by
John O'Neill
May 2nd, 2010
American Thinker
The hip Records of Alexandria, proverbial by Ptolemy II (circa 280 BC), has come to stand in for the pinch of knowledge of Classic mores. This hip store was barbarously razed in the Core Ages.
At its press flat, the Records confined to a small area an academic forty thousand volumes on a unreserved take home of topics. It held works on astronomy, mathematics, physics, therapy, and philosophy -- go to regularly of which were fallacious from the hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts of the Egyptians and Babylonians. It as a consequence stored histories of all the countries of the obvious world: histories of Egypt, of Babylonia, of Persia, of the lands of North Africa, of the lands of Western Europe, etc.
Period it was the note down bibliographic display in the ancient world, the Records probably held few books that were noteworthy to it; unevenly all of the documentation were copies of manuscripts held in other libraries or institutes of learning. Up till now, the Alexandria Records was esteemed as the best main treasury of information in the world at the time. Its disappearance is virtuously seen as a catastrophe and allegorical of the loss of distinction for knowledge that followed the crack of Classic mores.
Of the volumes held by the Records, as well as the other libraries of the time, it has been academic that everything worship 95% were lost. The same as remains of the writings of antiquity is but a teensy weensy relic of what once existed.
A story, visibly to begin with appearing in the thirteenth century (mentioned to begin with by Abd al Latif, who died in 1231, and forward-thinking by Gregory Bar Hebraeus, who died in 1286), says that the Arabs, under Caliph Umar, died out the Alexandria Records shortly in the past the occupation of Egypt in 639 AD. The recount states that the caliph, to the same extent clued-up about the business, declared that if the books it confined to a small area fixed with the Koran, next they were unessential, and if they disagreed, next they were revolutionary. In either let your hair down, they were worthless and must be obliterated. The books of the Records were put to the torch -- hand-me-down to heat the palace baths.
For centuries, Europeans had down basis to cynicism this story. Give were very good reasons indubitably, as we shall see, for believing it to be true. Yet by the at the rear of nineteenth century, historians were having gleam thoughts. Draw, they held, showed that the antiquated Arabs had hip distinction for learning, and the turn concerning the seventh and eleventh centuries was coming to be regarded as an Islamic Fair-haired Age, to the same extent Muslim societies led the world in science and therapy.
Absolutely, it was argued that the Arabs were the saviors, fancy than the destroyers, of Classic learning. A start chunk of this caste of side is Robert Briffault's 1919 book, The Invention of Humanity, which argued that the real Reappearance, or revitalization, of Classic learning actually occurred in eleventh-century Islamic Spain fancy than fifteenth-century Italy.
Briffault's side, with its uncomplimentary view of Christianity and European culture, may be regarded as an antiquated form of political ceremony. His newspaper has become the evasion mode of inkling in to a great extent of academe. And this is reflected in theories about the coincidence of the Records at Alexandria. A start chunk of this may be seen in the Wikipedia page production with the Records. Something like we clash a long-drawn-out seminar of the dent of the business. The hazard dent caused by Julius Caesar is solution pride of place, as are other real or conspicuous destructions which occurred at forward-thinking periods of the Roman Society. The last dent, which stipulation absolutely be the best main -- that carried out by the Arabs -- is mentioned fancy shortly at the end, right to be dismissed "as a not be serious or laze."
But if the dent carried out by the Arabs was a not be serious, next what happened to the Library? Equal height the authors of the Wikipedia page concede that following the past dent by Caesar, the Records was rebuilt and restocked. This needs to be stressed: Until the disappearance of Classic mores (visibly in the seventh century), the Records can be restocked and recreated -- for the hip mass of the volumes it confined to a small area were not noteworthy to it. They were copies of books as a consequence unfilled in the other libraries and institutes of learning that stippled the Mediterranean world. It was right with the disappearance of Classic mores as a whole -- through with the cultural, expansive, and commercial road and rail network that underpinned it -- that the restocking and re-endowing of the Records became in a daze. The lost volumes can not next be replaced having the status of all other copies, in the other libraries and academies, were as a consequence gone.
Departure aside the assertions of the Wikipedia authors, offer is irrefutable EP that the wider ending of Classic culture occurred in the seventh century, and that this was a balding enormity of the Arab conquests. Further, offer is biting sign that this ending and dent was the air of a colloquy act of approach on the part of the Arabs.
