Here, indeed, the writer claims too much, and it must be allowed that he occasionally applied his principles in a pedantic fashion, and was led by purely a prioriconsiderations to conclusions which are not always so warrantable as he believed. This is a very trifling matter in comparison with the value and originality of the principles themselves. Ibn Khaldún asserts, with justice, that he has discovered a new method of writing history. No Moslem had ever taken a view at once so comprehensive and so philosophical; none had attempted to trace the deeply hidden causes of events, to expose the moral and spiritual forces at work beneath the surface, or to divine the immutable laws of national progress and decay. Ibn Khaldún owed little to his predecessors, although he mentions some of them with respect. He stood far above his age, and his own countrymen have admired rather than followed him. His intellectual descendants are the great mediæval and modern historians of Europe—Machiavelli and Vico and Gibbon.

It is worth while to sketch briefly the peculiar theory of historical development which Ibn Khaldún puts forward in Ibn Kaldún's theory of historical evolution. his Prolegomena—a theory founded on the study of actual conditions and events either past or passing before his eyes.812 He was struck, in the first place, with the physical fact that in almost every part of the Muḥammadan Empire great wastes of sand or stony plateaux, arid and incapable of tillage, wedge themselves between fertile domains of cultivated land. The former were inhabited from time immemorial by nomad tribes, the latter by an agricultural or industrial population; and we have seen, in the case of Arabia, that cities like Mecca and Ḥíra carried on a lively intercourse with the Bedouins and exerted a civilising influence upon them. In Africa the same contrast was strongly marked. It is no wonder, therefore, that Ibn Khaldún divided the whole of mankind into two classes—Nomads and Citizens. The nomadic life naturally precedes and produces the other. Its characteristics are simplicity and purity of manners, warlike spirit, and, above all, a loyal devotion to the interests of the family and the tribe. As the nomads become more civilised they settle down, form states, and make conquests. They have now reached their highest development. Corrupted by luxury, and losing the virtues which raised them to power, they are soon swept away by a ruder people. Such, in bare outline, is the course of history as Ibn Khaldún regards it; but we must try to give our readers some further account of the philosophical ideas underlying his conception. He discerns, in the life of tribes and nations alike, two dominant forces which mould their destiny. The primitive and cardinal force he calls ‘aṣabiyya, the bindingelement in society, the feeling which unites members of the same family, tribe, nation, or empire, and which in its widest acceptation is equivalent to the modern term, Patriotism. It springs up and especially flourishes among nomad peoples, where the instinct of self-preservation awakens a keen sense of kinship and drives men to make common cause with each other. This ‘aṣabiyyais the vital energy of States: by it they rise and grow; as it weakens they decline; and its decay is the signal for their fall. The second of the forces referred to is Religion. Ibn Khaldún hardly ascribes to religion so much influence as we might have expected from a Moslem. He recognises, however, that it may be the only means of producing that solidarity without which no State can exist. Thus in the twenty-seventh chapter of his Muqaddimahe lays down the proposition that "the Arabs are incapable of founding an empire unless they are imbued with religious enthusiasm by a prophet or a saint."

In History he sees an endless cycle of progress and retrogression, analogous to the phenomena of human life. Kingdoms are born, attain maturity, and die within a definite period which rarely exceeds three generations, i.e., 120 years.813 During this time they pass through five stages of development and decay.814 It is noteworthy that Ibn Khaldún admits the moral superiority of the Nomads. For him civilisation necessarily involves corruption and degeneracy. If he did not believe in the gradual advance of mankind towards some higher goal, his pessimism was justified by the lessons of experience and by the mournful plight of the Muḥammadan world, to which his view was restricted.815

In 1492 a.d. the last stronghold of the European Arabs opened its gates to Ferdinand and Isabella, and "the Cross The fall of Granada (1492 a.d.). supplanted the Crescent on the towers of Granada." The victors showed a barbarous fanaticism that was the more abominable as it violated their solemn pledges to respect the religion and property of the Moslems, and as it utterly reversed the tolerant and liberal treatment which the Christians of Spain had enjoyed under Muḥammadan rule. Compelled to choose between apostasy and exile, many preferred the latter alternative. Those who remained were subjected to a terrible persecution, until in 1609 a.d., by order of Philip III, the Moors were banished en massefrom Spanish soil.

