Moses Maimonides, a learned Jew, gives further historical particulars in his _Doctor Perplexorum_ of this transition of Philosophy to the Arabians. He says: “All that the Ishmaelites have written of the unity of God and other philosophic dogmas”—especially the sect of the Muatzali (‎‏מעתוזלה‏‎, _i.e._ the Separated), who were the first to take an interest in the abstract intellectual knowledge of such subjects, while the sect Assaria (‎‏האשערייה‏‎) arose later—“is based upon arguments and propositions which have been taken from the books of the Greeks and Aramæans” (Syrians), “who strove to refute and deny the teachings of the philosophers.” The cause of this is as follows: The Christian community came to include within it these nations also, and the Christians defended many dogmas which were contradictory of philosophic tenets; among these nations, however, the teachings of philosophers were very widely and generally diffused (for with them Philosophy had its origin), and kings arose who adopted the Christian religion. The Christian Greeks and learned Aramæans, therefore, when they perceived that their doctrines were so clearly and plainly refuted by the philosophers, thought out a wisdom of their own, the “Wisdom of the Words” (Devarim), and they themselves received on that account the name of the Speakers (Medabberim, ‎‏מִדַבְרִים‏‎). They set up principles which served the purpose both of confirming their faith and of refuting the opposite teaching of the philosophers. When the Ishmaelites followed and attained supremacy, and the books of the philosophers themselves fell into their hands, and along with them the answers which “Christian Greeks and Aramæans had written against the philosophic books, as for instance the writings of Johannes Grammaticus, Aben Adi, and others, they eagerly laid hold of these and adopted them bodily.”[4] Christians and Ishmaelites felt the same need of philosophy; the Ishmaelites, moreover, strove all the more eagerly after knowledge of this kind, because their first desire was to defend Mohammedanism against Christianity, which was the religion of a large proportion of the nations they had conquered.