Four thousand baths
Ibn al-Qifti tells that John the Grammarian asked ‘Amr for the books of wisdom; the caliph replied that if they agreed with the Book of God they were unnecessary and if they disagreed undesirable, and the books fed the fires of the city's four thousand baths for six months.
Told by Ibn al-Qifti, before 1248 CE, some six centuries after the conquest
What the evidence supports
John Philoponus, the Grammarian, had died some seventy years before the conquest. Ibn Khaldun tells the same exchange of the books of the Persians: a travelling tale.
Sources (3)
- Ibn al-Qifti, History of Learned Men Yahya al-Nahwi
- Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah ch. 6
- 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