PART I: ANCIENT LIBRARY OF
ALEXANDRIA
Alexandria Project
The Alexandria Project (AP) is one of the major research projects undertaken by
the Bibliotheca Alexandrina since its inception. The Project is designed
primarily to serve researchers whose main area of study focuses on the Ancient
Library of Alexandria and Alexandrian scholarship as well as other relevant
topics. The Project seeks to achieve its goals through stimulating scholarship,
promoting research, organizing scholarly workshops, seminars, and conferences
as well as developing extensive collections on related topics. It also aims at
publishing series of comprehensive studies of which the present volume is the
first.
Indeed, temples and tombs are libraries, in as much as their walls preserve the
oldest and longest religious books that we have in Egypt and maybe in the
world, from the Pyramid Texts dating back to the middle of the third millennium
B.C., to the last inscriptions of the Temple of Philae in the fifth century
A.D.; in addition to historical records, geographical texts, and a large
variety of inscriptions and scenes providing invaluable information on the
economy of the country, its social life and the level of its scientific
achievements.
Map of Alexandria
Evidence for the presence of
archives and libraries in Ancient Egypt
In spite of massive losses of texts written on perishable organic material such
as papyrus, wooden tablets or leather rolls, the increasingly large amount of
written data coming from Ancient Egypt and the variety of the text genres, ranging
from administrative to religious, including literary and scientific texts point
to the presence of some sort of system for administering all this material.
More importantly, evidence of their transmission across time indicates clearly
that certain texts must have been kept in depositories for preservation and
easy access or retrieval. These depositories varied according to the categories
of texts; whereas specific accounts and certain administrative documents (such
as the fifth dynasty Abusir Papyri which deal essentially with the circulation
and redistribution of man power, cattle and goods between different temples)
may have required a shorter time of preservation, registration of personal
property and legal texts required more permanence. Research on writing material
in Ancient Egypt, and more specifically on papyrus, the way it was manufactured
and produced in different sizes to suit different needs, as well as the way how
it was preserved, has been pursued by a number of scholars. Fayence labels
fixed to papyrus rolls or to their containers were also found. Titles of texts
related to daily life or rituals in the temple were also inscribed on walls of
temple libraries of the late periods.
Private Collections and Temple Libraries: The Documents
Although the archeological context of a large part of the documents we have
today remains unknown, there is clear evidence for the existence of private
collections next to institutional libraries in Ancient Egypt. Documents
sometimes mention, in a colophon, the name of their owner or of the scribe who
copied them (who could be the very owner himself). Hazards of excavations have
also sometimes revealed entire collections whether in a temple, a tomb or a
settlement. Every now and then Egyptological research updates and clarifies our
understanding of these texts, and brings to our attention newly discovered
ones. In the last decade or so, in addition to excellent monographs, a number
of seminars have resulted in very important publications with compilations,
descriptions and studies of texts of all genres and of all periods. Literary
texts in particular seem to have attracted more attention.
Private Collections
Private collections are usually found in tombs or in settlements. They usually
show a variety in their contents as they often conserve miscellaneous texts
including private correspondence, literary compositions, medico-magical texts,
scientific treatises and religious funerary texts according to the profession
and the taste of their owners.
Temple Archives and Libraries: Walls of the temples
Like the walls of tombs, the walls of temples were covered with different kinds
of texts shedding light on different aspects of Egyptian life.
Temple Archives and Libraries: Actual libraries
Temple archives presenting a miscellany of texts related to the economic life
and administration of the temple mixed with religious compositions are known
since the Old Kingdom. In fact, the oldest written texts we have come from
temple archives.
Funerary texts
All funerary texts were inscribed on the walls of royal and private tombs as
well as on coffins and sarcophagi. However, these very texts have also been copied
or abbreviated on papyri for the benefit of tomb owners who wanted to supply
themselves with more copies for their afterlife. Some of these papyri, richly
illustrated with colored vignettes are probably the first illustrated books in
the world. There must also have been master copies written on papyrus to be
available for the scribes who inscribed the texts on the walls of tombs or on
other funerary equipments; and it is very likely that all this documentation
was made and preserved in the scriptoria of the temples. All these funerary
compositions, from the Pyramid Texts written in the third millennium B.C. to
the last funerary texts of the Graeco-Roman period, deal essentially with the
accession of the deceased to the afterlife and his escaping its dangers before
merging with the gods of the other world and spending eternal life in bliss.
