You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
This prompt made me read about Ancient Library of Alexandria and The Abbasid House of Wisdom.
Part I: Ancient Library of Alexandria
Alexandria Project
The Alexandria Project (AP) is one of the major research projects undertaken by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina since its inception. The Project is designed primarily to serve researchers whose main area of study focuses on the Ancient Library of Alexandria and Alexandrian scholarship as well as other relevant topics. The Project seeks to achieve its goals through stimulating scholarship, promoting research, organizing scholarly workshops, seminars, and conferences as well as developing extensive collections on related topics. It also aims at publishing series of comprehensive studies of which the present volume is the first.
Indeed, temples and tombs are libraries, in as much as their walls preserve the oldest and longest religious books that we have in Egypt and maybe in the world, from the Pyramid Texts dating back to the middle of the third millennium B.C., to the last inscriptions of the Temple of Philae in the fifth century A.D.; in addition to historical records, geographical texts, and a large variety of inscriptions and scenes providing invaluable information on the economy of the country, its social life and the level of its scientific achievements.
Evidence for the presence of archives and libraries in Ancient Egypt
In spite of massive losses of texts written on perishable organic material such as papyrus, wooden tablets or leather rolls, the increasingly large amount of written data coming from Ancient Egypt and the variety of the text genres, ranging from administrative to religious, including literary and scientific texts point to the presence of some sort of system for administering all this material. More importantly, evidence of their transmission across time indicates clearly that certain texts must have been kept in depositories for preservation and easy access or retrieval. These depositories varied according to the categories of texts; whereas specific accounts and certain administrative documents (such as the fifth dynasty Abusir Papyri which deal essentially with the circulation and redistribution of man power, cattle and goods between different temples) may have required a shorter time of preservation, registration of personal property and legal texts required more permanence. Research on writing material in Ancient Egypt, and more specifically on papyrus, the way it was manufactured and produced in different sizes to suit different needs, as well as the way how it was preserved, has been pursued by a number of scholars. Fayence labels fixed to papyrus rolls or to their containers were also found. Titles of texts related to daily life or rituals in the temple were also inscribed on walls of temple libraries of the late periods.
Private Collections and Temple Libraries: The Documents
Although the archeological context of a large part of the documents we have today remains unknown, there is clear evidence for the existence of private collections next to institutional libraries in Ancient Egypt. Documents sometimes mention, in a colophon, the name of their owner or of the scribe who copied them (who could be the very owner himself). Hazards of excavations have also sometimes revealed entire collections whether in a temple, a tomb or a settlement. Every now and then Egyptological research updates and clarifies our understanding of these texts, and brings to our attention newly discovered ones. In the last decade or so, in addition to excellent monographs, a number of seminars have resulted in very important publications with compilations, descriptions and studies of texts of all genres and of all periods. Literary texts in particular seem to have attracted more attention.
Private Collections
Private collections are usually found in tombs or in settlements. They usually show a variety in their contents as they often conserve miscellaneous texts including private correspondence, literary compositions, medico-magical texts, scientific treatises and religious funerary texts according to the profession and the taste of their owners.
Temple Archives and Libraries: Walls of the temples
Like the walls of tombs, the walls of temples were covered with different kinds of texts shedding light on different aspects of Egyptian life.
Temple Archives and Libraries: Actual libraries
Temple archives presenting a miscellany of texts related to the economic life and administration of the temple mixed with religious compositions are known since the Old Kingdom. In fact, the oldest written texts we have come from temple archives.
Funerary texts
All funerary texts were inscribed on the walls of royal and private tombs as well as on coffins and sarcophagi. However, these very texts have also been copied or abbreviated on papyri for the benefit of tomb owners who wanted to supply themselves with more copies for their afterlife. Some of these papyri, richly illustrated with colored vignettes are probably the first illustrated books in the world. There must also have been master copies written on papyrus to be available for the scribes who inscribed the texts on the walls of tombs or on other funerary equipments; and it is very likely that all this documentation was made and preserved in the scriptoria of the temples. All these funerary compositions, from the Pyramid Texts written in the third millennium B.C. to the last funerary texts of the Graeco-Roman period, deal essentially with the accession of the deceased to the afterlife and his escaping its dangers before merging with the gods of the other world and spending eternal life in bliss. They all contain superb passages of intensive religiosity and great literary value, comparable with other religious texts from different traditions. Funerary compositions recited during mummification or at funerals were also kept in the libraries of the temples. All these texts have been compiled and presented in a number of publications.
