The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 35
made long and laborious journeys to sit at the feet of some famous
master. For example, al-Ghazzali, born at Tus in north-east Persia,
studied at Nishapur, Baghdad, and Damascus, a total journey of
some 1,400 miles.
Though Arabic was the principal language of scholars, with
Persian steadily increasing in importance, only a small minority of
the scientists and scholars of the Muslim world were Arabs by race.
An analysis of the origins of the leading scholars and scientists of the
Muslim East indicates that over the whole chronological range of
Muslim culture from its rise to its decline Persia and Transoxiana
furnished consistently some 40 per cent, of the distinguished names.
Christians were predominant in the initial period of the translators,
but fell away later, and Jews in the East were relatively unimportant
in contrast to their great contribution to the culture of Muslim
Spain.1
The assessment of the contribution of the Muslim world to
science and scholarship has tended to run to two extremes. On the
one hand, some protagonists of Greek civilization have been will-
ing to see little originality in the Muslim achievement, and to con-
cede them only the credit for preserving and handing on what sur-
vived of Greek learning to Western Europe in the later Middle
Ages. On the other hand, modern Arab writers, and also some
European historians of science, reacting too far against the exces-
sive exaltation of Greek civilization by students of the classics,
have claimed too much for the medieval Muslim scientists, exag-
gerating their original achievement out of all proportion to
what they had received from the Greeks or from their oriental fore-
runners. The true assessment lies between these two extremes, and •
has been well embodied in a vivid word-picture: 'Islamic medicine
and science reflected the light of the Hellenic sun, when, its day had
fled; and shone like a moon, illuminatiiig the darkest night of the
1 This is based on data given by A. Mieli, pp. cit., for three successive periods:
(I) the period of translators and first beginnings, eighth-ninth centuries; (II) the
* Golden Age', tenth-eleventh centuries; (III) the age of decline, twelfth-
thirteenth centuries:
I II III
Christians 12 8 *5
Jews 034
Persians (including Transoxiana) 10 23 18
Iraqis 293
Syrians 379
Egyptians 145
Arabians 000
In Spain one-quarter of seventy-three names cited by Mieli are those of Jews.