. His grandson, Haroun-al-Raschid (A.D. 786),
followed his example, and ordered that to every mosque in his dominions
a school should be attached. But the Augustan age of Asiatic learning
was during the khalifate of Al-Mamun (A.D. 813-832). He made Bagdad the
centre of science, collected great libraries, and surrounded himself
with learned men.

The elevated taste thus cultivated continued after the division of the
Saracen Empire by internal dissensions into three parts. The Abasside
dynasty in Asia, the Fatimite in Egypt, and the Ommiade in Spain, became
rivals not merely in politics, but also in letters and science.

THEY ORIGINATE CHEMISTRY. In letters the Saracens embraced every topic
that can amuse or edify the mind. In later times, it was their boast
that they had produced more poets than all other nations combined. In
science their great merit consists in this, that they cultivated it
after the manner of the Alexandrian Greeks, not after the manner of the
European Greeks. They perceived that it can never be advanced by mere
speculation; its only sure progress is by the practical interrogation of
Nature. The essential characteristics of their method are experiment and
observation. Geometry and the mathematical sciences they looked upon
as instruments of reasoning. In their numerous writings on mechanics,
hydrostatics, optics, it is interesting to remark that the solution of
a problem is always obtained by performing an experiment, or by an
instrumental observation. It was this that made them the originators of
chemistry, that led them to the invention of all kinds of apparatus for
distillation, sublimation, fusion, filtration, etc.; that in astronomy
caused them to appeal to divided instruments, as quadrants and
astrolabes; in chemistry, to employ the balance, the theory of which
they were perfectly familiar with; to construct tables of specific
gravities and astronomical tables, as those of Bagdad, Spain, Samarcand;
that produced their great improvements in geometry, trigonometry, the
invention of algebra, and the adoption of the Indian numeration in
arithmetic. Such were the results of their preference of the inductive
method of Aristotle, their declining the reveries of Plato.

THEIR GREAT LIBRARIES. For the establishment and extension of the public
libraries, books were sedulously collected. Thus the khalif Al-Mamun
is reported to have brought into Bagdad hundreds of camel-loads of
manuscripts. In a treaty h