638 C.E. Arabs Conquer “Palestine”: Arabic Literature

“The invaders from the desert brought with them no tradition of learning, no heritage of culture to the lands they conquered … They sat as pupils at the feet of the peoples they subdued.”

“But when we speak of ‘Arab medicine’ or ‘Arab philosophy’ or ‘Arab mathematics’, we do not mean the medical science, philosophy or mathematics that are necessarily the product of the Arabian mind or developed by people living in the Arabian peninsula, but that body of knowledge enshrined in books written in the Arabic language by men who flourished chiefly during the caliphate and were themselves Persians, Egyptians or Arabians, Christian, Jewish or Moslem.”

“Indeed, even what we call ‘Arabic literature’ was no more Arabian than the Latin literature of the Middle Ages was Italian … Even such disciplines as philosophy, linguistics, lexicography and grammar, which were primarily Arabian in origin and spirit and in which the Arabs made their chief original contribution, recruited some of their most distinguished scholars from the non-Arab stock.”

Source: Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 9th ed. (New York, 1967), pp. 174, 240, 402.