The fate of the Library of Alexandria

The fate of that great wealth of books remains provocative and controversial. For
centuries the main point of contention was whether or not the library (or libraries—as
two sites existed) survived until the Arab conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century. In
the 21st century, however, the topic has cooled down, and there is growing agreement
among serious scholars that both libraries had both perished long before the Arab
conquest. Scholars further believe that there is enough evidence to show that the
destruction of the two libraries occurred at different times.

The Royal Library was an unfortunate casualty of war. In 48 BCE Julius Caesar became

involved in a civil war in Egypt between Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII. Caesar
sided with Cleopatra and was soon besieged by the Ptolemaic forces by land and sea in
the great harbour. He realized that his only chance lay in setting fire to the enemy fleet,
and it was by that drastic measure that he managed to gain the upper hand. Yet he is
remarkably silent regarding the extent of the destruction caused by the fire in the city
itself. Subsequent authors, however, provide details of the ensuing destruction. Most
explicit is Plutarch, who, after a personal visit to Alexandria, explained that “Caesar was
forced to repel the danger by using fire, which spread from the dockyards and destroyed
the Great Library.” Equally indicative is a statement by Strabo who, during a long stay in
the city (c. 25–20 BCE), expressed in an indirect manner his regrets over the loss of that
great library that had once supplied Eratosthenes and Hipparchus with the original
reports of earlier discoveries, sources that were no longer there for him to consult.

The daughter library, protected by the Serapeum, subsisted up to the 4th century as long
as paganism survived. But when Christianity became the one and only religion
acknowledged throughout the empire, Emperor Theodosius I in his zeal to wipe out all
vestiges of paganism issued a decree in 391 sanctioning the demolition of temples in
Alexandria. Empowered by the imperial decree, Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, led
an attack on the Serapeum, and he himself gave the first blow to the cult statue
of Serapis. His frenzied followers ran amok in the temple, destroying and plundering.
When the destruction was complete, Theophilus ordered a church to be built on the site.

Several testimonies written by contemporary or near-contemporary eyewitnesses testify

to the fact that the devastation was extensive. One Theodoret claims that “the temple
was destroyed to its foundations.” Another witness, Eunapius, mentions in Vita
Aedesii that Theophilus and his followers
A third contemporary witness was Aphthonius, who appears to have visited the
Serapeum before 391 and wrote his description of it sometime after the destruction
under the title “A description of the Acropolis of Alexandria.” One statement reads as
follows:

On the inner side of the colonnade were built rooms, some which served as bookstores and
were open to those who devoted their life to the cause of learning. It was these study rooms
that exalted the city to be the first in philosophy. Some other rooms were set up for the worship
of the old gods.
There is no doubt that Aphthonius was describing conditions as they existed before the
destruction, since it is unthinkable to speak of worshiping the old gods after 391 when a
church was set up on the site.

It is clear from the above evidence that the attack on the Serapeum in 391 put an end to
the temple and the daughter library housed in it. Tension in the city continued during
the first two decades of the 5th century and then cooled off. Alexandria resumed its
normal life under new conditions. With Christianity prevailing, the catechetical
school alone dominated the intellectual scene, and no more is heard of
the Mouseion and its libraries.

In 642 the Arab general ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ  conquered Egypt and occupied Alexandria. The
events of the early Arab conquests were recorded by historians from several sides,
including Arabs, Copts, and Byzantines. For more than five centuries after the conquest,
there was no mention of and not a single reference to any accident related to an
Alexandrian library under the Arabs. Suddenly, early in the 13th century appears an
account reported by Ibn al-Qifṭī and other Arab authors describing how ʿAmr had
burned the books of the ancient Library of Alexandria. The story has a fictitious flavour
and has repeatedly been criticized, notably by 18th-century British historian Edward
Gibbon, and it has since been proved to be a 12th-century fabrication.

Two questions arise from that circumstance: What happened in the 12th century that
suddenly aroused interest in the fate of the Library of Alexandria and further led to an
accusation that ʿAmr was the culprit? Why, after a total silence of more than eight
centuries after the destruction of the Serapeum, should Ibn al-Qifṭī be so anxious to
record such a story in full detail?

