After the fall of the Roman empire in the fifth century A.D., when the western world sank into barbarism, and the inhabitants, ever menaced by famine or the sword, found full occupation in struggling against civil wars, feudal tyranny, and the invasion of barbarians; when poetry was unknown, philosophy was proscribed as rebellion against religion, and barbarous dialects had usurped the place of that beautiful Latin language which had so long connected the nations of the West, and preserved to them so many treasures of thought and taste, the Arabians, who by their conquests and fanaticism had contributed more than any other nation to abolish the cultivation of science and literature, having at length established their empire, in turn devoted themselves to letters. Masters of the country of the magi and the Chaldeans, of Egypt, the first storehouse of human science, of Asia Minor, where poetry and the fine arts had their birth, and of Africa, the country of impetuous eloquence and subtle intellect--they seemed to unite in themselves the advantages of all the nations which they had thus subjugated. Innumerable treasures had been the fruit of their conquests, and this hitherto rude and uncultivated nation now began to indulge in the most unbounded luxury. Possessed of all the delights that human industry, quickened by boundless riches, could procure, with all that could flatter the senses and attach the heart to life, they now attempted to mingle with these the pleasures of the intellect, the cultivation of the arts and sciences, and all that is most excellent in human knowledge. In this new career, their conquests were not less rapid than they had been in the field; nor was the empire which they founded less extended. With a celerity equally surprising, it rose to a gigantic height, but it rested on a foundation no less insecure, and it was quite as transitory in its duration.
The Hegira, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, corresponds with the year 622 of our era, and the supposed burning of the Alexandrian library by Amrou, the general of the Caliph Omar, with the year 641. This is the period of the deepest barbarism among the Saracens, and this event, doubtful as it is, has left a melancholy proof of their contempt for letters. A century had scarcely elapsed from the period to which this barbarian outrage is referred, when the family of the Abassides, who mounted the throne of the Caliphs in 750, introduced a passionate love of art, of science, and of poetry. In the literature of Greece, nearly eight centuries of progressive cultivation succeeding the Trojan war had prepared the way for the age of Pericles. In that of Rome, the age of Augustus was also in the eighth century after the foundation of the city. In French literature, the age of Louis XIV. was twelve centuries subsequent to Clovis, and eight after the development of the first rudiments of the language. But, in the rapid progress of the Arabian empire, the age of Al Mamoun, the Augustus of Bagdad, was not removed more than one hundred and fifty years from the foundation of the monarchy. All the literature of the Arabians bears the marks of this rapid development.