Muslims believe that God had previously revealed Himself to the earlier prophets of the Jews and Christians,

such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims therefor e accept the teachings of both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospels. They believe that Islam is the perfection of the religion revealed first to Abraham ( who is considered the first Muslim) and later to other prophets. Muslims believe that Jews and Christians have strayed from Gods true faith but hold them in high er esteem than pagans and unbelievers. They call Jews and Christians the People o f the Book and allow them to practice their own religions. Muslims believe that M uhammad is the seal of the prophecy, by which they mean that he is the last in the series of prophets God sent to mankind. Muslims abhor the followers of later pr ophets. This attitude serves to explain the extreme Muslim animosity toward Baha is, followers of a nineteenth-century prophet, who in the Muslim mind is false. Muhammad (swt), the prophet of Islam, was born in Mecca around the year 570. Orp haned before he had reached the age of six, he was raised under the protection o f his uncle Abu Talib. Muhammad began working as a merchant and became known for his trustworthiness. When he was about twenty-five, he married Khadija, a wealt hy widow with high status in Meccan society. Muhammad and Khadija had four daugh ters and two sons, both of whom died in infancy. About fifteen or twenty years a fter his marriage, he began to retreat to a cave on Mount Hira on the outskirts of Mecca for meditation and reflection. One night during Ramadan, the traditiona l month of spiritual retreat, when Muhammad was about forty years old, an angel appeared to him in the form of a man and ordered him to; Recite in the name of thy lord who created, Created man from a clot; Recite in the name of thy lord, Who taught by the pen, Taught man what he knew not. This revelation was soon followed by others about the one true God. Eventually, the angel told Muhammad to begin proclaiming Gods message. Muhammad (peace be upoun him) slowly began to attract some followers, most of th em young and of modest social standing, including his cousin Ali, the son of his uncle and protector Abu Talib. When Muhammad began to impugn the traditional po lytheism of his native town, the rich and powerful merchants of Mecca realized t hat the religious revolution taking place under their noses might be disastrous for business, which was protected by the Meccan pantheon of gods and goddesses. The ruling elite ganged up against Muhammad and his followers, and began to pers ecute them. A few Meccans began to accept Muhammads message, while other members of his clan came to support their kinsman out of family loyalty, even if they di d not yet believe in his cause. Muhammads position in Mecca became hopeless when his wife Khadija and uncle Abu T alib died in quick succession. In 622 the local rulers of Mecca forced Muhammad and his small band of followers to leave the city. Muhammad accepted an invitati on to settle in the oasis of Yathrib, located some eleven days (280 miles) north by camel, for the oasis had been nearly torn apart by wars between the clans, o f which many were Jewish. Muhammads hegira from Mecca marks the beginning of a new polity. For the first ti me in Arabia members of a community were bound together not by the traditional t ies of clan and tribe but by their shared belief in the one true God. Later beli evers, looking back on this event, recognized its seminal importance by designat ing it as the first year of their new era. In further recognition of this great

event, the oasis of Yathrib came to be called Medina, the city [of the Prophet]. Muhammad, surrounded by his followers, lived in Medina for ten years, slowly win ning over converts. Muhammad made repeated attempts to attract the Jews to his c ause, for example, he directed that believers worship like the Jews in the direc tion of Jerusalem. Ultimately these attempts failed, and henceforth Muslims pray ed in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. Muhammads native town, which had long been a center of paganism, thereby became the center of the true religion, the f ocal point of the believers daily prayer, and eventually the object of their annu al pilgrimage. Raiding and warfare were the primary economic activities of the new community in Medina, and the rich caravans organized by the Quraysh of Mecca were particular ly attractive targets. In 628, Muhammad finally negotiated a truce with the Mecc ans and in the following year returned as a pilgrim to the citys holy sites. The murder of one of his followers provoked him to attack the city, which soon surre ndered. Muhammad acted generously to the Meccans, demanding only that the pagan idols around the Kaaba be destroyed. Muhammads prestige grew after the surrender of the Meccans. Embassies from all over Arabia came to Medina to submit to him. Muhammads extraordinary life and career were cut short by his sudden death on Jun e 8, 632, aged about sixty, less than a decade since he had set off from Mecca w ith his small band of followers. Muslims to this day revere Muhammad as the embodiment of the perfect believer an d take his