The survival rate of ancient literature

[Robert Vermaat]

To those interested, I recommend you buy the book "The Rise and Fall of Alexandria", it starts with the foundation of the city until its demise by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th century AD.

Well, that sounds like they missed a bit, namely the period when the city grew back into a major city! :wink:

There was quite a bit destroyed during the Ottoman conquests to, I believe!

No, the city was long destroyed and abandoned by that period. However, the city was conquered by the Persians in the 7th century AD, but briefly reconquered by the Romans and finally conquered and destroyed afterward by the invading Muslim Arabs. So, the city's fate was worse than you might suspect.

Destroyed and abandoned by the Ottoman period? That's simply not true.
Two sources describing the fall of Alexandria.
If the city was in ruins, then why would the Byzantines even have bothered to attempt a reconquest in 645, 3 years after it's being surrendered to Amr?
A nice page with opinions about the destruction of the Alexandrian library.

3. The arabs of this time period were actually very accepting of knowledge and science. It would be out of character for them to mindlessly destroy all the knowledge within the library.

Yeah, they destroyed both Alexandria AND Carthage, the two greatest cities on the continent, which were never again inhabited afterward. Sounds very much in character to destroy ancient buildings.

Sorry, but that's just very wrong. Of course Alexandria was inhabited afterwards, it still had a a Christian organisation of the Church for later Muslim leaders to abolish. That would be difficult with an empty ruin..
In fact, Alexandria was by no means destroyed at all, but negected by the Arab invaders, who made a new capital at cairo. Commerce went further in decline after that.

Carthage, of course, was very much damaged in the Vandal conquest, and despite being recovered by the Byzantines it never really got back on it's feet.

Why did it take this long for someone to mention Constantinople ? Everyone always jumps on the Arabs and the Latin monks but Constantinople had its own library and the city never fell to invaders until 1204. There's nothing the Arabs "preserved" that did not already survive in Constantinople.

That sounds logical, but I also read that the Orthodox church developed a very negative attitude towards earlier Classical learning. Do we know for sure what survived in Constantinople or are we just assuming things here?

Many were translated from Greek into Arabic, then lost and back-translated from Arabic in the Middle Ages. It's a crapshoot any way you look at it.

No (and yes). The Greek originals were preserved in Constantinople and translated into Latin during the Renaissance as Greek scholars and artisans fled from the Ottoman onslaught. Besides, the Arab translations were flawed so it is doubly fortunate that the Greek originals were rescued and translated directly to Latin. There was no need for the Arab middleman. And the Arabs were highly selective in what they deigned to translate - for instance they completely ignored anything to do with Greek political theory.

That sounds like a very partisan view to me. Is there really evidence that the re-emergence of Classical texts et al came directly from Constantinople? This sounds to me like a denial of the Arab connection in favour of a so far unsupported view, bent on denying any Arab role in the passing on of Classic culture. I'd like to hear more proof of this.

We should remind ourselves that relations between Byzantium and the West were soured and sometimes extremely bad. Before even thinking about Greek scholars fleeing to Western monks, we should remember that there was a very anti-Catholic sentiment around, with people crying out they'd rather would be Muslim than Catholic. I cannot see any Greek scholars going to monks for the tranbslation of ancient texts despite this sentiment.