Issue No.607
Heritage
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
10 - 16 October 2002 Issue No.607 Heritage |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Alexandria since the Arab conquest
Alexandria is undergoing one of its renaissances -- the third since the city was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. But Jenny Jobbins finds that while much of what is currently happening is innovative, the roots of the revival are embedded deep in the past
Alexandria's first renaissance -- accompanied by major remodelling -- came after 'Amr Ibn Al-'As marched in at the head of his Arab army in 640 AD, just 971 years after the city was founded by Alexander III of Macedonia. Most of the classical marble buildings still stood -- shining, one Arab soldier observed, "with so much light at night that one could thread a needle by them". On the other side of the Eastern Harbour, the famous lighthouse was still in use.
In spite of this, however, the city had lost much of its former splendour. Over the preceding centuries the Roman overlords' political neglect had been compounded by geomorphical changes: several branches of the Nile had silted up, canals had choked, and the coastal fringe had sunk so that much of the ancient city had drowned, including the island in the Eastern Harbour where the royal palace stood. Earth tremors caused more damage over the ensuing centuries, finally demolishing the Pharos in the first half of the 14th century.
'Amr Ibn Al-'As and his Arab successors paid scant respect to Alexandria's classical buildings and used the marble to build a new and rather smaller city, its walls well inside the boundaries of classical Alexandria. What they left was ground up for cement for use in the second major rehabilitation, the 19th- century reconstruction of the city to suit the European taste of Mohamed Ali. This was to be another era of elegance: French, Greek and Italian architects moved in to design and build the Alexandria we recognise today. It was the heyday of the Cecil, Metropole and Windsor Palace Hotels, of coffee shops such as Pastroudis and the Athineos, and of the Mohamed Ali Club.
But again, relatively little thought was given to Alexander's Alexandria. The remaining Graeco-Roman monuments and the Pharaonic relics which had been carried down the Nile more than 2,000 years before to decorate the ancient city -- as well as the Islamic buildings -- were swept aside. Some antiquities -- such as the two obelisks which once graced the Caesareum, Cleopatra's waterfront temple to the deified Julius Caesar -- were saved by being sent abroad as gifts. America and England received "Cleopatra's Needles", which now stand in New York's Central Park and on the London Embankment.
The revival we are seeing today acknowledges Alexandria's unique history -- classical and Khedival -- and is putting it back on the city's map. The 19th and 20th-century buildings are being cleaned, archaeological excavations -- where it is not too late -- are being stepped up, submerged treasures are being detected under the waves, and one of Alexandria's two great lost treasures, its Great Library, has been reconstructed in a style to suit the taste of the 21st century. It has even been suggested that financing should be sought to build a replica of the second treasure -- the Alexandria lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The Greek dynasty which succeeded Alexander, the Ptolemies, left a great legacy as sponsors of learning and the arts. Ptolemy I Soter, the first Pharaoh of this dynasty, founded the Mouseion, a study and research complex much like a modern university. The Mouseion, which was built near the sea within the Royal Enclosure, drew scholars from all over the known world and soon eclipsed contemporary seats of learning at Athens, Antioch, and Pergamum. The early Ptolemies nurtured a literary tradition known as the Alexandria School, and Ptolemy I himself was a historian who wrote a worthy first-hand account of Alexander's campaigns. Alexandria quickly became one of the major centres of the world not only of science, astronomy, medicine, literature and other fields of learning, but also of religious studies.
The best known section of the Mouseion was its store of scrolls and codices which at times numbered up to 750,000. These may have been housed in the various faculties of the Mouseion, but were collectively known as the Great Library. The collection contained not only originals and copies of classical literary works, drama, and poetry, but also medical and mathematical treatises, scientific and astronomical discoveries, maps and histories, contemporary records and magical papers.
