"Born in Persia, he found his way to Baghdad, became a favorite of Harun, and may have had with him one or two of the adventures ascribed to them in the Thousand Nights and a Night. He loved wine, woman, and his songs -- offended the Caliph by too conspicuous toping, agnosticism, and lechery -- was often imprisoned and often released -- came by leisurely stages to virtue -- and ended by carrying heads and the Koran with him everywhere.

"The minor courts had their poets too, and Sayfu'l-Dawla provided a place for one who, almost unknown to Europe, is reckoned by the Arabs as their best. His name was Ahmad ibn Husein, but Islam remembers him as al-Mutannab -- 'the pretender to prophecy.'

"Born at Kufa in 915, he studied at Damascus, announced himself as a prophet, was arrested and released, and settled down at the Aleppo court. Like Abu Nuwas, he made his own religion, and notoriously neglected to fast or pray or read the Koran. Though he denounced life as not quite up to his standards, he enjoyed it too much to think of eternity.

"Small pox left him blind at four. Nevertheless he took up the career of a student, learned by heart the manuscripts that he liked in the libraries, traveled widely to hear famous masters, and returned to his village.

"During the next fifteen years his annual annual income was thirty dinars, some twelve dollars a month, which he shared with servant and guide. His poems won him fame but as he refused to write encomiums, he nearly starved.

"In 1008 he visited Baghdad, was honored by poets and scholars and perhaps picked up among the freethinkers of the capital some of the skepticism that spices his vese. In 1010 he went back to al-Ma'arratu, became rich, but lived to the end with the simplicity of a sage.

"He was a vegetarian a l'outrance, avoiding not only flesh and fowl, but milk, eggs, and honey as well. To take any of these from the animal world, he thought, was rank robbery. On the same principle he rejected the use of animal skins, blamed ladies for wearing furs, and recommended wooden shoes.

"He died at eighty-four. A pious pupil relates that the poets followed his funeral, and eighty-four savants recited eulogies at his grave.

"We know him now chiefly through the 1592 short poems called briefly Luzumiyyat (Obligations). Instead of discussing woman and war, like his fellow poets, al-Ma'arri deals boldly with the most basic questions. Should we follow revelation, or reason? Is life worth living? Is there a life after death? Does God exist?

"Every now and then the poet professes his orthodoxy. He warns us, however, that this is a legitimate precaution against martyrdom, which was not to his taste. He deprecates indiscriminate honesty. 'Do not acquaint rascals with the essence of your religion, for so you expose yourself to ruin.'

"It should have been an unsurpassable barrier, but Firdausi succeeded in interesting the vizier, who brought the immense manuscript to the Sultan's attention. Mahmud (says one account) gave the poet comfortable quarters in the palace, turned over to him reams of historical material, and bade him incorporate these in the epic.

"All variations of the story agree that Mahmud promised him a gold dinar ($4.70) for each couplet of the revised poem. For an unknown time Firdausi labored. At last (c.1010) the poem reached its final form in 60,000 couplets, and was sent to the Sultan.

"When Mahmud was about to remit the promised sum, certain couriers protested that it was too much, and added that Firdausi was a Shi'ite and Mutazilite heretic.. Mahmud sent 60,000 silver dirhems ($30,000). The poet in anger and scorn, divided the money between a bath attendant and a sherbet seller and fled to Herst.

"He hid for six months in a bookseller's shop until Mahmud's agents, instructed to arrest him, gave up the search. He found refuge with Shariyar, prince of Shirzad in Taharistan. There he composed a bitter satire on Mahmud. Shariyar, fearful of the Sultan, bought the poem for 100,000 dirhems and destroyed it.

"If we may believe these figures, and our equivalent, poetry was one of the most lucrative professions in medieval Persia. Firdausi went to Baghdad and there wrote a long narrative poem, Yusuf and Zuleika, a variant of the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. Then, an old man of seventy six, he returned to Tus. Ten years later Mahmud, struck by the vigor of a couplet that he heard quoted, asked the author's name. When he learned that it was by Firdausi he regretted his failure to reward the poet as promised. He despatched to Firdausi a caravan carrying 60,000 gold dinars' worth of indigo, and a letter of apology.

"The Arabs themselves, so recently nomads or merchants, had no mature facility in art. They recognized their limitations and employed the artists and artisans -- adapted the art forms and traditions -- of Byzantium, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Iran, and India. The Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem and the Mosque of Walid II at Damascus were purely Byzantine, even in their decoration.

"Farther east the old Assyrian and Babylonian tile decoration, and current Armenian and Nestorian church forms, were adopted.

"In Persia, after much destruction of Sasanian literature and art, Islam saw the advantages of the column cluster, the pointed arch, the vault, and those styles of floral and geometrical ornament which finally flowered into the arabesque.

"The palace of Adud ad-Dawla at Shiraz, we are assured, had 360 rooms, one for each day in the year, each painted in a unique color combination. One of its largest rooms was a library two stories high, arcaded and vaulted. Says an enthusiastic Moslem:-'There was no book on any subject of which there was not here a copy.'

"Schedherazade's descriptions of Baghdad mansions are fiction, but suggest an ornate magnificence of internal decoration. Rich men had villas in the country as well as homes in the city. Even in the city they had formal gardens. But around their villas these gardens became 'paradises' -- parks with springs, brooks, fountains, tiled pool, rare flowers, shade, fruit, and nut trees, and usually a pavilion for enjoying the open air without the glare of the sun.

"In Persia there was a religion of flowers. Rose festivals were celebrated with sumptuous displays. The roses of Shiraz and Firuzabad were world famous. Roses with a hundred petals were gifts grateful to a caliph or a king.

"The houses of the poor were then, as they are now, rectangles of sun dried brick cemented with mud, and roofed with a mixture of mud, stalks, branches, palm leaves, and straw.

"Better homes had an interior court with a water basin, perhaps a tree. Sometimes a wooden colonnade and cloister between court and rooms. Houses rarely faced or opened upon the street. They were citadels of privacy, built for security and peace. Some had secret doors for sudden escape from arrest or attack or for the inconspicuous entry of a paramour.

"In all but the poorest houses there were separate quarters for the women, occasionally with their own court.

"Rich houses had a complicated suite of bathrooms, but most dwellings had no plumbing. Water was carried in. Waste was carried out. Fashionable homes might have two stories, with a central living room rising to a dome, and a second-story balcony facing the court.

"All except the poorest houses had at least one window grille (mashrabiy yah), a lattice of woodwork to let in light without heat, and allow the occupants to look out unseen. These grilles wre often elegantly carved and served as models for the stone or metal screens tht adorned the palace of the mosque.

"There was no fireplace. Heat was provided by charcoal -burning portable braziers. Walls were of plaster, usually painted in many colors. Floors were covered with hand-woven rugs. There might be a chair or two but the Moslem preferred to squat.

"Near the wall on three sides of the room the floor was raised a foot or so, forming a diwan and was furnished with cushions. There were no specific bedrooms. The bed was a mattress which, during the day, was rolled up and place in a closet, as in modern Japan. Furniture was simple. Some vases, utensils, lamps, and perhaps aniche for books.

