Description
It is a curious circumstance that the majority of the learned amongst the Muslims belonged to a foreign race; very few persons of Arabian descent having obtained distinction in the sciences connected with the law or in those based upon human reason: and yet the promulgator of the law was an Arab, and the Koran, that source of so many sciences, an Arabic book." The justness of this observation, made by lbn Khaldun in his Prolegomena, will be admitted by those who may have occasion to consult Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary : they cannot have failed to remark that many of the individuals to whom the author has devoted an article are designated by him as mawlas , a term denoting their foreign origin and the precise meaning of which shall be given farther on . The reason assigned by Ibn Khaldun for this peculiarity may not be completely satisfactory, but it is stated in a manner so highly characteristic of that writer that it cannot fail to interest the European reader.