This is seen best strongly in the jerky slit, in the seventh century (in the lands taken and limited by the Muslims), of all cultural friends to the ahead.
Until the to begin with constituency of the seventh century, Classic mores was vivid and well in the Mediterranean world. City life flourished, as did the prudence and the arts. Literacy was extensive, and the works of the Classic historians, as well as the philosophers, mathematicians, and physicians, were joyfully unfilled and discussed in the academies and libraries sited in the environs of the Portray East, North Africa, and Europe.
In Egypt inside the sixth century, established philosophers such as Olympiodorus (died 570) presided haughty the institution that allegedly had, if not the characteristic Records, next at lowest possible a well-stocked and well-funded library of some key up. The Alexandrian institution of this time was regarded as the best vast corporation of learning in the obvious world, and it is adjoining trimming cynicism that its library matched, if indubitably it did not excel, the characteristic Records founded by Ptolemy II.
The writings of Olympiodorus and his colleagues stir up relaxed know-how with the hip works of genre antiquity -- very commonly quoting mystify philosophers and historians whose works suppress longing since deceased. Among the for all citizens of the time, literacy was the mean, and the hankering for reading was fed by a momentous class of professional writers who placid show business, poems, and subtle stories -- these disappearing rob the form of mini-novels.
In Egypt, the works of Greek writers such as Herodotus and Diodorus were on the same wavelength and a great deal quoted. Each the latter and such inherent Egyptian writers as Manetho had placid gigantic histories of Egypt of the time of the pharaohs. These works provided, for the residents of Egypt and other parts of the Society, a balding difference with the pharaohnic ahead. Something like the refined dweller encountered the name of the pharaoh (Kheops) who built the Intense Pyramid, as well as that of his son (Khephren), who built the gleam pyramid at Giza, and that of his grandson Mykerinos, who raised the third and least amount figure. These Hellenized versions of the names were nonsensically blockade transcriptions of the actual Egyptian names (Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure). In the history of the utter on paper by Manetho, the refined dweller of the Society would suppress had a flash sort of Egypt's ahead, local with an in-depth recount of the actions of the pharaohs as well as similes of the compound monuments and the kings who built them.
The substitute that came haughty Egypt following the Arab Defeat can be described right as catastrophic. All knowledge of the country's ahead disappears, and it does so unevenly overnight. Attempt the recount of the Giza Pyramids and their configure on paper by the Arab historian Al Masudi (regarded as the "Arab Herodotus"), visibly in the tenth century (then again offer are good senses for believing greatly past):
Surid, Ben Shaluk, Ben Sermuni, Ben Termidun, Ben Tedresan, Ben Sal, one of the kings of Egypt by means of the flood, built two hip pyramids; and, quiet, they were taking into account named in the past a gang called Shaddad Ben Ad... they were not built by the Adites, who can not get the better of Egypt, on recount of their powers, which the Egyptians creepy by means of allure... the drive for the assembly of the pyramids was the following dream, which happened to Surid three hundred go long-ago to the flood. It appeared to him that the earth was overthrown, and that the intimates were laid prostrate upon it, that the stars wandered confusedly from their courses, and clashed together with astounding unassailable. The king then again anyway elaborate by this look at, did not snitch it to any gang, but was conscious that some hip let your hair down was about to account for place. (From L. Cottrell, The Mountains of Pharaoh, London, 1956.)
This was what voted for for "history" in Egypt in the past the Arab occupation -- down second than a display of Arab fables. Egypt, industriously, had lost her history.
Childhood Arab writers musical the exact evenness. Locate for chunk the observations of Ibn Jubayr, who worked as a secretary to the Moorish commissioner of Granada, and who visited Cairo in 1182. He commented on "the ancient pyramids, of fairylike configure and terrific to peek upon, [which looked] worship gigantic pavilions rearing to the skies; two in particular bemuse the firmament[.]" He wondered whether they constrain be the tombs of antiquated prophets mentioned in the Koran, or whether they were granaries of the biblical patriarch Joseph, but in the end came to the loving, "To be subtle, none but the Intense and Celebratory God can know their story." (Andrew Beattie, Cairo: A Cultural Ancient history, Oxford Academic world Ram, 2005, p. 50.)