"It was built with his labor and dirhems. It gathered up his arts and crafts and laid them like a rich carpet at Allah's feet. That beauty and splendor all men might enjoy.

"Usually the mosque was situated near the market place, easily accessible. It was not always impressive from without. Except for its facade it might be indistinguishable from -- even physically attached to -- the neighboring structures. It was rarely built of any more lordly material than stucco-faced brick. Its functions determined its forms -- a rectangular court to hold the congregation -- a central basin and fountain for ablutions, a surrounding arcaded portico for shelter, shade and schools.

"On the side of the court facing Mecca, the mosque proper, usually an enclosed section of the portico. It too was rectangular, allowing the worshipers to stand in long lines, again facing Mecca. The edifice might be crowned with a dome, almost always built of bricks, each layer projecting a bit inward beyond the layer beneath, with a surface of plaster to conceal the deviations.

"As in Sasartian and Byzantine architecture, the transition from rectangular base to circular dome was mediated by pendentives or squinches. More characteristic of mosque architecture was the minaret (manara, a lighthouse).

"Probably the Syrian Moslems developed it from the Babylonian ziggurat and the bell tower of Christian churches. The Persian Moslems took the cylindrical form from India, and the African Moslems were influencd in its design by the four-cornered Pharos or lighthouse of Alexandria. Perhaps the four corner towers of the old temple area at Damascus influenced the form.

"As if in compensation, the Moslem artist invented or adopted an overflowing abundance of non-representational forms. He sought an outlet first in geometrical figures -- line, angle, square, cube, polygon, cone, spiral, ellipse, circle, sphere. He repeated these in a hundred combinations and developed them into swirls, guilloches, reticulations, entrelacs, and stars. Passing to floral forms, he designed, in many materials, wreaths, vines, or rosettes of lotus, acanthus, or palm tendrils or leaves.

"In the tenth century he merged all these in the arabesque. To them all, as a unique and major ornament, he added the Arabic script. Taking usually the Kufic characters, he lifted them vertically, or expanded them laterally, or dressed them in flourishes and points, and turned the alphabet into a work of art.

"As religious prohibitions slackened, he introduced new motifs of decoration by representing the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, of strange composite animals that dwelt only in his whimsical fantasy. His flair for adornment enriched every form of art -- mosaic, miniature, pottery, textiles, rugs.

"A musical notation, and much musical theory were taken from the Greeks. al-Kindi, Avicenna, and the Brethren of Sincerity wrote at length on the subject. al-Farabi's Grand Book on Music is the outstanding medieval production on the theory of music -- 'equal, if not superior, to anything that has come down to us from Greek sources.'

"As early as the seventh century the Moslems wrote mensurable music (apparently unknown to Durope before 1190) -- their notation indicated the duration, as well as the pitch, of each note.

"Among a hundred musical instruments the chief were the lute, lyre, pandore, psaltery, and flute, occasionally reinforced by horn, cymbals, tambourine, castanets, and drum. The lyre was a small harp. The lute was like our mandolin, with a long neck and a curved sounding board made of small glued segments of maple wood. The strings, of catgut, were pluched by the fingers.

"There were a dozen sizes and varieties of lute. The large lute was called qitara from the Greek kithara. Our words guitar and lute (Arabic al-ud) are from the Arabic. Some string instruments were played with a bow, and the organ was known in both its pneumatic and its hydraulic forms. Certain Moslem cities, like Seville, were celebrated for making fine musical instruments, far superior to anything produced in contemporary Islam.

"Nearly all instrumental music was intended to accompany or introduce song. Performances were usually confined to four or five instruments at a time but we also read of large orchestras.

"An Idrisid dynasty (789-974) ruled at Fez, an Aghlabid dynasty (800-909) at Qairwan, and a Tulunid dynasty (869-05) in Egypt.

"That ancient granary, no longer robbed of its product by foreign masters, entered upon a minor renaissance. Ahmad ibn Tulun (869-84) conquered Syria for Egypt, built a new capital at Qatai (a suburb of al-Fustat), promoted learning and art, raised palaces, public baths, a hospital, and the great mosque that still stands as his monument.

"His son Khumarawayh (884-95) transmuted this energy into luxury, walled his palace with gold, and taxed his people to provide himself with a pool of quicksilver on which his bed of inflated leather cushions might gently float to win him sleep.

"Forty years after his death the Tulunids were replaced by another Turkish dynasty, the Ikshidid (935-69). These African monarchies, having no roots in the blood or traditions of the people, had to base their rule on military force and leadership.

"When wealth weakened their martial ardor their power melted away.

"The greatest of the African dynasties reinforced its military supremacy by associating itself with an almost fanatical religious belief. About 905 Abu Abdallah appeared in Tunisia, preached the Ismaili doctrine of the seven Imams, proclaimed the early coining of the Mahdi or Savior, and won such a following among the Berbes tht he was able to overthrow the Aghlabid rule in Qairwan. To meet the expectations he had aroused he summoned from Arabia Obeidallah ibn Muhammad, alleged grandson of the Ismaili prophet Abdallah, hailed him as the Mahdi, made him king (909), and was soon put to death by his king's command.

"But nearly all the surviving manuscripts of Islamic Africa in this period are hidden in libraries which Western scholarship is just beginning to explore. Much of the art has perished and only the mosuqes proclaim the vigor and spirit of the age.

"At Quaiwan stands the mosque of Sidi Oqba, originally built in 670, seven times restored and mostly dating from 838. Its cloisters of round arches are upheld by hundreds of Corinthian columns from the ruins of Carthage. Its pulpit is a master piece of wood carving, its mihrab a splendor of porphyry and faience. Its square and massive minaret -- the oldest in the world -- set a Syrian style for the minarets of the West. This mosque made Quaiwan the fourth holy city of Islam, one of 'the four gates to Paradise.'

"Only less sacred and magnificent were the mosques of Fez and Marraqesh, of Tunis and Tripoli.

"In Cairo the mosques were many and immense. 300 still adorn that charming capital. The mosque of Amr, begun in 642, was rebult in the tenth century. Nothing remains of its early constituents except the fine Corinthian columns judiciously rescued from Roman and Byzantine ruins.

"The mosque of Ibn Tulun (878) precariously preserves its first form and ornament. A high crenellated wall surrounds its roomy court. Within are pointed arches older than any others in Egypt except the arch of the Nilometer (865) -- a structure built on an island in the Nile to measure the rise of the river.

"Possibly this graceful and convenient form of the arch passes from Egypt through Sicily and the Normans to Gothic Europe. In the ziggurathlike minaret, and in the domed tomb of Ibn Tulun, are horseshoe arches -- one of the less pleasing features of Moslem art.

"It is told of Ibn Tulun that he had intended to raise the arches on 300 columns, but when he learned that these could be secured only by dismantling Roman or Christian edifices, he decided, instead, to support the arches with massive piers of brick. Here again this mosque may have suggested a characteristic element of the Gothic style.

