THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY.
A. D. 640.
Ptolemy-Soter, chief of the dynasty of the Lagides, laid the foundation of the Alexandrian library. It was afterwards enlarged by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus and his successors; and from this celebrated repository the city of Alexandria derived the title of “Mother of Books.”
There is much difference of opinion as to the number of works contained in this library. Instead of 54,800 volumes as asserted by St. Epiphanes, or 200,000 according to Josephus, Eusebius tells us, that at the death of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 100,000 volumes were collected in it.
The building was situated to the east of the large sea-port, near the city of Canopus, and became a prey to the flames when Julius Cæsar, who was besieged in that part of the town in which the museum stood, ordered the fleet to be set on fire. The wind unfortunately carried the flames to the neighbouring houses and to the locality of the Bruchion, close to the site of the valuable library.
Lucan, in his Pharsalia, has described this conflagration with much spirit:[13]
“On one proud side the lofty fabric stood
Projected bold into the adjoining flood;
There, fill’d with armed bands, their barks draw near,
But find the same defending Cæsar there:
To every part the ready warrior flies,
And with new rage the fainting fight supplies;
Headlong he drives them with his deadly blade,
Nor seems to be invaded, but to invade.
Against the ships Phalaric darts he aims,
Each dart with pitch and livid sulphur flames.
The spreading fire o’erruns their unctuous sides,
And nimbly mounting, on the topmast rides:
Planks, yards and cordage feed the dreadful blaze;
The drowning vessel hisses in the seas;
While floating arms and men promiscuous strew’d,
Hide the whole surface of the azure flood.
Nor dwells destruction on their fleet alone,
But driven by winds, invades the neighbouring town:
On rapid wings the sheety flames they bear,
In wavy lengths, along the reddening air.
Not much unlike the shooting meteors fly,
In gleamy trails athwart the midnight sky.
Soon as the crowd behold their city burn,
Thither all headlong from the siege they turn;
But Cæsar, prone to vigilance and haste,
To snatch the just occasion ere it pass’d,
Hid in the friendly night’s involving shade,
A safe retreat to Pharos timely made.”
Orosius tells us that 400,000 volumes were destroyed by the fire: “So perished,” says he “this monument of the learning and labour of the ancients, who had amassed the works of so many illustrious men.” “Monumentum studiique curæque majorum qui tot ac tanta illustrium ingeniorum opera congesserant.”[14]
Cleopatra was not insensible to the loss of so great a treasure, and Antony, to console her, presented her with the whole collection of books made by the king of Bithynia at Pergamus, to the number of 200,000 volumes. These books, with the few that had escaped the flames, formed the second library, and were placed in the Serapeon, or temple of Serapis, which from that time became the resort of all learned men. In A. D. 390, the fanatic Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, worthy of being the friend of the tyrant Theodosius, took advantage of the protection of that Emperor to disperse the library of the Serapeon, and to drive out the savans who assembled there. He overthrew the temple itself and built a church on its ruins which bore the name of the Emperor Arcadius. It would thus appear that the oldest and most extensive libraries of Alexandria ceased to exist before the 5th century of the Christian era. Nevertheless, there is still an opinion maintained among learned men that the immense collection made by the Ptolemies was destroyed by the Arabs in the 7th century.[15]
Several writers, with Gibbon at their head, have rejected this notion. Reinhart published at Göttingen in 1792 a special dissertation on the subject. It was Gregorius Bar-Hebræus, better known under the name of Abulpharadje, elected primate of the East in 1264, who gave the earliest account of the burning of the library at Alexandria, in a chronicle he published in Syriac, and afterwards translated into Arabic at the solicitation of his friends.
