It has been said, and probably not without good reason, that Mohammed himself saw and felt the importance of literary distinction. Among the sayings attributed to him, the following has been considered as evincing his sense of the value of learning: "A mind without erudition is like a body without a soul. Glory consists not in wealth, but in knowledge;" and, as the Koran affords abundant proof, he was by no means unmindful of that mental cultivation, of which the means were within his reach. His immediate followers, occupied only with the ideas of conquest and conversion, despised equally the religion and learning of the nations they subdued; but when the age of rapine and violence yielded at length to comparative security and quiet, and the fair and splendid city of the Oriental caliphs arose, the Muses were courted from their ancient temples, and by the milder and more graceful achievements of literature and science, efforts were made to expiate the guilt of former conquest, and to shed a purer lustre over the Mohammedan name. Almansor, the second of the dynasty of the Abbassides, whose reign commenced A.D. 754, and lasted twenty-one years, was among the first of the Arab princes to foster learning and the arts. {247} Jurisprudence and astronomy were the principal subjects of his study, which, however, through the instruction of a Greek physician in his court, he extended to the art of healing, and probably to those kindred arts with which, in all ages and countries, medical science has been connected. What progress was made by himself or his subjects, we cannot now ascertain. His two immediate successors seem not to have trodden in his steps, though it is probable they did not undo what he had done; for the next caliph, Haroun al Raschid, is renowned as one of the most munificent patrons that literature ever enjoyed. He was fond of poetry and music: he is said to have constantly surrounded himself with a great number of learned men; and to him the Arabs were deeply indebted for the progress in knowledge which they were enabled to make. Every mosque in his dominions had a school attached to it by his order; and, as if his love of learning were superior even to his hereditary faith, he readily tolerated men of science who refused to yield to the bold pretensions of the Prophet. A Nestorian Christian presided over his schools, and directed the academical studies of his subjects. His successor imitated his wise and generous course; and thus knowledge extended from the capital to the most distant extremities of the empire. {248}