Nubia. But the facility of
the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the obstinacy of the
resistance, provoked him to swear, that if a third time he drove the
infidels into the sea, he would render Alexandria as accessible on
all sides as the house of a prostitute. Faithful to his promise, he
dismantled several parts of the walls and towers; but the people was
spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosch of _Mercy_ was
erected on the spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of
his troops.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part VII.

I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence
the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the 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. 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 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. The fact
is indeed marvellous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and
the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at th