Within our heart of hearts we treasure the services which your people have rendered. We owe the Hebrew people much more than your modesty, noble Chasdai, has suffered you to claim. You opened the portals of Spain unto us, and to you alone belongs the credit of turning Spain once again into a paradise, for a hundred years of uninterrupted warfare under the banner of Islam, had unfitted us for agricultural and mechanical and intellectual and artistic pursuits. You sowed the seeds of our prosperity. We sat at the feet of your masters, and if we have proven ourselves apt scholars, we bear testimony to the excellency of your teachers. Far be it from us to claim superiority over our honored rival. In the arts and sciences and philosophies your people hold distinguished places. Your theologians have given us many a problem which the wisest among us have failed to solve. In the purity of your home and social life, and in your industries you serve the world as models. In poetry I should never venture to compete for supremacy with friend Dunash ben Labrat and Menachem ben Saruk. In diplomacy, where lives the man who can equal you in intellect and sagacity, to whom else do we owe our political greatness than to you, Chasdai ben Isaac, the Jewish minister of our beloved Caliph Abder Rahman III." CHAPTER X. THEIR POSITION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.--A CHANGE IN THE FORTUNES OF THE JEWS AND MOORS.--AN EXAMINATION INTO THEIR GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS.--THEIR SKILL IN MEDICAL SCIENCE.--MIRACLE CURE BY CHRISTIAN CLERGY.--JEWISH BODY PHYSICIANS HIGHLY PRIZED AND MUCH SOUGHT.--PROMINENT MEDICAL SCHOOLS AND EMINENT PHYSICIANS.--RASHI.--IBN EZRA.--IBN TIBBON.--MAIMONIDES.--AVENZOAR AVACENNA. We have witnessed the rise of Islam. We accompanied the Arab on his march of conquest. Breathlessly we stood upon the banks of the Guadalete and awaited the issue of a battle upon which the destiny of nations depended. We followed the triumphal processions of the Arab-Moors into Spain, and our eyes and hearts never ceased rejoicing over the manifold beauties and wonders which Moorish skill spread o'er fair Andalusia, and our tongues ne'er tired speaking of the manifold blessings which Moorish social and domestic and political life and religious tolerance showered lavishly not only upon their own generation, but upon all the generations that have been ever since.