ans are still
mentioned. Of the amusements of the court, hunting appears to have
flourished most, and the learned poet Koshajim, who wrote on the game
of nerd, also left instructive poems on the chase. Radhi-billah
appears to have been fond of books of travel and of natural history,
and of the society of men of letters and of science, and liked
listening to recitals on the history, politics, and glory of the old
Persian kings.

[Footnote 4: Nerd.--This game is mentioned as early as the
Shah-Namah, the author of which, Firdausi, was of opinion
that it is of genuine Persian, and not of Indian origin,
like chess, but this assertion is not necessarily correct.
Hyde has described the game in his 'Historia Nerdiludii,'
and it resembles somewhat the German puff and triktrak, and
the English backgammon. It is played on a board divided into
black-and-white compartments, with a black and a white house
in the centre. The moves are made according to the numbers
that come up on the throw of two dice.]

Of the Spanish Khalifs, mention only will be made of the ninth
sovereign of the Benou Omaiyide dynasty in Andalusia, viz., Hakim II.,
who died A.D. 976. Among the five Arab rulers of Spain--viz., three
Abd-ar-Rahmans and two Hakims--who have acquired everlasting fame in
history as special friends of science and patrons of learned men,
Abd-ar-Rahman III. and Hakim II. are the greatest and most prominent.
They stand in the Arab literary history of the West as high as Harun
and his son Mamun do in the history of the literature of the East. As
Mamun was the greatest of the Benou Abbas Khalifs of Baghdad who
promoted science and art, so Hakim II. was the greatest of the Benou
Omaiyides in Cordova. From his earliest youth he had received a most
careful scientific education, and applied his energies to study, as he
could not devote them to public affairs on account of the long
duration of his father's reign, from A.D. 912 to 961. Hakim's father,
Abd-ar-Rahman III., invited the learned Abu Ali Ismail Al Kali, the
philologist and author, from the court of Baghdad, where he enjoyed
the greatest consideration with the Khalif Mutwakkil, to Cordova, and
entrusted him with the education of his son, who, later on, composed a
Diwan (collection of poems), divided into twenty parts, bearing, like
the Surahs, or Chapters of the Koran, the most sublime objects of
nature as titles, such as 'Heaven,' 'th