They all contain superb passages of intensive religiosity and great literary
value, comparable with other religious texts from different traditions.
Funerary compositions recited during mummification or at funerals were also
kept in the libraries of the temples. All these texts have been compiled and
presented in a number of publications.
Texts for Temple Rituals
Temples had a life of their own. The daily ritual performed in them was not
limited to the service and adoration of the gods, it served essentially to
dispel chaos and maintain an orderly creation and the equilibrium of the world.
In addition to the performance of the daily ritual, the calendar was full of festivals
with rites performed inside the temple or even sometimes expanding outside the
temple in processional journeys of the gods to different locations. All these
rituals demanded great knowledge of specific texts preserved in the libraries
of the temples.
Related Texts
In addition to religious texts, temple libraries housed other kinds of
documentation for the smooth performance of the various functions in the
temple’s life, such as astronomical texts to establish among other things, the
time of rituals, veterinary treatises to ensure the good health of animals
slaughtered as offerings, texts on drugs and pharmacy, magic and medicine,
dream interpretation, history, geography, economics, administration and
geometry, all sciences needed for the service of the gods and their creations.
The Alexandrian Fire-Storm of 48 B.C.
The Alexandrian Library and the fate of its intellectual content in 48 B.C.
have been discussed by Classical philologists, historians, and archaeologists
over the past 183 years. The select bibliography alone is simply enormous,
numbering over fifty citations.
At issue for these scholars are basically three questions that can be
summarized as follows. First of all, where was the Library located—near the
Eastern Harbour or safely beyond it? Second, do the ancient testimonia that
refer to the loss of stored books mean the Great Library itself, or some other
external collection? Third and finally, was the Great Library indeed damaged or
destroyed as a result of the Bellum Alexandrinum, when Julius Caesar set
afire the Egyptian fleet in the Eastern Harbour?
To date, no scholar has focused upon one detail that all of the ancient
testimonia agree upon the fire itself. So, the present thesis argues simply
this: if the necessary conditions were available, could the intentionally set
Alexandrian fire of 48 B.C. have reached fire-storm proportions?
A fire-storm is usually a natural phenomenon that combines fire with the mass
movement of air to create a fire of extreme intensity over a wide area. After
an area catches fire, the air above the area becomes extremely hot and rises
rapidly. Cold air then rushes in at ground level from the outside, creating
high winds which fan the flames at ground level further. This vortex creates a
self-sustaining “fire-storm” that can attain temperatures as high as 2000ºC.
The Destruction of the Library of Alexandria
The debate surrounding the destruction of the Library among modern writers has
taken a rather striking ideological dimension. In effect, the Western tradition
following the evidence of Seneca and Plutarch, among others, has commonly
attributed the fire that ravaged the building to Julius Caesar. Lucan and Dio
Cassius recount how, as he tried to out-manoeuvre the attacking Alexandrians
from the heights of the royal palaces, he set fire to vessels anchored in the
Eastern Harbour. This action led to the burning of an apothiki full of
papyri and this has been interpreted as the destruction of the Library of
Alexandria.
Another version attributes the destruction to ‘Amr ibn al-‘Ās, the Arab
conqueror of Egypt who took Alexandria in 642 A.D., the Library having
apparently survived until this date. We know the tale: obeying the command of
the Caliph ‘Umar, ‘Amr used the papyri to heat the furnaces of Alexandria’s
public bathhouses.
Then, there is the intermediary version. The guilty party this time are the
Christians led by Bishop Theophilus. In 391 A.D., this latter applied the edict
of Theodosius prohibiting the practice of pagan cults and he led his troops in
the destruction of the most famous sanctuary at Alexandria, the Temple of
Serapis which dominated the city at the top of some one hundred steps upon the
platform that the Alexandrians, somewhat pompously, called the Acropolis.
Only ruins were left of the sanctuary and upon them a monastery dedicated to
St. John was built. This violence against the pagans continued throughout the
following decades and it was not only the cults themselves that were targeted,
but also individuals. Thus Cyril, nephew and successor to Theophilus, in a
desire to end the teaching of pagan philosophy, sent his hordes of monks to
assassinate Hypatia in the open streets of Alexandria in 415 A.D.
