The Alcázar, the Mosque, the lordly Giralda Tower and other remains testify to the ancient splendour of Seville. It was the Moor who applied the method of science to the cultivation of the plains, who bred the cattle, introduced the orange tree, and planted the palm in the city. Granada and Seville were centres of silk-growing. Here were manufactured the damascened swords and other weapons, and beautiful metal work of divers kinds, which was in demand all over Spain for centuries. Moorish civilisation was unsurpassed for its handicrafts and architectural decorations. Long after the Christian reclamation of Seville, the _Mudéjar_, or Moor, living under the new rule, was employed by the State to construct bridges and to build castles, to design houses, and to decorate them with the wonderful glazed tiles and imperishable colours. Among the learned Moors of Seville the most eminent was Abu Omar Ahmed Ben Abdallah, known as El Begi. Abu Omar's father had spared no cost in providing for his son's education. He employed as tutors the greatest scholars of the time, and sent the lad to Africa, Syria, Egypt and Khorassan in order to confer with sage men and doctors of repute. At the age of eighteen years Abu Omar was wonderfully cultured, and as he grew to middle age there was no man who could surpass him in knowledge of arts and sciences. 'Even in his earliest youth, the Cadi of that city, Aben Faweris,' says Condé, 'very frequently consulted him in affairs of the highest importance.' El Begi, the Sage, was born in Seville and lived there during most of his life. Many philosophers must have mused in this cultured age amid the orange trees of the court of the magnificent mosque. From the summit of the Giralda, astronomers surveyed the spangled sky, making observations for the construction of astronomical tables. Chemists questioned nature in the laboratories by means of careful experiments, and mathematicians taught in the schools. There were seventy public libraries in Andalusia; the library of the State contained six hundred thousand volumes, and the catalogue included forty-four tomes. Scholars also possessed large private libraries. There was no censorship, no meddling with the works of genius. Men of science were encouraged to investigate every problem of human existence. Abu Abdallah wrote an encyclopædia of the sciences. The theory of the evolution of species was part of the Arab education. Moorish thought was destined to influence Spain for ages. The discovery of the New World was due to the Mohammedan teaching of the sphericity of the earth, and it was the work of Averroes that set Christopher Columbus thinking upon his voyage of exploration.