Texts for Temple Rituals
Temples had a life of their own. The daily ritual performed in them was not limited to the service and adoration of the gods, it served essentially to dispel chaos and maintain an orderly creation and the equilibrium of the world. In addition to the performance of the daily ritual, the calendar was full of festivals with rites performed inside the temple or even sometimes expanding outside the temple in processional journeys of the gods to different locations. All these rituals demanded great knowledge of specific texts preserved in the libraries of the temples.
Related Texts
In addition to religious texts, temple libraries housed other kinds of documentation for the smooth performance of the various functions in the temple’s life, such as astronomical texts to establish among other things, the time of rituals, veterinary treatises to ensure the good health of animals slaughtered as offerings, texts on drugs and pharmacy, magic and medicine, dream interpretation, history, geography, economics, administration and geometry, all sciences needed for the service of the gods and their creations.
The Alexandrian Fire-Storm of 48 B.C.
The Alexandrian Library and the fate of its intellectual content in 48 B.C. have been discussed by Classical philologists, historians, and archaeologists over the past 183 years. The select bibliography alone is simply enormous, numbering over fifty citations.
At issue for these scholars are basically three questions that can be summarized as follows. First of all, where was the Library located—near the Eastern Harbour or safely beyond it? Second, do the ancient testimonia that refer to the loss of stored books mean the Great Library itself, or some other external collection? Third and finally, was the Great Library indeed damaged or destroyed as a result of the Bellum Alexandrinum, when Julius Caesar set afire the Egyptian fleet in the Eastern Harbour?
To date, no scholar has focused upon one detail that all of the ancient testimonia agree upon the fire itself. So, the present thesis argues simply this: if the necessary conditions were available, could the intentionally set Alexandrian fire of 48 B.C. have reached fire-storm proportions?
A fire-storm is usually a natural phenomenon that combines fire with the mass movement of air to create a fire of extreme intensity over a wide area. After an area catches fire, the air above the area becomes extremely hot and rises rapidly. Cold air then rushes in at ground level from the outside, creating high winds which fan the flames at ground level further. This vortex creates a self-sustaining “fire-storm” that can attain temperatures as high as 2000ºC.
The Destruction of the Library of Alexandria
The debate surrounding the destruction of the Library among modern writers has taken a rather striking ideological dimension. In effect, the Western tradition following the evidence of Seneca and Plutarch, among others, has commonly attributed the fire that ravaged the building to Julius Caesar. Lucan and Dio Cassius recount how, as he tried to out-manoeuvre the attacking Alexandrians from the heights of the royal palaces, he set fire to vessels anchored in the Eastern Harbour. This action led to the burning of an apothiki full of papyri and this has been interpreted as the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
Another version attributes the destruction to ‘Amr ibn al-‘Ās, the Arab conqueror of Egypt who took Alexandria in 642 A.D., the Library having apparently survived until this date. We know the tale: obeying the command of the Caliph ‘Umar, ‘Amr used the papyri to heat the furnaces of Alexandria’s public bathhouses.
Then, there is the intermediary version. The guilty party this time are the Christians led by Bishop Theophilus. In 391 A.D., this latter applied the edict of Theodosius prohibiting the practice of pagan cults and he led his troops in the destruction of the most famous sanctuary at Alexandria, the Temple of Serapis which dominated the city at the top of some one hundred steps upon the platform that the Alexandrians, somewhat pompously, called the Acropolis. Only ruins were left of the sanctuary and upon them a monastery dedicated to St. John was built. This violence against the pagans continued throughout the following decades and it was not only the cults themselves that were targeted, but also individuals. Thus Cyril, nephew and successor to Theophilus, in a desire to end the teaching of pagan philosophy, sent his hordes of monks to assassinate Hypatia in the open streets of Alexandria in 415 A.D.