"The wealth and power of Baghdad declined, those of Cairo grew. Nasir-i-Khosru, visiting the new capital in 1047, described it as having 20,000 houses, mostly of brick, rising to five or six stories, and 20,000 shops 'so filled with gold, jewelry, embroideries, and satins that there was no room to sit down.'

"The main streets were protected against the sun, and were lighted at night by lamps. Prices were fixed by the government and anyone caught charging more was paraded through the city on a camel, ringing a bell and confessing his crime.

"Millionaires were numerous. One merchant, a Christian, fed the whole population at his own expense during the five years of famine caused by the low level of the Nile. Yaqub ibn Qillis left an estate of some $30,000,000. Such men joined with the Fatimid caliphs in building mosques, libraries, and collegees and fostering the sciences and the arts.

"The Berbers not only accepted Mohammedanism, they became its most fanatical defenders. Doubtless economic consideration entered. Non-Moslems paid a head tax and converts were for a time free from it.

"When in 744 the Arab governor of Egypt offered this exemption, 24,000 Christians went over to Islam. Occasional but severe persecutions of Christians may have influenced many to conform to the ruling faith. In Egypt a Coptic minority held out bravely, built their churches like fortresses, maintained their worship in secret, and survive to this day.

"But the once crowded churches of Alexandria, Cyrene, Carthage, and Hippo were emptied and decayed. The memory of Athanasius, Cyril, and Augustine faded out. The disputes of Arians, Donatists, and Monophysites gave way to the quarrels of Sunni and Ismaili Mohammedanism.

"The Fatimids propped up their power by gathering the Ismailities into a Grand Lodge of complex initiations and hierarchical debrees. The members were used for political espionage and intrigue. The forms of the order were transmitted to Jerusalem and Europe and strongly influenced the organization, ritual, and garb of the Templars, the Illuminati, and the other secret fraternities of the Western world.

"Soon their men-of-war seized Cyprus and Rhodes and defeated the Byzantine navy (652, 655). Corsica was occupied in 809, Sardinia in 810, Crete in 823, Malta in 870.

"In 827 the old struggle between Greece and Carthage for Sicily was resumed. The Aghlabid caliphs of Qairwan sent expedition after expedition and the conquest proceeded with leisurely bloodshed and rapine.

"Palmemo fell in 831, Messina in 843, Syracuse in 878, Taormina in 902.

"When the Fatimid caliphs succeeded to the Aghlabid power (909) they inherited Sicily as part of their demain.

"As piracy was quite within the bounds of honored custom at this time, and Christians and Moslems raided Moslem or Christian shores to capture infidels for sale as slaves, Saracen fleets, mostly from Tunisia or Sicily, began in the ninth century to attack Italian ports.

"In 841 the Moslems took Bari, the main Byzantine base in southeastern Italy. A year later, invited by the Lombard duke of Benevento to help him against Salerno, they swept across Italy and back, despoiling fields and monasteries as they went.

"In 846 eleven hundred Moslems landed at Ostia, marched up to the walls of Rome, freely plundered the suburbs and churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, and leisurely returned to their ships. Seeing that no civil authority could organize Italian defense, Pope Leo IV took charge, bound Amalfi, Naples, Gaeta, and Rome in alliance, and had a chain stretched across the Tiber to halt any enemy.

"In 849 the Saracens made another attempt to seize the citadel of Western Christianity. The united Italian fleet, blessed by the Pope, gave them battle and routed them -- a scene pictured by Raphael in the Stanze of the Vatican.

"In 866 the emperor Louis II came down from Germany, and drove the marauding Moslems of south Italy back upon Bari and Taranto.

"In 876 the Moslems pillaged the Campagna. Rome was so endangered that the pope paid the Saracens a yearly bribe of 25,000 mancuci (c.$25,000) to keep the peace.

"In 884 they burned the great monastery of Monte Cassino to the ground. In sporadic attacks they ravaged the valley of the Anio.

"Finally the combined forces of the pope, the Greek and German emperors, and the cities of southern and central Italy defeated them on the Garigliano (916), and a tragic century of invasion came to an end.

"Italy, perhaps Christianity had had a narrow escape. Had Rome fallen, the Saracens would have advanced upon Venice. Venice taken, Constantinople would have been wedged in between two concentrations of Moslem power.

"Sicilians, Greeks, Lombards, Jews, Berbers, and Arabs mingled in the streets of the Moslem capital -- ancient Panormus, Arabic Balerm, Italian Palermo. All hating one another religiously, but living together with no more than a Sicilian average of passion, poetry, and crime.

"Here Ibn Hawqal, about 970, found some 300 mosques, and 300 school teachers who were highly regarded by the inhabitants 'in spite of the fact,' says the geographer, 'that school teachers are notorious for their mental deficiency and light brains.'

"With sunshine and rain co-operating to make a lush vegetation, Sicily was an agricultural paradise. The clever Arabs reaped the fruits of a well-managed economy. Palermo became a port of exchange between Christian Europe and Moslem Africa. Soon it was one of the richest cities in Islam.

"The Moslem flair for fine dress, brilliant jewelry, and the arts of decoration made for a life of otium cum dignitate -- leisure without vulgarity.

"Tariq was a Berber, and his army had 7000 Berbers to 300 Arabs. His name is embedded in the rock at whose foot his forces landed. The Moors came to call it Gebel al-Tariq, the Mountain of Tariq, which Europe compressed into Gibraltar.

"Tariq had been sent to Spain by Musa ibn Nusayr, Arab governor of North Africa. In 712 Musa crossed with 10,000 Arabs and 8000 Moors, besieged and captured Seville and Marida, rebuked Tariq for exceeding orders, struck him with a whip, and cast him into prison.

"The Caliph Walid recalled Musa and freed Tariq, who resumed his cocnquest. Musa had appointed his son Abd al-Aziz governor of Seville. Suleiman, Walid's brother, suspected Abd al-Aziz of plotting to make himself independent sovereign of Spain, and despatched assassins to kill him. The head was brought to Suleiman, now caliph, at Damascus. He sent for Musa, who asked:-'Grant me his head, that I may close his eyes.'

"Having established their position in the peninsula, the Moslems scaled the Pyrenees and entered Gaul, intent upon making Europe a province of Damascus.

"Between Tours and Poitiers, a thousand miles north of Gibraltar, they were met by the united forces of Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine, and Charles, Duke of Austrasia. After seven days of fighting, the Moslems were defeated in one of the most crucial battles of history (732).

"Again the faith of countless millions was determined by the chances of war. Thenceforth Charles was Carolus Martellus, or Martel, Charles the Hammer.

"In 735 the Moslems tried again, and captured Arles.

"In 737 they took Avignon and ravaged the valley of the Rhone to Lyons.

"In 755 a romantic figure landed in Spain, armed only with royal blood, and destined to establish a dynasty that would rival in wealth and glory the caliphs of Baghdad. When in 750 the triumphant Abbasids ordered all princes of the Umayyad family slain, Abd-er-Rahman, grandson of the Caliph Hisham, was the only Umayyad who escaped. Hunted from village to village, he swam the broad Euphrates, crossed into Palestine, Egypt and Africa and finally reached Morocco.

