It was Almamon who caused the works of the fathers of Indian medical science to be translated first into Persian and then into Arabic; thus it was that the Saracens became familiar with the medical wisdom of Susruta and Charaka in the eighth century of our era.[684] Charaka is frequently mentioned in the Latin translations of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Rhazes (Al Rasi), and Serapion (Ibn Serabi).[685] Chaldee works at this time were also translated into Persian. In the first centuries of the Hijra the Caliphs of Baghdad caused a considerable number of works upon Hindu medicine to be translated into Persian.[686] At the time of Mohammed there existed a famous school of medicine at Senaa in Southern Arabia, the principal of which, Harit Ben Kaldah, had learned his profession in India.[687] When the son of Mesuach, a young Nestorian Christian, first entered Baghdad, it is said[688] that he appeared to have discovered a new world. He applied himself to the study of medicine, philosophy, and astronomy. He became a “treasure of learning,” and was chosen to attend Prince Almamon, the son of Haroun-al-Raschid, who, when he became Caliph in 813, invited learned men of all religions and of all nations to his court, collected from them the names of all the great authors and the titles of their books which had been published in Greek, Syriac, and Persian, and then sent to all parts of the world to purchase them. The Arabs studied Aristotle; and when Western Europe had long been sunk in intellectual darkness and had forgotten him, the Saracens taught him to the Christians of the West. “He was read at Samarcand and at Lisbon,” says Freeman, “when no one knew his name at Oxford or Edinburgh.”[689] In his own tongue at Constantinople and Thessalonica he had never been forgotten. Such learning and science as the Saracens did not receive from India, such as the Arabic numerals, came to them from the West. They developed and improved much, but they probably invented nothing. Freeman says[690] that after careful investigation he observed three things: first, that whatever the Arabs learned was from translations of Greek works; secondly, that they made use of only an infinitesimal portion of Greek literature; thirdly, that many of their most famous literary men were not Mahometans at all, but Jews or Christians.[691] Greek poetry, history, and philosophy had little charm for them. Gibbon says there is no record of an Arabian translation of any Greek poet, orator, or historian.[692] Learned Nestorians, Jacobites, and Jews in Persia and Syria occupied themselves with translations from Greek authors, and contributed greatly to the extension of Western culture in Eastern lands.[693] To the world at large Mahomet was but an impostor; to the Arab of the seventh century he was a true prophet and the greatest of benefactors.