It is certainly difficult to imagine the total disappearance of the library.
The Ancient Library of Alexandria, built by the Ptolemies in the third century
B.C., played a very important role in the development of scientific and
intellectual activities of the Mediterranean world over several centuries. In
some ways, this Library with its annexations can be considered a kind of
continuation of the temple libraries of ancient Egypt, but undoubtedly, it was
by far the most important and renowned Library in the ancient world.
Since Edward Gibbon first started the debate about the fate of the Ancient
Library of Alexandria in the eighteenth century, this subject has aroused
vehement controversies among historians during the last two centuries. The
revival of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a few years ago, has stimulated the
debate once more and this paper deals with the Arab version of the story of the
fate of the Ancient Library.
Interior of the
modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina
PART II: THE ABBASID HOUSE OF
WISDOM
Ummayad Dynasty
After ‘Ali’s death the caliphate passed to his rival Mu‘awiya, despite the
hopes of many that ‘Ali’s elder son, Hasan, would became caliph. Hasan was,
however, a practical man and when he saw ‘that rule was beyond his grasp’
because he lacked sufficient support to fight Mu‘awiya, he negotiated peace
terms with him, including a substantial sum of money from the treasury of Kufa.
With hindsight, the death of ‘Ali marked the end of the period of the Rightly Guided
Caliphs and the start of a new era in which the caliphate passed to the Umayyad
and then ‘Abbasid dynasties, whose political ethos blended the original
Medinese idea of the caliphate with various Near Eastern traditions of
kingship. The Umayyads and ‘Abbasids interacted with the Islamic and
pre-Islamic pasts in distinct ways and presented themselves as picking up
different strands of the story presented above but, such differences aside, the
‘Abbasid edifice was constructed upon the foundations laid by the Umayyads, to
whom we now turn.
Like his second cousin, ‘Uthman, Mu‘awiya was a member of the aristocratic Banu
Umayya clan from which the designation ‘Umayyad’ comes. He was the first caliph
of a younger generation but had served as the Prophet’s secretary late in the
latter’s life and was generally accepted by the community as a sensible choice
of leader. He reunited the empire, which had been fractured by civil strife
throughout ‘Ali’s caliphate, and the dynasty he established ruled it for the
next 90 years. His successors constructed an imperial identity manifested in
administration, architecture and coinage, and presided over the first phase in
the creation of the Islamic culture and society which flowered under the
‘Abbasids. The first important change which Mu‘awiya made was to transfer the
caliphal seat from Medina to Damascus in recognition of the shifting
geopolitical centre of the Islamic empire. Despite its cachet as the city of
the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, Medina was a small city in remote
Arabia from which it was impossible to adequately direct the conquests or
administer an empire. Damascus, in contrast, was still in easy reach of Islam’s
birthplace to the south, but also placed the caliph in the heart of Byzantine
Syria and within striking distance of Mesopotamia.
Despite their achievements, the Umayyads became notorious for a number of
actions which irrevocably tarnished their reputation and paved the way for the
‘Abbasid revolution in 750.
The Rise of Abbasid
Broadly speaking, the appeal of the ‘Abbasid revolution was the same as that of
the Kharijite revolt in North Africa: it offered a fairer Islamic order in
which Muslims, whatever their origin, would be able to participate on equal
terms. However, the propagandists of the ‘Abbasid movement asserted that this
could only be achieved if the caliphate was held by a member of the Prophet’s
family, the ahl al-bayt, in contrast to the Kharijite position that the
best man should be caliph regardless of his origin. The movement was highly
successful because its chief representative in Khurasan, a client of the
‘Abbasids called Abu Muslim, did not state which member of the Prophet’s house
would be elevated to the caliphate. This prevented squabbling and
faction-fighting between supporters of the different scions of the ahl
albayt, who included the male descendants of Hasan and Husayn and also more
distant relatives of the Prophet such as the ‘Abbasids themselves, who were the
descendants of one of his uncles.
As we’re talking about library, there’s another old library that was
famous and rich in knowledge. Its name is “House of Wisdom” or Bayt
Al-Hikmah. The ninth-century Abbasid palace library known as the House of
Wisdom has attracted the attention of generations of scholars from the end of
the nineteenth century until today. The transformation of this institution from
a palace library into a nineteenth-century modern European academy or
fully-fledged modern-day university has had a very interesting journey.