"News of the Abbasid revolution had intensified the factional rivalry of Arabs, Syrians, Persians, and Moors in Spain. An Arab group loyal to the Umayyads, fearing that the Abbasid caliph might question their titles to lands given them by Umayyad governors, invited Abd-er-Rahman to join and lead them. He came, and was made emir of Cordova (756).

"He defeated an army commissioned by the Caliph al-Mansur to unseat him and sent the head of its general to be hung before a palace in Mecca.

"Perhaps it was these events that saved Europe from worshiping Mohammed.

"Moslem Spain, weakened with civil war and deprived of external aid, ceased to conquer and withdrew even from northern Spain. From the ninth to the eleventh century the peninsula was divided into Moslem and Christian by a line running from Coimbra through Saragossa and along the Ebro River.

"Some thought it fairer than that capital. People loved it for its gardens, palm trees, and roses, and a gaiety always ready with music dance, and song.

"Anticipating the fall of Cordova, it made itself independent in 1023. Its chief justice, Abu'l Qasim Muhammad, found a mat-maker resembling Hisham II, hailed him as Caliph, housed and guided him, and persuaded Valencia, Tortosa, even Cordova, to recognize him.

"By this simple device the subtle jurist founded the brief Abbadid dynasty. When he died (1042), his son Abbad al-Mutadid succeeded him, ruled Seville with skill and cruelty for twenty-seven years, and extended his power until half of Moslem Spain paid him tribute.

"His son al-Mutamid (1068-91), at the age of twenty-six, inherited his realm, but neither his ambition nor his cruelty. Al-Mutamid was the greatest poet of Moslem Spain. He preferred the company of poets and musicians to tht of politicians and generals, and rewarded his able rivals in poetry with unenvious hand. He thought it not too much to give a thousand ducats ($2,290) for an epigram.

"He liked Ibn Ammar's poetry and made him vizier. He heard a girl slave, Rumaykiyya, improvise excellent verses. He bought her, married her, and loved her passionately until his death while not neglecting the other beauties of his harem. Rumaykiyya filled the palace with her laughter and drew her lord into a spiral of gaiety.

"Theologians blamed her for her husband's coolness to religion and the near emptiness of the city's mosques. Nevertheless al-Mutamid could rule as well as love and sing. When Toledo attacked Cordova and Cordova asked his aid, he sent trops who saved the city from Toledo and made it subject to Seville.

"It is the judgment of a great Christian Orientalist, whose enthusiasm may require some discounting of his praise. But after due deductions his verdict stands.

"The emirs and caliphs of Spain were as cruel as Machiavelli thought necessary to the stability of a government. Sometimes they were barbarously and callously cruel, as when Mutadid grew flowers in the skulls of his dead foes, or as when the poetic Mutamid hacked to pieces the lifelong friend who had at last betrayed and insulted him.

"Against these stray instances al-Maqqari gives a hundred examples of the justice, liberality, and refinement of the Umayyad rulers of Spain. They compare favorably with the Greek emperors of their time. They were certainly an improvement upon the illiberal Visigothic regime that had preceded them.

"Their management of public affairs was the most competent in the Western world of that age. Laws were rational and humane and were administered by a well-organized judicary. For the most part the conquered, in their internal affairs, were governed by their own laws and their own officials. Towns were well policed. Markets, weights and measures were effectively supervised. A regular census recorded population and property.

"Taxation was reasonable compared with the imposts of Rome or Byzantium. The revenues of the Cordovan caliphate under Abd-er-Rahman III reached 12,045,000 gold dinars ($57,213,750) -- probably more than the united governmental revenues of Latin Christendomn.

"The overgrown estates of the Visigothic nobles were broken up and the serfs became proprietors. But the forces that in these centuries were making for feudalism operated in Spain, too, although better resisted than in France.

"The Arab leaders in their turn accumulated large tracts and framed them with tenants verging on serfdom. Serfs were slightly better treated by the Moors than by their former owners and the slaves of non-Moslems could free themselves merely by professing Islam.

"The Arabs for the most part left the actual work of agriculture to the conquered. However, they used the latest manuals of agronomy and under their direction agricultural science developed in Spain far in advance of Christian Europe.

"The leisurely oxen, hitherto universally used in Spain for plowing or draft were largely replaced by the mule, the ass, and the horse. Stock breeding of Spanish with Arab strains produced the 'noble breed' of the Arab horseman and the Spanish caballero.

"Moslem Spain brought from Asia, and taught to Christian Europe, the culture of rice, buckwheat, sugar cane, pomegranates, cotton, spinach, asparagus, silk, bananas, cherries, oranges, lemons, quinces, grapefruit, peaches, dates, figs, strawberries, ginger, myrrh. The cultivation of the vine was a major industry among the Moors whose religion forbade wine. Market gardens, olive groves, and fruit orchards made some areas of Spain -- notably around Cordova, Granada, and Valencia -- 'garden spots of the world.'

"Coral was gathered along Andalusia's shores.

"Pearls were fished along the Catalonian coasts.

"Rubies were mined at Baja and Malaga.

"Metallurgy was well developed. Murcia was famous for its iron and brass works. Toledo fir its swords, Cordova for shields.

"Handicraft industry flourished. Cordova made 'Cordovan' leather for the 'cordwainers' (cordobanes) of Europe. There were 13,000 weavers in Cordova alone. Moorish carpets, cushions, silk curtains, shawls, divans found eager buyers everywhere.

"According to al-Maqqari, Ibn Firnas of Cordova, in the ninth century, invented spectacles, complex chronometers, and a flying machine. A merchant fleet of over a thousand ships carried the products of Spain to Africa and Asia. Vessels from a hundred ports crowded the harbors of Barcelona, Almeria, Cartagena, Valencia, Malaga, Cadiz, and Seville. A regular postal service was maintained for the government.

"The official coinage of gold dinars, silver dirhema, and copper fals preserved a relative stability in comparison with the currencies of contemporary Latin Christendom.

"Although Christians were free, the Church was not. Most of her landed property had been confiscated by a decree affecting all active resisters to the conquest. Many churches had been destroyed and new ones were prohibited.

"The Moslem emirs inherited from the Visigoth kings the right to appoint and depose bishops even to summon ecclesiastical councils. The emirs sold bishoprics to the highest bidder although he might be a skeptic or a libertine. Christian priests were liable to abuse by Moslems in the streets.

"Moslem theologians commenteed freely on what seemed to them absurdities in Christian theology but it was dangerous for Christians to reply in kind.

"Under such tense relations a minor incident could lead to a major tragedy.

"A pretty girl of Cordova, known to us only as Flora, was the child of a mixed marriage. When her Mohammedan father died she resolved to become a Christian. She fled from her brother's guardianship to a Christian home, was caught and beaten by him, persisted in apostasy, and was turned over to a Moslem court.

"The qadi, who might have condemned her to death, ordered her flogged. She escaped again to a Christian home and there met a young priest, Eulogius, who conceived for her a passionate spiritual attachment.

