LI. CHAP. 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 the end of six hundred years on the confines of Media is overbalanced by the silence of two annalists 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." 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." A more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials. I shall not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Cæsar in his own defence,° or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry." But m This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the annals of Eutychius, and the Saracenic history of Elmacin. The silence of Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of Moslems, is less conclusive from their ignorance of Christian literature. n See Reland, de Jure Militari Mohammedanorum, in his iiid volume of Dissertations, p. 37. The reason for not burning the religious books of the Jews or Christians is derived from the respect that is due to the name of God. • Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement. Livian. c. 12. 43) and Usher (Annal. p. 469). Livy himself had styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiæ regum curæque egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly criticised by the narrow stoicism of Seneca (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9), whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into nonsense. P See this History, vol. iii. p. 521. LI. if we gradually descend from the age of the Anto- CHAP. nines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of the Ptolemies. 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 and interesting facts are buried in oblivion; the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and glory: the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared the S 4 Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticæ, vi. 17), Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 16), and Orosius (1. vi. c. 15). They all speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong: fuerunt Bibliothecæ innumerabiles; et loquitur monumentorum veterum concinens fides, &c. • Renaudot answers for versions of the Bible, Hexapla, Catena Patrum, Commentaries, &c. (p. 170). Our Alexandrian MS. if it came from Egypt, and not from Constantinople or Mount Athos (Wetstein, Prolegom. ad N. T. p. 8, &c.), might possibly be among them. • I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of Quintilian (Institut. Orator. x.i), in which that judicious critic enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin classics. LI. t CHAP. writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages. Administration of Egypt. man. In the administration of Egypt," Amrou balanced the demands of justice and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who were defended by God; and of the people of the alliance, who were protected by In the recent tumult of conquest and deliverance, the tongue of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the tranquillity of the province. To the former, Amrou declared, that faction and falsehood would be doubly chastised; by the punishment of the accusers, whom he should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of their innocent brethren, whom their envy had laboured to injure and supplant. He excited the latter by the motives of religion and honour to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the caliph, to spare and protect a people who had trusted to their faith, and to content themselves with the legitimate and splendid rewards of their victory. In the management of the revenue he disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion of taxes, deducted on every branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs of the dykes and canals, so essential * Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this subject Wotton (Reflections on ancient and modern Learning, p. 85-95) argues with solid sense, against the lively exotic fancies of Sir William Temple. The contempt of the Greeks for barbaric science would scarcely admit the Indian or Ethiopic books into the library of Alexandria; nor is it proved that philosophy has sustained any real loss from their exclusion. u This curious and authentic intelligence of Murtadi (p. 284—289) has not been discovered either by Mr. Ockley, or by the self-sufficient compilers of the Modern Universal History. LI. to the public welfare. Under his administration the CHAP. fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road from Memphis to Medina. But the genius of Amrou soon renewed the maritime communication which had been attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, or the Cæsars; and a canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red Sea. This inland navigation, which would have joined the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean, was soon discontinued as useless and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to Damascus, and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy cities of Arabia." populous Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imper- Riches and fect knowledge from the voice of fame and the legends ness. of the Koran. He requested that his lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful picture of that singular country.* "O commander of the faithful, Egypt is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverised mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and morning, and which rises and falls ▾ Eutychius, Annal. tom. ii. p. 320. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 35. w On these obscure canals, the reader may try to satisfy himself from D'Anville (Mem. sur l'Egypte, p. 108-110. 124. 132), and a learned thesis maintained and printed at Strasburg in the year 1770 (Jungendorum marium fluviorumque molimina, p. 39–47. 68-70). Even the supine Turks have agitated the old project of joining the two seas (Mémoires du Baron de Tott, tom. iv). * A small volume, des Merveilles, &c. de l'Egypte, composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and translated from an Arabic MS. of cardinal Mazarin, was published by Pierre Vatier, Paris, 1666. The antiquities of Egypt are wild and legendary; but the writer deserves credit and esteem for his account of the conquest and geography of his native country (see the correspondence of Amrou and Omar, p. 279-289). with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When y In a twenty years' residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile (lettre ii. particularly p. 70. 75); the fertility of the land (lettre ix). From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener glance: What wonder in the sultry climes that spread, Or on frail floats to neighbouring cities ride, That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide. (Mason's Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200). Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily credit a human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a miracle of the successors of Mahomet. |