He broke the bonds of a stern fanaticism, and put himself forth as a cultivator and patron of letters.

Thirty years had wrought a wonderful change.

A Persian satrap who had occasion to pay homage to Omar, the second khalif, found him asleep among the beggars on the steps of the Mosque of Medina; but foreign envoys who had occasion to seek Moawyah, the sixth khalif, were presented to him in a magnificent palace, decorated with exquisite arabesques, and adorned with flower-gardens and fountains.
THEIR LITERATURE.

In less than a century after the death of Mohammed, translations of the chief Greek philosophical authors had been made into Arabic; poems such as the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," being considered to have an irreligious tendency from their mythological allusions, were rendered into Syriac, to gratify the curiosity of the learned.

Almansor, during his khalifate (A.D.