ARAB CIVILISATION IN SPAIN 45 source. It may be worth noting that the peach, to which we are in the habit of attributing a Persian origin, was found by the Persians, according to Strabo, in the eastern part of Negroland, where it was cultivated by the Ethiopians at the period of the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses.

It does not seem to be native to Negroland, and the presumption is that it may have been introduced into the valley of the Nile from India. Nevertheless we may accept it as a pleasant fruit of the early intercourse of Egypt with Negroland.

Among the vegetables which we owe to the Arab passion for gardening is asparagus. This was introduced somewhat later than the peach by a certain courtier and epicure of the name of Zaryab, who came to Andalusia in 821. This Zaryab, who, like Tarik, Tarif, and others, was a freedman, was a celebrated musician. He improved the lute, adding a fifth string to the four which up to his time had sufficed, and founded a great school of music. He was renowned throughout Spain, enjoyed a public pension, and on one occasion, when he came to Cordova, the Sultan himself, to show the respect which he held to be due to talent, rode out to meet him. Zaryab appears to have been a remarkable as well as an extraordinarily popular person. He was not only talented but learned. He was an astronomer and geographer. He had a prodigious memory. "He was, moreover, gifted with so much penetration and wit, he had so deep an acquaintance with the various branches of polite literature, he possessed in so eminent a degree the charms of polite conversation and the talents requisite to entertain an audience . . . that there never was either before or after him a man of his profession who was more generally beloved and admired.

Kings and gieat people took him for a pattern of manners and education, and his name became for ever celebrated among the inhabitants of Andalusia."

Zaryab, who is worth quoting individually as having been evidently a leader of fashion in the most civilised court of Europe in the early half of the ninth century,