"While she hid in a convent another priest, Perfectus, achieved martyrdom by telling some Moslems what he thought of Mohammed. They had promised not to betray him but the vigor of his exposition so shocked them that they denounced him to the authorities. Perfectus might have saved himself by a retraction. Instead he repeated to the judge his conviction that Mohammed was 'the servant of Satan.' The judge remanded him to jail for some months, hoping for a change of mood. None came and Perfectus was condemned to death. He marched to the scaffold cursing the Prophet as 'an imposter, an adulterer, a child of hell.'

"Despite the rigor of Moslem law, a wave of skepticism rose in the eleventh century. Not only did the mild heresies of the Mutazilites finally enter Spain.

"A sect arose that declared all religions false and laughed at commandments, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, and alms. Another group, under the name of 'Universal Religion,' deprecated all dogmas and pled for a purely ethical religion.

"Some were agnostics. The doctrines of religion, they said, 'may or may not be true. We neither affirm nor deny them. We simply cannot tell. But our consciences will not allow us to accept doctrines whose truth cannot be demonstrated.'

"The Romans had built in Cordova a temple to Janus. The Christians had replaced it with a cathedral. Abd-er-Rahman I paid the Christians for the site, demolished the church, and replaced it with the Blue Mosque. In 1238 the reconquista would turn the mosque into a cathedral.

"So the good, the true, and the beautiful fluctuate with the fortunes of war. The project became the consolation of Abd-er-Rahman's troubled years. He left hs suburban for his city home to superintend the operations and hoped that he might before his death lead the congregation in grateful prayer in this new and majestic mosque. He died in 788, two tears after laying the foundation.

"His son al-Hisham continued the work. Each caliph, for two centuries, added a part, until in al-Mansur's time it covered an area 742 by 472 feet. The exterior showed a battlemented wall of brick and stone with irreglar towers and a massive minaret that surpassed in size and beauty all the minarets of the time, so that it too was numbered among the innumerable 'wonders of the world.'

"Nineteen portals, surmounted by horseshoe arches elegantly carved with floral and geometrical decoration in stone, led into the Court of Ablutions, now the Patio de los Naranhos, or Court of Oranges. In this rectangle, paved with colored tiles, stood four fountains, each cut from a block of solid marble so large that seventy oxen had been needed to haul it from the quarry to the site.

"The mosque proper was a forest of 1290 columns, dividing the interior into eleven naves and twenty-one aisles. From the column capitals sprang a raviety of arches -- some semicircular, some pointed, some in horsesoe form, most of them with voussoirs, or wedge stones, alternately red or white. The columns of jasper, porphyry, alabaster, or marble snatched from the ruins of Roman or Visigothic Spain, gave by their number the impression of limitless and bewildering space.

"The wooden ceiling was carved into cartouches bearing Koranic and other inscriptions. From it hung 200 chandeliers holding 7000 cups of scented oil, fed from reservoirs of oil in inverted Christian bells also suspended from the roof.

"Floor and walls were adorned with mosaics. Some of these were of enameled glass, baked in rich colors and often containing silver or gold. After a thousand years of wear these dados still sparkle like jewels in the cathedral walls.

"One section was marked off as a sanctuary. It was paved with silver and enameled tiles, guarded with ornate doors, decorated with mosaics, roofed with three domes, and marked off with a wooden screen of exquisite design.

"Within this sanctuary were built the mihrab and minbar, upon which the artists lavished their maturest skill.

"The mihrab itself was an heptagonal recess walled with gold. Brilliantly ornamented with enameled mosaics, marble tracery, and gold inscriptions on a ground of crimson and blue, and crowned by a tier of slender columns and trevoil arches as lovely as anything in Gothic art.

"The pulpit was considered the finest of is kind. It consistd of 37,000 little panels of ivory and prcious woods -- ebony, citron, aloe, red and yellow sandal, all joined by gold and silver nails, and inlaid with gems. On this minbar, in a jeweled box covered with gold-threaded crimson silk, rested a copy of the Koran written by the Caliph Othman and stained with his dying blood.

"To us, who prefer to adorn our theaters with gilt and brass rather than clothe our cathedrals in jewelry and gold, the decoration of the Blue Mosque seems extravagant. The walls encrusted wth the blood of exploited generations, the columns confusingly numerous, the horseshoe arch as structurally weak and aesthetically offehsive as obesity on bow legs.

"Others, however, have judged differently. Al-Maqqari (1591-1632) thought this mosque 'unequaled in size, or beauty of design, or tasteful arrangement of its ornaments, or boldness of execution.'

'tall, with mustaches so long that he used to tie up their ends when he wished to shoot. And never did his arrows miss the mark. He wore so lofty a turban that men were wont to say that from its top to the end of his mustaches was a distance of two yards. He was a strong and just ruler, generally magnanimous, swift to punish tyranny or extortion among his officials, and extremely charitable to the poor. He was also devoted to the study of history, listening with great pleasure and interest to chronicles of former kings, and to works that threw light on their characters, institutions, and methods of administration.'

"The Seljuq sultans -- Tughtil Beg, Alp Arslan, Malik Shah, Sinjar -- were among the ablest monarchs of the Middle Ages. Nizam al-Mulk ranks with the greatest statesman. Nur-ud-din, Saladin, and al-Kamil were the equals of Richard I, Louis IX, and Frederick II.

"All these Moslem rulers and even the minor kings, continued the Abbasid support of literature and art. At their courts we shall find poets like Omar, Nizami, Sa'di, and Jalal ud-din Rumi.

"And although philosophy faded out under their cautious orthodoxy, architecture flourished more splendidly than before.

"The Seljuqs and Saladin persecuted Moslem heresy. But they were so lenient to Christians and Jews that Byzantine historians told of Christian communities inviting Seljuq rulers to come and oust oppressive Byzantine governors.

"Under the leadership of Seljuqs and Ayyubids Western Asia again prospered in body and mind. Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Isfahan, Rayy, Herat, Amida, Nishapur, and Merv were in this period among the best adorned and most cultured cities in the white man's world.

"To save their masculine honor, the Moslem leaders of Cairo chose another former slave, Aybak, as her associate. She married him, but continued to rule. When he attempted a declaration of independence she had him murdered in his bath (1257).

"She herself was presently battered to death with wooden shoes by Aybak's women slaves.

"Aybak had lived long enough to found the Mamluk dynasty. Mamluk meant 'owned', and was applied to white slaves, usually strong and fearless Turks or Mongols employed as palace guards by the Ayyubid sultans.

"As in Rome and Baghdad, so in Cairo. The guards became the kings. For 267 years (1250-1517) the Mamluks ruled Egypt and sometimes Syria (1271-1516). They incarnadined their capital with assassinations and beautified it with art. Their courge saved Syria and Egypt -- even Europe -- when they routed the Mongols at Ain-Jalut (1260).

