The Destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria

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On a sunny morning in 642 C.E., armies of Muslim Arabs, in the process of conquering Egypt, destroyed the ancient library at Alexandria, which for a thousand years had been the western world’s most important center of learning.¹

The library held a million volumes, including an extensive collection of Greek and Roman literature, as well as works of science, philosophy, religion and law. The Alexandria Library was nothing less than the summit of ancient scholarship. Its archives and museum were filled with the intellectual riches of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Rome and Egypt, and its research center was visited by many generations of scholars seeking to stimulate their minds and keep alive memories of the past.

Following the library’s destruction, literary scholarship and scientific inquiry suffered greatly in the West. Indeed, nearly a millennium would pass before Western thinking returned to the level of sophistication achieved at the Alexandria Library in its heyday. A single building, that is to say, was crucial to the advancement of an entire civilization.

It is worth remembering the fate of that ancient library these days, given the recent looting of the National Museum in Baghdad and the pillaging of Iraq’s libraries. These institutions once housed precious manuscripts, copies of the Koran a thousand years old, and Mesopotamian artifacts from the first stirrings of civilized life some 5,000 years ago. With this recent plunder, the very spirit and identity of a great people were attacked. Thomas Jefferson was right when he claimed that a nation’s libraries and museums constitute its identity and essence. Burn a library, and you extinguish a national soul.

Some reports now indicate, however, that most of the volumes in the National Library had been removed for safekeeping before the war. As for the National Museum, more and more artifacts creep slowly and surreptitiously back to their proper home. With any luck, the museum will regain much of its vast and prominent collection.

If only the intellectual treasures of the Alexandria Library could so readily be recovered. Though the library itself was razed, its collections were not destroyed but carried off by the Arab conquerors of Alexandria, who were under the command of General Amr Ibn al Ass. Figuring out what eventually became of the library’s million scrolls had been for many centuries a matter of widespread—and often erroneous—speculation.

Alexander the Great (pictured above) selected the site of the city that was to bear his name in 331 B.C.E., during his conquest of Egypt. Alexander later marched eastward, subduing the Persian Empire and continuing to the Indus River Valley in India.^a Wounded and ill, he returned to Babylon (in what is now Iraq), where he died, probably of malaria, in 323 B.C.E.

The vast territories Alexander had conquered were divided among his three senior commanders. Seleucis I Nicator became king of the empire’s eastern reaches (from Syria to Persia), where he founded the Seleucid 025Empire (312–64 B.C.E.). Antigonus I took possession of Macedonia, Greece and large parts of Anatolia, establishing the Antigonid Dynasty (312–169 B.C.E.). A third general, Ptolemy, assumed the position of governor of Egypt, with his capital at Alexandria. There he buried the body of Alexander in a royal tomb and proceeded to build a marble metropolis. In 306 B.C.E., he launched his grandest construction project of all: the Alexandria Library.

The legacy of this magnificent intellectual center was the work of the scholars who studied there. Ptolemy hired an Athenian named Demetrios of Phaleron (345–283 B.C.E.) to organize the library and acquire its books. To house all the books, Demetrios built ten halls that were connected to the campus by marble colonnades. Attractive spaces were created where the scholars dined, studied and relaxed. Demetrios acquired about 250,000 scrolls for the library, and his scriptorium produced superb copies of every document that could be acquired from all parts of the world. Extra copies were sold, and the resulting bookstore trade provided a lucrative enterprise with an international clientele.

Demetrios and the chief librarians who succeeded him were not just managers of the library’s operations. They were scholars of great reputation, many 026of them still known to us today. Demetrios, for example, was a famous Homeric scholar. In 283 B.C.E., after 22 years of service, he was succeeded as chief librarian by Zenodotus of Ephesus (325–260 B.C.E.), who held the office for 25 years. Zenodotus was a brilliant Greek grammarian, literary critic, poet and editor. He continued Demetrios’s work on Homer, creating a detailed comparative study of the extant texts, deleting questionable passages, transposing others and making numerous emendations. He produced the first critical editions of the Iliad and Odyssey, and he arranged them in 24 sections, or books, as we have them today.

One of the most important scholars brought to Alexandria was Callimachus of Cyrene (c. 305–235 B.C.E.). He improved the organization of the library’s holdings by creating the first comprehensive library catalogue, called the Pinakes. Of the library’s numerous lost works, this is the one we would most profit from today. The Pinakes consisted of 120 large scrolls that contained a wealth of information about each author and title in the library—an enormous undertaking, given that the library’s collections included half a million scrolls by the end of Callimachus’s career.

Only fragments of the Pinakes exist today. It was organized by topic, much like our encyclopedias and card catalogues. Indeed, our classification of the areas of knowledge into humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, applied sciences and so forth can be traced to Callimachus’s Pinakes.^b

Another important scholar at the library was Eratosthenes of Cyrene (275–195 B.C.E.), who was Callimachus’s student and later became chief librarian. He was an accomplished mathematician, geographer, astronomer, chronographer, philologist, philosopher, historian and poet. He founded the sciences of astronomy and geography, and he was known as the most learned person of his time, second only to Plato as a literary thinker and philosopher. He dated the Trojan War to the early 12th century B.C.E. (by our modern reckoning), a date accepted by many 027scholars to this day. He worked out a calendar with a leap year, calculated the tilt of the earth’s axis, accurately measured the circumference of the earth and created a remarkably accurate map of the then-known world.

Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257–180 B.C.E.), Aristarchus of Samothrace (217–130 B.C.E.), Plotinus (c. 205–270 C.E.) and numerous other scholarly giants graced the halls of the grand library and its research center. Together with their stable of less-known colleagues, they produced a nearly unimaginable mass of scholarly work that forever influenced the way humans have lived and thought.

The history of the library falls into five stages. From its founding in 306 B.C.E. to about 150 B.C.E., it was populated by a large band of scholars from all over the world who lived on generous stipends from the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt. These scholars applied Aristotle’s scientific method to every conceivable area of investigation, from the humanities to the exact sciences. The second period, which lasted from 150 B.C.E. to 30 B.C.E.—a turbulent time, when the Mediterranean world was being swept by the tidal wave of Roman conquest—was characterized by a radical shift from Aristotelian empirical research to the idealism of Plato. A new interest in religion and metaphysics came about, in an attempt to understand the meaning and purpose of life.

From 30 B.C.E until about 150 C.E., the teachings of the Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus and the rise of Christianity most influenced life at the library. And during the next (fourth) phase, which lasted until 350 C.E., religion became increasingly important in the cultural life of Alexandria, with many systems of belief competing for supremacy: Christianity, the Hellenistic Judaism of Philo Judaeus, the Paganism of Rome, Gnosticism, the Roman brand of Iranian Mithraism and the Hellenistic Neoplatonism of philosophers such as Plotinus, Porphyry (c. 234–305 C.E.) and Hypatia (355–415 C.E.). The fifth and final phase, which lasted until the Arab conquest in the seventh century, was dominated by Christian theology and philosophy.

What exactly happened to the Alexandria Library’s 028million scrolls after the Muslim Arabs destroyed the structure in 642 C.E.?^c

According to the historian Ibn al Qifti’s History of Wise Men (1227 C.E.), when the Arabs arrived in Alexandria, they secured the city’s municipal buildings, including the library. The general in command of the Arab armies, Amr Ibn al Ass, a philosophically minded man, developed a friendship with the Bishop of Alexandria, John the Grammarian. One day, writes Ibn al Qifti, the bishop asked the general to relinquish control of the Alexandria Library to him. The general said he had no specific orders regarding the library, so he would need to consult his superior, Caliph Omar Ibn al Khattab. The caliph pronounced that if the contents of the library conformed with the teachings of the Koran, there was no need to preserve them; if not, it was better not to preserve them. So, Ibn al Qifti recounts, the general ordered that the books fuel the fires that heated Alexandria’s city baths.²

For several centuries, this story was believed to be a true account of the library’s destruction. But why? Perhaps because the tale is so romantically tragic. Or perhaps because it portrays the conquerors in so monstrous a light. Then again, the conquerors were Muslim Arabs, as was Ibn al Qifti. Why would he disparage his compatriots in this way?

Possibly Ibn al Qifti sought to justify the actions of his friend and patron Salah ed-Din (Saladin). Toward the end of the 12th century C.E., Saladin himself looted all of the remarkable libraries of the Fatimid palaces in Egypt (the Fatimid Caliphate lasted from 909 to 1171 C.E.), in order to fund his reconquest of Muslim territories. By alleging that the Alexandria Library’s scrolls were unceremoniously fed to the flames several centuries before, Ibn al Qifti might have been trying to establish a precedent for Saladin’s nefarious work.³

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Probably General Ibn al Ass actually behaved as Arab conquerors did almost everywhere they went. He would have expressed interest in preserving and promoting learning, and he would have treasured the great libraries of his day. Given the enormous flourishing of science and learning in the Arab world immediately following the conquest, it seems quite likely that Ibn al Ass confiscated the holdings of the Alexandria library and transported them to the great caliphate libraries in Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus and the like. One remarkable consequence of the Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries was that Europeans came into contact with the supremely learned culture of the Muslim Arabs. It was the recovery of that rich heritage of classical learning that gave rise to new universities and eventually the Renaissance.

Where did the Muslim Arabs acquire that heritage of classical wisdom and learning? Directly from the Alexandria Library, as well as from other, lesser libraries, which they captured, confiscated, preserved and studied. From those conquests was born the golden age of Arab civilization. In the aftermath of the looting in Baghdad, we might all wish for a return to the principles of that golden age—to a world that does not give rise so easily to hysterical mobs that loot and destroy, without regard for the cultural heritage that is their, and our, inheritance.

On a sunny morning in 642 C.E., armies of Muslim Arabs, in the process of conquering Egypt, destroyed the ancient library at Alexandria, which for a thousand years had been the western world’s most important center of learning.1 The library held a million volumes, including an extensive collection of Greek and Roman literature, as well as works of science, philosophy, religion and law. The Alexandria Library was nothing less than the summit of ancient scholarship. Its archives and museum were filled with the intellectual riches of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Rome and Egypt, and its research center was visited by […]