It is certainly difficult to imagine the total disappearance of the library.
The Ancient Library of Alexandria, built by the Ptolemies in the third century B.C., played a very important role in the development of scientific and intellectual activities of the Mediterranean world over several centuries. In some ways, this Library with its annexations can be considered a kind of continuation of the temple libraries of ancient Egypt, but undoubtedly, it was by far the most important and renowned Library in the ancient world.
Since Edward Gibbon first started the debate about the fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria in the eighteenth century, this subject has aroused vehement controversies among historians during the last two centuries. The revival of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a few years ago, has stimulated the debate once more and this paper deals with the Arab version of the story of the fate of the Ancient Library.
Part II: The Abbasid House of Wisdom
Ummayad Dynasty
After ‘Ali’s death the caliphate passed to his rival Mu‘awiya, despite the hopes of many that ‘Ali’s elder son, Hasan, would became caliph. Hasan was, however, a practical man and when he saw ‘that rule was beyond his grasp’ because he lacked sufficient support to fight Mu‘awiya, he negotiated peace terms with him, including a substantial sum of money from the treasury of Kufa. With hindsight, the death of ‘Ali marked the end of the period of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the start of a new era in which the caliphate passed to the Umayyad and then ‘Abbasid dynasties, whose political ethos blended the original Medinese idea of the caliphate with various Near Eastern traditions of kingship. The Umayyads and ‘Abbasids interacted with the Islamic and pre-Islamic pasts in distinct ways and presented themselves as picking up different strands of the story presented above but, such differences aside, the ‘Abbasid edifice was constructed upon the foundations laid by the Umayyads, to whom we now turn.
Like his second cousin, ‘Uthman, Mu‘awiya was a member of the aristocratic Banu Umayya clan from which the designation ‘Umayyad’ comes. He was the first caliph of a younger generation but had served as the Prophet’s secretary late in the latter’s life and was generally accepted by the community as a sensible choice of leader. He reunited the empire, which had been fractured by civil strife throughout ‘Ali’s caliphate, and the dynasty he established ruled it for the next 90 years. His successors constructed an imperial identity manifested in administration, architecture and coinage, and presided over the first phase in the creation of the Islamic culture and society which flowered under the ‘Abbasids. The first important change which Mu‘awiya made was to transfer the caliphal seat from Medina to Damascus in recognition of the shifting geopolitical centre of the Islamic empire. Despite its cachet as the city of the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, Medina was a small city in remote Arabia from which it was impossible to adequately direct the conquests or administer an empire. Damascus, in contrast, was still in easy reach of Islam’s birthplace to the south, but also placed the caliph in the heart of Byzantine Syria and within striking distance of Mesopotamia.
Despite their achievements, the Umayyads became notorious for a number of actions which irrevocably tarnished their reputation and paved the way for the ‘Abbasid revolution in 750.
The Rise of Abbasid
Broadly speaking, the appeal of the ‘Abbasid revolution was the same as that of the Kharijite revolt in North Africa: it offered a fairer Islamic order in which Muslims, whatever their origin, would be able to participate on equal terms. However, the propagandists of the ‘Abbasid movement asserted that this could only be achieved if the caliphate was held by a member of the Prophet’s family, the ahl al-bayt, in contrast to the Kharijite position that the best man should be caliph regardless of his origin. The movement was highly successful because its chief representative in Khurasan, a client of the ‘Abbasids called Abu Muslim, did not state which member of the Prophet’s house would be elevated to the caliphate. This prevented squabbling and faction-fighting between supporters of the different scions of the ahl albayt, who included the male descendants of Hasan and Husayn and also more distant relatives of the Prophet such as the ‘Abbasids themselves, who were the descendants of one of his uncles.
As we’re talking about library, there’s another old library that was famous and rich in knowledge. Its name is “House of Wisdom” or Bayt Al-Hikmah. The ninth-century Abbasid palace library known as the House of Wisdom has attracted the attention of generations of scholars from the end of the nineteenth century until today. The transformation of this institution from a palace library into a nineteenth-century modern European academy or fully-fledged modern-day university has had a very interesting journey.
