ignorance. It is only the ignorant who can be positive, only the ignorant who can become fanatics, for the more I learned the more I became aware that there are shadings and relationships in all things.
My Druid discipline had not only trained my memory but conditioned my mind to the quick grasp of ideas, of essential points. Most of what I read, I retained. In knowledge lay not only power but freedom from fear, for generally speaking one only fears what one does not understand.
It was a time when all knowledge lay open to him who would seek it, and a physician was often an astronomer, a geographer, a philosopher, and a mathematician. There were several hundred volumes in the library of ibn-Tuvvais. These books I read from and studied.
Here and there I began to make acquaintances. Mahmoud was such a one. A tall young man of twenty-four, vain of his pointed beard and mustaches. He was much of a dandy, but keen of wit and a ready hand with a blade. We met by chance in the Garden of Abdallah near the Guadalquivir.
It was shadowed and cool. Great trees created islands of shadow on the stone flags, and there I often sat with a glass of golden Jerez at hand and a book before me.
A shadow fell upon my page, and glancing up, I saw Mahmoud for the first time. "Ah? A student and a drinker of wine? Have you no respect for the Koran?"
It was a time for caution, for under the reign of Yusuf there were fanatics in Cordoba. Yet the stranger's eyes seemed friendly.
"If the Prophet had read Avicenna upon a hot day, he might have accepted a glass. Anyway," I added slyly, "he had never tasted the wine of Jerez."
He sat down. "I am Mahmoud, a student of the law, occasionally a drinker of wine."
"And I am Kerbouchard."
There in the shadow of a great tree we talked of what young men talk about when their world is filled with ideas and the excitement of learning. We talked of war and women, of ships, camels, weapons, and Avicenna, of religion and philosophy, of politics and buried treasure, but most of all we talked of Cordoba.
We ate figs, small cakes, and drank wine, talking the sun out of the sky and the moon into it. We talked of the faults of Caesar and the death of Alexander, and he spoke of Fez and Marrakesh and the great desert to the south of those cities.
It was the beginning of a friendship, my first in the land of the Moors.
Of course, there were John of Seville, whose name was often mentioned, and old ibn-Tuwais, whose name was not.
My gold disappeared, and I sold the sapphire. It bought leisure and time to study and roaming the streets at night with Mahmoud, and it bought much else. Startling ideas appeared in a book newly come to Cordoba, a book written at the oasis of Merv by al-Khazini and calledThe Book of the Balance of Wisdom. It was an excellent account of the hydrostatics and mechanics of the time, but it also advanced the theory of gravity, and that air has weight.
We argued the subject furiously and were becoming quite angry when a girl passed by on a camel. We forgot gravity, and the weight of the air became as nothing.
Mahmoud leaped to his feet. "Did you see her? Did you see how she looked at me?"
"You?" His friend Haroun scoffed. "It was at Kerbouchard she looked! I have noticed this before. All the girls look at Kerbouchard!"
Mahmoud snorted. "That dog of an unbeliever? That stench in the nostrils of humanity? It was atme she looked!"
The camel had stopped in the hot, dusty street nearby. Four soldiers were escort for the girl on the camel, tough, surly-looking men, yet something about her drew my attention, and her eyes were meeting mine over her veil. It was not an illusion, not a vanity.
It was hot in the street, and a fresh sherbet had just been put before me. On impulse I picked up the sherbet and crossed to the camel in four quick steps. The place where we sat in the garden adjoined the bazaar, and the attention of the guards was momentarily distracted by the confusion and the crowd.
"Light of
My Druid discipline had not only trained my memory but conditioned my mind to the quick grasp of ideas, of essential points. Most of what I read, I retained. In knowledge lay not only power but freedom from fear, for generally speaking one only fears what one does not understand.
It was a time when all knowledge lay open to him who would seek it, and a physician was often an astronomer, a geographer, a philosopher, and a mathematician. There were several hundred volumes in the library of ibn-Tuvvais. These books I read from and studied.
Here and there I began to make acquaintances. Mahmoud was such a one. A tall young man of twenty-four, vain of his pointed beard and mustaches. He was much of a dandy, but keen of wit and a ready hand with a blade. We met by chance in the Garden of Abdallah near the Guadalquivir.
It was shadowed and cool. Great trees created islands of shadow on the stone flags, and there I often sat with a glass of golden Jerez at hand and a book before me.
A shadow fell upon my page, and glancing up, I saw Mahmoud for the first time. "Ah? A student and a drinker of wine? Have you no respect for the Koran?"
It was a time for caution, for under the reign of Yusuf there were fanatics in Cordoba. Yet the stranger's eyes seemed friendly.
"If the Prophet had read Avicenna upon a hot day, he might have accepted a glass. Anyway," I added slyly, "he had never tasted the wine of Jerez."
He sat down. "I am Mahmoud, a student of the law, occasionally a drinker of wine."
"And I am Kerbouchard."
There in the shadow of a great tree we talked of what young men talk about when their world is filled with ideas and the excitement of learning. We talked of war and women, of ships, camels, weapons, and Avicenna, of religion and philosophy, of politics and buried treasure, but most of all we talked of Cordoba.
We ate figs, small cakes, and drank wine, talking the sun out of the sky and the moon into it. We talked of the faults of Caesar and the death of Alexander, and he spoke of Fez and Marrakesh and the great desert to the south of those cities.
It was the beginning of a friendship, my first in the land of the Moors.
Of course, there were John of Seville, whose name was often mentioned, and old ibn-Tuwais, whose name was not.
My gold disappeared, and I sold the sapphire. It bought leisure and time to study and roaming the streets at night with Mahmoud, and it bought much else. Startling ideas appeared in a book newly come to Cordoba, a book written at the oasis of Merv by al-Khazini and calledThe Book of the Balance of Wisdom. It was an excellent account of the hydrostatics and mechanics of the time, but it also advanced the theory of gravity, and that air has weight.
We argued the subject furiously and were becoming quite angry when a girl passed by on a camel. We forgot gravity, and the weight of the air became as nothing.
Mahmoud leaped to his feet. "Did you see her? Did you see how she looked at me?"
"You?" His friend Haroun scoffed. "It was at Kerbouchard she looked! I have noticed this before. All the girls look at Kerbouchard!"
Mahmoud snorted. "That dog of an unbeliever? That stench in the nostrils of humanity? It was atme she looked!"
The camel had stopped in the hot, dusty street nearby. Four soldiers were escort for the girl on the camel, tough, surly-looking men, yet something about her drew my attention, and her eyes were meeting mine over her veil. It was not an illusion, not a vanity.
It was hot in the street, and a fresh sherbet had just been put before me. On impulse I picked up the sherbet and crossed to the camel in four quick steps. The place where we sat in the garden adjoined the bazaar, and the attention of the guards was momentarily distracted by the confusion and the crowd.
"Light of
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