He made Bagdad the centre of science, collected great libraries, and surrounded himself with learned men.
The elevated taste thus cultivated continued after the division of the Saracen Empire by internal dissensions into three parts.

The Abasside dynasty in Asia, the Fatimite in Egypt, and the Ommiade in Spain, became rivals not merely in politics, but also in letters and science.
THEY ORIGINATE CHEMISTRY.

In letters the Saracens embraced every topic that can amuse or edify the mind.

In later times, it was their boast that they had produced more poets than all other nations combined.

In science their great merit consists in this, that they cultivated it after the manner of the Alexandrian Greeks, not after the manner of the European Greeks.