IT seems desirable that at this point, standing, as it were, on the threshold of modern Persian literature, we should consider in somewhat greater detail the state of development attained by the Science and Literature of the Muslims, which were the common heritage of all those nations who had embraced Islám. Persian is often spoken of as a very easy language, and this is true, so far as the language itself is concerned; but to be a good Persian scholar is very difficult, since it involves a thorough familiarity, not only with the Qu'rán, the Traditions of the Prophet, and the ancient Persian legends, but with the whole scientific and literary point of view which prevailed in the Muhammadan East. This applies more particularly to those writers who lived before the terrible devastation wrought by the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century, for never after this did the literature and science of the Muslims reach their old level, owing to the wholesale massacres and acts of incendiarism perpetrated by these hateful savages. The scientific outlook of the later writers is much more circum­scribed; the Arabic language ceased to be generally used throughout the realms of Islám; and, owing to the destruction of Baghdad and the Caliphate, there was no longer a metropolis of Culture and Learning to co-ordinate, concentrate, and combine the intellectual efforts of the Muslim world.

We possess fortunately three admirable sources of informa­tion on the range and scope of the literature and science of Islám at the period (i.e., the end of the tenth century of our era) of which we are speaking, viz.:—

(1) The Treatises of the Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá, or “Brethren of Purity,” that society of encyclopædists and philosophers of which we have already spoken in the last chapter.

(2) The Mafátíḥu'l-'Ulúm, or “Keys of the Sciences,” composed in A.D. 976 by Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad b. Yúsuf al-Kátib (“the Scribe”) of Khwárazm, and recently edited (Leyden, 1895) by Van Vloten.

(3) The Fihrist, or “Index,” of Abu'l-Faraj Muḥammad b. Isḥáq al-Warráq (“the Bookseller” or “Copyist”) of Baghdad, better known as Ibn Abí Ya'qúb an-Nadím, composed in A.D. 988, and edited by Flügel in 1871-2.

All these works are written in Arabic, and are of an essentially encyclopædic character. The two first deal more particularly with Philosophy and Science, and the third with Literature and “Culturgeschichte.” I propose to discuss them in the order given above, and to give some account of their scope and contents.

This society of encyclopædists flourished at Baṣra in the latter half of the tenth century of our era, and included, amongst the five or six of its members whose names have come down to us, men from Bust in the far east of Persia, Zanján in the north-west of the same country, and Jerusalem; while, of the remaining three, one was certainly Persian, and the other two were probably of Arab extraction.* This society summed up the philosophical and scientific learning of the time in a series of fifty-one anonymous tracts, written in a popular style, of which a complete edition was printed at Bombay in four volumes, comprising some 1,134 pages, in A.H. 1305-6 (A.D. 1887-9). Complete or partial translations of these tracts (Rasá'il) exist in several other Eastern languages, viz., Persian (lith. Bombay, A.D. 1884), Hindustání, and Turkish. For a knowledge of their contents and an exposition of their teach­ings we are indebted chiefly to the learned and indefatigable Dr. Friedrich Dieterici of Berlin, who published between 1858 and 1895 seventeen valuable monographs (including six texts) on Arabian Philosophy in the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, with especial reference to the Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá. The fifty-one tracts published by this fraternity covered the whole ground of Philosophy, as understood by its members, pretty exhaustively. But of course the aspirant after philosophical knowledge was supposed to be already well grounded in the ordinary subjects of study, which are thus enumerated by Dieterici:* —

1. Reading and Writing.

2. Lexicography and Grammar.

3. Calculation and Computation.

4. Prosody and the Poetic Art.

5. The Science of Omens and Portents.

6. The Science of Magic, Amulets, Alchemy, and Legerdemain.

7. Trades and Crafts.

8. Buying and Selling, Commerce, Agriculture, and Cattle-farming.

9. Biography and Narrative.

1. Knowledge of the Scripture (i.e., the Qur'án).

2. Exegesis of the Scripture.

3. The Science of Tradition.

4. Jurisprudence.

5. The Commemoration of God, Admonition, the Ascetic Life, Mysticism (Ṣúfíism), and the Ecstatic or Beatific Vision.

The philosophic studies properly so called include—

(i) Mathematics, Logic, &c. (ar-Riyáḍiyyát wa'l-Mantiqiyyát = <text in Greek script omitted>), discussed in Tracts i-xiii (= vol. i), which treat of such things as Number, Geometry, Astronomy, Geography, Music, Arithmetical and Geometrical Relation, Arts and Crafts, Diversity of Human Character, the <text in Greek script omitted>, the Categories, the <text in Greek script omitted>, and the <text in Greek script omitted>.

