Horace informs us that a drama, where the sentiments and manners are well preserved, will please the audience more than a pompous fable where they are wanting." Perhaps what is true in dramatic composition, is not less true in historical.

Plutarch, among the Greek historians, appears in a peculiar manner to have merited this praise. So likewise Bohadin among the Arabians, and to him we add Abulpharagius and Abulfeda, from whom so many facts in these chapters are taken.

Nor ought I to omit (as I shall soon refer to them) some of our best monkish historians, though prone upon occasion to degenerate into the incredible. As they often lived during the times which they described, it was natural they should paint the life and the manners which they saw.

A single chapter more will finish all we have to say concerning the Arabians.

CHAPTER VIII.

ARABIANS FAVOURED MEDICINE AND ASTROLOGY-FACTS RELATIVE TO THESE TWO SUBJECTS—THEY VALUED KNOWLEDGE, BUT HAD NO IDEAS OF CIVIL LIBERTY-THE MEAN EXIT OF THEIR LAST CALIPH, MOSTASEM-END OF THEIR EMPIRE IN ASIA AND IN SPAIN THEIR PRESENT WRETCHED DEGENERACY IN AFRICA-AN ANECDOTE.

THE Arabians favoured medicine and astrology, and many of their princes had professors of each sort usually near their persons. Self-love, a natural passion, led them to respect the art of healing; fear, another natural passion, made them anxious to know the future; and superstition believed there were men, who, by knowing the stars, could discover it.

We shall first say something concerning medicine," which we are sorry to couple with so futile an imposture.

It is commonly supposed that the prescriber of medicines and the provider, that is to say, in common words, the physician and the apothecary, were characters anciently united in the same person. The following fact proves the contrary, at least among the Orientals.

66

In an army commanded by Aphshin, an officer of the caliph Al-Mostasem, it happened that Aphshin and the army physician, Zacharias, were discoursing together. "I assert," says Zacharias, you can send for nothing from an apothecary, but, whether he has it or has it not, he will affirm that he has." Aphshin, willing to make the trial, bids them bring him a catalogue of unknown people, and transcribing out of it about twenty of their names, sends messengers to the apothecaries to provide him those medi• Abulphar. p. 160.

n

Sup. p. 445, in the note.

cines. A few confessed they knew no such medicines; others affirmed they knew them well, and taking the money from the messengers, gave them something out of their shops. Aphshin, upon this, called them together, permitted those who said they knew nothing of the medicines to remain in the camp, and commanded the rest that instant to depart.P

The following story is more interesting.

The caliph Mottawakkel had a physician belonging to him, who was a Christian, named Honaïn. One day, after some other incidental conversation, "I would have thee," says the caliph, "teach me a prescription, by which I may take off any enemy I please, and yet at the same time it should never be discovered." Honaïn, declining to give an answer, and pleading ignorance, was imprisoned.

Being brought again, after a year's interval, into the caliph's presence, and still persisting in his ignorance, though threatened with death, the caliph smiled upon him, and said, "Be of good cheer; we were only willing to try thee, that we might have the greater confidence in thee.'

As Honaïn upon this bowed down and kissed the earth, "What hindered thee," says the caliph, "from granting our request, when thou sawest us appear so ready to perform what we had threatened?" "Two things," replied Honaïn; "my religion, and my profession: my religion, which commands me to do good to my enemies; my profession, which was purely instituted for the benefit of mankind." "Two noble laws," said the caliph; and immediately presented him (according to the Eastern usage) with rich garments and a sum of money.

q

The same caliph was once sitting upon a bench with another of his physicians, named Bactish, who was dressed in a tunic of rich silk, but which happened on the edge to have a small rent. The caliph, entering into discourse with him, continued playing with this rent, till he had made it reach up to his girdle. In the course of their conversation, the caliph asked him, "How he could determine when a person was so mad as to require being bound?" "We bind him," replies Bactish, "when things proceed to that extremity, that he tears the tunic of his physician up to the girdle." The caliph fell backward in a fit of laughing, and ordered Bactish (as he had ordered Honaïn) a present of rich garments, and a donation in money."

That such freedom of conversation was not always checked, may appear from the following, as well as the preceding

narrative.

The caliph Al-wathick was once fishing with a rod and line, upon a raft in the river Tigris. As he happened to catch nothing, he turned about to his physician John, the son of Misna, then sitting near him, and said a little sharply, "Thou ▸ Abulphar. p. 167. r Ibid. p. 171.

a Ibid. p. 172, 173.

unlucky fellow, get thee gone." "Commander of the faithful," replies his physician, "say not what is absurd. That John, the son of Misna, whose father was an obscure man, and whose mother was purchased for a few pieces of silver; whom fortune has so far favoured, that he has been admitted to the society and familiarity of caliphs; who is so overpowered with the good things of life, as to have obtained from them that to which even his hopes did not aspire; that he (I say) should be an unlucky fellow, is surely something most absurd.

"However, if the commander of the faithful would have me tell him, who is unlucky, I will inform him." "And who is he?" says the caliph. "The man," replied John, "who being sprung from four caliphs, and being then raised through God to the caliphate himself, can leave his caliphate and his palaces, and in the middle of the Tigris sit upon a paltry raft, twenty cubits broad and as many long, without the least assurance that a stormy blast may not sink him; resembling, too, by his employ, the poorest, the worst fellows in the world; I mean fishermen.

The prince on this singular discourse only remarked, “My companion I find is moved, if my presence did not restrain him."

