A special notice, brief though it must be, is due to ‘Izzu ’l-Dín Ibnu ’l-Athír (õ 1234 a.d.). Ibnu ’l-Athír (õ 1234 a.d.). He was brought up at Mosul in Mesopotamia, and after finishing his studies in Baghdád, Jerusalem, and Syria, he returned home and devoted himself to reading and literary composition. Ibn Khallikán, who knew him personally, speaks of him in the highest terms both as a man and as a scholar. "His great work, the Kámil,672 embracing the history of the world from the earliest period to the year 628 of the Hijra (1230-1231 a.d.), merits its reputation as one of the best productions of the kind."673 Down to the year 302 a.h. the author has merely abridged the Annals of Ṭabarí with occasional additions from other sources. In the first volume he gives a long account of the Pre-islamic battles ( Ayyámu ’l-‘Arab) which is not found in the present text of Ṭabarí; but De Goeje, as I learn from Professor Bevan, thinks that this section was included in Ṭabarí's original draft and was subsequently struck out. Ibnu ’l-Athír was deeply versed in the science of Tradition, and his Usdu ’l-Ghába('Lions of the Jungle') contains biographies of 7,500 Companions of the Prophet.
An immense quantity of information concerning the various countries and peoples of the ‘Abbásid Empire has been preserved Geographers. for us by the Moslem geographers, who in many cases describe what they actually witnessed and experienced in the course of their travels, although they often help themselves liberally and without acknowledgment from the works of their predecessors. The following list, which does not pretend to be exhaustive, may find a place here.674
1. The Persian Ibn Khurdádbih (first half of ninth century) was postmaster in the province of Jibál, the Media of Ibn Khurdádbih. the ancients. His Kitábu ’l-Masálik wa-’l-Mamálik('Book of the Roads and Countries'), an official guide-book, is the oldest geographical work in Arabic that has come down to us.
2. Abú Isḥáq al-Fárisí a native of Persepolis (Iṣṭakhr)—on this account he is known as Iṣṭakhrí—wrote a book called Iṣṭakhrí and Ibn Ḥawqal. Masáliku ’l-Mamálik('Routes of the Provinces'), which was afterwards revised and enlarged by Ibn Ḥawqal. Both works belong to the second half of the tenth century and contain "a careful description of each province in turn of the Muslim Empire, with the chief cities and notable places."
3. Al-Muqaddasí (or al-Maqdisí), i.e., 'the native of the Holy City', was born at Jerusalem in 946 a.d. In his delightful book entitled Aḥsanu ’l-Taqásím fí Muqaddasí. ma‘rifati ’l-Aqálímhe has gathered up the fruits of twenty years' travelling through the dominions of the Caliphate.
4. Omitting the Spanish Arabs, Bakrí, Idrísí, and Ibn Jubayr, all of whom flourished in the eleventh century, Yáqút. we come to the greatest of Moslem geographers, Yáqút b. ‘Abdalláh (1179-1229 a.d.). A Greek by birth, he was enslaved in his childhood and sold to a merchant of Baghdád. His master gave him a good education and frequently sent him on trading expeditions to the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. After being enfranchised in consequence of a quarrel with his benefactor, he supported himself by copying and selling manuscripts. In 1219-1220 a.d. he encountered the Tartars, who had invaded Khwárizm, and "fled as naked as when he shall be raised from the dust of the grave on the day of the resurrection." Further details of his adventurous life are recorded in the interesting notice by Ibn Khallikán.675 His great Geographical Dictionary ( Mu‘jamu ’l-Buldán) has been edited in six volumes by Wüstenfeld (Leipzig, 1866), and is described by Mr. Le Strange as "a storehouse of geographical information, the value of which it would be impossible to over-estimate." We possess a useful epitome of it, made about a century later, viz., the Maráṣidu ’l-Iṭṭilá‘. Among the few other extant works of Yáqút, attention maybe called to the Mushtarik—a lexicon of places bearing the same name—and the Mu‘jamu ’l-Udabá, or 'Dictionary of Littérateurs,' which has been edited by Professor Margoliouth for the Trustees of the Gibb Memorial Fund.
As regards the philosophical and exact sciences the Moslems naturally derived their ideas and material from Greek culture, The foreign sciences. which had established itself in Egypt, Syria, and Western Asia since the time of Alexander's conquests. When the Syrian school of Edessa was broken up by ecclesiastical dissensions towards the end of the fifth century of our era, the expelled savants took refuge in Persia at the Sásánian court, and Khusraw Anúshirwán, or Núshírwán (531-578 a.d.)—the same monarch who welcomed the Neo-platonist philosophers banished from Athens by Justinian—founded an Academy at Jundé-shápúr in Khúzistán, where Greek medicine and philosophy continued to be taught down to ‘Abbásid days. Another centre of Hellenism was the city of Ḥarrán in Mesopotamia. Its inhabitants, Syrian heathens who generally appear in Muḥammadan history under the name of 'Ṣabians,' spoke Arabic with facility and contributed in no small degree to the diffusion of Greek wisdom. The work of translation was done almost entirely by Syrians. In the monasteries of Syria and Mesopotamia the Translations from the Greek. writings of Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, and other ancient masters were rendered with slavish fidelity, and these Syriac versions were afterwards retranslated into Arabic. A beginning was made under the Umayyads, who cared little for Islam but were by no means indifferent to the claims of literature, art, and science. An Umayyad prince, Khálid b. Yazíd, procured the translation of Greek and Coptic works on alchemy, and himself wrote three treatises on that subject. The accession of the ‘Abbásids gave a great impulse to such studies, which found an enlightened patron in the Caliph Manṣúr. Works on logic and medicine were translated from the Pehleví by Ibnu ’l-Muqaffa‘ (õ about 760 a.d.) and others. It is, however, the splendid reign of Ma’mún (813-833 a.d.) that marks the full vigour of this Oriental Renaissance. Ma’mún was no ordinary man. Like a true Persian, he threw himself heart and soul into theological speculations and used the authority of the Caliphate to enforce a liberal standard of orthodoxy. His interest in science was no less ardent. According to a story told in the Fihrist,676 he dreamed that he saw the venerable figure of Aristotle seated on a throne, and in consequence Ma’mún's encouragement of the New Learning. of this vision he sent a deputation to the Roman Emperor (Leo the Armenian) to obtain scientific books for translation into Arabic. The Caliph's example was followed by private individuals. Three brothers, Muḥammad, Aḥmad, and Ḥasan, known collectively as the Banú Músá, "drew translators from distant countries by the offer of ample rewards677 and thus made evident the marvels of science. Geometry, engineering, the movements of the heavenly bodies, music, and astronomy were the principal subjects to which they turned their attention; but these were only a small number of their acquirements."678 Ma’mún installed them, with Yaḥyá b. Abí Manṣúr and other scientists, in the House of Wisdom ( Baytu ’l-Ḥikma) at Baghdád, an institution which comprised a well-stocked library and an astronomical observatory. Among the celebrated translators of the ninth century, who were themselves conspicuous workers in the new field, we can only mention the Christians Qusṭá b. Lúqá and Ḥunayn b. Isḥáq, and the Ṣábian Thábit b. Qurra. It does not fall within the scope of this volume to consider in detail the achievements of the Moslems in science and philosophy. That in some departments they made valuable additions to existing knowledge must certainly be granted, but these discoveries count for little in comparison with the debt which we owe to the Arabs as pioneers of learning and bringers of light to mediæval Europe.679 Meanwhile it is only possible to enumerate a few of the most eminent philosophers and scientific men who lived during the ‘Abbásid age. The reader will observe that with rare exceptions they were of foreign origin.