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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of Gibraltar, England’s bulwark of pride since 1779, still preserves the name of the Saracen hero who took it—Gibel-al-Taric, the Moorish substitute for the original, classic Calpe Most of the Spanish towns submitted after this, without opposition, and before the end of a year the whole of Spain passed under the sway of the Moors, except a solitary corner in the northern part, Asturias, now Oviedo, where Christianity preserved a foothold. It required nearly eight hundred years to regain it from the Moslem sway.
Once entered on their career of conquest, the Saracen hosts had almost simultaneously spread over Syria, the valley of the Euphrates, Persia, and Egypt, thus fulfilling their destiny in becoming a “ great nation.” Nor was their progress brilliant only in the arts of war. The Arab “ stood in the presence of his brethren” as a learner, for learning was mostly in the hands of the Jews and Christians. The caravan trade first opened channels of communication and more extended contact with the world which they conquered, and the great cities of the East and West supplied instructors. The ancient seats of civilization throughout the East, Northern Africa, Spain, and the Mediterranean Isles bestowed upon them the rich legacy of letters, which they translated into their native language. Thus the mind of the Moor became loosened from the fetters of the religion which had enthralled it, and became illuminated with the reflected light of the word, just as Europe has been rescued from the dark superstitions of Romanism by the electric spark of the Protestant Bible. In natural science, physics, medicine; in botany, mathematics, astronomy, alchemy and the arts, they equaled and often surpassed the Chinese, Jews, Gentiles and Christians, whose pupils they were. Seats of learning were located, as the demand for them arose, at Samar- cand and Bokhara beyond the Oxus, at Ispahan in Persia, at Bagdad on the Tigris, at Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, at Fez and Morocco in Western Africa, at Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Granada, Salamanca and Alcala in Spain, and even in Sicily. The Moors “ studied everything and wrote on everything they studied.” The libraries became phenomenal in their growth. The library at Bagdad was enriched by thousands of volumes and precious manuscripts. It rapidly rose to splendor, and was the center of enlightenment until Cordova, in her beauty, rivaled and eclipsed her. Bagdad, on the Tigris, with its gorgeous palaces and splendid mosques, was the literary metropolis of the East, and Cordova, upon 'the Guadalquiver, of the West, while Cairo, upon the Nile, divided the prestige of each as the metropolis of Egypt.
The library of El Hakem II., of Spain, was stored in his palace at Cordova, and is said to have numbered six hundred thousand volumes. What wonder that the light that shone from the Moorish schools should have attracted the more poorly supplied scholars of Christian Europe, and that the fair surroundings of the Spanish university towns, where schools were attached to every mosque, beguiled them from their coarser northern homes! Cordova was the Delphi of the peninsula, while the sterner Goths retired to the rugged Asturias. The Crusades aided in awakening the mind of Europe by emphasizing this contrast of the culture and refinement of the East with that of the barren North.
The genius of the Moors was poetic, and their songsters outnumber those of all other peoples put together. The “ Poema del Cid,” the oldest as well as the finest ballad of the Iberian muse, gave birth to the latter songs of Spanish chivalry.
In romance, the store was more meager, but where has any later achievement eclipsed the splendor and charm of the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainment?” For a hundred years it has been a European classic, one of the few books that delights all classes and all ages. Haroun-al-Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad, is almost as familiar to children as Santa Claus. Aladdin’s lamp will serve to illuminate the day-dreams of the young as long as girls covet dancing slippers and boys long for racing ponies.
In architecture the Moors have given expression to their religion. The shifting tent of the Bedouin gave place to edifices resembling those built by Christian architects from Constantinople, who imitated those of Greece and Rome, and more ancient predecessors, with one noticeable distinction—the fanciful ornamentation known as