When Amrou, the lieutenant of the Khalif Omar, conquered Egypt, and annexed it to the Saracenic Empire, he found in Alexandria a Greek grammarian, John surnamed Philoponus, or the Labor-lover.  Presuming on the friendship which had arisen between them, the Greek solicited as a gift the remnant of the great library—­ a remnant which war and time and bigotry had spared.  Amrou, therefore, sent to the khalif to ascertain his pleasure.  “If,” replied the khalif, “the books agree with the Koran, the Word of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree with it, they are pernicious.  Let them be destroyed.”  Accordingly, they were distributed among the baths of Alexandria, and it is said that six months were barely sufficient to consume them.

Although the fact has been denied, there can be little doubt that Omar gave this order.  The khalif was an illiterate man; his environment was an environment of fanaticism and ignorance.  Omar’s act was an illustration of Ali’s remark.

The Alexandrian library burnt.  But it must not be supposed that the books which John the Labor-lover coveted were those which constituted the great library of the Ptolemies, and that of Eumenes, King of Pergamus.  Nearly a thousand years had elapsed since Philadelphus began his collection.  Julius Caesar had burnt more than half; the Patriarchs of Alexandria had not only permitted but superintended the dispersion of almost all the rest.  Orosius expressly states that he saw the empty cases or shelves of the library twenty years after Theophilus, the uncle of St. Cyril, had procured from the Emperor Theodosius a rescript for its destruction.  Even had this once noble collection never endured such acts of violence, the mere wear and tear, and perhaps, I may add, the pilfering of a thousand years, would have diminished it sadly.  Though John, as the surname he received indicates, might rejoice in a superfluity of occupation, we may be certain that the care of a library of half a million books would transcend even his well-tried powers; and the cost of preserving and supporting it, that had demanded the ample resources of the Ptolemies and the Caesars, was beyond the means of a grammarian.  Nor is the time required for its combustion or destruction any indication of the extent of the collection.  Of all articles of fuel, parchment is, perhaps, the most wretched.  Paper and papyrus do excellently well as kindling-materials, but we may be sure that the bath-men of Alexandria did not resort to parchment so long as they could find any thing else, and of parchment a very large portion of these books was composed.