actions and sayings as a model of ideal conduct. Unlike Jesus, who Ch ristians believe was Gods son, Muhammad was a mortal, albeit with extraordinary q ualities. Today many Muslims believe that it is wrong to represent Muhammad, but this was not always the case. At various times and places pious Muslims represe nted Muhammad although they never worshipped these images. Islam, followed by more than a billion people today, is the worlds fastest growin g religion and will soon be the worlds largest. The 1.2 billion Muslims make up a pproximately one quarter of the worlds population, and the Muslim population of t he United States now outnumbers that of Episcopalians. The most populous Muslim countries are Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. The number of Muslims in Indonesia alone (175 million) exceeds the combined total in Egypt, Syria, Sau di Arabia, Iraq and Iran, the traditional heartlands of Islam. There are also su bstantial Muslim populations in Europe and North America, whether converts or im migrants who began arriving in large numbers in the 1950s and 1960s. In keeping with tradition, the two main branches of Islam today are Sunni and Shiite. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s Islam remerged as a potent political force, ass ociated with both reform and revolution. Given the large number of adherents, it is no surprise that Muslims incorporate a broad and diverse spectrum of positio ns in regard to liberalism and democracy. Some are secularists who want to disen gage religion from politics. Others are reformers, who reinterpret Islamic tradi tions in support of elective forms of government. Still there are others who rej ect democracy entirely. For Muslims, God is unique and without equal. They attempt to think and talk abo ut God without either making Him into a thing or a projection of the human self. The Koran avoids this by constantly shifting pronouns to discourage believers f rom inadvertently reifying God and creating any physical image of Him. God is known in Arabic as Allah to distinguish Him from ilah, which could refer to any of the gods once worshiped in Arabia. Just as one might say in English th at the French or Germans worship God, not Dieu or Gott, so one should properly s ay that Muslims worship God, not Allah, which is simply the word for God (with a capital G) in the Arabic language. Giving a different name to the one God worsh ipped by the followers of Muhammad erroneously implies that their God is differe

nt from the one God worshipped by Jews or Christians. In contrast to many other religions, the basic practice of Islam is simplicity i tself. The believer worships God directly without the intercession of priests or clergy or saints. The believers duties are summed up in five simple rules, the s o-called Five Pillars of Islam: Belief, Worship, Fasting, Almsgiving, and Pilgri mage. Belief (Iman) The first Pillar of Islam is for the believer to testify, in Arabic, that There i s no god but God and that Muhammad is His messenger. This phrase, known as the sh ahada, (sha-HEH-da) or Profession of Faith, is central to Islam, for it affirms both Gods oneness and the central role of the Prophet. The shahada appears in dai ly life in many different ways, from being proclaimed in the call to prayer to b eing inscribed on flags and coins. In contrast to the Judeo-Christian tradition, which exhorts believers not to take the Lords name in vain, Muslims constantly c all on God by name in all sorts of situations. For example, when beginning any a ctivity, one might say bismillah (in the name of God) or when admiring something, one might say al-hamdu lillah (praise be to God). Worship (Salat) The second Pillar of Islam is to worship God five times a day at dawn, noon, mid -afternoon, sunset, and nightfall. To do so, the believer washes according to a particular ritual and prostrates himself or herself on the ground in the directi on of Mecca, while reciting certain phrases. This rite takes only a few minutes to perform and can be done anywhere. Worshippers are summoned to prayer by a muezzin, who calls the faithful together by saying: God is Great (four times) I testify that there is no god but God (twice) I testify that Muhammad is Gods messenger (twice) Come to prayer (twice), Come to salvation (twice) God is Great (twice) There is no god but God. For the dawn prayer, the muezzin adds, after the second Come to salvation, the phr ase Prayer is better than sleep twice. Muslims believe that the call to prayer by the human voice distinguishes Islam f rom Judaism, which uses the shofar, or rams horn, and Christianity, which uses th e bell. The first muezzin was Bilal, a Black Abyssinian slave who was one of the first converts to Islam. In addition to the five daily prayers, believers are enjoined to gather together on Friday for the noon prayer and listen to a sermon, called a khutba in Arabic , by the leader of the community. The rules for womens attendance at Friday worsh ip have varied over time and place. Women also attend Friday worship, although t hey are segregated from the men and pray behind, beside or above them. As the ru lers name is traditionally invoked in the sermon, the khutba became an important sign of the rulers authority.

Fasting (Sawm) The third Pillar of Islam is to abstain from food and drink, as well as smoking and sex, between sunrise and sunset during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month in the Muslim calendar. Abstinence during Ramadan brings Muslims to greater awareness of Gods presence an d helps them acknowledge their gratitude for Gods provisions in their lives. It s erves to heighten a sense of community among believers as Muslims around the wor ld join together in the performance of this ritual. The Arabic word ramadan comes from a root meaning to be hot and suggests that the month originally fell in the summer. But following the Islamic lunar calendar, t he month of fasting can come at any time during the year. To distinguish themselves from the Jews, Christians and pagan Arabs, Muslims mea sure their year by the cycles of the moon rather than the sun, so the Muslim lun ar year is eleven days shorter than the Christian solar year. Muslims are forbid den to adjust their year by adding an extra month, as the Jews do to keep their lunar calendar in synch with the seasons. Hence, the months of the Muslim year d o not relate to the seasons. The Ramadan fast starts at dawn, defined as the moment when the human eye can di stinguish a white thread from a black one, and ends at dusk, when the eye is aga in no longer able to distinguish the difference. The end of the month of Ramadan is always marked by a feast, known as the Id al-Fitr, or break-fast feast. Almsgiving (Zakat) The fourth Pillar of Islam is to give alms to the poor. Muslims are supposed to donate a fixed amount of their property to charity every year. Many pious individuals, from the mightiest rulers to modest merchants, give mone y to help out the less-fortunate by establishing soup kitchens, hospitals, schoo ls, libraries, mosques, and the like. One of the most common forms of charity in medieval Islamic cities was to establish a public drinking fountain, where fres h, sweet water was distributed freely to all passers-by. Such a drinking fountai n was commonly known as a sabil, from the common Arabic expression fi sabil alla h, literally meaning in the path of God and referring to doing something for God c haritably or disinterestedly. Pilgrimage (Hajj) The fifth Pillar of Islam is to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in ones lifetime, if one is able, during the first days of Dhul-Hijja, the twelfth month of the Muslim calendar. People who have performed this pilgrimage, called in Arabic hajj, earn the epith et hajji, which is a title of great respect. Before entering Mecca, the pilgrim dons a special garment made of two seamless white cloths. The ceremonies of the pilgrimage are associated with the prophet Abraham and center on the Kaaba, whic h Muslims believe to be the house that Abraham erected for God. The pilgrimage then moves to Arafat, a plain some 12 miles east of the city, whe re the ceremonies culminate on the tenth day of the month in the Feast of the Sa crifices. Livestock is sacrificed in commemoration of Abrahams readiness to offer his son Ismail, and the meat is distributed to the poor. This event is also kno wn as the Great Feast, and it usually lasts three or four days.

In contrast to the spontaneous cheer with which people celebrate the end of Rama dan, the celebration of the Great Feast is a more solemn holiday. Although a vis it to the Prophets mosque and gravesite in Medina is not an official part of the pilgrimage, most pilgrims include it in their trip. The two foundations of Muslim faith are Gods revelations to Muhammad, known as th e Koran, from the Arabic word Quran, or recitation; and the reports about Muhammads life and deeds, which are known as the hadith, from the Arabic word for report. Th e central miracle of Islam is Gods revelation to Muhammad, whose human fallibilit ies as a mere mortal are repeatedly mentioned in the Koran. The revelations that comprise the Koran were revealed over a period of more than two decades in two places. The first revelations from the period of Muhammads re sidence in Mecca are short and incantatory verses of extraordinary poetic beauty . The later revelations from the period after Muhammad immigrated to Medina are longer, legalistic texts appropriate to a developing community of believers in n eed of rules and regulations. Muhammad and his followers initially committed the revelations to memory, but as these revelations grew in number and complexity, some were probably written dow n on whatever materials were at hand. After the Prophet died, his followers were pressed to preserve the purity of the revelations and began to write down as ma ny of them as possible. According to the traditional view, a uniform written tex t of the revelations to Muhammad was collected and collated some twenty years af ter his death. The Koran as a book is comparable in length to the Gospels. It contains 114 chap ters (each called in Arabic a sura) of varying length. It opens with the Fatiha, a beautiful short prayer that serves as an invocation in many situations; In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate Praise belongs to God, Lord of all Being the All-merciful, the All-compassionate the Master of the Day of Doom Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succor Guide us in the straight path the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful nor of those who are astray. The other chapters of the Koran follow in descending order of length, from the 2 86 verses of the second chapter, known as The Cow, to the final two chapters, whic h are short prayers of a few lines. The chapters are thus arranged neither in th e order in which the verses were revealed nor in a narrative sequence. The Koran, as Gods literal word, can only be comprehended in the majestic and glo rious Arabic language in which it was revealed. The necessity of reading the Kor an in Arabic has meant that all believers should learn the language in order to understand the scriptures. This requirement has created a linguistic bond among believers, particularly as Islam spread beyond the boundaries of Arabia to regio ns inhabited by speakers of other languages. Having learned to use Arabic as the language of religion, the new converts also used it as a language of literature

, science, commerce and social intercourse. The primacy of Arabic as the language of Gods revelation has also helped to prese rve the purity of the Arabic language, for Muslims constantly call to mind the n oble and magnificent words and phrases of the Koran. Although the Arabic languag e has evolved over the fourteen centuries since the Koran was revealed, it has n ot changed as much as English has changed in the six centuries since the time of Chaucer. Finally, the primacy of the Arabic language has encouraged the spread and use of the Arabic script, which is known and used from the shores of the Atl antic to the Pacific to render a variety of languages, including Arabic, Persian , Kurdish, Pashto, Kashmiri, Urdu, Sindhi, Ottoman Turkish, Chaghatay, and Malay . The second basis of Muslim faith is the example of the Prophet. As the perfect M uslim, Muhammad served and still serves as the model for all believers. His sayi ngs and deeds were remembered by his associates and preserved in the Traditions, known in Arabic as hadith. These Traditions normally take the form of a chain (S o-and-so heard from so-and-so, who heard from so-and-so, that the Prophet said [ or did]), followed by a report of what the Prophet said or did. The Traditions came to be considered second in authority to the Koran and also h elp explain and elaborate the circumstances under which obscure passages in the Koran were revealed. The Traditions were transmitted orally for several generati ons before being written down, beginning in the eighth century. By the ninth cen tury the jurist al-Shafii (d. 820) came to consider the sunna, or custom of the Prophet, the second most important root of Islamic jurisprudence after the Koran . Together the Koran and the Traditions, along with consensus and analogy, make up the sharia, the rules and regulations that govern the day-to-day lives of Mus lims. It is often said that Islam bans images of people or animals, but this is false. The Koran itself has very little to say on the subject and the Traditions of th e Prophet are open to various interpretations. As Muslims believe that God is un ique and without associate, He cannot of course be represented. As He is worship ped directly without intercessors, images of saints, as in Christian or Buddhist art, have no place in Islam. As the Koran is not a narrative like the Torah or the Gospels, there is little reason for Muslims to tell religious stories throug h pictures. Instead, Islamic religious art has focused on the glorification of Gods word, spe cifically by writing it beautifully, and accompanying the Arabic script with geo metric and floral designs known as arabesques, in which plants grow according to the laws of geometry rather than nature. Some people believe that these designs have deep spiritual and mystical meaning, while others believe they are simply beautiful patterns. Believers are free to see in these designs whatever they lik e this sense of ambiguity is one of the hallmarks of Islamic art. Examples of re ligious art range from beautifully calligraphied manuscripts of the Koran to int ricately carved and inlaid pulpits or minbars, from which the Friday sermon is g iven in the mosque. Islamic secular art, on the other hand, might or might not have representations of living beings, depending on the local cultural traditions and the preferences of the artist and patron. For example, North Africans have generally shown litt le taste for images, while Iranians have always enjoyed them, sometimes even in religious settings. Much of Islamic secular art, like religious art, is decorated only with geometri c and vegetal patterns and inscriptions, but many objects, whether glazed cerami cs, carved ivories, intricately woven silks, or luxurious carpets, are decorated with lively human and animal figures set individually or in scenes. Unlike much

Christian art, which largely developed for the use of the Church, Islamic secul ar art has been characterized by the transformation of everyday objects, whether bowls for eating or carpets and cushions to sit on, into things of transcendent beauty. Given the Islamic fascination with Gods word, the art of the book has always been one of the favorite forms of Islamic art, and calligraphers in the Islamic land s have the fame accorded painters and sculptors in the West. Although transcribi ng the Koran and decorating the pages with beautiful designs was always revered, calligraphers and painters, particularly in Iran, India and Turkey, also prepar ed manuscripts of epic and lyric poetry, history and geography with beautiful ca lligraphy and exquisite miniatures. Medieval Muslims made invaluable contributions to the study of mathematics, and their key role is clear from the many terms derived from Arabic. Perhaps the mos t famous mathematician was Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 800-ca. 847), aut hor of several treatises of earth-shattering importance. His book On the Calcula tion with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, was principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration (Arabic numerals) in the Islamic l ands and the West. Traditional systems had used different letters of the alphabet to represent numb ers or cumbersome Roman numerals, and the new system was far superior, for it al lowed people to multiply and divide easily and check their work. The merchant Le onardo Fibonacci of Pisa, who had learned about Arabic numerals in Tunis, wrote a treatise rejecting the abacus in favor of the Arab method of reckoning, and as a result, the system of Hindu-Arabic numeration caught on quickly in Central It aly. By the fourteenth century, Italian merchants and bankers had abandoned the abacus and were doing their calculations using pen and paper, in much the same w ay we do today. In addition to his treatise on numerals, al-Khwarizmi also wrote a revolutionary book on resolving quadratic equations. These were given either as geometric dem onstrations or as numerical proofs in an entirely new mode of expression. The bo ok was soon translated into Latin, and the word in its title, al-jabr, or transp osition, gave the entire process its name in European languages, algebra, unders tood today as the generalization of arithmetic in which symbols, usually letters of the alphabet such as A, B, and C, represent numbers. Al-Khwarizmi had used t he Arabic word for thing (shay) to refer to the quantity sought, the unknown. When al-Khwarizmis work was translated in Spain, the Arabic word shay was transcribed as xay, since the letter x was pronounced as sh in Spain. In time this word was abbreviated as x, the universal algebraic symbol for the unknown. Robert of Chesters translation of al-Khwarzmis treatise on algebra opens with the words dixit Algorithmi, Algorithmi says. In time, the mathematicians epithet of his Central Asian origin, al-Khwarizmi, came in the West to denote first the new pr ocess of reckoning with Hindu-Arabic numerals, algorithmus, and then the entire step-by-step process of solving mathematical problems, algorithm. Medieval Muslim scientists often focused on practical matters, particularly hydr aulic engineering, as water was always a precious resource in the arid lands whe re Islam traditionally flourished. Engineers designed various kinds of water-rai sing machines, some powered by animals, others powered by rivers and streams. Th e waterwheels along the Orontes River in Syria were used to irrigate until moder n times. Watermills were used to grind corn and other grains, though in Iran wat er power was often supplemented or replaced by wind. Bridges and dams were needed to channel water. In addition to the standard beam, cantilever and arch bridges, engineers also designed bridges of boats to span r ivers. Dams were widely used to divert rivers into irrigation canals. Perhaps th

