This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...twenty years afterwards the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every intelligent spectator." The same authority, under the article "Amru," further says: "To Amru has generally been attributed the burning of the famous Alexandrian library, by command of khaliff Omar; but with this act ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...twenty years afterwards the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every intelligent spectator." The same authority, under the article "Amru," further says: "To Amru has generally been attributed the burning of the famous Alexandrian library, by command of khaliff Omar; but with this act of barbarism, so repugnant to the character of Omar and his general, he is for the first time charged by Abulpharagius, a Christian writer who lived six centuries later. It is highly probable that few of the 700,000 volumes, collected by the Ptolemies, remained at the time of the Arab conquest, when we consider the various calamities of Alexandria, from the time of Caesar to those of Caracalla, Diocletian, and the disgraceful pillage of the library, in A.D. J8q, under the rule of a Christian Bishop, Theophilus, a far less respectable character than the Arabian conquerors." We add the following corroborative statement, made by the equally unimpeachable authority Chambers' Encyclopedia in its article on the Alexandrian library: "The other part of the library was kept in the Serapeion, the temple of Jupiter Serapis, where it remained till the time of Theodosius the Great. When this emperor permitted all the heathen temples in the Roman empire to be destroyed, the magnificent temple of Jupiter Serapis was not spared. A mob of fanatic Christians led on by Archibishop Tkeophilus, stormed and destroyed the temple, together, it is most likely, with the greater part of its literary treasures. "It was at this time, that the destruction of the library was begun, and not at the taking of Alexandria by the Calif Omar, 642 A.D. The historian Orosius, who visited the place after the destruction of the temple by the...
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