Nevertheless, in this regard, a wide gap separates the commentaries of Rashi and the works of the Spanish school of exegetes, which shone with such lustre [luster sic] in that epoch. Under the influence and stimulus of the Arabs, scientific studies took an upward flight among the Jews of Moslem Spain. The Midrash was abandoned to the preachers, while the scholars cultivated the Hebrew language and literature with fruitful results. In France, on the contrary, though rabbinical studies were already flourishing, the same is not true of philological studies, which were introduced into France only through the influence of the Spaniards. French scholars soon came to know the works, written in Hebrew, of Menahem ben Saruk and Dunash ben Labrat,[91] and Rashi availed himself of them frequently, and not always uncritically. Thus, like them, he distinguishes triliteral, biliteral, and even uniliteral roots; but contrary to them, he maintains that contracted and quiescent verbs are triliteral and not biliteral. Unfortunately, he could have no knowledge of the more important works of Hayyoudj, "father of grammarians," and of Ibn Djanah, who carried the study of Hebrew to a perfection surpassed only by the moderns;[92] for these works were written in Arabic, and the translations into Hebrew, made by the scholars of Southern France, did not appear until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Though the Spanish Jews did not yet cultivate the allegoric and mystic exegesis, their philosophic sense was rather refined and they did not always approach the study of the Bible without seeking something not clearly expressed in the text, without <I>arriere-pensee</I> so to speak. Rashi's exegesis was more ingenuous and, therefore, more objective.