From Al Ghazali, or even from before his time, dates the great flow of commentaries on the Koran. These half-philosophical, half-fanatical discussions would have seemed irreligious to the earliest Mohammedan age. The Koran had been originally accepted as perfect, and therefore as completely clear. But now the analytic spirit of the Semite reasserted itself; and even as the Hebrews in their Biblical commentaries weighed every "and" and "but" and every carelessly made letter in their Holy Book, so now the Mohammedan "mullahs," or priests, began to draw deductions from their law, to interpret and so develop it. Among these commentators two are chiefly celebrated. Zamakhshari (1074-1143) was perhaps the most learned and the shrewdest, but his ideas have seemed to his coreligionists a little too radical, too independent of Mohammed, daring almost to question the divine inspiration of the prophet. Therefore the work of Zamakhshari's more submissive successor of a century later, Al Baidawi, has gradually superseded the older book as the favorite exposition of the Koran. The Western reader, however, will distinctly prefer the independence of Zamakhshari. Into the lighter literature of the medieval Arabs we need not look too far. They had their wholly unreligious and fantastic romances such as the "Arabian Nights." This famous work, however, draws largely upon Persian sources. Indeed, as our later Persian volume will emphasize, most of the pure romance of later Arab literature is of Persian origin, and may best be studied in the Persian books. There is, however, an intermediate class of tale peculiarly Arabian. This is the mingling of romance with poetry and moral teachings, just as the earlier historians had mingled it with history. Most celebrated in this peculiar class of semi-religious, semi-poetic romances is the work presented in this volume, the "Assemblies" of Al Hariri (1054-1122). Just as Masoudi stands to his race for history, Al Biruni for geography, Avicenna for science, Al Ghazali for philosophy, and Zamakhshari and Al Baidawi for religious study, so does Al Hariri stand for literary skill, for brilliancy and humor. His "Assemblies" is the Arabs' chief purely literary achievement. MOORISH LITERATURE In the year 1258 Bagdad was stormed and conquered by a Tartar general. It is true that most of the ravaging Tartars finally adopted the religion of the conquered, and so the region continued to obey in religious matters a Mohammedan caliph; but the rule of the Arabs, which had been long undermined by Persian influences, ended definitely with the fall of Bagdad. From the time of that disaster we must look to other lands for the continuation of a semi-Arabic literature.