"Born a Turkish slave, his brave resourcefulness raised him to high command in the Egyptian army. It was he who defeated Louis IX at Mansura in 1250. Ten years later he fought with fierce skill under the Sultan Qutuz at Ain-Jalut. He murdered Qutuz on the way back to Cairo, made himself sultan, and accepted with winning grace the triumph that the city had prepared for his victorious victim.

"He renewed repeatedly the war against the Crusaders, always with success. For these holy campaigns Moslem tradition honors him next to Harun and Saladin.

"In peace, says a contemporary Christian chronicler, he was 'sober, chaste, just to his people, even kind to his Christian subjects.' He organized the government of Egypt so well that no incompetence among his successors availed to unseat the Mamluks until their overthrow by the Ottoman Turks in 1517.

"He gave Egypt a strong army and navy, cleared its harbors, roads, and canals, and built the mosque that bears his name.

"Another Turkish slave deposed Baibars' son, and became Sultan al-Mansur Sayf-al-Din Qalaun (1279-90). History remembers him chefly for the great hospital that he built at Cairo, and which he endowed with an annuity of a million dirhems ($500,000). His son Nasir (1293-1340) was thrice enthroned but only twice deposed -- built aqueducts, public baths, schools, monasteries, and thirty mosques -- dug with the forced labor of 100,000 men a canal connecting Alexandria with the Nile, and exemplified Mamluk ways by slaughtering 20,000 animals for the marriage feast of his son. When Nasir traveled through the desert forty camels bore on their backs a garden of rich earth to provide him with fresh vegetables every day.

"The new architectural style is often called Morisco, as having entered from Morocco. But its elements came from Syria and Persia and mark as well the Taj Mahal in India, so wide and rich was the realm of Moslem art. It was a feminine style, aiming no longer at impressive strength as in the mosques of Damascus, Cordova, and Cairo but as a delicate beauty in which all skill seemed absorbed in decoration and the sculptor engulfed the architect.

"The Almohads were enthusiastic builders.

"First they built for defense, and surrounded their major cities with mighty walls and towers, like the Torre del Oro, or Tower of Gold, that guarded the Guadalquivir at Seville. The Alcazar there was a union of fortress and palace and showed a plain, blunt front to the world.

"Designed by the Toledan architect Jalabi for Abn Yaqub Yusuf (1181), it became after 1248 the favorite domicile of the Christian kings. It was modified, repaired, restored, or enlarged by Pedro I (1353), Charles V (1526) and Isabella (1833).

"Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Baalbek, Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul, Emesa, Tus, Nishapur and many other cities boasted colleges. Baghdad alone had thirty in 1064. A year later Nizam al-Mulk added another, then Nizamiya.

"In 1234 the Caliph Mustansir founded still another which in size, architecture, and equipment surpassed all the rest. One traveler called it the most beautiful building in the city. It contained four distinct law schools in which qualified students received free tuition, food, and medical care and a monthly gold dinar for other expenses. It contained a hospital, a bathhouse, and a library freely open to students and staff.

"Women probably attended college in some cases for we hear of a shaikha -- a lady professor -- whose lectures, like Aspasia's or Hypatia's, drew large audiences (c.1178).

"Libraries were now richer and more numerous than ever in Islam. Moslem Spain alone had seventy public libraries. Grammarians, lexicographers, encyclopedists, and historians continued to flourish. Collective biography was a Moslem hobby and forte.

"Ibn al-Qifti (d.1248) wrote the lives of 414 philosohers and scientists. Ibn Abi Usaybia (1203-70) performed a like service for 400 physicians.

"Muhammad Awfi (1228) achieved an encyclopedia of 300 Persian poets without mentioning Omar Khayyam. Muhammad ibn Khalikan (1211-82) surpassed all other singlehanded works of this kind in his Obituaries of Men of Note. Containing brief anecdotal lives of 865 distinguished Mohammedans, it is remarkably accurate for a book covering so wide a field. Ibn Khallikan nevertheless apologized for its imperfections, saying, in its final words, that 'God has allowed no book to be faultless except the Koran.'

"Muhammad al-Shahrastani, in a Book of Religions and Sects (1128) analyzed the leading faiths and philosophies of the world and summarized their history.

"Persia classes him among the scientists and considers his quatrains the casual amusement of 'one of the greatest mathematicians of medieval times.'

"Abu'l-Fath Umar Khayyami ibn Ibrahim was born at Nishapur in 1038. His cognomen meant tentmaker but proves nothing about his trade or that of his father Abraham. Occupational names, in Omar's time, had lost their literal application, as among the Smiths, Taylors, Bakers, and Porters of our land.

"History knows little of his life but records several of his works. His Algebra, translated into French in 1857, made significant advances both on al-Khwarizmi and on the Greeks. Its partial solution of cubic equations has been judged 'perhaps the very highest peak of medieval mathematics.'

"Another of his works on algebra (a manuscript in the Leiden Library,) studied critically the postulates and definitions of Euclid.

"In 1074 the Sultan Malik Shah commissioned him and others to reform the Persian calendar. The outcome was a calendar that reuired a day's correction every 3770 years -- slightly more accurate than ours, which requires a day's correction every 3330 years. We may leave the choice to the next civilization.

"Mohammedan religion proved stronger than Moslem science and Omar's calendar failed to win acceptance over Mohammed's.

"The rubaiyah or quatrain (from rubai, composed of four) is in its Persian form a poem of four lines rhyming aaba. It is an epigram in the Greek sense, as the expression of a completed thought in terse poetic form. Its origin is unknown, but it long antedated Omar.

"In Persian literature it is never part of a longer poem but forms an independent whole, hence Persian collectors of rubaiyat arrange them, not by their thought sequence but in the alphabetical order of the final letter of the rhyming syllables.

"Thousands of Persian quatrains exist, mostly of uncertain authorship. Over 1200 of them have been attributed to Omar, but often questionably. The oldest Persian manuscript of the Rubaiyat of Omar (in the Bodleian Library at Oxford) goes back only to 1460 and contains 158 stanzas, alphabetically arranged. Several of these have been traced to Omar's predecessors -- some to Abu Said. one to Avicenna.

"As if in foil to Omar, Hyas Abu Muhammad, later known as Nizami, lived a life of genuine piety, rigorously abstained from wine, and devoted himself to parentage and poetry.

"His Romance of Layla and Majnum (1188) is the most popular of all love stories in Persian verse. Qays Majnun (i.e. the Mad) becomes enamored of Layla, whose father compels her to marry another man. Majnun, delirious with disappointment, retires from civilization to the wilderness. Only when Layla's name is mentioned does he return to brief sanity.

"Widowed, she joins him, but dies soon afterward. Romeo Qays kills himself on her grave.

"In the first class they named the Hindus, Persians, Babylonians, Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, and Arabs. These, in their view, were the elite of the world.

"The others of whom the Chinese and the Turks were the best, resembled animals rather than men. The judgment sinned chiefly agaainst the Chinese.

"The Moslems continued in this period, and their unchallenged ascendancy in science. In mathematics the most signal and advances were made in Morocco and Azerbaijan. We see here again the range of Islamic civilization. In 1229 Hasan al-Marraquash (i.e. of Marraqesh) published tables of sines for each degree and tables of versed sines, arc sines and arc cotangents.

