say of this illustrious Caliph of Bagdad, in the words of Tennyson:

One cannot speak of the services rendered to science and literature by Harun-al-Rashid without referring to his distinguished son and successor, the Caliph Al-Mamun. Although the power and the greatness of the empire had suffered a notable diminution after the death of Al-Rashid, the glory of Bagdad as a center of learning still retained all its former luster. Some, indeed, will have it that its prestige was enhanced and that Al-Mamun and not Harun was the father of letters and the Augustus of the Abbasside Caliphate. For the first thing he did on ascending the throne was to invite the Muses from their favorite seats in the Byzantine Empire to the capital of the Caliphs on the Tigris.

History was but repeating itself, for, as in the days of ancient Rome, so also in the most brilliant period of Bagdad

So great during this brilliant literary period was the love of learning that there were in Bagdad more than a hundred booksellers. How many of our modern cities could count so great a number? And so large were even private libraries that we are told of a doctor of Bagdad who “refused the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara, because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.”[442]

Nor was it in Bagdad alone that the zeal of Harun and Mamun for the progress of knowledge had stimulated enthusiasm for science and letters. Under these two illustrious patrons of learning, homes of science that almost equaled that of Bagdad were established in all parts of the Caliphate—in Cufa and Basra; in Fez and Morocco; in Cairo and Alexandria and Damascus; in Balk, Ispahan, and Samarcand—many of which, in the splendor of their buildings and in the equipment of their libraries, rivaled the famous Arabian schools of Granada, Seville, and Cordoba, which were in their heyday “when all that was polite or elegant in literature was classed among the Studia Arabum.” And it is to be observed that these institutions, created and fostered by the benign influence of the Caliphs, had reached the acme of their glory when the greater part of western and northern Europe was in a condition of comparative darkness.

But in paying this tribute to the Caliphs of Bagdad—especially Harun-Al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun—I do not wish to appear as overrating their achievements in science and letters. One may, indeed, concede that they always held literary excellence in the highest honor; one may admit that never, not even in the days of Mæcenas and Lorenzo the Magnificent, did men of letters receive greater encouragement and rewards; one may acknowledge that for centuries the Saracens were far in advance of many of the western nations of Christendom in many branches of science and philosophy, but, granting all this, the indisputable fact still remains that they were borrowers and not originators.

All their achievements in philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics were due to their Greek masters—to Plato and Aristotle; to Galen and Dioscorides; to Hipparchus and Ptolemy; to Euclid, Archimedes, and Eratosthenes. And it must not be forgotten that the Saracens owed their knowledge of Greek science to Christians, for it was Christians who translated for them the works which they were unable to read in the original. Thus it was the Christian scholar Honein, who was the physician to the Khalif Motowakkel, that translated into Arabic the “Elements” of Euclid and the “Almagest” of Ptolemy; and it was his pupils who made the Arabic versions of the greater number of the works of Galen and Hippocrates.[443] And it was to the celebrated Christian family, the Boktishos, and to the Nestorian school of Gondisapor, from which issued so many scholars of distinction, that the Saracens were indebted for versions of countless other works of Greek science and philosophy.

Among the many learned men whom the Caliph Al-Mamun invited to his court and “who contributed far more than his own subjects to the reputation that sovereign has deservedly gained in the history of science,” was Leo the Mathematician, who subsequently became the Archbishop of Thessalonica. The Caliph desired to have made an accurate measurement of the earth’s orbit and he called this distinguished Greek to his court to take charge of this important work because “he was universally recognized to be the superior to all the scientific men of Bagdad in mathematical and mechanical knowledge.”[444]

But while the Arabs were good borrowers from Greek writers on medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, they almost completely ignored the great poets, orators, and historians of ancient Hellas. Never cultivating any language but their own, they were unable to read the masterpieces of Greek literature except in a translation, but as there was no demand by the Saracens for translations of these works into Arabic, none were ever made. For this reason the matchless poems of Homer and the Greek dramatists; the orations of Lysias and Demosthenes; the histories of Herodotus and Trucidides, were for the Saracens as so many closed books. The noted Syriac author, Bar-Herbræus, does, indeed, mention a version of the Iliad and Odyssey by a Christian Maronite of Mount Lebanon, but his translation was into Syriac and not Arabic.

These facts show how much the great reputation of the Saracens for learning was due to their immortal Greek masters and to the literary activity of their Christian subjects, especially the Greeks of the Lower Empire. It is true, as Freeman observes, that “the Arabs studied Aristotle and taught him to the men of western Europe; but it was surely from the men of eastern Europe that they obtained him in the first instance. He was read in translations at Samarcand and at Lisbon, when no one knew his name at Oxford or Edinburgh; but all the while he continued to be read in his own tongue at Constantinople and Thessalonica.”[445]

The impulse that Harun-al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun gave to educational progress by encouraging the translation of the works of Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, and others of the great Greek masters will always give their reigns a conspicuous place in the annals of science and civilization. But the successors of these two illustrious monarchs did not follow in their footsteps. Although the power of the Caliphate seemed still unimpaired and its splendor was apparently undimmed, the seeds of decay, which led to ultimate destruction, were already at work. The vices of sloth and luxury and cruelty which prevailed at the court and in many of the most important departments of the government of the Caliphate, slowly but surely entailed their fatal consequences. Besides these, there were other causes of decay and extinction. Chief among them were internecine strife and the separation of the remoter provinces from the central power. Added to these disintegrating factors the Caliphate had become top-heavy, and under a weak and degenerate ruler like Al-Mostassem, the last of the Abbassides, its downfall was inevitable.

In contemplating the fall of the power which was for five centuries the glory of the Moslem world, one is led to compare the close of the reign of the last of the Caliphs with that of the last of the Byzantine Emperors: