emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of
science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez and Cordova. The vizier of a
sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold to
the foundation of a college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual
revenue of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were
communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand disciples
of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of the mechanic: a
sufficient allowance was provided for the indigent scholars; and the
merit or industry of the professors was repaid with adequate stipends.
In every city the productions of Arabic literature were copied and
collected by the curiosity of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A
private doctor refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because
the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.
The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred thousand
manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were
lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet this
collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that the Ommiades of
Spain had formed a library of six hundred thousand volumes, forty-four
of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova,
with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth
to more than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries
were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian
learning continued about five hundred years, till the great eruption of
the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of
European annals; but since the sun of science has arisen in the West, it
should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and declined.

In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the far greater
part of the innumerable volumes were possessed only of local value or
imaginary merit. The shelves were crowded with orators and poets, whose
style was adapted to the taste and manners of their countrymen; with
general and partial histories, which each revolving generation supplied
with a new harvest of persons and events; with codes and commentaries
of jurisprudence, which derived their authority from the law of the
prophet; with the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox tradition; and
with the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and
moralists, the first or t