(ii) Natural Science and Anthropology (aṭ-Ṭabí'iyyát wa'l-Insániyyát = <text in Greek script omitted>), discussed in Tracts xiv-xxx (= vol. ii), which treat of Matter, Form, Space, Time, and Motion; Cosmogony; Production, Destruction, and the Elements; Meteoro­logy; Mineralogy; the Essence of Nature and its Manifestations; Botany; Zoology; Anatomy and Anthropology; Sense-perceptions; Embryology; Man as the Microcosm; the Development of the Soul (Psychical Evolution); Body and Soul; the true nature of Psychical and Physical Pain and Pleasure; Diversity of Languages (Philo­logy).

(iii) Pyschology (an-Nafsániyyát = <text in Greek script omitted>), discussed in Tracts xxxi-xl (= vol. iii), which treat of the Understanding, the World-Soul, &c.

(iv) Theology (al-Iláhiyyát = <text in Greek script omitted>), discussed in Tracts xli-li, which treat of the ideals and methods of the Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá; the Esoteric Doctrine of Islám; the Ordering of the Spirit World; the Occult Sciences.

The Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá were essentially synthetical and en-cyclopædic, seeking, as Dieterici says (Makrokosmos, p. iv), “to correlate all the materials of knowledge, so far as these had reached them; and to construct a synthetic view of the material and spiritual worlds which would guarantee an answer to all questions, conformable to the standpoint of the Culture of that time.” In general the topics discussed by them may be divided, according to Dieterici's plan, into—

(i) The Macrocosm, or the Development of the Universe as the Evolution of Plurality out of Unity, an Evolution by Emanation from God through Intelligence, Soul, Primal Matter, Secondary Matter, the World, Nature, and the Elements to the final Products, or “Threefold Progeny,” i.e., the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Kingdoms.

(ii) The Microcosm (Man), or the Return (“Remanatio”) from Plurality to Unity.

The general character of their system was a “combination of Semitic Monotheism with Neo-Platonism,” so that in a sense Philo-Judæus may, I suppose, be regarded as their prototype. To this synthesis they were impelled, as Dieterici implies (Makrokosmos, pp. 86-88), by a conviction of the unity of all truth, religious, philosophical, and scientific. Co-ordi­nating all the sciences known to them with this view and for this object, they studied each not only for its own sake, but in its relation to Truth as a whole, and endeavoured to embody their conceptions in an intelligible, attractive, and even popular form, to which end they made extensive use (as in their celebrated apologue of the Beasts and Man) of simile, allegory, and parable. In their prehistoric and scientific conceptions they were most influenced by Aristotle as regards Logic and Natural Science, by the Neo-Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists in their theories of Numbers and Emanations, by Ptolemy in their ideas of Natural Hïstory, and by Galen in Anthropology and Medicine, the whole synthesis being in­formed by a strong Pantheistic Idealism.* They believed that perfection was to be reached by a combination of the Greek Philosophy with the Arabian Religious Law.* They were the successors of al-Kindí and al-Fárábí, and the predecessors of the Great Avicenna, with whom, as Dieterici observes,* “the development of Philosophy in the East came to an end.” From the East this system, the so-called “Arabian Philosophy,” passed to the Moors in Spain; whence, after undergoing further development at the hands of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, † A.D. 1135), it became diffused in Europe, and gave rise to the Christian Scholastic Philosophy, to which, according to Dieterici,* it rendered the greatest service in restoring the Aristotelian element, which, in the earlier systems of Christian philosophy, had been almost ousted by the Neo-Platonist element.