"Mostanser Billah and his successors, to the number of eighteen, were called the second dynasty of the Abbassides, and were spiritual chiefs of the Mohammedan religion, but without the slightest vestige of temporal authority. When Selim, emperor of the Turks, conquered Egypt and destroyed the power of the Mamelukes, he carried the caliph, whom he found there a prisoner, to Constantinople, and accepted from him a renunciation of his ecclesiastical supremacy. On the death of the caliph, the family of the Abbassides, once so illustrious, and which had borne the title of caliph for almost eight hundred years, sunk with him from obscurity into oblivion." [4] [1] Vol. ii., Section 3. [2] Mills, p. 179. [3] When it was demanded of Moez from what branch of Mohammed's family he drew his title, "This," said he, showing his cimeter, "is my pedigree; and these," throwing gold among his soldiers, "are my children." [4] Mill's History, 160. {243} CHAPTER II. Literature and Science of the Arabs.--Their Facilities for Literary and Scientific Pursuits.--Patronage of Literature by the Princes of the House of Abbas.--Almamoun.--Arabian Schools.--Eloquence.--Poetry.--The Arabian Tales.--History.--Geography.--Speculative Sciences.--Astrology.--Mathematical Knowledge of the Arabs.--Astronomy.--Architecture.--The Fine Arts.--Agriculture.--Medicine.--Chymistry.--Our obligations to Arab Literature. The early followers of the Arabian prophet were only enthusiastic military adventurers, subduing in their wide and rapid progress most of the nations of the then known world. The lust of power, and successful military enterprise, are commonly unfavourable to the cultivation of the liberal arts, so that a conquering people usually exhibit but little taste for science or literature. The Goths and the Huns, for instance, were among the most implacable foes of knowledge. Nor did the early Arabs regard it with more favour. Mohammed found his countrymen sunk in the deepest barbarism: he was incapable of any direct effort to raise them; and, from the ruthless destruction of the Alexandrean library by Omar, one of his earliest successors, they appear not to have been in a much {244} better condition after the close than at the commencement of his eventful career.