[Footnote 179: In the Historia Arabum (c. 9, p. 17, ad
calcem Elmacin), Roderic of Toledo describes the emerald
tables, and inserts the name of Medinat Almeyda, in Arabic
words and letters. He appears to be conversant with the
Mohammedan writers; but I cannot agree with M. de Guignes
(Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 350), that he had read and
transcribed Novairi; because he was dead a hundred years
before Novairi composed his history. This mistake is
founded on a still grosser error. M. de Guignes confounds
the historian Roderic Ximenes archbishop of Toledo in the
thirteenth century with Cardinal Ximenes who governed Spain
in the beginning of the sixteenth, and was the subject, not
the author, of historical compositions.]