of paper from cotton, and the making of morocco leather--these are among
our debts to these people. Though many of the above had been known to
antiquity, they had been lost during the barbarian invasions and were
restored only through their re-introduction by the Moslems.

GREAT ABSORPTIVE POWER FOR LEARNING. The original Arabians themselves were
not a well-educated people. Before the time of Mohammed we have
practically no records as to any education among them. When in their
religious conquests they overran Syria (see Map, p. 103), they came in
contact with the survivals of that wonderful Greek civilization and
learning, and this they absorbed with greatest avidity.

It will be recalled, too, that in chapter IV (p. 94), it was stated that
the early Christians developed very important catechetical schools in
Egypt and Syria, and especially at Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, Nisibis,
Harran, and Caesarea. [1] (See Figure 27, p. 89.) It was also stated that
the Christian instruction imparted at these eastern schools was tinctured
through and through with Greek learning and Greek philosophic thought.
Here monasteries also were developed in numbers, and Syrian monks had for
centuries been busy translating Greek authors into Syriac. It was also
stated (p. 94) that the Eastern or Greek division of the Christian Church,
of which Constantinople became the central city, was more liberal toward
Greek learning than was the Western or Latin division of the Church.

By the fifth century, though, due in part to the breakdown of government,
the increasing barbarity of the age, and the greater control of all
thinking by the Church, the Eastern Church lost somewhat of its earlier
tolerance. In 431 the Church Council of Ephesus put a ban on the
Hellenized form of Christian theology advocated by Nestorius, then
Patriarch of Constantinople, and drove him and his followers, known as