"A generation later Nasir ud-Din al-Tusi (i.e. of Tus) issued the first treatise in which trigonometry was considered s an independent science rather than an appendate for astronomy. This Kitab shakl al-shakl al=qatta a remained without a rival in its field until the De Trian-gulit of Regionmontanus two ccenturies later.

"Perhaps Chinese trigonometry whch appears in the second half of the thitettenth century, was of Arabic origin.

"Abu bdallah Muhammad al-Idrisi was born at Ceuta (1100), studied at Cordova, and wrote in Palermo, at the behest of King Roger II of Sicily, his Kitab al-Rujari (Roger's Book). It divided the earth into seven climatic zones, and each zone into ten parts -- each of the seventy parts of medieval cartography, unprecedented in fullness, accuracy, and scope. Abl-Irisi, like most Moslem scientits, took for granted the sphericity of the earth.

"Rivaling him for the honor of being the greatest medieval geographer was Abu Abdallah Yaqut (1179-1229). Born a Greek in Asia Minor, he was captured in war and enslaved but the Baghdad merchant who bought him gave him a good education and then freed him. He traveled much first as a merchant, then as a geographer fascinated by places and their diverse populations, dress, and ways.

"He rejoiced to find ten libraries at Merv, one containing 12,000 volumes. The discriminating curators allowed him to take as many as 200 volumes at a time to his room. Those who have loved books as the lifeblood of great men will sense the dusty joy he felt in these treasuries of the mind.

"He moved on to Khiva and Balkh. There the Mongols almost caught him in their murderous advance. He fled, naked, but clutching his manuscripts, across Persia to Mosul. While buttering the bread of poverty as a copyist, he completed his Mu'jam al-Buddan (1228) -- a vast geographical encyclopedia which summed up nearly all medieval knowledge of the globe.

"Yaqut included almost everything -- astronomy, physics, archaeology, ethnography, history, giving the co-ordinates of the cities and the lives and works of their famous men.

"They excelled expecially in ophthalmology, perhaps because eye diseases were so prevalent in the Near East. There, as elsewhere, medicine was paid most to cure, least to prevent.

"Operations for cataract were numerous . Khalifah ibn-abi'l-Mahasin of Aleppo (1256) was so confident of his skill that he operated for cataract on a one-eyed man. Ibn Baitar's Kitab al-Jami made medicinal-botanical history. It listed 1400 plants, foods, and drugs, 300 of them new -- analyzed their chemical constitution and healing power -- and added acute observations on their use in therapy.

"But the greatest name in this acme of Moslem medicine is Abu Marwan ibn Zuhr (1091-1162) of Seville, known to the European medical world as Avenzoar.

"He was the third in six generations of famous physicians, all of one family line, and each at the top of his profession. His Kitab al-Tasir, or Book of Simplification on Therapeutics and Diet, was written at the request of his friend Avertoes, who (himself the greatest philosopher of the age) considered him the greatest physician since Galen.

"Ibn Zuhr's forte was clinical description. He left classical analyses of mediastinal tumors, pericarditis, intestinal tuberculosis, and pharyngeal paralysis.

"One founded by Nur-ud-din at Damascus in 1160 gave free treatment and drugs during three centuries. For 267 years, we are told, its fires were never extinguished.

"Ibn Jubayr, coming to Baghdad in 1184, marveled at the great Bimaristan Adadi, a hospital rising like some royal palace along the banks of the Tigris. Here food and drugs were given to the patients without charge.

"In Cairo, in 1285, Sultan Qalaun began the Maristan al-Mansur, the greatest hospital of the Middle Ages. Within a spacious quadrangular enclosure four buildings rose around a courtyard adorned with arcades and cooled with fountains and brooks.

"There were separate wards for diverse diseases and for convalescents -- laboratories, a dispensary, out-patient clinics, diet kitchens, baths, a library, a chapel, a lecture hall, and particularly pleasant accommodations for the insane.

"Treatment was given gratis to men and women, rich and poor, slave and free. A sum of money was disbursed to each convalescent on his departure, so that he need not at once return to work. The sleepless were provided with soft music, professional story-tellers, and perhaps books of history.

"The conflict between religion and science led many to skepticism, some to open atheism. Al-Ghazali divided Moslem thinkers into three groups -- theists, deists or naturalists, and materialists -- and denounced all three groups alike as infidels.

"The theists accepted God and immorality, but denied creation and the resurrection of the body, and called heaven and hell spiritual conditions only.

"The deists acknowledged a deity but rejected immortality, and viewed the world as a self-operating machine.

"The materialists completely rejected the idea of God.

"A semi-organized movement, the Dahriyya, professed a frank agnosticism. Several of these doubting Thomases lost their heads to the executioner.

"Said Isbahan ibn Qara to a pious faster during Ramaden:-'You torment yourself for nothing. Man is like a seed of grain that sprouts and grows up and is then mowed down to perish forever. Eat and drink!'

"It was in rection against such skepticism that Mohammedanism produced its greatest theologian, the Augustine and the Kant of Islam.

"Abn Hamid al-Ghazali was born at Tus in 1058, lost his father early, and was reared by a Sufi friend. He studied law, theology, and philosophy. At thirty-three he was appointed to the chair of law at the Nizamiya College in Baghdad. Soon all Islam acclaimed his eloquence, erudition, and dialectical skill.

"After four years of this glory he was laid low by a mysterious disease. Appetite and digestion failed, paralysis of the tongue occasionally distorted his speech, and his mind began to break down. A wise physician diagnosed his case as mental in origin.

"In truth, as al-Ghazali later confessed in his remarkable autobiography, he had lost belief in the capacity of reason to sanction the Mohammedan faith. The hypocrisy of his orthodox teaching had become unberable.

"In 1094 he left Baghdad, ostensibly on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Actually he went into seclusion, seeking silence, contemplation, and peace. Unable to find in science the support he sought for his crumbling faith, he turned from the outer to the internal world. There, he thought, he found a direct and immaterial reality which offered a firm basis for belief in a spiritual universe.

"He subjected sensation -- on which materialism seemed to rest, to critical scrutiny -- accused the senses of making the stars appear small when, to be so visible from afar, they must be vastly larger than the earth -- and concluded from a hundred such examples tht sensation by itself could be no certain test of truth. Reason was higher and corrected one sense with another but in the end it too rested on sensation. Perhaps there was in man a form of knowledge, a guide to truth, surer than reason?

"Al-Ghazali felt that he had found this in the introspective meditation of the mystic. The Sufi came closer than the philosopher to the hidden core of reality.

"The populace smiled tolerantly at these sacred worldlings but lavished worship upon sincere devotees -- ascribed to them miraculous deeds and powers -- honored them as saints -- celebrated their birthdays -- prayed for their intercession with Allah -- and made pilgrimages to their tombs.

"Mohammedanism, like Christianity, was a developing and adjustable religion, which would have starled a reborn Mohammed or Christ.

