MARVELOUS INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY OF MOORS AND JEWS.—MOORS EXCEL THE JEWS IN THE SCIENCES.—THEY INTRODUCE THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES.—THEIR PROGRESS IN ASTRONOMY.—ABSURD REFUTATIONS BY THE CHRISTIAN CLERGY.—THEIR RESEARCHES INTO CHEMISTRY, ZOOLOGY AND GEOLOGY.—THEY ANTICIPATE MODERN DISCOVERIES.—EUROPE'S INGRATITUDE.

We turn next in our review of the intellectual labors of the Moors and Jews in Spain, during the period that extends from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the fifteenth century, to an examination of their position in the sciences. The deplorably benighted state of contemporaneous Europe prepares us to expect little or nothing in this noblest department of human knowledge, and our surprise is therefore so much the greater as we gaze upon, and ponder over, the mighty strides made by the Moors and by the Jews on the highways of science. The impetus in this special branch seemed to have come from the Arabs. The few words of Ali, the fourth Arabian caliph: "Eminence in science is the highest honor; he dies not who gives life to learning," seems to have taken as deep roots within the minds of the Arabians, and to have yielded far more precious fruits, than did the Koran the vast volume of his distinguished father-in-law; Mohammed.

For centuries the Arab-Moors led the world in this department. Here the Jews cannot lay claim to rivalry; they were collaborators, but nothing more. In justice to the Jews, however, we shall add, that there are some who differ from us in our conclusion. Some give to the Jews an equal rank with the Moors, others claim that the point under discussion is still debatable. And we must not treat their objection lightly. We must not forget that in treating of these scientists of Spain, we are dealing with men known under Arabic names; beyond a knowledge of their scientific works we know little or nothing about them. Concerning their religion, history maintains a commendable silence; the Mohammedans preferring, at this period, the ink of science to the blood of martyrs. Knowing of the scientific scholars nothing more than that their works are written in Arabic, and that their names are Arabic, the canons of criticism will not permit us to conclude that a scientist who writes in Arabic, and whose name is Arabic, is necessarily also a Mohammedan by faith. The records give incontestable proof that many and many of the distinguished Jewish scholars of that period wrote in Arabic, and went under an Arabic name, who, but for a chance article of work from their pen upon a Hebrew subject, might have been classed to-day as Arab-Moors by race and Mohammedan by creed. Be this as it may. That point will never be definitely settled, and as long as a doubt remains, the Arab-Moors may justly claim the benefit of the doubt, and the Jews shall be the last to contest their claims of superiority in the sciences during the Middle Ages over every other race or creed.

Entering upon our subject, and beginning at the root of the tree of science, we make the pleasing discovery that to the Arab-Moors of Spain belongs the honor of having been the first to generally introduce in Europe, for scientific and industrial and commercial purposes, the science of arithmetic. Had they achieved nothing else, the introduction of this most needful of all the branches of mathematics alone, would have entitled them to a distinguished place among the world's benefactors. That introduction was the starting point of a new progress. Its use and development made possible the higher mathematics and analytical mechanics and astronomy, and every other science discovered since, and hailed with delight. Little do we think to-day when we pride ourselves on the startling achievements of our astronomers and meteorologists and other scientists, when we speak of the miracles they work in space and time, of the ascensions they make to the remotest of the nebulÆ, and of their holding communion there with stars and worlds and solar systems whose light has not yet reached the earth, little do we think when we speak of electricity obeying our every wish, and of steam yoked in our service, and of the countless other wonders of modern science, little do we think that for all these blessings we are lastingly indebted to the Arab-Moors, and to their assistants, the Jews, for their faithful labors in mathematics. Little do we think that we are pronouncing Arabic words when we speak of the "zero" or the "cipher", the "naught,"—that most important of all figures, upon which the most needful of all arithmetical contrivances is based—the decimal system. And when we remember that the prosperity and progress of every country in Europe dates from the introduction of the Arabian figures[22] and when we realize the clumsiness and uselessness of the Hebrew and Greek and Latin alphabet figures, in vogue in Europe before the entrance of the Arab-Moors into Spain, and when we try to work out a problem of multiplication, say ninety-nine multiplied by ninety-nine, in accordance with the notation of the Arabic nine digits and cipher, and then, in accordance with the Roman alphabet figures, XCIX times XCIX, then, perhaps, will we most readily give thankful praise to those to whom Europe owes so magnificent a boon—to those who, with so simple an invention, opened the avenues of prosperity and loosened the fetters that had shackled the advance of science.

