Here is a challenge for you Hind Samy

Submitted by The challenging innocent (United States), Apr 2, 2006 at 12:59

Here is a challenge for you :

Ptolemy II, who became the ruler of Egypt after Alexander the Great in the third century BC, was a great patron of learning, and founded a library in Alexandria, Egypt, which contained about 5,00,000 books on different subjects. It is this collection which is known in history as the great library in Alexandria.

This library was burned down by Amr bin Aas at the behest of the Second Caliph, Umar. The story goes to state that Amr fed the numerous bath furnaces of the city with the volumes of the Alexandrian library. The story also relates the oft-quoted remark allegedly made by Caliph Umar (ruled: 634-644) when he consented to the destruction of the library, "If these writing of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed". Amr bin Aas decided that the books were contrary to the Quran and the whole library was burned down without even opening the books.

The Library of Alexandria held the greatest collection of human knowledge at the time. Its destruction was a contributing factor to the decline in collective intellect of the classical world. Its estimated had not that library been burned we would be a thousand years advanced of what we are today.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".