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sical and scientific books that could be found
were ordered to be destroyed. If true, our
loss therefrom is as great as from the burn-
ing of the Alexandrian library by the Caliph
Omar. He burnt all the books because he
held that they must be either consistent or
inconsistent with the Koran, and in the one
case they were superfluous, in the other case
objectionable.
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