Tripoli contained other riches for which the Franks showed no less disdain than they had evinced for the productions of industry. A library established in this city, and celebrated through all the East, contained the monuments[238] of the ancient literature of the Persians, the Arabians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks. A hundred copyists were there constantly employed in transcribing manuscripts. The cadi sent into all countries men authorized to purchase rare and precious books. After the taking of the city, a priest, attached to Count Bernard de St. Gilles,[239] entered the room in which were collected a vast number of copies of the Koran, and as he declared the library of Tripoli contained only the impious books of Mahomet, it was given up to the flames. Some eastern authors have bitterly deplored this irreparable loss; but not one of our contemporary chronicles has spoken of it, and their silence plainly shows the profound indifference with which the Frank soldiers were witnesses of a fire which consumed a hundred thousand volumes. Biblies, situated on the smiling and fertile shores of Phœnicia; Sarepta, where St. Jerome saw still in his day the tower of Isaiah; and Berytus, famous in the early ages of the Church for its school of eloquence, shared the fate of Tripoli, and became baronies bestowed upon Christian knights. After these conquests the Pisans, the Genoese, and several warriors who had followed Baldwin in his expeditions, returned into Europe; and the king of Jerusalem, abandoned by these useful allies, was obliged to employ the forces which remained in repulsing the invasions of the Saracens, who penetrated into Palestine, and even displayed their standards on Mount Sion. He had given up the idea of subduing the maritime cities which still belonged to the Egyptians, when Sigur, son of Magnus, king of Norway, arrived in the port of Jaffa. Sigur was accompanied by ten thousand Norwegians, who, three years before, had quitted the north of Europe for the purpose of visiting the Holy Land. Baldwin went to meet the prince of Norway, and conjured him to join with him in fighting for the safety and aggrandizement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Sigur acceded with joy to the prayer of the king, and required nothing as a recompense for his labour but a piece of wood from the true cross.