Islam and the Advancement of Knowledge
The West has been subjugated to Muslim propaganda concerning how Islam continued to advance knowledge while the Christian West fell into a stupefied dark age. For one who cares to do primary research, what one finds is quite another picture. When the curtain of Islam fell over the Eastern, Mideast and North Africa regions, the free flow of information, cultural and education exchanges stopped. During the Muslim conquests they became wards of several Christian centers of learning. These schools had long been the depository of knowledge of all sorts, but especially of engineering, physical and medical sciences. One of these centers of learning was Edessa in Upper Mesopotamia. In Edessa, was founded the celebrated School of the Persians. This school (largely attended by the Christian youth of Persia, and held in suspicion by the Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt because of its strong Nestorian tendencies) reached its highest development under Bishop Ibas, famous through the Three-Chapter Controversy. This school was ordered closed in 489, by command of Emperor Zeno and Bishop Cyrus, upon which the teachers and students of the School of Edessa removed to Nisibis and became the founders and chief writers of the Nestorian Church in Persia. However, it is noted that Miaphysite Christianity prospered at Edessa, even after the Arab conquest. The whole region fell to Muslim conquest in A. D. 638. This loss of principles Christian schools, which included Alexandria, Egypt and its great school and library in A. D. 642 was a great loss to the Cristian world at large because of these centers of learning. It is no mystery of how an illiterate race of desert nomads could go from not being able to read or write to being teachers of the sciences in such a short period of time. They had captured great centers of Christian learning that had themselves preserved the best of the knowledge of the Greek and Latin worlds. These schools were very literally cut off from the Western Christian world by continuous war and the unimaginable suspension one side had for the other. So, then, when, hundreds of years later, the West discovered what wonderful scientific knowledge the Arab world held, it was forgotten that the knowledge had been plagiarized from the conquered Christian educational centers.
Muslims Destroyed Alexandria's Famous Library?
In the beginning of Muslim conquest many bright lights of Christian learning were snuffed out before more sensible heads of the Islamic world could prevail. An example is the destruction of the great library in Alexandria Egypt.
The Library of Alexandria was one of the best-known of the libraries of the ancient world. One of the interesting facts about the ancient world that seems to be missing from many history books is that there were many great collections of books and literature in ancient times and most were open to any scholar from anywhere in the world.
The library at Alexandria actually competed with that at Pergamum in amassing the most complete collection of books in the world. This went on in the 200's B. C., and it is interesting to note that there were already so many works in existence that obtaining a copy of each would have been an impossible undertaking even then. The destruction of this priceless treasure was a stroke of the most unimaginable barbaric act. If Byzantine Egypt had been taken by one of the later Islamic conquerors, this irreplaceable collection would have been counted amongst the finest of the spoils of war to fall into a victor's hands.
Early in the year A. D. 642, Alexandria surrendered to Amrou, the Islamic general leading the armies of Omar, Caliph of Baghdad. Long one of the most important cities of the ancient world and capital of Byzantine Egypt, Alexandria surrendered only after a long siege and attempts to rescue the city by the Byzantines. On the orders of Omar, Caliph of Baghdad, the entire collection of books (except for the works of Aristotle) stored at the Library of Alexandria were removed and used as fuel to heat water for the city's public baths.
This is not the first time the library was damaged or destroyed. Originally built to house the massive collection of books accumulated by the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, the library had been devastated by fire several times. During Julius Caesar's Alexandrian campaign in 47 B. C., Caesar set fire to ships in the port. The fire spread to the library, which was called the Museum at that time.
In A. D. 391, riots instigated by fanatical Christians damaged the collection heavily. During the years between disastrous events, the library collection had been gradually restored. In 641, the Caliph of Baghdad exhibited the same spirit of religious fanaticism in ordering Amrou to burn the books stored there. The loss of the library at Alexandria was a particularly grievous blow because the works of so many scholars of the ancient world, literary geniuses, and historians were destroyed.
In A. D. 642, Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of Amr ibn al `Aas. Several later Arabic sources describe the library's destruction by the order of Caliph Omar. Bar-Hebraeus, writing in the 13th century, quotes Omar as saying “If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them.” According to tradition, the scrolls were used as fuel to provide hot water for the soldiers' baths for six months.
Sadly, this attitude toward higher learning, continues to be exemplified throughout the Muslim world in the twenty-first-century.
Apostolically Speaking,
☩ Jerry L Hayes
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