Library of Alexandria significant event Destruction of the Library of Alexandria
Arabic sources on Muslim invasion
In 642 AD, Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of Amr ibn al-As. Several later Arabic sources describe the library's destruction by the order of Caliph Omar. Bar-Hebraeus, writing in the thirteenth century, quotes Omar as saying to Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them." Later scholars—beginning with Father Eusèbe Renaudot's remark in 1713 in his translation of the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria that the tale "had something untrustworthy about it"—are skeptical of these stories, given the range of time that had passed before they were written down and the political motivations of the various writers. According to Diana Delia, "Omar's rejection of pagan and Christian wisdom may have been devised and exploited by conservative authorities as a moral exemplum for Muslims to follow in later, uncertain times, when the devotion of the faithful was once again tested by proximity to nonbelievers".