The 11th and 12th centuries were decisive in the history of the Crusades and a crucial
period in world history. During those centuries two developments—not conspicuously
interrelated—were taking place in Europe and the Arab world. The first was military,
and it was decided in favour of the Arabs on the battlefield in Palestine. The second was
cultural and of more far-reaching consequences, and it was decided in favour of the
West. In both Byzantium and Europe there was a remarkable revival of classical
learning, especially Greek philosophy. In the mid-11th century a university was
established in Constantinople with faculties in law, philosophy, and philology. In
western Europe the flourishing Scholastic movement led to a widespread founding of
universities in France, Italy, England, and Germany, including those
at Chartres, Paris, Bologna, and Oxford.

The ensuing gradual desacralization of learning was most graphically illustrated in the
transformation of the book in the 12th century. Previously, the production of books had
been largely confined to the monasteries. The monastic book of the early Middle
Ages was luxurious, made of fine parchment and gold leaf, and contained painstaking
script and artistic illuminations. Such beautiful masterpieces were obviously much too
costly and rare for the thousands of masters and students who thronged the 12th-
century seats of learning. To supply their needs, publishers (stationarii) began to mass-
produce books, employing scores of copyists working at a feverish rate. Also, a fresh
supply of books for publication was permanently sought after everywhere. By that time
it had become known that the great cities in the Muslim world, with their renowned
libraries, were depositories of a great wealth of books, especially the ancient books of the
Greeks. Translation from Arabic into Latin became an essential feature of the revival of
learning, and many works of the Greek classics were made known to Europe at second
hand through Arabic translation.
By contrast, the fate of books and libraries in the Muslim East was decidedly different.
Certain incidents that coincided with the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries
resulted in the destruction of libraries. The most-notable reported event detrimental to a
public library was during the great famine that occurred in Egypt about 1070
(about AH 460) when the Fāṭimid caliph al-Mustanṣ ir was forced to offer for sale
thousands of books of the great Fāṭimid library in Cairo in order to pay the money due
to his Turkish soldiers. On one occasion he sold “18,000 books on the ancient sciences.”
On another, in one day, he carried out of the library 25 camel-loads of books to pay off
debts to two of his ministers. The portion of one of the ministers, Ābu al-Faraj, was
estimated at 5000 dinars, although its real worth was 100,000 dinars. Among those
treasures was tapestry of woven silk with an image of a world map that showed regions
of the earth with their cities, mountains, seas, rivers, and castles of various sizes. It was
highlighted by pictures of Mecca and Medina. At the bottom corner was inscribed “Made
by order of Caliph al-Muʿizz in AH 353 (959 CE) worth 1022 dinars.” In that way, vast
numbers of priceless books were scattered throughout the region.

Another tragic war-related incident happened during the capture of Tripoli (now in

Lebanon) by the Crusaders in 1102. After a siege of six years, the city offered
to capitulate on the condition that lives and property be safeguarded, which the
Crusaders promised. But after the surrender the Crusaders, in the words of Ibn al-Athīr,
plundered the city and captured money, treasures from its people, and books from its
schools beyond count.

During those troubled times there were incidents of aggression even on the personal
level on private book collections. A case in point concerns Usāmah ibn Munqidh, a
distinguished Muslim general and poet. He had obtained from the king of Jerusalem a
safe conduct for his family to sail from Egypt to Syria. Off the coast of Acre (now ʿAkko,
Israel), the king’s Crusader soldiers stopped the ship and confiscated his entire wealth,
which included his private library. With moving brevity, Usāmah reported the whole
incident in his autobiography. He was particularly distressed not so much at the loss of
his money as at the loss of his library of 4,000 magnificent books, which “left a wound in
my heart which cannot be healed as long as I live.”

Those incidents aroused feelings of public indignation and anger and often resulted in
accusations and counteraccusations. In such circumstances the fabrication of a story
blaming Arabs for the destruction of the most famous library of the ancient world at
Alexandria would be suitable material for the battle of words that characterized the time
of the Crusades.

