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Authors: Paul Strathern
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library. If a Muslim wished to come into the library he was not in any way prevented, on the contrary he was welcomed in a friendly manner. The French were most pleased when a Muslim visitor appeared interested in the sciences; they immediately made themselves available to him, showing him all sorts of printed books, with designs representing certain parts of the terrestrial globe, animals and plants. . . . I have had occasion to visit this library several times and remain constantly astonished at the sight of all these beautiful things. 11
Such naïve astonishment, especially coming from a learned man and one who was no admirer of the French, is revealing. This was the reaction of a man who was not only deprived of secular learning, but also had never encountered a world in which such learning was freely available, and open to all. Five hundred years previously, this might have been the reaction of a French medieval scholar entering the Al-Azhar mosque and university, where the study of mathematics, chemistry and medicine was far in advance of anywhere in Europe.
El-Djabarti goes on to describe how the French had “many Moslem books which had been translated into their language,” including the Koran, and how some were “learning verses of the Koran by heart.” He also observed how “they applied themselves night and day to learn the Arabic language.” And evidently not all the French scientific instruments lay at the bottom of Alexandria harbor or Aboukir Bay, for El-Djabarti goes on to admire “astronomical instruments of great precision . . . telescopes which opened out and could be reclosed so that they fitted into little boxes. These were used to observe the stars and determine their distances, their volume, their conjunctions and their opposites.” Visiting the painters’ atelier, he marveled at the artists: “Among them was Arago [evidently Rigo] who made portraits; he was so skilled that on seeing his portraits one might have said they were in relief [i.e., three-dimensional] and on the point of speaking.”
El-Djabarti’s greatest wonder was reserved for the scientists: “When an animal or a fish unknown in France is discovered, they put it in a liquid which preserves it indefinitely without alteration.” Later he visited the chemistry laboratories, where one of the assistants “took a flagon containing a certain liquid and poured part of it into an empty glass; then he took another flagon of liquid and poured it into the same glass. This gave off a colored smoke and when this smoke disappeared the liquid had turned solid and remained a yellowish color. I touched this solid and found that it was as hard as stone. The same experience was repeated with other liquids, and they produced a blue stone, while a third produced a red stone like a ruby.” He was also shown a certain machine: “If a person touched it, his body received an instant shock, which made the bones of his shoulders and his arm crack.”
The bathos of such schoolboy experiments astonishing a learned Egyptian makes depressing reading indeed. This was the land where over 3,000 years previously, chymia , the art of embalming, had been the first chemistry known to humanity, and had even given the science its name. This was the region where Arabic al-chemia had become alchemy, nursing the techniques which had given birth to modern chemistry. It is arguable that the modern rational sciences arising out of such knowledge had played a significant role in enabling the French to overcome the obfuscations of their religion, yet at the same time, it seems, causing them to forget the universal compassion which this very religion had preached. As a result, they felt no compunction about imposing themselves upon the Egyptians, who had done nothing to deserve such attentions. On the other hand, just as surely, the increasing orthodoxy of Islam had overcome the Arabic love of learning, causing the Egyptians in turn to forget all that Islam had
Such naïve astonishment, especially coming from a learned man and one who was no admirer of the French, is revealing. This was the reaction of a man who was not only deprived of secular learning, but also had never encountered a world in which such learning was freely available, and open to all. Five hundred years previously, this might have been the reaction of a French medieval scholar entering the Al-Azhar mosque and university, where the study of mathematics, chemistry and medicine was far in advance of anywhere in Europe.
El-Djabarti goes on to describe how the French had “many Moslem books which had been translated into their language,” including the Koran, and how some were “learning verses of the Koran by heart.” He also observed how “they applied themselves night and day to learn the Arabic language.” And evidently not all the French scientific instruments lay at the bottom of Alexandria harbor or Aboukir Bay, for El-Djabarti goes on to admire “astronomical instruments of great precision . . . telescopes which opened out and could be reclosed so that they fitted into little boxes. These were used to observe the stars and determine their distances, their volume, their conjunctions and their opposites.” Visiting the painters’ atelier, he marveled at the artists: “Among them was Arago [evidently Rigo] who made portraits; he was so skilled that on seeing his portraits one might have said they were in relief [i.e., three-dimensional] and on the point of speaking.”
El-Djabarti’s greatest wonder was reserved for the scientists: “When an animal or a fish unknown in France is discovered, they put it in a liquid which preserves it indefinitely without alteration.” Later he visited the chemistry laboratories, where one of the assistants “took a flagon containing a certain liquid and poured part of it into an empty glass; then he took another flagon of liquid and poured it into the same glass. This gave off a colored smoke and when this smoke disappeared the liquid had turned solid and remained a yellowish color. I touched this solid and found that it was as hard as stone. The same experience was repeated with other liquids, and they produced a blue stone, while a third produced a red stone like a ruby.” He was also shown a certain machine: “If a person touched it, his body received an instant shock, which made the bones of his shoulders and his arm crack.”
The bathos of such schoolboy experiments astonishing a learned Egyptian makes depressing reading indeed. This was the land where over 3,000 years previously, chymia , the art of embalming, had been the first chemistry known to humanity, and had even given the science its name. This was the region where Arabic al-chemia had become alchemy, nursing the techniques which had given birth to modern chemistry. It is arguable that the modern rational sciences arising out of such knowledge had played a significant role in enabling the French to overcome the obfuscations of their religion, yet at the same time, it seems, causing them to forget the universal compassion which this very religion had preached. As a result, they felt no compunction about imposing themselves upon the Egyptians, who had done nothing to deserve such attentions. On the other hand, just as surely, the increasing orthodoxy of Islam had overcome the Arabic love of learning, causing the Egyptians in turn to forget all that Islam had
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