Encouraged by their success in arithmetic, they turned towards a higher branch of mathematics and gave to Europe the science of numbers and quantity, and named it algebra ("al'jabara," to bind parts together). Whether, as some claim, the Arab-Moors obtained their knowledge of algebra from their schools in Bagdad or Damascus, who, in their turn, had derived it from the Hindoos, or whether, as others claim, the Jews, in their diligent translations from the early Greek geometricians into Arabic, must have come across, and followed up the algebraic trace, which is supposed to exist in the treatise of Diaphantus (350 A. C.), or whether the Moorish claim be the true one, that the honor of having invented algebra belongs to one of their own mathematicians, who flourished about the middle of the ninth century, to Mohammed ben Musa, or Moses,[23] whoever the inventors be of this valuable branch of mathematics, unanimity of opinion prevails concerning one point, and that is, the Arab-Moors and Jews first introduced algebra into Europe. Still more Ibn Musa (or Ben Moses) developed it to the solution of quadratic equations, and Ibn Ibrahim (Ben Abraham) to the solution of cubic equations, Ibn Korrah (or Ben Korah) to the application of algebra to geometry, laying thus the foundation of analytical geometry. Geometry led them to trigonometry, which they elevated to a practical science by substituting sines for chords and by establishing formulas and tables of tangents and cotangents and secants and cosecants. From trigonometry Al Baghadadi advanced to land surveying, and wrote on it a treatise so excellent, that by some it has been declared to be a copy of Euclid's lost work on that subject.

The unbiased student, who searches diligently among the achievements of the Moors and Jews, will soon detect, not only a systematic contrivance on the part of the literature of Europe to put out of sight our obligations to them in science, but a bold effort, wherever a chance presents itself, to wrest their hard toil from them, and bestow it upon some one, who is not so unfortunate as to be Saracen or Jew. But "injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever." The real truth can not be much longer hidden, and if the chapters of this volume have no other effect than simply to do justice to the memory of those who have toiled and who have suffered, that we may enjoy, to-day, the blessings of our civilization, we shall regard our labors amply rewarded.

We have digressed. Let us return to our theme. They toiled for science sake, not for fame. They looked for none. When Spain itself, indebted to them for all her blessings, repays so miserably their faithful services, why should they look to Europe for recognition? "High minds," it has been truly said, "are as little affected by such unworthy returns for services, as the sun is by those fogs which the earth throws up between herself and his light."[24]

And so, expecting no thanks, and working for none, they advanced, with their present achievements as stepping stones, to the study of astronomy. And marvelous, almost incredible, is their success in this department. They determine the altitude of celestial bodies by means of the astrolabe. They register all the stars in their heaven, giving to those of the first magnitudes the names they still bear on our celestial maps and globes, writing thus indelibly their impress upon the celestial heaven, though it be denied them in the literature of Europe. They give us the words "azimuth," "zenith," "nadir," "almanac," and others. They compute time by the oscillations of the pendulum, and determine the true length of the year. They discover the theory of the refraction of light and ascertain the curvilinear path of a ray of light through the air. They explain the horizontal sun and moon, and why we see those bodies before they have risen and after they have set. They measure the height of the atmosphere and determine it to be nearly fifty-eight and one half miles. They give the true theory of the twilight, and of the twinkling of the stars. They not only know the spheroidal form of the earth, but approximately its diameter and circumference. Averroes discovers the spots upon the sun. Kepler alludes honorably to the observations of Levi ben Gerson, and Copernicus to those of Profiat Duran, and Laplace accepts Ibn Musa's proof of the diminution of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, and Ibn Junis' proof of the obliquity of the ecliptic. They invent the first pendulum clock. They build the first observatory in Europe, the Giralda, (1196 A. C.) turned into a belfry after the expulsion of the Moors and Jews. They almost discover the laws of gravity, considering it terrestrial, reserving it for Newton to teach that it is universal. Rabbi Isaac ben Sid prepares for Alphonso X., king of Castile, new astronomical tables, for which Alphonso takes the credit, names them the Alphonsine tables, and is modest enough to remark: "That if God had called him (the king) into His councils when He created the universe, things would have been in a better and simpler order."

