And what concerns us here is that they exactly reflect the mind
of the Arabic science or pseudo-science of the time just preceding, so
that their words may represent to us the state of Mohammedan thought
between the eighth and twelfth centuries, between the writers at the
Court of Caliph Almamoun (813-833) and Edrisi at the Court of King Roger
of Sicily (1150).
(1.) _Adelard_, summarising Mohammed Al-Kharizmy with the results of his
Paris education, tells us of the Arabic "Examination of planets and of
time, starting from the centre of the world, called _Arim_, from which
place to the four ends of the earth the distance is equal, viz., ninety
degrees, answering to the fourth part of the world's circumference. It
is tedious and unending to attempt to place all the countries of the
world and to fix all the marks of time. So the meridian is taken as the
measure of the latter and _Arim_ of the former, and from this
starting-point it is not hard to fix other countries." "Arim," he
concludes, "is under the equator, at the point where there is no
latitude," and he plainly implies that there were then existing among
the Arabs tables calculating all the chief places of every country from
the meridian of _Arim_.
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