warehouses full of books yet closer. The last great burning was
perpetrated in A.D. 642. Gibbon quotes the famous sentence of
Omar, the great Mohammedan who gave the order: '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,' and goes on:

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.... 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.

Of the consequence he writes:

Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be
enriched with a repository of books: but, if the ponderous
mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed
consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may allow, with
a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of
mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries,
which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire;
but, when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of
ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather
than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious