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Al-Jāḥiẓ (776-868), ninth-century Arab writer, says of the Byzantines (or "Romans," as he calls them):

Had the common people but known that the Christians and the Romans have neither wisdom nor clarity of mind nor depth of thought but are simply clever with their hands in wood-turning, carpentry, plastic arts, and weaving of silk brocade, they would have removed them from the ranks of the literati and dropped them from the roster of philosophers and sages because works like the Organon, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorology were written by Aristotle, and he is neither Roman nor Christian; the Almagest was written by Ptolemy, and he is neither Roman nor Christian; the Elements was written by Euclid, and he is neither Roman nor Christian; medical books were written by Galen, who was neither Roman nor Christian; and similarly with the books by Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, and on and on.

All these are individuals of one nation; they have perished but the traces of their minds live on; they are the Ionians [i.e. Ancient Greeks]. Their religion was different from the religion of the Romans, and their culture was different from the culture of the Romans. They were scientists, while the Romans are artisans who appropriated the books of the Ionians on account of their geographic proximity.
Al-Masʿūdī (896-956), tenth-century Arab geographer, says similarly:

Both in their spoken and written language the Romans follow in the footsteps of the Ionians, though they never reached their level either in the essential purity or the absolute eloquence of the language. The language of the Romans is inferior in comparison with that of the Ionians and its syntax, in the way in which it is expressed and in the customary manner of address, is weaker...

During the time of the ancient Ionians, and for a little while during the Roman Empire, the philosophical sciences kept on growing and developing, and scholars and philosophers were respected and honored. They developed their theories on natural science -- on the body, the intellect, and the soul -- and on the quadrivium, i.e. on arithmetike, the science of numbers, on geometrike, the science of surfaces and geometry, on astronomika, the science of the stars, and on musike, the science of the harmonious composition of melodies.

The sciences continued to be in great demand and intensely cultivated until the religion of Christianity appeared among the Romans; then they effaced the signs of philosophy, eliminated its traces, destroyed its paths, and they changed and corrupted what the ancient Ionians had set forth in clear expositions.​

And what would have been proof of this distinction between medieval Romans and ancient Ionians for Al-Jāḥiẓ and Al-Masʿūdī?
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