The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-09-06
THE SUN, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. 1yus:

| tilted Inc BEST OF DlVlsiOns Tor hnOwleQH
of the Climates, is a very complete work
| in which. besides the results of the author
! personal seryation, is given a summar
| OF all preexisting information. 1t wa
written in A ID. 9s5 This account OF Mos
lem countries has been frequently utilize,
by subsequent geographers. Al-ldrisi
| who was born at Ceuta in 1899, studied a
Cordova, travelled far and wide, and reached
the court of the Norman King Of Sicily
| Roger H., for whom he wrote in l154 hi
great geographical work, which has beer
translated into French, Yaqut, whose
memorable geographical dictionary has
been published by Wustenfeld, was born
Of Greek parents on territory belonging
to the Roman Empire OF the East toward
the year ITO. He was carried of in a
foray, taken to Bagdad and there sold as
| a slave. His owner, merchant, had him
carefully educated, and sent him. when
still quite young, on journeys connected
with his trade. Returning in 1894 from
his third voyage on the Persian Gulf, he
quarrelled with his master, and, being
turned out of the house. began to copy for
his livelihood. and studied under the gram
marian Al-Ukbari In 1918 he started on
his travels again. went first to Tabriz,
then left Mosul for Syria and Egypt, and
proceeded to Khorasan two years later.
To console himself for the loss of a Turkish
slave woman, from whom he had been con-
strained to part on account of his poverty.
he read the books in the libraries Of Merv.
and conceived the plan of an extensive
geographical lexicon. Having spent some
two years at Merv, he proceeded to Khiva
and Balkh, and. while in the latter town.
heard that Bokhara and Samarkand had
been taken by the Mongols. Terror
stricken by this catastrophe, he turned back
into Khorasan. and returned in 1920 to
Mosul, where he set himself to complete
his dictionary. which he finished in 1924
The perusal of the translations Of Aris-
totle gave birth to study Of philosophy,
which, however, in the Moslem world, re-
manned restricted within the comparatively
narrow circle OF learned men and thinkers.
1t never took hold Of the common people,
but was received with enthusiasm among
the laborers in the intellectual field. As
early as the days of the Caliph al-Mu-
tasim, treatise on politics was composed
at the sovereign's request and was pre-
coded by some reflections on psycholo gy
which may, perhaps, be looked upon as the
Oldest work of the kind in the Arabic tongue.
Al-Farabi belonged to Turkish family Of
trans KAMA, and knew no Arabic when he
came to Bagdad in the tenth century to
study philosophy and medicine. He has
been called the greatest philosopher that
Islam ever produced. 1t was certainly to
him that Avicenna owed his learning. He
filed seventy volumes with the notes he
took at lectures which expounded Ars-
totle's treatise on logic. He read the Greek
philosophers treatise on the soul two hun
dred times. His Utopian conception OF a
model State is manifestly an adaptation
Of Plato's Republic" Avicenna. born
A. d. $50, was the son Of the Governor
Of a small town near Bokhara. He studied
philosophy and medicine simultaneously
in the chief town of his native province.
His works cover the whole field Of the
learning cultivated in the East Of his day
Philosophy was his special subject In
medical science he produced a work which
was long accounted a masterpiece. In
Vulnerable commentaries have been writ
ten on this treatise His refutation of
astrology shows how completely the great
physician had cast off the most tenacious
prejudices OF his time. He was accused Of
having displayed enmity to the doctrines
Of the Koran In one Of his philosophi-
cal books.
There is no doubt that even in logic and
metaphysics the influence OF Avicenna on
the West was considerable.
The last Arabian philosopher who at
tanned great European reputation was
Algazel, who was born in 1888 He carried
into the field of philosophy the aims and
spirit of rigorous Moslem theologian.
BY way of preface to his Destruction Of
the Philosophers" he gave a summary
of the contemporary state Of the spec'la-
tive sciences, in which the contradictions
and errors of these sciences We're pointed
out as well as their divergence from the
orthodox faith. This indictment of liberal
thought. from the standpoint OF the theo-
logical school, was afterward answered
in Spain by Averroes, and there the answer
was effective for time but in Bagdad
the position taken by Algazel caused the
extinction of the light of philosophy. As
early as 1850 Bagdad saw library of philo-
sophical books burned by command of a
Caliph, and forty-two years later the SAME
place witnessed a strange scene in which
the books Of physician were first publicly
cursed and then committed to the flames.
while their owner was incarcerated. Philos-
ophy. which had only sprung up in Islam
when the purely Arabian influences ceased
to predominant, came to an end when the
sceptre Of the Moslem world passed away
from the Abbassid dynasty.
".
II has often been asserted that it was
the adoption of the Indian numerals which
permitted the Arabs to make great progress
in arithmetic As a matter of fact, the
adoption was of comparatively late date.
and the Arabs, like the Greeks, made Use
of the numerical value of the letters in their
own alphabet before they passed on to the
decimal system of enumeration, which
originated in India, and since. under he
name Of Arabic figures, has ira yelled round
the world We say that it originated in
India, but it possibly may have been
borrowed by the Indians from the enum-
Grating system of the dbdcUs lin which
the empty compartment represents zero),
probably invented at Alexandria in the
earliest centuries of the Christian era
The earliest Of the Arab mathematicians
was Abu Abdallah al-Khwarizmi; he came
from Khwarizm, the ancient Khanate of
Ehiya The word alpOrthm il derived