TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE Geography and Travel.—Arabic geographical literature was stimulated in the first place by Greek mathematical geography and the necessities of administration. The first road-book was written in the 9th century by Ibn Khurdadhbih, the royal post master at Samarra, to give particulars of the provinces and their revenues. Soon afterwards love of travel and intellectual curios ity produced a valuable series of descriptive works, of which those of Ya`qubi (q.v.), Ibn Hauqal (q.v.), Mas`udi (q.v.), and Maq disi (Mokaddasi) are the most famous. While these early writers prided themselves that their knowledge was derived from personal investigations, their successors, Bakri (q.v.), Idrisi (q.v.), Yaqut (q.v.), and Abu'l-Feda (q.v.), nevertheless contrived to compile excellent geographical treatises based almost entirely on written and narrative sources. There are also accounts of embassies and journeys both into Central Europe and the remoter parts of Asia. Ibn Jubair of Valencia wrote an admirable journal of his travels to and from Mecca by way of Syria and Egypt in 118'– 84. In the 14th century Ibn Battuta (q.v.) earned the title of "The Traveller of the Arabs" by his extensive journeys. The commercial relations long existing between the Persian Gulf and India and the Far East produced several exceedingly interesting works on those countries, notably the Chain of Histories and Marvels of India, besides manuals of navigation in prose and verse. In the loth century some Spanish-Arab sailors even set out from Lisbon to cross the Atlantic. In later times geography shared the general decline, and, except for the geo graphical sections of the great encyclopaedias mentioned in the preceding section, was merged into cosmography. The works of the earlier cosmographers, Qazwini (d. 1283) and Dimishqi (d. 1327), are not indeed without interest and importance, but with the economic ruin of the Arabic world all study of geography ceased. (See further under GEOGRAPHY.) Philology.—The beginnings of the study of Arabic grammar can be traced to `Iraq early in the 8th century, where the two cities of Basra and Kuf a produced rival schools of philology, a third being afterwards established in Baghdad (see Fliigel, Die grammatischen Schulen der Araber, Leipzig, 1862). The earliest systematic treatise on grammar was written by Sibawaihi of Basra, and among the other members of this school were Abu `Ubaida (q.v.), Asma`i (q.v.), Mubarrad, and Ibn Duraid (q.v.). The rival school of Kufa claimed to be less antiquar ian, but exercised less influence. The principal founder of the school of Baghdad was Ibn Qutaiba (q.v.) . The most impor tant services rendered by the older philologists were the collection of the old poetry and of materials for lexicography. On their shoulders stood the later systematizers, such as Jauhari (q.v.), Tha`alibi (q.v.), Jurjani (q.v.), Zamakhshari, Sakkaki (d. 12 29), author of the standard text-book on rhetoric, and Ibn Malik (d. 1273), who wrote a celebrated metrical summary of grammar in a thousand lines.
The great Arabic dictionaries are of late date; the two most esteemed are the Lisan al-`Arab of Ibn Manzur (d. 1311) and the commentary called Taj al-`Arus by Murtada Zabidi (d. 1790) on the Qamds of Fairuzabadi (q.v.).
While the writing of books and composition of poetry con tinued in Egypt and Syria, and sporadically elsewhere, through out the 17th and 18th centuries, little of originality or value was produced. During the 19th century the new political, social, economic and intellectual movements resulting from contact with Europe prepared the way for a revival of Arabic letters, particu larly in Syria and Egypt. This took on the one hand the form of a throw-back to Classical Arabic models, represented in Syria by Nasif Yaziji (1800-71), the author of Maqdmat on the model of Hariri, and in Egypt by the activities of the orthodox theological seminary of al-Azhar. On the other hand the influences exerted by the missionary schools in Lebanon, and the Western sympathies of Mohammed `Ali (q.v.) and Isma`il Pasha (q.v.) led to a rapid and superficial assimilation of Western ideas, fostered by the translation of large numbers of French works, especially scientific works, novels and plays. The westernizing movement was strengthened by the creation, in the last decades of the century, of an Arabic daily press (see EGYPT : Modern History: Litera ture), which has contributed to the evolution of a new and more flexible literary style, and also of an Arabic theatre. While the modernist school has been represented by many influential writers in the East, its advanced wing is formed by the recent group of Syro-American writers belonging to the large Lebanese communities now settled in the United States, Brazil and else where in the New World. In Egypt a movement of reconciliation between the two schools, initiated by Shaykh Mohammed `Abduh (d. 1905) had much success, but in default of a leader to succeed him has itself broken into a conservative and a modernist wing. The present situation is therefore on the whole less productive than concerned with clearing the ground for new foundations. The effects of this instability and hesitation are most marked in the work of the leading modern poets. In subject and content Western influences tend to predominate, but the style and conven tions remain for the most part those of the classical age. Never theless the many experiments now being made in Egypt and also in the Lebanon, where the modernist movement is triumphant, give abundant evidence of vitality. In Damascus and `Iraq, the traditional disciplines have only within the last few years been challenged by Western influences, either directly, or mediated through Egypt and the Lebanon.