The universal obligation of the Mecca pilgrimage compelled every Moslem
to travel once in his life; and many an Arab, after the Caliphate was
settled in power from the Oxus to the Pyrenees, journeyed to and fro
with the joy of a master going over vast estates, shewing his dreaded
turban to subjects of every nation.

This, however, was not geographical science, or even pseudo-science.
Before Mohammed the Arabs had possessed some knowledge of the stars and
used it for astrology; but it was at the Court of Almamoun (813-833)
that their inquiring spirits first set themselves to answer the great
question of geography--Where? Through the ninth and tenth centuries
there arose a succession of travellers and thinkers who, with all their
wild dreamings, preserved the best results of Greek maps and would have
made much greater advances but for their helplessness in original work.
As they could not recast Aristotle in philosophy, so they could not with
all their new knowledge of the Further East recast the geography of
Ptolemy and Strabo.

A few great ages, the age for instance of Almamoun in Bagdad (A.D. 830),
of Mahmoud in Ghazneh (A.D. 1000), of Abderrahman III. in Cordova (A.D.
950), give us the history of Arabic geography.

Beginning in the latter years of the eighth century, Moslem science was
reformed and organised, in the New Empire, by the patronage of the
Caliphs of the ninth. Itineraries of victorious generals, plans and
tables prepared by governors of provinces, and a freshly acquired
knowledge of Greek and Indian and Persian thought, made up the
subject-matter of study. The barbarism of the first believers was
passing away, and Mohammed's words were recalled: "Seek knowledge, even
in China." By the end of the eighth century Ptolemy's Geography and the