"If these books contain what is in the Quran, they are unnecessary. If they contain things contrary to it, then they are harmful." The Muslim Arabs burned and looted the Library of Alexandria and created the "Islamic Golden Age" lie.
In 640, the Muslims enter Egypt, which was one of the most important cities of the Byzantines and a major center of intellectual life.
Al-Qifti, described the story in the biographical dictionary, "History of Learned Men". Bar-Hebraeus, writing in the thirteenth century, quotes Umar as saying to Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī (The Arabic name of John the Grammarian / John Philoponus): "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."
So, Ibn al-Qifti recounts, the general ordered that the books be burned to fuel the fires heating Alexandria's city baths. It is said that they were enough to provide heating for six months.
Some were saved and went to Rome, some others to various monasteries in Greece and Constantinople.
Some were hidden by Christian Arab scholars to save them from destruction, while others were found in private collections. For example, Patriarch Cyril Lucaris donated to the King of England Charles I the "Alexandrian Codex," a valuable manuscript of the 4th century. The Christian Arabs saved and translated many of the Greek writings, about 8%, until the advance of Islam, when many literary copies were destroyed because they were accused of being heretical, and only mathematics and astronomy were preserved.
The destruction of the center of knowledge began with the fire of Julius Caesar but was completed in the hands of the Muslims, who in their passage brought only chaos and death.
The idea that the Christians destroyed the library comes from a fanatical English "enlightener," Edward Gibbon, who at the end of the 18th century created the theory that the Arab Muslims were innocent and the bad ones were the Christians, without being able to support his theory anywhere, as he even wrote the characteristic phrase about the burning of the books by the muslims: "But if the bulky volumes of the dissenters, Arians and Monophysites, were really used for heating the public baths, the philosopher will admit with a smile that in the end they were sacrificed for the good of humanity," and thus one understands that he is an unreliable fanatical anti-Christian.
By pure chance, a century later, the so-called "Golden Age of Islam" begins with the opening of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. They translated hundreds of thousands of books which had been collected after about two centuries of looting and fanatical expansionism. They stole all the wisdom of other peoples and appropriated it.
The greatest proof is that there is no chronological continuity in the sciences and knowledge that suddenly appeared among the Arabs.
Of course, however, the greatest thinkers of the Caliphates were not the Arabs but the Persians, who, although they had been conquered by Islam, had managed to create their own Caliphates. The Abbasids had depended heavily on the support of Persians in their overthrow of the Umayyads.
Therefore, the "Islamic Golden Age" is a lie. The Persians are the ones who deserve to be mentioned, not Islam. They, as knowledgeable in the sciences and feeling the attraction toward progress, translated the Greek and Egyptian texts and managed possibly to develop them.
But still, only as much as Islam allowed them. Islam forbade critical thinking and progress because this would mean departure from the commands of the Quran and Muhammadanism. Scientists who were conquered by Islam, such as Persians, Greeks, Syrians, Jews, and Egyptians, were forced to change their names to Arabic ones.
Islam could never engage with science and medicine because it explicitly forbade anything contrary to the Quran and the evolution as commanded by Muhammad (Quran, Hadith, Tawhid, Surah, Fiqh).
Persian physicists, physicians, and mathematicians who had not completely distanced themselves from Zoroastrianism engaged with the sciences.
How is it possible for a society with the law of Sharia to progress in sciences and philosophy?
Two centuries of looting and slaughter of more advanced peoples was what brought about the so-called false "Islamic Golden Age."
There is not a single primary source or trustworthy historical text that supports the claim that Europeans lacked the knowledge and simply took what they wanted from the books the Muslims preserved. Monks in Greek monasteries, as well as those in Rome and Constantinople, preserved and translated thousands of Greek texts. The Arabs translated what they stole and destroyed the prototypes. Yes, there are some texts by Pythagoras, for example, that exist only in Arabic, and that is all. The so-called "Islamic Golden Age" did not exist and did not help or influence the European sciences. This is Islamic propaganda.
However, you should think carefully about why and who promote two very big lies in the West:
Why do some people try with mania to convince that the Christians burned and destroyed the Library of Alexandria, which was not ultimately destroyed but continued to function completely normally? Yet no one ever mentions that the last and final destruction, during which there were thousands of books and endless wealth of knowledge, was carried out in 640 by the Muslim Arabs? Why does this happen, one wonders?
1. Why do some people insist so much on the "Golden Age of Islam" at the same time when there are no primary sources that report that there is historical and scientific continuity among the Arabs and Islam? That is, suddenly their civilization blossomed from zero without there having been any historical continuity in the sciences, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics?
2. Why do some people insist so much on these two topics which are not at all coincidental?
Everyone should think and research on their own.
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