Spain was not the sole point whence Moslem culture spread itself over the Christian lands. Sicily was conquered by the The Arabs in Sicily. Aghlabids of Tunis early in the ninth century, and although the island fell into the hands of the Normans in 1071 a.d., the court of Palermo retained a semi-Oriental character. Here in the reign of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1194-1250 a.d.) might be seen "astrologers from Baghdád with long beards and waving robes, Jews who received princely salaries as translators of Arabic works, Saracen dancers and dancing-girls, and Moors who blew silver trumpets on festal occasions."816 Both Frederick himself and his son Manfred were enthusiastic Arabophiles, and scandalised Christendom by their assumption of 'heathen' manners as well as by the attention which they devoted to Moslem philosophy and science. Under their auspices Arabic learning was communicated to the neighbouring towns of Lower Italy.

CHAPTER X

FROM THE MONGOL INVASION TO THE PRESENT DAY

Before proceeding to speak of the terrible catastrophe which filled the whole of Western Asia with ruin and desolation, General characteristics of the period. I may offer a few preliminary remarks concerning the general character of the period which we shall briefly survey in this final chapter. It forms, one must admit, a melancholy conclusion to a glorious history. The Caliphate, which symbolised the supremacy of the Prophet's people, is swept away. Mongols, Turks, Persians, all in turn build up great Muḥammadan empires, but the Arabs have lost even the shadow of a leading part and appear only as subordinate actors on a provincial stage. The chief centres of Arabian life, such as it is, are henceforth Syria and Egypt, which were held by the Turkish Mamelukes until 1517 a.d., when they passed under Ottoman rule. In North Africa the petty Berber dynasties (Ḥafṣids, Ziyánids, and Marínids) gave place in the sixteenth century to the Ottoman Turks. Only in Spain, where the Naṣrids of Granada survived until 1492 a.d., in Morocco, where the Sharífs (descendants of ‘Alí b. Abí Ṭálib) assumed the sovereignty in 1544 a.d., and to some extent in Arabia itself, did the Arabs preserve their political independence. In such circumstances it would be vain to look for any large developments of literature and culture worthy to rank with those of the past. This is an age of imitation and compilation. Learned men abound, whose erudition embraces every subject under the sun. The mass of writing shows no visible diminution, and much of it is valuable and meritorious work. But with one or two conspicuous exceptions— e.g.the historian Ibn Khaldún and the mystic Sha‘rání—we cannot point to any new departure, any fruitful ideas, any trace of original and illuminating thought. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries "witnessed the rise and triumph of that wonderful movement known as the Renaissance,... but no ripple of this great upheaval, which changed the whole current of intellectual and moral life in the West, reached the shores of Islam."817 Until comparatively recent times, when Egypt and Syria first became open to European civilisation, the Arab retained his mediæval outlook and habit of mind, and was in no respect more enlightened than his forefathers who lived under the ‘Abbásid Caliphate. And since the Mongol Invasion I am afraid we must say that instead of advancing farther along the old path he was being forced back by the inevitable pressure of events. East of the Euphrates the Mongols did their work of destruction so thoroughly that no seeds were left from which a flourishing civilisation could arise; and, moreover, the Arabic language was rapidly extinguished by the Persian. In Spain, as we have seen, the power of the Arabs had already begun to decline; Africa was dominated by the Berbers, a rude, unlettered race, Egypt and Syria by the blighting military despotism of the Turks. Nowhere in the history of this period can we discern either of the two elements which are most productive of literary greatness: the quickening influence of a higher culture or the inspiration of a free and vigorous national life.818