ally a Greek slave, who made a
brave but fruitless attempt to change his name into Yacoub or Jacob,
became one of the greatest of Arab encyclopaedists, was checked by the
hordes of Genghiz-Khan in his exploration of Central Asia, and died
1229.]

But as a matter of fact, the balance both of knowledge and power was now
shifting from Islam to Christendom. The most daring and successful
travellers after the rise of the Mongols were the Venetian Marco Polo
and the Friar Preachers who revived Chinese Christianity (1270-1350);
Madeira and the Canaries (off Moslem Africa) were finally rediscovered
not by Arabic enterprise, but by the Italian Malocello in 1270, by the
English Macham in the reign of our Edward III., and by Portuguese ships
under Genoese captains in 1341; in 1291 the Vivaldi ventured beyond Cape
Bojador, where no Moor had ever been, except by force of storm, as in
the doubtful story of Ibn Fatimah, who "first saw the White Headland,"
Cape Blanco, between Cape Bojador and Cape Verde.

In the fourteenth century the map of Edrisi was superseded by the new
Italian plans and coast-charts, or Portolani. As the Moslem world fell
into political disorder, its science declined. "Judicial astrology"
seemed gaining a stronger and stronger hold over Islam, and the
irruption of the Turks gradually resulted in the ruin of all the higher
Moslem culture. Superstition and barbarism shared the honour and the
spoils of this victory.

But two great names close the five hundred years of Arab learning.

1. Ibn Batuta (_c._ 1330), who made himself as much at home in China as
in his native Morocco, is the last of Mohammedan travellers of real
importance. Though we have only abridgments of his work left to us,
Colonel Yule is well within his rights in his deliberate judgment, "that
it must rank at least as one of the four chief guide books of the
Middle Ages," along with the _Book of Ser Marco Polo_ and the journals
of the two Friar-travellers, Friar Odoric and Friar William de
Rubruquis.

2. With _Abulfeda_ the Eastern school of Moslem geography comes to an
end, as the Western does with Ibn Batuta. In the early years of the
fourteenth century he rewrote the "story and description of the Land of
Islam," with a completeness quite encyclopaedic. But his work has all the
failings of a compilation, however careful, in that, or any, age. It is
based upon information, not upon inspection; it is in no sense original.
As it began in imitati