"As orthodoxy triumphed, toleration waned. From Harun al-Rashid on, the so-called 'Ordinance of Omar,' formerly ignored was increasingly observed. Theoretically, though not always in practice, non-Moslems were now required to wear distinguishing yellow stripes on their clothing. They were forbidden to ride on horseback, but might use an ass or a mule. They were not to build new churches or synagogues, but might repair old ones. No cross was to be displayed outside a church, no church bell should ring.

"Non-Moslem children were not to be admitted to Moslem schools, but could have schools of heir own. This is still the letter of the law -- not always enforced -- in Islam. Nevertheless there were 45,000 Christians in tenth-century Baghdad. Christian funeral processions passed unharmed through the streets and Moslem protests continued against the employment of Christians and Jews in high office.

"The Seljuqs had brought new strength to Eastern Islam. But they too had succumbed to ease and had allowed the empire of Malik Shah to break down into autonomous kingdoms culturally brilliant and militarily weak.

"Religious fanaticism and racial antipathies divided the people into bitter sects and frustrated any united defense against the Crusades.

"Meanwhile, on the plains and deserts of northwestern Asia, the Mongols thrived on hardships and primitive fertility. They lived in tents or the open air, following their herds to fresh pastures, clothed themselves in oxhides, and studied with relish the arts of war. These new Huns, like their kin of eight centuries back, were experts with dagger and sword, and arrows aimed from their flying steeds. If we may believe the Christian missionary Giovanni de Piano Carpini, 'they eat anything edible, even lice.' They had as little repugnance to feeding on rats, cats, dogs, and human blood as our most cultured contemporaries to eating eels and snails.

"Jenghiz Khan (1167-1227) -- i.e. the Great King -- disciplined them with severe laws into an irresistible force and led them to the conquest of Central Asia from the Volga to the Chinese Wall. During the absence of Jenghiz Khan from his capital at Karokorum, a Mongol chieftain rebelled against him and formed a league with Ala al-Din Myhammad, the Shah of the independent state of Khwarizan.

"Jenghiz suppressed the rebellion and sent the Shah an offer of peace. The offer was accepted but shortly thereafter two Mongol merchants in Transoxiana were executed as spies by Muhammad's governor of Otra. Jenghiz demanded the extradition of the governor. Muhammad refused, beheaded the chef of the Mongol embassy and sent its other members back without their beards.

"Another army, under Jenghiz' son Jagatai, captured and sacked Otrar.

"A third army, under Jenghiz himself, burned Bokhara to the ground, raped thousands of women, and massacred 30,000 men. Samarkand and Balkh surrendered at his coming, but suffered pillage and wholesale slaughter.

"A full century later Ibn Baruta described these cities as still largely in ruins.

"Jenghiz' son Tule led 70,000 men through Khurasan, ravaging every town on their march. The mongols placed captives in their van, and gave them a choice between fighting their fellow men in front, or being cut down from behind.

"Merv was captured by treachery and was burned to the ground. Its libraries, the glory of Islam, were consumed in the conflagration. Its inhabitants were allowed to march out through the gates with their treasures, only to be massacred and robbed in detail. This slaughter (the Moslem historians aver) occupied thirteen days and took 1,300,000 lives.

"Nishapur resisted long and bravely but succumbed (1221), Every man, woman, and child there was killed except 400 artisan-artists who were sent to Mongolia. The heads of the slain were piled up in a ghastly pyramid. The lovely city of Rayy, with its 3000 mosques and its famous pottery kilns, was laid in ruins and (a Moslem historian tells us). Its entire population was put to death.

"Muhammad's son Jalal ud-Din collected a new army of Turks, gve Jenghiz battle on the Indus, was defeated and fled to Delhi. Herat, having rebelled against its Mongol governor, was punished with the slaughter of 60,000 inhabitants. This ferocity was part of the military science of the Mongols. It sought to strike a paralyzing terror into the hearts of later opponents and to leave no possibility of revolt among the defeated.

"For five centuries, from 700 to 1200, Islam led the world in power, order, and extent of government -- in refinement of manners -- in standards of living -- in humane legislation and religious toleration -- in literature, scholarship, science, medicine, and philosophy

"In architecture it yielded the palm, in the twelfth century, to the cathedrals of Europe. Gothic sculpture found no rival in inhibited Islam. Moslem art exhusted itself in decoration, and suffered from narrowness of range and monotony of style.

"But within its self-imposed limits it has never been surpassed.

"In Islam art and culture were more widely shared than in medieval Christendom. Kings were calligraphers, and merchants, like physicins, might be philosophers.

"In sexual morality during these centuries, Christendom probably excelled Islam, although there was not much to choose. Christian monogamy, however evaded in practice, kept the sexual impulse within bounds and slowly raised the status of woman, while Islam darkened the face of woman with purdah and the veil.

"The Church succeeded in limiting divorce. Homosexual diversions seem never to have attained, even in Renaissance Italy, the spread and freedom allowed them not in Mohammedan law but in Moslem life.

"The Moslems seem to have been better gentlemen than their Christian peers. They kept their word more frequently, showed more mercy to the defeated, and were seldom guilty of such brutality as marked the Christian capture of Jerusalem in 1099.

"Christian law continud to use ordeal by battle, water, or fire while Moslem law was developing an advanced jurisprudence and an enlightened judiciary.

"The Mohammedan religion, less original than the Hebrew, less embracing in eclecticism than the Christian, kept its creed and ritual simpler and purer, less dramatic and colorful, than the Christian, and made less concession to the natural polytheism of mankind. It resembled Protestantism in scorning the aid and play that Mediterranean religion offered to the imagination and the senses. But it bowed to popular sensualism in its picture of paradise.

"The figure and story of Jesus touched the Moslem soul and appeared sympathetically in Moslem poetry and art.

"The influence of Islam upon Christendom was varied and immense.

"From Islam Christian Europe received foods, drinks, drugs, medicaments, armor, heraldry, art motives and tastes, industrial and commercial articles and techniques, maritime codes and ways, and often the words for these things -- orange, lemon, sugar, syrup, sherbet, julep, elixir, jar, azure, arabesque, mattress, sofa, muslin, satin, fustian, bazaar, caravan, check, tariff, traffic, douane, magazine, risk, sloop, barge, cable, admiral.

"The game of chess came to Europe from India via Islam and picked up Persian terms on the way. Checkmate is from the Persian shah mat -- 'the king is dead.'

"Some of our musical instruments bear in their names evidence of their Semitic origin -- lute, rebeck, guitar, tambourine. The poetry and music of the troubadours came from Moslem Spain into Provence and from Moslem Sicily into Italy.

"Arabic descriptions of trips to heaven and hell may have shared in forming The Divine Comedy. Hindu fables and numerals entered Europe in Arabic dress or form.

"Moslem science preserved and developed Greek mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine and transmitted this Greek heritage, considerably enriched, to Europe. Arabic scientifc terms -- algebra, zero, cipher, azimuth, alembic, zenith, almanac -- still lie imbedded in European speech. Moslem medicine led the world for half a millennium.