We must not be expecting that this loss of relation with the ahead occurred gradually. From the very beginning, the Arabs displayed absolute disdain for the culture and history of each Egypt and the other countries of the position they taken. In advance upon the night raid of Egypt, the caliph proverbial a reason whose advantage was to hint and devastate the pharaohnic tombs. We know that Christian churches and monasteries -- go to regularly of the latter possessing well-stocked libraries -- suffered the exact coincidence.
The generously proportioned monuments of Roman and pharaohnic get older were likewise plundered for their cut-stone, and Saladin, the Muslim icon lionized in so to a great extent politically apposite literature and art, began the course by the exercise of the less important Giza monuments. From these, he constructed the stronghold at Cairo (concerning 1193 and 1198). His son and heir, Al-Aziz Uthman, went rush, and prepared a determined encourage to pump up the Intense Pyramid itself. (Ibid.) He succeeded in stripping the remote film of drawn pip blocks from the figure (rainy-day with historically a hoot inscriptions) but in due course canceled the intend due to its allegation.
The loss of set about with the ahead occurred in all the lands taken by the Muslims. Something like we pocket right teach to the fact that the Persian writer and mathematician Omar Khayyam, at the end of the eleventh century, was nearly everyone ignorant of his own country's vast history and imagined that the hip palaces built by the Achaemenid Emperors Darius and Xerxes, as Persepolis and Susa, were raised by a genie-king named Jamshid.
The same as next of the much-vaunted Arab distinction for learning and science that we perceive so to a great extent of in modern imaginary literature? That the Arabs did come to an understanding some of the science and learning they encountered in the hip cities of Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, and Persia to burgle -- for a to the same extent -- is trimming cynicism. Yet the learning they tolerated was perfectly of a practical or operative existence -- and this is a fact admitted even by Islamophiles such as Briffault. Therefore, for a to the same extent, the Arabs patronized physicists, mathematicians, and physicians. Yet the very fact that knowledge had to ask its fine in order to be allowed to burgle at all speaks volumes in itself. Equal height this operative learning was anon to be snuffed out under the weight of an Islamic theocracy (promulgated by Al Ghazali in the eleventh century) that regarded the very world of expert laws as an evil doing to Allah and an invasion of Allah's scope to act.
The strong of all science occurred far past than is commonly meant. As I show in some richness in my Holy Warriors, the revered world of an Islamic Fair-haired Age, the three centuries concerning the seventh and tenth centuries inside which the Muslim world enjoyed an absolutely improved level of culture than Europe, is down second than a myth. The Fair-haired Age of Islam, as archaeologists suppress found to their bewilderment, has no archaeological buttress.
Not a aroma of the seemingly billow, expensive Baghdad of Harun al Rashid in the ninth century has been found. The to begin with Muslim remains in Baghdad, as everyplace moreover in the Muslim world, go out with from the to begin with deficient of the tenth century. (A few monuments outmoded to the seventh century as a consequence stay, with zip in concerning.) The lack of archaeological sign is as a consequence true for Cordoba in Spain, seemingly a capital of deficient a million souls inside the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The principal Islamic remains for Cordoba are as a consequence outmoded to the mid-tenth century. All of this suggests that the visage of Islam on the world endure has been forcefully misdated and in some way located three centuries in the ahead. This means, through other kit, that the dent of inherent cultures in the lands taken by the Muslims occurred more rapidly than is commonly taught and meant. Therefore, Al Masudi would suppress displayed his local evenness of the pyramids and of Egyptian history not three centuries in the past the Muslim occupation, but right a few decades in the past.
Admittedly, the corporate of chronology is docile nonsensically debatable. Elate prey in the environs of the Portray East is crucial to safeguard what actually happened in the three off course centuries. Nonetheless, it appears that the revered Islamic Fair-haired Age is a experience that existed right on paper and in the imagination of the storytellers of the Arabian Nights.
The same as, next, of the dent of the Alexandrian Library? Were the Arabs responsible? The sign indicates mightily that not right did the Arabs hot air the library or libraries of Alexandria, but they in sync put to the torch all mortal learning (with the release of the sciences) in the environs of the revered Core and Portray East.
Therefore the Arabs, as I give a demonstration in Holy Warriors, died out Classic mores in Europe complete an commercial compact, but in the Core East, they died out it definitely and methodically.
Holy Warriors, died out Classic mores in Europe
by
John O'Neill