The Church, in the meanwhile, does her best to refute the "ungodly scientific teachings" of the Moors and Jews. The argument of the "Sohar" that the earth revolves upon its own axis and around the sun (a Jewish teaching in the twelfth century, anticipating that of Copernicus), the shining lights of the church nail to the ground with clinchers from the Bible such as these: "The sun runneth about from one end of the heaven to the other," and "the foundations of the earth are so firmly fixed that they cannot be moved." The absurdity of the existence of the antipodes they prove to their full satisfaction in this manner: "It is impossible that any inhabitants exist on the opposite side of the earth, since no such race is recorded by Scriptures among the descendants of Adam." Again, "we are told by St. Paul that all men are made to live 'upon the face of the earth,' from which it clearly follows that they can not live upon more faces than one or upon the back." Again, "how could men exist on the other side of the earth, since on the day of judgment, being on the other side, they could not see the Lord ascending through the air?" Ergo, the teachings of the Church alone are the true theories of this universe, "concerning which it is not lawful for a Christian to doubt."

But the Moors and Jews treated with contempt this puerile opposition, little thinking that the Church of "Love unto all men" has stronger and more convincing weapons than tongue and pen to prove her points. They persevered in their path so well begun. They turned to the physical sciences. They originated chemistry. They discovered some of the most important reagents, such as the nitric, sulphuric and hydrochloric acids, and alcohol, which still bears its Arabic name. They knew the chemical affinities of gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead and quicksilver. They invented various apparatus for distillation, sublimation, fusion, filtration, etc. They constructed tables of specific gravities. In geology, Abu Othman wrote a valuable work. In zoology, the following extract from a chapter of Avicenna (Ibn Sinai or Ben Sinai) on the origin of the mountains, which reads as if it were written by one of the most advanced geologists of our day, will best indicate the heights to which they attained in this science. "Mountains" said Ibn Sinai (980-1037), "may be due to two different causes. Either they are upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effects of water, which, cutting for itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds—some soft, some hard. The winds and waters disintegrate the one, but leave the other intact. That water has been the main cause of these facts is proved by the existence of fossil remains of aquatic and other animals on many mountains."[25]

But little has been cited here concerning the position of the Moors and Jews in the sciences. The field is too vast and the scope of this volume will not permit us to enter into greater details. He that would have fuller knowledge upon this theme let him peruse the following works, to which I am largely indebted for the facts stated above. "Geschichte der Arabischen Aerzte and Naturforscher," Wuestenfeld; "Conquest of Spain," "Book V.," by Coppe; "Eastern Caliphate," Stanislaus Guyard; "History of Algebra," Phillip Kelland; "History of Arithmetic," George McArthur; "Astronomy," R. A. Proctor; "The Intellectual Development of Europe," Draper; "Conflict Between Religion and Science," Draper; "Rationalism in Europe," Lecky.

Yet, even though our synoptical review has been brief we have seen and heard enough to understand fully why in the year 1492, and within the realm of Spain, Wisdom mourns and Knowledge wails, and Science is broken-hearted and Europe trembles. Anguish seizes upon our soul at the thought, yet a little while, and all this wondrous intellectual advance, so active and so promising will be torn off the soil of Europe, root and all, and darkness, cruel darkness, ignorance, cruel ignorance, will ascend the throne once more and usher into the scenes of life stagnation, corruption, suffering, despair.

For science and for humanity's sake we venture to approach the princes of the realm and prelates of the church and plead for mercy. "No!" is the stern reply of Ferdinand and Isabella, "Spain is polluted by the presence of the accursed Moors and Jews." "Avaunt!" shouts Cardinal Ximenes, "Catholicism is in danger where Moorish and Jewish brain is at work." "Mercy ye ask for," fairly shrieks the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, "the Church knows no mercy for the Moorish and Jewish infidel dogs. Begone, or their fate is yours."

We are not yet prepared for death. Our task is not yet done. Many a Moorish and Jewish achievement remains still to be spoken of, and so we shall hasten our review, while yet we may speak of their position in literature.