Renaudot was the first in France who threw a doubt on this story in his _Histoire des Patriarches d’Alexandrie_. “It merely reposes,” says he, “on Eastern tales, and these are never to be relied upon.” Kotbeddin, in his _History of Mecca_, from which de Sacy quotes an extract in his _Notes des Manuscrits_, Vol. IV. p. 569, relates seriously, that at the taking of Bagdad by _Hulagou_ the destroyer, of the empire of the Caliphs, the Tartars threw the books belonging to the colleges of this city into the river Euphrates, and the number was so great, that they formed a bridge, over which foot-passengers and horsemen went across! Besides Abulpharadi, two other eastern writers give an account of the destruction of the library: Abd-Allatif and Makrizi; but they only go over the same ground as their predecessors. These three writers (of the 12th, the 13th, and the 15th centuries) are the less to be relied upon as no other eastern historians who speak of the conquest of Egypt by the Arabians, mention the loss of their great repository by fire. Eutyches, the patriarch of Alexandria, who lived in the 10th century, and who enters into details of the taking of this city by the Arabians; Elmacin, who, in the 13th century, recounts the same fact; and Aboulfeda, who at about the same period gives a description of Egypt, completely ignore this remarkable and important event. How is it that the Greek authors, who were so incensed against the Saracens, omit to speak of this conflagration authorised by Omar?--and that after centuries of silence Abulpharadi is the first who opens his lips on the subject? And it is still more surprising that this writer did not mention the anecdote in his _Chronicle_, published in Syriac, but that he only added it while translating his work into Arabic at the latter end of his life. The Caliphs had forbidden under severe penalties the destruction of all Jewish and Christian volumes, and we nowhere hear of any such work of destruction during the first conquests of the Mahommedans. Quite at the beginning of the 5th century, Paulus Orosius, a disciple of St. Jerome, mentions, on his return from Palestine, having seen at Alexandria the empty book-cases which the library had formerly contained. All these arguments brought forward by Assemanni, by Gibbon, by Reinhard, and many others, do not appear to have convinced M. Matter, although he admits in his _Histoire de l’École d’Alexandrie_, that a certain amount of courage is necessary to maintain the opinion of the existence of an extensive collection of books at the commencement of the conquest.