The earliest scientific
manuscripts originated in the Abbasid era
Baghdad, the capital of the
“Abbasid Caliphate”, was established after a careful search for the most
suitable place to establish as the basis of the new administration and the new
army. Al-Mansur (754–775), the second Abbasid Caliph, selected a fertile and
strategically convenient place on the main routes of communications with
various parts of the empire. The historical growth of Baghdad, beginning with a
magnificent, round city constructed by al-Mansur in 145/762, suggests a rather
different type of urban development. The round city, or Madinat al-Salam (the
city of peace), as it was also called, was not a prefabricated military camp
given permanency by a growing sedentary environment, but rather the product of
consummate planning and execution.
The advent of Islam and the Arab conquests brought to an end the old divisions
that separated the civilized world for a millennium since the time of Alexander
the Great. Egypt and the fertile crescent were united with Persia, Central
Asia, and India under central political authority based in Baghdad. This led to
the free flow of goods, knowledge, and ideas. It was the agricultural
revolution of the first centuries after the Arab conquest that provided much of
the wealth of the early empire and benefited all social strata.
The earliest settlers of Baghdad were undoubtedly the followers and supporters
of the caliph. They were the Abbasid family, the companions, the client
(Mawali), the commanders, the army, and the masses. The quick growth of the
population and of economic activity led to the expansion of a Baghdad as a
whole, until it became the greatest city in the empire and the largest in the
world. The capital of the Abbasid Empire was a real metropolis, and better
representative of the Islamic Empire than semi-nomadic Medina or
quasi-Byzantine Damascus. Arabic, Aramaic, Persian, and Turkish cultures were
living together as early as its foundation, and the scantiness of the
Greco-Byzantine elements was compensated for by the active translation of the
Greek intellectual heritage into Arabic.
The population was nevertheless linked together by the common bonds of the
Arabic language, the Islamic religion, and their allegiance to the caliph who
stood above racial divisions. The army and the officials formed the majority of
the population of early Baghdad as they did in the amsar (garrison
towns); but whereas the amsar were dominated by a population of almost
purely Arabic nomadic stock whose relations with the government were not always
smooth, the population of early Baghdad had good relations with the ruling
Abbasid Caliphs. The non-Arab elements were many, but the caliph’s support of
the nomadic culture and the Arabs created a balance and a peaceful process of
establishing a cosmopolitan civilization into which were integrated the
numerous different cultures that already existed in the Middle East.
During this period, the sciences of the ancients (‘ulum al-’awa’il) also called
foreign sciences (al-’ulum al-dakhila), rational or intellectual sciences
(al-’ulum al’aqliyya), or philosophical sciences (al-’ulum al-falsafiyya, or
al-’ulum al-hikamiyya or what is shortly known as al-hikma/wisdom) were
transmitted from antiquity and formed an integral part of the new encyclopedia
of knowledge. The integration of these sciences in the epistemological and
educational structure was a long process which started in this era and was
achieved in steps.
After the second/eighth century and until the Mongol invasion, Baghdad was the
center where arts and sciences were sought. In addition to some clues in the
primary sources that enlighten certain aspects of intellectuality in early
Abbasid period, we know also cultural image of Abbasid life mirrored in the
partly fanciful tale of Arabian Nights where scholars, as well as simple people
such as the chatterbox barber, are portrayed as an astrologer and learned in
alchemy and white magic, syntax, grammar and lexicology, the arts of logic,
rhetoric and elocution, mathematics, arithmetic and algebra, astronomy,
astromancy and geometry, theology, traditions of the prophet, and commentaries
of the Quran.
For more information, you can read sources below.
Source:
- Bennison, A. (2009). The Great Caliphs: THE
GOLDEN AGE OF THE ‘ABBASID EMPIRE. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Brill. (2008). What Happened to The Ancient
Library of Alexandria? (M. E.-A. Fathallah, Ed.) Leiden: Brill.
- Ihsanoğlu, E. (2023). The Abbasid House of
Wisdom: Between Myth and Reality. New York: Routledge.
- MacLeod, R. (2010). THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA:
CENTRE OF LEARNING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. New York: I.B.Tauris & Co
Ltd.
