rated statements of enthusiastic
apologists. It is erroneous to assert that Islam has never encouraged
education, that it has invariably been adverse to all progress, that it
knows nothing but the Koran, or that Omar, in ordering the destruction
of the Alexandrian library, is the only historical exponent of the
system. Such statements are full of partial truths, but they are also
mingled with patent errors.

The Arab races in their original home were naturally inclined to the
encouragement of letters, particularly of poetry, and Mohammed himself,
though he had never been taught even to read, much less to write, took
special pains to encourage learning. "Teach your children poetry," he
said; "it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom, and makes the heroic
virtues hereditary."[109] According to Sprenger, he gave liberty to
every prisoner who taught twelve boys of Mecca to write. The Abbasside
princes of a later day offered most generous prizes for superior
excellence in poetry, and Bagdad, Damascus, Alexandria, Bassora, and
Samarcand were noted for their universities.[110] Cordova and Seville
were able to lend their light to the infant university of Oxford. The
fine arts of sculpture and painting were condemned by the early caliphs,
doubtless on account of the idolatrous tendencies which they were
supposed to foster; but medicine, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry,
and astronomy were especially developed, and that at a time when the
nations of Europe were mostly in darkness.[111] Yet it cannot be denied
that on the whole the influence of Islam has been hostile to learning
and to civilization.[112] The world will never forget that by the
burning of the great library of Alexandria the rich legacy which the old
world had bequeathed to the new was destroyed. By its occupation of
Egypt and Constantinople, and thus cutting off the most important
channels of communication, the Mohammedan power became largely
responsible for the long eclipse of Europe during the Middle Ages.

Moreover, when zealous advocates of the system contrast the barbarism of
Richard Coeur de Lion with the culture and humanity of Saladin, they
seem to forget that the race of Richard had but just emerged from the
savagery of the Northmen, while Saladin and his race had not only
inherited the high moral culture of Judaism and Christianity, but had
virtually monopolized it. It was chiefly by the wars of the Crusaders
that Western Europe became acquainted with