LEARNING AND ISLAM

~ 54 ~ Alexandria came under the domination of the Christians. With reference to the survival of existing institutions, the Encyclopaedia Britannica states that “the main museum and library were destroyed during the civil war of the third century A.D. and a subsidiary library was burned by Christians in A.D. 391.” 15 This same work, however, erroneously links the final destruction of the library with the Muslim period. In its article on censorship, it has this to say: There are many accounts of the burning, in several stages, of part or all of the library at Alexandria, from the siege of Julius Caesar in 47 B.C. to its destruction by Christians in A.D. 391 and by Muslims in 642. In the latter two instances, it was alleged that pagan literature presented a danger to the Old and New Testaments or the Qur’an.I6 The above attribution of the destruction of the Alexandria library to Islam has no basis in fact. The first two extracts quoted above from the Encyclopaedia Britannica clearly refute this. Islam by its very nature, encourages the acquisition of