In the tenth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1495-1592) the generally prevalent belief that the world would, at the completion of it, come to an end, contributed much to the gradual decay of science and literature. The case is somewhat analogous to the superstition in Europe some six hundred years previously, when the Christian era attained its millennium, which was considered to carry with it the same catastrophe. This prophecy, believed to be true, contributed in some measure to slacken authority as well as exertion, and the power of Islamitic countries really sank; but this might have been predicted without any prophetic foresight. In one part of Islam, the ruin of Muhammadan countries thus prophesied was accomplished twenty-one years before the end of the thousandth year, that is in the 979th year of the Hijrah, A.D. 1571, by the total expulsion of the Moors from Spain. Granada itself had succumbed already, seventy-nine years before, and the unwieldy palace of the kings, of Spain (still unfinished) had risen by the side of the lofty arcades of the Alhambra, still a lovely specimen of Moorish artistic design and architecture. The tenth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1495-1592), which was the first of the decay of Arab literature, is to be considered as the period when the political importance of Turkey culminated in the reign of Sulaiman the Law-giver. There were, however, four authors of celebrity who wrote both in Arabic and in Turkish. Ibn Kamal Pasha, the surname of Mufti Shams-uddin Ahmad bin-Sulaiman, who died A.D. 1534, wrote on history in Turkish, and on law in Arabic; the Mufti Abu Sa'ud acquired great renown by his numerous Fetwas (legal decisions), approving of the political institutions of Sulaiman; Ibrahim of Aleppo is the author of the 'Molteka' (Confluence of Two Seas), which embodies the essence of Muslim law, according to the Hanifi ritual; and lastly, Birgeli, otherwise known as Mulla Muhammad Ibn Pir Ali ul-Birkali, was equally great as a dogmatist and as a grammarian. He wrote in Arabic 'The Unique Pearl; or, The Art of Reading the Koran,' and died A.D. 1573. Special mention, too, must be made of Mulla Ahmad Bin Mustafa, the celebrated Arabian, whom Haji-Khalfa always calls by the more euphonious name of Abul-Khair (Father of Wisdom). This author is worthy of notice, on account of the Arabic works he wrote on biographical, historical, and especially encyclopaedic subjects. His 'Key of Felicity' will remain for ever the best encyclopaedia of Arabian sciences, representing as it does their division among the Arabs, with notices of the works of scholars in every branch of them in a most compact and comprehensive manner. He died A.D. 1560.