So it's borrowed propaganda. 
- Edit 1
- Edit 1Before modification by Joel at 13/04/2010 09:31:41 AM
In double checking I did go by there, but somehow read the part about Saladin using the story to mean it had some kernel of truth originally. Probably because the article says the first Western account was in 1663, nearly half a millennium after Saladin came to power. 
I'm not sure what relevance the first Western account has anyway; the one to verify is the oldest, not the oldest of one region. Still, the only actual outside citation there is to the recent book in which the claim about Saladin was made, which means all that's firmly established at the Wikipedia article is that the story predates the one from 1663. It seems likely that most of the damage had been done well before Islam even existed though, and my reference was more in the vein of "played a role" than "bears the blame" (as a rule I like to blame Caesars armies, but wtf really knows...?)
I'm not sure what relevance the first Western account has anyway; the one to verify is the oldest, not the oldest of one region. Still, the only actual outside citation there is to the recent book in which the claim about Saladin was made, which means all that's firmly established at the Wikipedia article is that the story predates the one from 1663. It seems likely that most of the damage had been done well before Islam even existed though, and my reference was more in the vein of "played a role" than "bears the blame" (as a rule I like to blame Caesars armies, but wtf really knows...?)And he says the oldest sources of the story date to more or less Saladin's time, so late 12th century, hence the theory that Saladin would've promulgated the story.
It does remain mystifying how it is that there seems to be a range of half a millennium and more between the earliest and latest estimates of when the library was destroyed, although I suppose that means it likely wasn't all destroyed in one big conflagration, but in several steps.
That seems to be the consensus, less a question of "who destroyed it?" than "who did the most damage?" Since it's impossible to say at this date there's reason to believe that later assaults may have only finished the job largely done by previous ones. The attack by Caesars troops seems particularly aggressive to me, reminiscent of what the legions of Tiberius did to the Second Temple in Jerusalem: We have large numbers of relatively unsupervised and unrestrained soldiers in a politically tense environment suddenly grasping lit torches. Given the effects that had on the Temple it's not hard to imagine how it would've been especially devastating to centuries old papyrus. But that's mostly just speculation on my part; again, there's really no way to know today.