Baghdad, the capital of the “Abbasid Caliphate”, was established after a careful search for the most suitable place to establish as the basis of the new administration and the new army. Al-Mansur (754–775), the second Abbasid Caliph, selected a fertile and strategically convenient place on the main routes of communications with various parts of the empire. The historical growth of Baghdad, beginning with a magnificent, round city constructed by al-Mansur in 145/762, suggests a rather different type of urban development. The round city, or Madinat al-Salam (the city of peace), as it was also called, was not a prefabricated military camp given permanency by a growing sedentary environment, but rather the product of consummate planning and execution.
The advent of Islam and the Arab conquests brought to an end the old divisions that separated the civilized world for a millennium since the time of Alexander the Great. Egypt and the fertile crescent were united with Persia, Central Asia, and India under central political authority based in Baghdad. This led to the free flow of goods, knowledge, and ideas. It was the agricultural revolution of the first centuries after the Arab conquest that provided much of the wealth of the early empire and benefited all social strata.
The earliest settlers of Baghdad were undoubtedly the followers and supporters of the caliph. They were the Abbasid family, the companions, the client (Mawali), the commanders, the army, and the masses. The quick growth of the population and of economic activity led to the expansion of a Baghdad as a whole, until it became the greatest city in the empire and the largest in the world. The capital of the Abbasid Empire was a real metropolis, and better representative of the Islamic Empire than semi-nomadic Medina or quasi-Byzantine Damascus. Arabic, Aramaic, Persian, and Turkish cultures were living together as early as its foundation, and the scantiness of the Greco-Byzantine elements was compensated for by the active translation of the Greek intellectual heritage into Arabic.
The population was nevertheless linked together by the common bonds of the Arabic language, the Islamic religion, and their allegiance to the caliph who stood above racial divisions. The army and the officials formed the majority of the population of early Baghdad as they did in the amsar (garrison towns); but whereas the amsar were dominated by a population of almost purely Arabic nomadic stock whose relations with the government were not always smooth, the population of early Baghdad had good relations with the ruling Abbasid Caliphs. The non-Arab elements were many, but the caliph’s support of the nomadic culture and the Arabs created a balance and a peaceful process of establishing a cosmopolitan civilization into which were integrated the numerous different cultures that already existed in the Middle East.
During this period, the sciences of the ancients (‘ulum al-’awa’il) also called foreign sciences (al-’ulum al-dakhila), rational or intellectual sciences (al-’ulum al’aqliyya), or philosophical sciences (al-’ulum al-falsafiyya, or al-’ulum al-hikamiyya or what is shortly known as al-hikma/wisdom) were transmitted from antiquity and formed an integral part of the new encyclopedia of knowledge. The integration of these sciences in the epistemological and educational structure was a long process which started in this era and was achieved in steps.
After the second/eighth century and until the Mongol invasion, Baghdad was the center where arts and sciences were sought. In addition to some clues in the primary sources that enlighten certain aspects of intellectuality in early Abbasid period, we know also cultural image of Abbasid life mirrored in the partly fanciful tale of Arabian Nights where scholars, as well as simple people such as the chatterbox barber, are portrayed as an astrologer and learned in alchemy and white magic, syntax, grammar and lexicology, the arts of logic, rhetoric and elocution, mathematics, arithmetic and algebra, astronomy, astromancy and geometry, theology, traditions of the prophet, and commentaries of the Quran.
For more information, you can read sources below.
Source:
Bennison, A. (2009). The Great Caliphs: THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE ‘ABBASID EMPIRE. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Brill. (2008). What Happened to The Ancient Library of Alexandria? (M. E.-A. Fathallah, Ed.) Leiden: Brill.
Ihsanoğlu, E. (2023). The Abbasid House of Wisdom: Between Myth and Reality. New York: Routledge.
MacLeod, R. (2010). THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA: CENTRE OF LEARNING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. New York: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd.
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