204 THE RELIGION OF THE CRESCENT.

contrary, there is in them that which will lead us astray, then GOD protect us from them." In obedience to these commands Sa'd cast some of the volumes into the rivers and others into the fire, until they all perished.

The period of the brief hey-day of Arabic learning coincided with that during which the House of 'Abbas ruled at Baghdad. The Khalifs of this family hardly even professed to

'Abbaside
Khalifash.

disguise their unbelief in Muhammadanism. A philosophical party known as the Rationalists1 ruled supreme,2 and orthodox Islam was almost entirely trodden down for a time. And therefore "An almost complete religious toleration prevailed;3 political disabilities had ceased to exist; and Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians shared with the 'Faithful' the emoluments and responsibilities of public life. The Khalifs invited to their court the eminent scholars of the Byzantine Empire.....The effects of

Rationalism.

this free life and intellectual activity are striking enough; but to credit them to the inspiring influence of Islam is absurd. Islam during this brief period was virtually set aside; and
1 Al Mu'tazalah
2 Sayyid Amir 'Ali confesses this ("Spirit of Islam"): "Distinguished scholars, prominent physicists, mathematicians, historians, all the world of intellect, in fact, including the Caliphs, belonged to the Mu'tazalite school" (p.610; cf. pp. 496, 520, 571, 646, &c. &c.). He rightly compares this philosophical party to that of the Rationalists in Europe.
3 Osborn, op. cit., pp. 265-6.
THE INFLUENCE OF ISLAM. 205

when it regained its ascendency the greatness and prosperity of the 'Abbasides withered like a flower severed from its root." Yet strangely enough there are not a few among us who attribute to Islam the very intellectual and spiritual energies which were really arrayed against1 orthodox Muhammadanism, and which vanished in utter extinction 2 as soon as the latter regained the power it had lost. From that time to this no second period of learning and science has ever recurred in any

Revival of Islam
the Deathblow
of Learning.

Muhammadan land. The Qur'an is exalted, reason and freedom of thought cannot exist along with it, and so the latter are swept aside. The Muhammadan empires have either entirely vanished, as in Spain, or are in a most decrepit state, like Turkey and Persia. They have long lost their repute for learning of whatever kind. Even in India it requires all the fostering care of the English Government to incite the Muslims to rival their long-oppressed Hindu fellow-countrymen in their use of our schools and colleges and in the avocations of public life. Islam is the enemy

1 Gibbon admits this (Chandos ed., p. 129): "The instinct of superstition was alarmed by the introduction even of the abstract sciences, and the more rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious curiosity of Al Ma'mun."
2 What Sayyid Amir 'Ali says on this subject is true: "A deathlike gloom settled upon Central Asia, which still hangs heavy and lowering over these unhappy countries" (op. cit., p. 589).