learned
Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than
that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was
pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius,
and who derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of
grammar and philosophy. [115] Emboldened by this familiar intercourse,
Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion,
contemptible in that of the Barbarians--the royal library, which alone,
among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit
and the seal of the conqueror.

Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid
integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent
of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the
ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of the Greeks agree with
the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved: if they
disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence
was executed with blind obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment
were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was
their incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient
for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of
Abulpharagius [116] have been given to the world in a Latin version,
the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious
indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning,
the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly
tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. [1161] The fact is
indeed marvellous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and
the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred
years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two
annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt,
and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply
described the conquest of Alexandria. [117] The rigid sentence of Omar
is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists
they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and
Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never
be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science,
historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied
to the use of the faithful. [118] A more destructive ze