Another instance of lenity I must not omit, though in a later period, and in another country. When Al-azis was sultan of Egypt, a poet there wrote a scandalous invective upon him and his vizier. The vizier complained, and repeated the verses to Al-azis, to whom the Sultan thus replied: "I perceive," says he, "that in this invective I' have my share along with you: in pardoning it, you shall have your share along with mé.

We are now, as we promised, to mention astrology, which seems to have been connected in its origin with astronomy. Philosophers, men of veracity, studied the heavenly bodies; and it was upon their labours that impostors built astrology.

The following facts, however, notwithstanding its temporary credit, seem not much in its favour.

When Al-wathick (the caliph whom we have just mentioned) was dangerously ill, he sent for his astrologers, one of whom, pretending to inquire into his destiny, pronounced that from that day he would live fifty years. He did not however live beyond ten days."

A few years after, the same pretenders to prediction said, that a vast number of countries would be destroyed by floods; that the rains would be immense, and the rivers far exceed their usual boundaries.

Men began upon this to prepare; to expect inundations with terror; and to betake themselves into places which might protect them by their altitude.

The event was far from corresponding either to the threats of
Abulpharag. p. 168.
Ibid. p. 219.
u Ibid. p. 168.

the prophets or to the fears of the vulgar. The rain that season was so remarkably small, and so many springs and rivers were absorbed by the drought, that public supplications for rain were many times made in the city of Bagdad.*

We must however confess that, notwithstanding these and many other such failures, astrologers still maintained their ground, gained admittance for many years into the courts of these princes, and were consulted by many, who appear not to have wanted abilities.

As the West of Europe learned astronomy from these Arabians, so astrology appears to have attended it, and to have been much esteemed during centuries not remote, through Germany, Italy, France, &c.

Even so late as the days of cardinal Mazarine, when that minister lay on his death-bed, and a comet happened to appear, there were not wanting flatterers to insinuate, that it had reference to him, and his destiny. The cardinal answered them, with a manly pleasantry, "Messieurs, la comete me fait trop d'honneur." 99 y

We cannot quit these Orientals without observing, that, though they eagerly coveted the fair fruit of knowledge, they appear to have had little relish for the fairer fruit of liberty. This valuable plant seems to have rarely flourished beyond the bounds of Europe, and seldom even there, but in particular regions.

It has appeared, indeed, from the facts already alleged, that these Eastern princes often shewed many eminent virtues; the virtues, I mean, of candour, magnanimity, affability, compassion, liberality, justice, and the like. But it does not appear, that either they or their subjects ever quitted those ideas of despotism and servitude, which during all ages appear to have been the characteristic of Oriental dominion.

As all things human naturally decay, so, after a period of more than five centuries, did the illustrious race of the Abasida. The last reigning caliph of that family, Al-Mostasem, wasting his time in idleness and luxury, and that without the least judgment, or consistency in the conduct of his empire; when he was told of the formidable approach of the Tartars, and how necessary it was, either to soothe them by submission, or to oppose them by force, made, in answer to this advice, the following mean reply: "For me, Bagdad suffices; which they will not surely think too much, if I yield them the other provinces. They will not invade me while I remain there; for this is my mansion, and the place of my abode."

Little did these poor sentiments avail. Bagdad soon after was taken, and he himself, having basely asked permission to approach the Tartar prince, appeared, and offered him dishes, filled with pearls and precious stones. These the Tartar dis* Abulpharag. p. 181. Abulfeda, p. 222. Bayle, sur la Cométe.

tributed among his attendants, and a few days after put the unhappy caliph to death."

Bagdad being lost by this fatal event, the dignity and sovereignty of the caliphs were no more.

The name indeed remained in Egypt under the Mamlucs, but it was a name merely of honour, as those other princes were absolute.

It even continued in the same family to the time of Selim, emperor of the Turks. When that emperor in 1520 conquered Egypt, and destroyed the Mamlucs, he carried the caliph, whom he found there, a prisoner to Constantinople. It was partly in this last city and partly in Egypt that this caliph, when degraded, lived upon a pension. When he died, the family of the Abassidæ, once so illustrious, and which had borne the title of Caliph for almost eight hundred years, sunk with him from obscurity into oblivion."

When the Tartars and the Turks had extinguished the sovereignty of these Arabians in the East, and the descendants of the ancient Spaniards had driven them out of Spain, the remainder in Africa soon degenerated; till at length, under the celebrated Muly Ismael, in the beginning of this century, they sunk into a state of ignorance, barbarity, and abject servitude, hardly to be equalled either in ancient or in modern history.

But I say nothing concerning them during this unhappy period. That which I have been treating, though in chronology a middle period, was to them, in many respects, a truly golden

one.

I conclude this chapter with the following anecdote, so far curious, as it proves that, even in our own century, the taste among the Orientals for philosophy was not totally extinguished.

In the year 1721, a Turkish envoy came to the court of France. As he was a man of learning, he searched through Paris (though in vain) for the Commentary of Averroes upon Aristotle, a large work in Latin, containing five folio volumes, printed at Venice by the Junta, in the years 1552, 1553. It happened that, visiting the king's library, he saw the book he wanted; and seeing it, he could not help expressing his ardent wish to possess it. The king of France, hearing what had happened, ordered the volumes to be magnificently bound, and presented him by his librarian, the abbé Bignon.b

Abulpharag. p. 318. 337, 338, 339. These events happened in the middle of the thirteenth century.

a See the supplement of that excellent scholar, Pococke, to his edition of Abulpharagius. In this supplement we have a short but accurate account of the caliphs who succeeded Mostasem, even to the time of

their extinction.

See also Herbelot's Biblioth. Orientale, under the word Abassides, with the several references to other articles in the same work.

b Vid. Reimanni Histor. Atheismi et Atheorum, 8vo. p. 537.