Cleopatra's obelisk pictured at the end of the 18th century. The crumbling Caesareum stood on the waterfront to the east of the Islamic city photo: Mobil Oil
The legend of the ancient Library of Alexandria and the myth of how its priceless books were committed to an iconoclastic bonfire has persisted until today, even though the rumours have themselves long been thrown to the flames. There was a fire in 48 BC when Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatra's first husband, Ptolemy XIII, accidentally destroying a consignment of books waiting to be unloaded at the docks. But there is no evidence that this spread through the marble buildings of the Royal Enclosure to the Library -- contemporary historians of the war, including Caesar himself, made no mention of it. Indeed, the Mouseion and the rest of the Royal Enclosure were intact when the Greek historian Strabo, who chronicled the early years of the Roman Empire, described them 18 years later.
There were also other fires. During the Jewish revolt in 115 AD the Temple of Serapis -- which housed a second library, known as the 'Daughter Library' -- was sacked, and this library was again destroyed in 391 when monks dismantled it stone by stone. But presumably the books were replaced, as this and some other Alexandrian libraries survived until the end of the sixth century.
Another rumour which still persists, especially in the Arab World, is that 'Amr Ibn Al-'As burnt the library on the orders of the Caliph Omar Ibn Al-Khatab. But this was refuted 200 years ago by, among others, Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, when he proved that the tale was invented 600 years after the supposed event by an apologist for Salaheddin, the chronicler Abdel-Latif Al-Boghdadi. On his victorious entry into Cairo in 1171 Salaheddin had burned Shi'ite books, and had consequently been castigated for destroying sacred literature. The library- burning story was planted to prove there had been a precedent for Salaheddin's iconoclasm.
Rather than destroying the scientific books they found -- and there must have been many, for as we have seen most of the libraries in Alexandria were in use in the sixth century -- the Arabs preserved them until they could be translated into Arabic. So what happened to the scrolls and codices housed in the various faculties of the Mouseion?
The most likely explanation for the Great Library's demise under Roman rule was that political structure and order had broken down, and there was no money to pay for the preservation and copying of the books. Religious discord, directed first against pagan scholars and then between various Christian factions, also played a major part in the closure of the Mouseion and the library. Even though the Daughter Library at the Temple of Serapis, as well as other libraries, survived almost until the end of Roman occupation, the Mouseion closed its doors towards the end of the fourth century. Its last director was the mathematician Theon, whose daughter, Hypatia, also a mathematician, was torn to pieces by a mob of frenzied Christians in 415. It is likely that Christians destroyed pagan books and that many of the magical secrets of the Ancient Egyptians were lost, but it is likely too that many other books were hidden and that many more were removed to the Roman capital at Constantinople. The building itself, like most of the rest of classical Alexandria, was dismantled for building materials.
The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, designed by Norwegian architects and built with the help of Arab and international financing, opens officially on 16 October. The building's roof, a slanting sun disc, reflects the Mediterranean sky and allows the interior to be lit only by natural light.
Like its predecessor, the library has been conceived as a centre of enlightenment. Just as the ancient library was designed to hold all the knowledge of the known world, the new library's shelves are intended to hold eight million books. It has the biggest reading room in the world, as well as a 3,200- seat conference facility. It also houses a planetarium with an Imax screen, hosts colloquia and exhibitions, and an archaeological museum is being set in place to complement the Graeco-Roman Museum in downtown Alexandria.
The city has been preparing for the event with an upgrading programme which includes a widened Corniche -- which has mostly eliminated the city's traffic jams -- and renovation of the town houses built in the last two centuries, many of which were falling into disrepair. There is an abundance of hotel rooms, and the city's famous coffee shops are ready for an influx of conference delegates, business travellers and the merely curious. Alexandria today is both a holiday resort and a thriving commercial city. It is now hoping to return to what it was so good at more than 2,000 years ago -- throwing open its doors to the world's scholars and offering an international centre for learning and research to rival all others.
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: weekly.ahram.org.eg Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
