In Spain the Jews had always been most numerous and prosperous. Under the Saracen conquerors, with few exceptions,--as, for instance, the persecution by Ibn Tumart,--they enjoyed a peace such as they had seldom experienced under Christian rule. The liberty usually accorded to them enabled the Spanish Jews to attain distinction in other fields of activity besides money-lending. They were farmers, land-owners and slave-dealers. The last kind of trade was particularly encouraged by the Caliphs of Andalusia who formed their bodyguards of picked Slavonian slaves. They also were physicians, financiers, civil administrators, and they vied with their Mohammedan masters in learning as well as in material splendour and love of display. The influence of Moorish culture on the spiritual and intellectual development of the Spanish Jews has been very ably outlined by a modern Jewish writer in the following words:--“The milder rule of the Moslem gave the Jew a needed pause in the struggle for existence, and the similarity of the Semitic genius in both prevented the perceptible tendency to narrowness, and brought the Jewish mind again into free contact with the world’s thought.... The first aim of the Caliphs, after the victory of Islam was assured, was to resuscitate Greek science and philosophy. Translators were employed to bring forth from their Syriac tombs Aristotle and Galen. And the Jews at once took part in this Semitic renaissance.”[42] The writer might have added that it was mainly through the instrumentality of the Jews that this Arabic resuscitation of Hellenic philosophy and science was transmitted from Islam to Christendom. Learned Jews, familiar with both languages, rendered the Arabic translations of Aristotle into Latin, thus bringing them within reach of the Schoolmen, who valued these versions highly, not only for their fidelity to the original but also for the explanatory comments which accompanied the text. In fact, the first acquaintance of mediaeval Europe with any of the Aristotelian writings, other than the _Organon_, was due to the Arabs and Jews of Spain.[43] Thus these two Semitic races, by a dispensation of fate the irony of which was not to become apparent until our own day, were the first to stimulate in Western students a thirst for Hellenic literature and to supply them with the means of gratifying it.