Islam Guidance

LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

This book is a translation of Maghze Mutafakkir Jehan Shia, the famous Persian book, which has been published four times in Tehran, Iran. The Persian book is itself a translation from a French thesis published by The Research Committee of Strasbourg, France, about the contribution of Imam Ja’far as-Sadiq (a.s.) to science, philosophy, literature etc.
Members of the Research committee have done a wonderful job and deserve thanks and gratitude from all those who love the Imam (a.s.). However, I cannot help commenting that when the learned scholars, who were engaged in research, failed to find worldly sources of Imam’s knowledge, they indulged in wild speculations and guesswork and were even guilty of misrepresenting historical facts to prove that Imam Muhammad al-Baqir and Ja’far as-Sadiq (a.s.) had acquired their knowledge through the following sources:

The Great Library of Alexandria.
Coptic Scholars of Egypt.
Books of Greek Philosophers.
Persian Physicians.

LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

The library, which was established by Ptolemy I, was burnt down about 600 years before Muslims entered Egypt. There was no trace of scientific books of Coptic scholars in that country at the time of the Imam. Philip K. Hitti has described the burning of that library in The History of The Arabs:
“The story that by the order of the Caliph, Amr, for six months fed numerous bath furnaces of the city with volumes of Alexandrian Library is one of those tales that makes good fiction but bad history. The great Ptolemic library was burnt as early as 48 BC by Julius Caesar. A later one referred to as the Daughter Library, was destroyed about AD 389 as a result of an edict by Emperor Theodosius. At the time of the Arab conquest, therefore, no library of any importance existed in Alexandria.

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