As to the second question, why Ibn al-Qifṭī so relished the reporting of an unfounded
story in such full details, his motivation may have had something to do with his family’s
close association with Saladin and his family. Ibn al-Qifṭī’s father had served Saladin as
a judge in Jerusalem, and Ibn al-Qifṭī himself was a judge in Aleppo in 1214. In other
words, they belonged to the new Sunni regime of Saladin that had overthrown the
old Shīʿite rule of the Fāṭimids. After establishing his rule in Egypt, Saladin found
himself in dire need of money to carry on his campaigns against the Crusaders and to
pay off those who had cooperated with him and served him. He therefore donated as
well as offered for sale many of the treasures he had confiscated. On two occasions it is
reported that among those treasures were great public libraries.

The first incident is reported by two eminent authorities, al-Maqrīzī and Abū Shāmah.
According to al-Maqrīzī, once Saladin had gained control over Egypt (1171 CE, or
567 AH), he announced the distribution and sale by auction of the famous Fāṭimid
library: “the auctioneer, Ibn Sura, took charge of the sale which lasted several years.”
With obvious sorrow, al-Maqrīzī further quotes from Ibn Abī Ṭ ayy that after the capture
of the palace by Saladin, of its many treasures, he sold the library that was one of the
wonders of the world, and it is said that in the whole Muslim world there was no library
to equal that in the Fāṭimid palace. That incident is further substantiated by the details
reported by Abū Shāmah, who quotes al-ʿImād, one of Saladin’s assistants, who
mentioned that the library at that time contained “120,000 leather-bound volumes of
those immortal ancient books…of these, eight camel-loads were transported to Syria.”
Thus Saladin liquidated what remained of a library that had once contained, according
to Abū Shāmah, as many as two million volumes before the Fāṭimids themselves starting
selling it.

Abū Shāmah reported a second incident, in his account of the fate of another library, of
more than a million books, in the Syrian city of Amida (present day Diyarbakır) on the
upper Tigris River, which Saladin in 1183 CE (AH 579) donated, for services rendered, to
his chief supporters. Abū Shāmah reported that Al-Qāḍ ī al-Fāḍ il selected 70 camel-loads
from it and that Kara Arsalan spent seven years in “selling the surplus treasures of
Amida.”

Two significant points emerge from the above account. First, there was a considerable
increase in the demand for books by the West at the time of the Crusades, especially in
the 12th century, when Europe was experiencing a revival of learning sometimes called
the proto-Renaissance. The two incidents of the public library of Tripoli and the private
one of Usāmah ibn Munqidh indicate that the acquisition of books was one of the
objectives of the Crusaders. It is also likely that most of the books that were offered for
sale found their way outside the Muslim world. Repeated statements, derived from
almost contemporary sources, assert that the books first sold by al-Mustanṣir “were
taken by ships in the Nile to Alexandria or to North Africa” or “carried to the rest of the
world.” To be more specific, the books that were sold by Saladin in Cairo, or at least part
of them, “were carried to Syria.” As for the books of Amida, “the earth was filled with its
treasures.”

A prevailing sadness also emerges from those accounts, which is an indication of the
widespread feeling of resentment and discontent at the loss of such a priceless legacy of
learning. Saladin was accordingly exposed to bitter criticism, especially by the survivors
of the old regime whom he feared and sought to suppress. It was imperative, therefore,
that the adherents of the new order should rise to the occasion and seek to justify the
actions of the new ruler. There is little doubt that it was in response to the exigency of
those pressing circumstances that Ibn al-Qifṭī included in his History of Wise Men the
fantastic story of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ ordering the books of the ancient Library of Alexandria
to be used as fuel for heating the city bath. In light of the above analysis, most
contemporary scholars agree that the ancient Library of Alexandria had ceased to exist
long before the Arab conquest of Egypt, and, in the words of British-American historian
Bernard Lewis, “It is surely time that the Caliph ʿUmar and ʿAmr ibn al-Āṣ were
finally acquitted of this charge.”