ARAB CIVILISATION IN SPAIN 49 number of poets to furnish matter for biographies of poets, of which one Is mentioned as having been in ten volumes. Philosophy, theology, metaphysics, were richyl represented, and fiction was not neglected.

The minor arts, as we have seen, were warmly encouraged. Seville, which was the special home of music, had a large export trade in musical instruments, which it sent to Africa. In this town it was said that every musical instrument was to be obtained. Toledo was the centre of steel and metal work. In Cordova, the famous Cordovan leather, of which the skins were imported from Negroland, was worked into many designs and extensively used in beautiful book bindings. All the arts to which elaborate architecture and luxurious domestic life gave rise were, of course, highly developed.

Painting appears to have been restricted chiefly to decorative work, but we are repeatedly told that the palaces of southern Spain were filled with works of art.

It is interesting to note that In the great days of Mohammedan Spain, Arabian women were not confined, as In the East, to harems, but appeared freely In public and took their share in all the intellectual, literary, and even scientific movements of the day. Women held schools in some of the principal towns. There were women poets, historians, and philosophers, as well as women surgeons and doctors.

A national life, so varied and active, having a commerce which reached to the confines of the known world, naturally drew material for its consumption from every source with which It was acquainted. Negroland offered to Saracen Spain many of the same sources of supply which our tropical colonies offer to us, and it will presently be seen how deeply the development of Negroland was affected by the high civilisation of the Peninsula.

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