e most ingenious hydraulic technologies were the distribution networks of canals and qanats, subterranean aqueducts that sometimes carried water for hundreds of miles. Cisterns and underground ice-houses were used for storage. Various instr uments were used to measure water flow, and the Nilometer built in 861-62 still stands on Rawda Island in Cairo. In addition to these machines and technologies related to water, Muslim engineer s also designed several types of siege engines, notably the traction and the cou nterweight trebuchet. Their ingenuity is clear from the many kinds of fine machi nes they also perfected, ranging from clocks and automata to fountains. Some wer e meant for practical purposes but others were designed for amusement or aesthet ic enjoyment, and their components and techniques were of great importance for t he development of machine technology. As in the other sciences, astronomers in the Muslim lands built upon and greatly expanded earlier traditions. At the House of Knowledge founded in Baghdad by th e Abbasid caliph Mamun, scientists translated many texts from Sanskrit, Pahlavi or Old Persian, Greek and Syriac into Arabic, notably the great Sanskrit astrono mical tables and Ptolemys astronomical treatise, the Almagest. Muslim astronomers accepted the geometrical structure of the universe expounded by Ptolemy, in whi ch the earth rests motionless near the center of a series of eight spheres, whic h encompass it, but then faced the problem of reconciling the theoretical model with Aristotelian physics and physical realities derived from observation. Some of the most impressive efforts to modify Ptolemaic theory were made at the observatory founded by Nasir al-Din Tusi in 1257 at Maragha in northwestern Iran and continued by his successors at Tabriz and Damascus. With the assistance of Chinese colleagues, Muslim astronomers worked out planetary models that depended solely on combinations of uniform circular motions. The astronomical tables com piled at Maragha served as a model for later Muslim astronomical efforts. The mo st famous imitator was the observatory founded in 1420 by the Timurid prince Ulu ghbeg at Samarkand in Central Asia, where the astronomer Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid al-Kashi worked out his own set of astronomical tables, with sections on diverse computations and eras, the knowledge of time, the course of the stars, and the position of the fixed stars. Essentially Ptolemaic, these tables have improved p arameters and structure as well as additional material on the Chinese Uighur-cal endar. They were widely admired and translated even as far away as England, wher e John Greaves, professor at Oxford, called attention to them in 1665. Medieval Muslims revolutionized the science and practice of medicine, as physici ans began to question the medical traditions inherited from both East and West a nd distinguish one disease from another. For example, Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965-10 39), the so-called father of optics, explained how human vision takes place by int egrating physical, mathematical, experimental, physiological, and psychological considerations. His treatise had an enormous impact on all later writers on opti cs, both in the Muslim world and through a medieval Latin translation in the Wes t. Similarly, the great Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288), discovered th e minor, or pulmonary, circulation of the blood. Ibn Sina (980-1037), known in t he West as Avicenna, synthesized Aristotelian and later Greek theories with his own original views, and his Canon of Medicine became the most famous medical boo k in the East or West, translated at least 87 times. Muslims also expanded the practice of medical schools and hospitals. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid used the Sasanian academy of Jundishapur in southwestern Iran as his model when he founded his own hospital in Baghdad (ca. 800). Hospit als were soon established throughout the empire. They were staffed by dozens of specialists, from physiologists, oculists, and surgeons, to bonesetters. They ev en had special wards for the mentally ill and separate wings for men and women. These hospitals were often incorporated into large charitable foundations and we re supported by endowments made by powerful and wealthy individuals. One of the

most famous was that founded by the Mamluk sultan Qalawun in Cairo. In addition, traveling clinics and dispensaries provided services to rural areas. Muslims were responsible for the transfer of papermaking from China, where it ha d been invented in the centuries before Christ, to Europe, where it fueled the p rint revolution in the late fifteenth century. Muslims encountered paper when th ey conquered Central Asia in the eighth century. Paper quickly supplanted papyru s (which was made only in Egypt) and parchment (which was made from animal skins ), for it could be made virtually anywhere from rags and waste fibers. Although it was not cheap, paper had the great advantage of being difficult to erase, an important consideration when documents and records had to be secure from forgery . The use of paper soon spread from government offices to all segments of societ y. By the middle of the ninth century the Papersellers Street in Baghdad had more than one hundred shops in which paper and books were sold. Medieval Islamic society had a paper economy, where both wholesale and retail me rchants conducted commerce on credit. Orders of payment, the equivalent of moder n checks (the Persian word sakk is the origin of our word check), were drawn in am ounts upwards from one dinar (a gold coin roughly equivalent to half a months sal ary). By the ninth century paper was used for copying scientific and other types of utilitarian texts, although it took longer for Muslims to accept the use of paper as a fitting support for Gods word. The first paper manuscript of the Koran to survive dates from 972, but from this date paper soon became standard for al l books. Medieval Islamic libraries had hundreds of thousands of volumes far out stripping the relatively small monastic and university libraries in the West.