It is, moreover, to be regretted that a general study has not been made of the Arabic buildings in Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and even India, of the different epochs of Arabic rule. It would offer peculiar characters useful in an exact determination of style. We have reason to hope that skilful artists will soon supply this want.
COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY
The empire of the caliphs, in its extent, its rich soil, varied climate, people, and regulated condition of its provinces, naturally excited commercial speculation. The productions of Spain, Barbary, Egypt, Abyssinia, Arabia, Persia, and Russia, those of countries bordering on the Caspian Sea, as well as all Indian and China merchandise, came to Mecca, Medina, Cufa, Bassorah, Damascus, Baghdad, Mosul, and Madain (Modein). The founding of colonies had created new business centres and opened up important routes.
The Arabs were, moreover, devoted to industry by that same law which made of work a duty, and commended commerce and agriculture as meritorious and pleasing to God. Merchants and their callings elicited equal respect. Governors of provinces, generals, and servants did not blush to be known as Khayat the tailor, Atari the druggist, Jauhari the jeweller, etc. Free passage for merchandise through armies and the safety of the high-roads were maintained at all points. Wells and cisterns were dug in the desert, caravanseries were built at certain distances where travellers could find necessary help at a moderate cost.
Relations existed between Spain and the limits of eastern Asia; an Arab fleet had gone through the Straits of Gibraltar, and a tempest which drove them ashore hindered the possible honour of discovering the Azores, and perhaps America. But though restricted to the old world, the Moslems gave a strong impulse to every kind of human industry. Spain enriched herself with the products of Arabian agriculture and manufactures. Cane sugar, rice, cotton, saffron, ginger, myrrh, ambergris, pistachio, bananas, henna for dyeing, mohaleb to promote plumpness, were objects of exchange in the peninsula; tapestry of Cordova leather, Toledo blades, Murcia cloth made from beautiful wool, Granadan, Almerian, and Sevillian silks, and gun-cotton were sought in all parts of the world. Sulphur, mercury, copper, iron were exploited successfully; the finely tempered Spanish steel caused the helmets and cuirasses coming from its foundries to be quickly bought up. The environs of Seville were covered with olive trees, and contained one hundred thousand oil farms or oil-mills. The province of Valencia gave to Europe southern fruits. From the ports of Malaga, Cartagena, Barcelona, and Cadiz there were large exportations; and Christian nations patterned their maritime regulations upon those of the Arabs.
Under the Moors, as M. Darny has said, Toledo had 200,000 inhabitants and Seville 300,000; to-day the population is rated at 21,000 for the one, and 143,000 for the other. Cordova was eight leagues in circumference, had 60,000 palaces, and 283,000 houses. To-day she has scarcely 56,000 inhabitants. The diocese of Salamanca then included 125 towns or boroughs; this number is now reduced to 13. Seville had 6000 workers on silk alone, yet in 1742 only 10,000 could be counted in the peninsula among both silk and wool factories.
The geographer Edrisi, who visited Spain in the middle of the eleventh century, assures us there were in the royal kingdom of Jaen more than 600 towns and hamlets working in silk. The expulsion of the Moors had for Spain as disastrous results as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had for French commerce; and Cardinal Ximenes, desiring that even the remembrance of the service they had rendered should be destroyed, ordered in a decree worthy of barbarous times 84,000 Arabian manuscripts to be burned in the public squares of Granada.
The northerly coasts of Africa had also shown great commercial development. Numerous factories arose, and the Mauretanian Tingitana rivalled the peninsula in its manufacturing and rural activity. The country of Sous recalled Andalusia in its fertility and in the intelligence of its inhabitants. The East caught the infection of this general industry; at Siraf and Aden there was an exchange of goods between China, India, Persia, Ethiopia, and Egypt. Nubian slaves and Habasch, tiger skins, silk, cotton, ivory, and gold-dust from Zanzibar came from Ethiopia. India and China sent stuffs, saddles, sandalwood, spices, ebony, lead, tin, pearls, and precious stones. From Aden these goods were transported to Jiddah, then to Suez, and shared among Egyptian ports and Syrian coast towns. Countries bordering on the Caspian Sea bought stores at the Cabul fair; caravans from Samarcand to Aleppo distributed Chinese silks, cashmere cloth, musk, and medicinal drugs of Turkestan.
We have set forth the causes and principal effects of the great wave of civilisation poured forth in the Middle Ages by the Arabs, which rolled from the columns of Hercules to the confines of Asia. It remains, to complete this vast picture, only to say a few words on certain Arabian discoveries, which altered the literary, political, and military conditions of the entire world. These were paper, the compass, and gunpowder.
PAPER, COMPASS, AND GUNPOWDER
One has already seen how many useful and important inventions have been transmitted to us by the Arabs, and even although they were not perhaps the originators they must not be refused the glory of having brought them to the light and of having propagated them from one end of the world to the other. This is really what they did with paper, the compass, and gunpowder.
A belief, founded on certain apocryphal writing, that the Chinese knew the use thereof at a far distant epoch, has been considered sufficient to rob the Arabs of the honour of having bequeathed these inventions to Europe, but this is an injustice. It might be said that printing existed in China from the eighth century; yet the names of Gutenberg, Faust, and Schoeffer are not less illustrious. Would not the Arabs, if they had taken tissue paper from them, have also borrowed the art of printing had it then been known? Would those of the Celestial Empire ever practically have used chance discoveries? What use have they made of the compass, they who still believed in 1850 that there was a burning furnace at the South Pole; and have they ever applied gunpowder and utilized its power in as many ways as the Arabs?
It must be remembered that at the siege of Mecca in 690 a kind of bomb was already in use, and that in Egypt in the thirteenth century powdered nitre was used to throw projectiles to a great distance with a noise like thunder. It is also mentioned on the occasion of a naval battle between the king of Tunis and the emir of Seville in the eleventh century, in 1308 at the siege of Gibraltar, in 1324 at that of Baeza; also as used by Ismail, king of Granada in 1340 and by Algeciras in 1342, and Ferreras says positively that the balls were shot by means of powder. The Spanish thenceforth made use of it, and one sees the European armies little by little provided with cannon, while no mention is made of their trials and attempts which would necessarily have preceded the organisation of artillery if the actual invention of gunpowder had originated with Christian nations as some writers and historians have long claimed.
Early Bronze Cannon
With regard to the compass, nothing proves that the Chinese used it for navigation, while we find the Arabs using it in the eleventh century, not only for sea voyages, but in caravan journeys through the desert, and to determine the azimuth of the Kiblah, that is the direction of the Moslem oratories towards Mecca. It was the same with paper. Towards the year 650 silk paper was already being made at Samarcand and Bokhara. In 706 Jusuf Amron at Mecca thought of substituting cotton for silk; hence the “damask paper,” of which Greek historians speak. In Spain, where linen and hemp were more common, arose factories for linen paper. “The Xativa paper,” says the geographer Edrisi, “is excellent and incomparable.” Valencia and Catalonia soon afterwards proved formidable rivals to Xativa (Jativa). In the thirteenth century Arabian paper was used at Castile, whence it penetrated into France, Italy, England, and Germany. But Arabian manuscripts always led in the fineness and glossiness of their paper, as well as in the choice of ornamentation in lively and brilliant colours.