The precise date of events in the Moslem conquest of Egypt, by Amru, lieutenant of the Caliph Omar, is uncertain. Sir William Muir fixes the first surrender of Alexandria to Amru in A. D. 641. After that it was reoccupied by the Byzantines either once or twice, on occasions of neglect by the Arabs, as they pursued their conquests elsewhere. The probability seems to be that this occurred only once, in 646. It seems also probable, as remarked by Sir W. Muir, that the two sieges on the taking and retaking of the city—641 and 646—have been much confused in the scanty accounts which have come down to us. On the first occasion Alexandria would appear to have been generously treated; while, on the second, it suffered pillage and its fortifications were destroyed. How far there is truth in the commonly accepted story of the deliberate burning of the great Alexandrian Library—or so much of it as had escaped destruction at the hands of Roman generals and Christian patriarchs—is a question still in dispute. Gibbon discredited the story, and Sir William Muir, the latest of students in Mahometan history, declines even the mention of it in his narrative of the conquest of Egypt. But other historians of repute maintain the probable accuracy of the tale told by Abulpharagus—that Caliph Omar ordered the destruction of the Library, on the ground that, if the books in it agreed with the Koran they were useless, if they disagreed with it they were pernicious. See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 640-646. {41} ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 815-823. Occupied by piratical Saracens from Spain. See CRETE: A. D. 823. ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 1798. Captured by the French under Bonaparte. See FRANCE: A. D. 1798 (MAY-AUGUST). ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 1801-1802. Battle of French and English. Restoration to the Turks. See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1802. ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 1807. Surrendered to the English. The brief occupation and humiliating capitulation. See TURKS: A. D. 1806-1807. ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 1840. Bombardment by the English. See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840. ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 1882. Bombardment by the English fleet. Massacre of Europeans. Destruction. See EGYPT: A. D. 1875-1882, and 1882-1883. ----------ALEXANDRIA: End---------- ALEXANDRIA, LOUISIANA, The Burning of. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MARCH-MAY: LOUISIANA). ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA., A. D. 1861 (May). Occupation by Union troops. Murder of Colonel Ellsworth. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (MAY: VIRGINIA). ALEXANDRIAN TALENT. See TALENT. ALEXIS, Czar of Russia, A. D. 1645-1676. ALEXIUS I. (Comnenus), Emperor in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 1081-1118. Alexius II. (Comnenus), Emperor in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 1181-1183.