It is to be noted that several centuries before the institution in Christian Europe of the first of the universities, and at a time when, outside of a few monastic _scriptoria_, the interest in literature in Christian states was almost non-existent, in the countries which had accepted the faith of Mahomet a system of higher education had been effectively organised, and in connection with the intellectual activity of the universities and libraries of Bagdad, Alexandria, Cairo, and Cordova, there had been a very considerable production of literature in the departments of jurisprudence, philosophy, and science. In fact, the first knowledge that came to the Europe of the Middle Ages concerning Greek thought and Greek literature was brought to it through Arabian scholars, and it was by means of the lecturers of Cordova that the doctrines of Aristotle were made known to the philosophers of Paris. The list of the scholarly writers who were associated during the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the great Arabian schools is a long one, and the books produced by them included not a few works which had an abiding influence on the thought of Europe. I have, however, no information concerning the methods employed for the manifolding and distribution of the books, and a consideration of them does not properly find place in this study. The names of Avicenna (d. 1027) and Averrhoes (d. 1198) will be recognised as representative of the class of authors referred to, the men who, by their translations of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, and other Greek classics, recalled what Laurie calls the university life of the Greeks.[259] In explaining how the universities are to be distinguished from the cathedral schools or the Benedictine schools out of which they were developed, Laurie gives the following definition of the first universities: “They were _specialised_ schools, as opposed to the schools of Arts, and they were _open to all_, without restriction, as _studia publica_ or _generalia_, as opposed to the more restricted ecclesiastical schools, which were under a Rule.”[260]