It's been years since I've seen the quotation, but what you wrote looks right. I got the date from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, which is not claimed to be infallible, but generally careful for accuracy. Come to think of it, 616 does look a bit too early.
My recollection for the early fire damage wasn't Caesar vs Pompey but Octavian vs Antony. Maybe age has deprived me of some gray brain cells. It would seem that Caesar didn't intend to destroy the city or library; but the attitude alleged of the Caliph is to be found over and over in the history of the Persians, the first Muslims to conquer Egypt, the Arabs who came after, and finally the Turks. My source as to the library being burned by the general is the same as that of his quote. Gibbons is at least as unsympathetic toward Christianity as President Bush is toward Saddam Hussein. If I had it at hand, my first place to check would be the first volume of John Julius Norwich's Byzantium. Second, probably would be a good encyclopedia, but I don't have one either. I'll be content to accept an early statement from the article you cite, that the problem isn't lack of information, but contradictory claims. At the end, the summary is "The real tragedy of course is not the uncertainty of knowing who to blame for the Library's destruction but that so much of ancient history, literature and learning was lost forever. " At 04:19 PM 1/2/03 -0600, you wrote: >Chopin Cusachs wrote: >>Would add a snippet on the Muslim Empires and knowledge. The Muslim >>general who conquered Alexandria >>in 616 burned the fabled library, saying that if it wasn't in the Koran, >>it wasn't worth keeping. > >It was actually thought to be 640AD. Islam was just getting started in >616, as it was only 610 that Mohammed had his first relevation in the cave >at Mount Hira.
