It is therefore clear that the vast majority of the texts that were held in the Library of Alexandria were probably also held in at least several dozen other libraries and private collections.To use a rather crude modern analogy, think how much information would be lost if the Library of Congress were to burn down today and everything in it were to be completely destroyed.
Indeed, the Library of Alexandria may perhaps be one of the most misunderstood subjects in classical history. Amr thought that what Yahya had mentioned was too much, and he said, ‘I cannot issue such an order without asking permission from the caliph.’ He wrote to Umar and told him what Yahya had said, and ‘Umar wrote back, saying: ‘As for the books which you have mentioned, if what is in them is accordance with the Book of Allah, then we should be content with the Book of Allah. Umar Ibn al-Khattab (ra) and Amr Ibn al-As (ra) are vindicated from the lies that are attributed to them. The Alexandria Library reopened Monday, August 17, 2020. Unfortunately, it also burned down part of the city - the area where the great Library stood. Caesar wrote of starting the fire in the harbor but neglected to mention the burning of the Library.
What really killed the Library was probably primarily lack of patronage and funding. A Harder Question than You Might Think.Why Do So Many Ancient Sculptures Have Their Noses Missing? Why, you cannot even buy the right things: any casual recommendation is enough to guide your choice; you are as clay in the hands of the unscrupulous amateur, and as good as cash down to any dealer. Some writers have attempted to clear Abu al-Faraj of responsibility for the famous report of the destruction of the Alexandrian library. Scholars, however, continued to frequent the Museum, at least until 216 a.d., when Caracalla suppressed the common hall. The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library's holdings, "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." The whole articles talked constantly & consistently about Christians eargerness to destroy.Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: How are you to know the difference between genuine old books that are worth money, and trash whose only merit is that it is falling to pieces? In the early contests of Christians and Mohammedans it was the Christians who were fanatical and the Mohammedans who were successful. 2 3. The Library of Alexandria was undoubtedly one of the largest and most prestigious of all the libraries that existed during the Hellenistic Period, but this does not eradicate the fact that there were plenty of others that existed.The Library of Alexandria even had a rival: the Library of Pergamon, which, at its height, according to the Greek writer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46–after c. 119 AD), housed roughly 200,000 scrolls. Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, contemptible in that of the barbarians: the royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror. This story – its origins, purpose, acceptance and rejection – provides an interesting example of how such historical myths arise and, for a while at least, flourish. The loss of the ancient world's single greatest archive of knowledge, the Library of Alexandria, has been lamented for ages. … It is difficult either to convict or to clear Caesar of the charge. It had withstood earthquakes, but it could not withstand Christians fanatics, who attacked in AD392. One must pronounce that “In 642 Alexandria, protected by walls and towers and guarded by the Byzantine fleet, fell to the Arabs. Listen to this story and wonder!” Barhebraeus merely followed the text of Ibn al-Qifti, omitting his final observation on the number of baths. However, we have seen that Abu al-Faraj is responsible for the Arabic epitome of his work and the additions to it. the library burned by the Caliph Omar in 642, said to have contained 700,000 volumes. With this weapon, the Czarist secret police were able to discredit their two favorite enemies at the same time, by attributing revolutionary designs to the Jews and Jewish inspiration to the revolutionaries. But several considerations render the Islamic tradition “there are many objections to accepting this tradition. A diaspora of Alexandrian scholarship occurred, in which scholars dispersed first throughout the eastern Mediterranean and later throughout the western Mediterranean as well. Now, though, scholars are using X-rays and multispectral imaging to digitally unravel the papyri without completely destroying them.Although there can be no doubt that scrolls were often very expensive in ancient times, they were nonetheless highly prized and widely collected, especially by the wealthy. Ptolemy VIII Physcon's expulsion of the scholars from Alexandria brought about a shift in the history of Hellenistic scholarship. He had only two predecessors, from one of whom he simply copied the story, and both preceded him by no more than a few decades. The Caesarion was plundered in 366 a.d. Wars tend to do these things. Others blame Theophilus for destroying the last of the scrolls when he razed the Temple of Serapis prior to making it a Christian church. And when one has deducted all the writings on vellum, how can it be seriously imagined that the remainder of the books would have kept the 4,000 bathfurnaces of Alexandria alive for 180 days ? 5. and wonder. Under normal conditions of continuous use, papyrus typically only survives for about fifty years or so before it breaks down into dust. It has been estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India and many other nations. These reports were written at a time that was distant from the conquest of Egypt and the time of Amr Ibn al-As. Alexandria lay in ruins before the arms of the Arab commander Amr Ibn al-As.