He says: “John the grammarian came to Amrou, who was in possession of Alexandria, and begged that he might be allowed to appropriate a part of the booty. ‘Which part do you wish for,’ asked Amrou. John replied, ‘The books of philosophy which are in the treasury (library) of kings.’ Amrou answered that he could not dispose of these without the permission of the Emir Al-Moumenin Omar. He wrote to the Emir, who replied in these terms: ‘As to the books you speak of, if their contents are in conformity with the Book of God (the Koran) we have no need of them; if, on the contrary, their contents are opposed to it, it is still less desirable to preserve them, so I desire that they may be destroyed.’ Amrou-Ben-Alas in consequence ordered them to be distributed in the various baths in Alexandria, to be burnt in the stoves; and after six months, not a vestige of them remained.”[16]
How open is this unlikely story to objection! In the first place, John of Alexandria was dead before the city was taken, on the 21st December 640.
D’Herbelot, in his Bibliothèque Orientale, tells us that at that period four thousand baths existed in Alexandria. What a multitude of volumes it must have required to supply fuel for them for the space of six months! And then the absurdity of attempting to heat baths with parchment!!!
Renaudot was the first in France who threw a doubt on this story in his Histoire des Patriarches d’Alexandrie. “It merely reposes,” says he, “on Eastern tales, and these are never to be relied upon.”
Kotbeddin, in his History of Mecca, from which de Sacy quotes an extract in his Notes des Manuscrits, Vol. IV. p. 569, relates seriously, that at the taking of Bagdad by Hulagou the destroyer, of the empire of the Caliphs, the Tartars threw the books belonging to the colleges of this city into the river Euphrates, and the number was so great, that they formed a bridge, over which foot-passengers and horsemen went across!
Besides Abulpharadi, two other eastern writers give an account of the destruction of the library: Abd-Allatif and Makrizi; but they only go over the same ground as their predecessors.
These three writers (of the 12th, the 13th, and the 15th centuries) are the less to be relied upon as no other eastern historians who speak of the conquest of Egypt by the Arabians, mention the loss of their great repository by fire.
Eutyches, the patriarch of Alexandria, who lived in the 10th century, and who enters into details of the taking of this city by the Arabians; Elmacin, who, in the 13th century, recounts the same fact; and Aboulfeda, who at about the same period gives a description of Egypt, completely ignore this remarkable and important event.
How is it that the Greek authors, who were so incensed against the Saracens, omit to speak of this conflagration authorised by Omar?—and that after centuries of silence Abulpharadi is the first who opens his lips on the subject? And it is still more surprising that this writer did not mention the anecdote in his Chronicle, published in Syriac, but that he only added it while translating his work into Arabic at the latter end of his life.
The Caliphs had forbidden under severe penalties the destruction of all Jewish and Christian volumes, and we nowhere hear of any such work of destruction during the first conquests of the Mahommedans.
Quite at the beginning of the 5th century, Paulus Orosius, a disciple of St. Jerome, mentions, on his return from Palestine, having seen at Alexandria the empty book-cases which the library had formerly contained.
All these arguments brought forward by Assemanni, by Gibbon, by Reinhard, and many others, do not appear to have convinced M. Matter, although he admits in his Histoire de l’École d’Alexandrie, that a certain amount of courage is necessary to maintain the opinion of the existence of an extensive collection of books at the commencement of the conquest.
“There are two points beyond dispute,” says he, “in this question. The first is, that Alexandria possessed during the 5th and 6th centuries, after the destruction of the Serapeon, a library of sufficient importance to contain many valuable literary works. The next is, that these works, far from being limited to religion and theology, as Gibbon supposes, included various branches of study; of this we cannot entertain a doubt when we reflect on the later productions of the school of Alexandria.”
In order to establish his argument, Matter enters into long details. “Gibbon himself,” he says, “would have admitted later that Amrou might have burned other works in Alexandria besides those on theology.”
Two orientalists, Langlès and de Sacy, have adopted a very similar opinion. “It is incontestable,” says the former, “that on the entrance of the Mahommedans, a library still existed at Alexandria, and that it fell a prey to the flames.”[17]
De Sacy allows that the story told by Abulpharadi is very probable, and proves that at that period the Mahommedans did demolish libraries and destroy books, in spite of the law against any such destruction.
At any rate this opinion has only been adopted by a small minority, and Amrou is generally exonerated from having been the destroyer of the Alexandrian Library.