The caliph's order
‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, writing about 1200, mentions in passing the library which ‘Amr burned with ‘Umar's permission. Ibn al-Qifti, a generation later, tells the whole story.
Told by ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, c. 1200 CE, some 550 years after the conquest
What the evidence supports
No ancient source supports it. John of Nikiu, who wrote within a lifetime of the conquest and was hostile to the conquerors, says nothing of books burned; the story is unknown before about 1200, and no ancient library is known to have stood in 642.
Sources (5)
- ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, Account of Egypt c. 1200
- John of Nikiu, Chronicle 120
- B. Lewis, "The Vanished Library", letter in The New York Review of Books, 27 September 1990
- B. Lewis, "The Arab Destruction of the Library of Alexandria: Anatomy of a Myth", in El-Abbadi and Fathallah (eds.), What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria? (Leiden, 2008) 213–217
- A. J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion (Oxford, 1902; 2nd ed. P. M. Fraser, 1978) (opens in a new tab)