ambassadors in important embassies. Hischem II. ordered a translation of the Talmud to be made into Arabic, and caused its literature to be introduced as a branch of study in the Moslem colleges. The educated Moors treated with the greatest honor and respect the princes and officials of the hierarchy chosen by the assemblies of the Synagogue. The beginning of the tenth century witnessed the destruction of the renowned academies of Persia, whose members, by the promulgation of liberal doctrines, had rendered themselves obnoxious to Oriental despotism. Their societies dissolved, these learned men were forced to seek security in exile. Some of the most famous, including the Rabbi Moses, of the Academy of Pumbedita, were taken by African corsairs and exposed for sale in the slave-market of Cordova. Such was the eminent reputation of this doctor, that, as soon as his identity was disclosed, he was unanimously elected prince of the Hispano-Hebrew nation. These Oriental scholars were not the only exiles who enriched the universities of Spain with their accumulated stores of wisdom. From every country where the hand of persecution was raised against the Jew refugees flocked by thousands into the Peninsula, until the Ommeyade khalif included among his subjects a larger proportion of the people of this race than any other sovereign of the age. The list of rabbis who illuminated with their genius and learning the reign of the Cordovan princes is both instructive and interesting, especially when we consider the benighted condition of contemporaneous Europe. In France, during the ninth century, a Christian bishop declared the rabbis preached better than the priests.