easier taskmaster than the Goth. The Mahometan had established a fairly equitable system of taxation, ans, while the civilization was one based upon slavery, freedom was comparatively easy to obtain, the main requirement being a confession of faith and the repetition of the formula to a reputable Mahometan that "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his Prophet." Then, too, Arabian activity in the way of public improvements counted for much. Just as in Egypt, Amru, the conqueror, dug a canal of communication from the Nile to the Red sea, a distance of eighty miles, by which provisions might be conveyed to the Arabian shores, so in Spain, the country was improved by the making of roads, bridges, canals and aqueducts. Then, too, learning was encouraged and shipbuilding and commerce fostered. The city of Cordova was the European center of learning under Moslem rule. "Hither," writes the Arab historian El Marrary, "came from all parts of the world students eager to cultivate poetry, to study the sciences, or to be instructed in divinity or law; so that it became the meeting place of the eminent in all matters, the abode of the learned, and the place of resort for the studious."
It it well to remember that while dwelling upon the warrior activities of the Arabs, a kind of impression arises of a people caring for nothing but conquest and rapine, that impression should be always balanced by a the remembrance of the strange culture of the same people. Mahomet's insistence upon the Koran as final by no means bound his followers.
