Recent Spanish Arabic StudiesAuthor(s): D. B. MacdonaldSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Oct., 1927), pp. 78-79Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1838112 .

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NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

RECENT SPANISH ARABIC STUDIES

IT is an outstanding characteristic of the modern Spanish histc cal school that it frankly recognizes the importance of Arabic stuc3 for the understanding of the Spanish civilization in its widest asp( -social, literary, theological, legal-and does not regard the Mosl dominance in Spain, with its influences, as a period to be ignored to be got rid of as quickly as possible. It thus accepts the fact t the Spanish peninsula was one of the bridges between Islam - Christendom and sees the whole of medieval Europe as affected the multifarious influences which passed over that bridge. I openness of mind in the Spanish school is in almost startling c trast with an obliviousness towards Islam on the part of too m; Italian medievalists; the grandeurs of Rome too often blind thes( the essential unity of the medieval civilization which surrounded whole Mediterranean. One embarrassing consequence of the lat of this Spanish school is that the European medievalist must be ] pared to read Spanish easily; some Arabic would be a great adi tage to him but that seems to be a counsel of perfection. Every 1 books appear in Spain which are of importance not only for Si but for all Europe. The Royal Spanish Academy and the Ji para Ampliacion de Estudios are unwearying in their publicati and the names of the leaders of the Spanish school of Arab Ribera and Asin and their pupils, recur again and again on tU Thus Asin has just published, under the imprint of the Royal A emy of History, the first volume of an elaborate study of the Mo& philosopher and theologian Ibn Hazm of Cordova (Abenhazan Cordoba y su Historia Critica de las Ideas Religiosas, por Mi Asin Palacios, Madrid, I927, PP. 346) whose discussions mai stage in the relationship of theology and physical science and ( cially in the history of the atomic theory. Similarly, under the print of the Royal Academy of History, Juli'an Ribera has just lished a book which has been long in the making (Coleccion de C Arabigas de Historia y Geografia, que publica la Real Academni la Historia, tomo segundo, Historia de la Conquista de Espaii Abenelcotia el Cordobe's . . . traduccion de Don Juli'an Ribera, drid, I926, pp. xxxii, I86, 232). In the 'sixties of the last cet Pascual de Gayangos, the father of alnmost all the Arabists of S

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Cross: On Coppering Ship's Bottomiis 79

undertook, along with his labors on the British Museum catalogue of Spanish manuscripts, an edition of this work from the unique Paris manuscript. He completed the text, which was printed by the Span- ish Academy as the second volume of their collection of Arabic works. The text bears the date i868 but it was never issued; the sheets re- mained in the archives of the Academy. Now, at last, after fifty- eight years, these sheets appear with the addition by Julian Ribera of a translation, introduction, and textual emendations from a photo- graph of the Paris manuscript. Dozy's use of this history of the conquest long ago made plain its importance, and all students of medieval Europe must be grateful to the piety of Ribera in thus completing his master's work. A third volume, issued by the Junta para Ampliacion de Estudios, deals with a later period in the eleventh century A. D., that of the little local kings who reigned 1miost con- fusedly between the passing of the Umayyads and the coming of the Murabits. This period has been the despair of historians, but is at last being put on a firmer basis by the labors on the coins of those kinglets of Antonio Prieto y Vives, a civil engineer. (Los Reyes de Taifas: Estudio Historico-Numismdatico de los Musublmanes Espa- iioles en el Siglo V. de la Heigira, XI. de J. C., por Antonio Prieto y Vives, ingeniero de caminos, canales, y puertos, Madrid, 1926, pp. 280; many small maps and plates of coins.) In the history of litera- ture and of literary dependencies and sources two smaller works by Professor Emilio Garcia Gomez of the University of Madrid are of importance (Un Cuento Arabe Fuente ComniTh de Abentofail y de Gracian, Madrid, I926, pp. ioo; La Fore't aux Pucelles, Madrid, 1927, pp. 24.) The first of these deals with a tangled bit of literary re- lationship between the philosopher Ibn Tufail, Avicenna, " El Criti- con" of Graci'an, and Boccaccio; the second finds an Arabic source for an episode in the Old French romance of Alexander.

D. B. MIACDONALD.

ON COPPERING SHIP'S BOTTOMS

IN his informing and suggestive work, Forests and Sea Power (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1926), Professor Robert Greenbalgh Albion has occasion to say something about the problem of keeping British warships in repair and of the significance of this as a factor in naval tactics and strategy. On page II, with ample references to authorities, he takes up briefly the question of sheathing in general and of copper sheathing in particular:

Even the stronger timbers [he writes] might contain elements of decay. The timber problem was closely related to the durability of ships. Un-

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