In the year 995, Thafar Al-baghdádé, the chief of the scribes of his time, came from Baghdad and settled in Cordova. The Khalif Al-hakem took him into his service and employed him in transcribing books. The Khalif surpassed every one of his predecessors in the love of literature and of the sciences, which he himself cultivated with success and fostered in his dominions. Through his influence, Andalusia became a great market to which the literary productions of every clime were immediately brought for sale. He employed merchants and agents to collect books for him in distant countries, remitting for the purpose large sums of money from the treasury, until, says the chronicler, “the number of books in Andalusia exceeded all calculation.” The Khalif sent presents of money to celebrated authors in the East with a view to encourage the publication of works or to secure the first copies of these. Hearing, for instance, that Abú-l-faraj of Ispahán had written a book entitled _Kitábu-l-aghani_ (_The Book of Songs_), he sent him a thousand dinars of pure gold, in consideration of which he received a copy of the work before it had been published in Persia. He did the same thing with Abú Bekr Al-abhari, who had published a commentary on the _Mokhtassar_. Al-hakem also collected and employed in his own palace the most skilful men of his time in the arts of transcribing, binding and illuminating books. The great library that he brought together remained in the palace of Cordova, until, during a siege of the city by the Berbers, Hájib Wadheh, a freedman of Al-mansúr, ordered portions of the books to be sold, the remainder being shortly afterwards plundered and destroyed on the taking of the city. The extent of the collection is indicated by the description of the catalogue. In the Tekmílah, Ibun-l-abbáns is quoted by Al-Makkari as saying that the catalogue comprised forty-four volumes, each volume containing twenty sheets. Makkari estimates that the library contained no less that four hundred thousand volumes. It is possible that this number was over-estimated, at least, if we are to believe the statement of Ibun-l-abbar that the Khalif Al-hakem had himself read every book in the collection, writing on the fly-leaf the dates of his perusal and details concerning the author. Makkari gives a long list of famous authors who flourished in Andalusia during the reign of Al-hakem, their productions including works in law, medicine, history, topography, language, and poetry. One of the historians, Al-tári-khí, was a paper merchant, and was accordingly known by the name of Al-Warrak. I do not find record of the names of any dealers in books or any account of the means employed for their distribution.[356]