Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/458

I. 314 THE SPANISH ARABS. PART his native desert as free, and almost as uncivilized, as before the coming of his apostle. The lan- guage, which was once spoken along the southern shores of the Mediterranean and the whole extent of the Indian ocean, is broken up into a variety of discordant dialects. Darkness has again settled over those regions of Africa, which were illumined by the light of learning. The elegant dialect of the Koran is studied as a dead language, even in the birth-place of the prophet. Not a printing-press at this day is to be found throughout the whole Arabian Peninsula. Even in Spain, in Christian Spain, alas ! the contrast is scarcely less degrading. A death-like torpor has succeeded to her former intellectual activity. Her cities are emptied of the population with which they teemed in the days of the Saracens. Her climate is as fair, but her fields no longer bloom with the same rich and variegated husbandry. Her most interesting monuments are from that in which they had been ities, indiscriminately, no part of presented by the principal Spanish his book can be cited as a genuine historians. Arabic version, except indeed the The first volume, which may last sixty pages, comprising the be considered as having receiv- conquest of Granada, which Car- ed the last touches of its author, donne professes in liis Preface to embraces a circumstantial narra- have drawn exclusively from an live of the great Saracen invasion, Arabian manuscript. Conde, on of the subsequent condition of the other hand, professes to have Spain under the viceroys, and of adhered to his originals with such the empire of the Omcyades ; un- scrupulous fidelity, that " the Eu- doubtedly the most si)lendid por- ropean reader may feel that he tiou of Arabian annals, but the is perusing an Arabian author"; one, unluckily, which has been most and certainly very strong internal copiously illustrated in the popu- evidence is afforded of the truth of lar work compiled by Cardonne tliis assertion, in the peculiar na- from liic oriental manuscripts in tional and religious spirit which the Royal Library at Paris. But pervades the work, and in a cer- as this author has followed the tain florid gasconade of style, corn- Spanish and the oriental autlior- mon with the oriental writers. It