[kiwi12]

Today I had dispute with my sisters husband about who destroyed Great Library at Alexandria. I was certain that muslims destroyed it(i remember reading about it somewhere), but he tried to tell me that Romains did it. Later he sent me this article. I did some google searches and reading, and found that there indeed was several fires in library.
Maybe some more knowledgeable person can enlighten me?

[Tenerife]

Christians, Muslims, Jews: pick one.

I read somewhere that the library was attached to the temple of Serapsis which was destroyed by an unruly mob of Christians in 390 after Emperor Theodosius banned all religions besides Christianity.

Christians enjoyed shutting down philosophical schools, burning pagan texts and destroying pagan temples so it wouldn't surprise me if it was Christians.

[Thomas the Rhymer]

The wikipedia article doesn't really clear things up...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destructio...Alexandria

I'm not an expert but my guesses are::
- it appears that the library consisted of multiple buildings. The 'burning of the library' may only have involved one building at a time, not the entire library complex
- every invasion of Alexandria, beginning with Julius Caesar's epic battle of Alexandria in support of Cleopatra, appears to have been accompanied by some form of looting/destruction of at least one of the library buildings
- the muslim invasion, the last of many, seems to have been the library's last gasp. It was probably looted and then simply never restocked.

It appears to have been a victim of multiple wars, rather than a deliberate target for destruction.

[MajorStyles]

(09-17-2016 03:54 PM)kiwi12 Wrote:  

Today I had dispute with my sisters husband about who destroyed Great Library at Alexandria. I was certain that muslims destroyed it(i remember reading about it somewhere), but he tried to tell me that Romains did it. Later he sent me this article. I did some google searches and reading, and found that there indeed was several fires in library.
Maybe some more knowledgeable person can enlighten me?

Great question and I like to read more in this thread. In school they tell you (if you're lucky) that the library was destroyed. Few will tell you who did it, and even fewer will tell you why.

[The Beast1]

Thomas the Rhymer has it. The library wasn't a singular building but many over the entire city. The city was sacked multiple times. By the time the muslims took over the place was on its last legs.

Fun fact about alexandria: they used to take books from merchants passing through. They made copies and gave them to the travelers while keeping the originals.