volume one

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288 niSTOEY OF the crusades.
more t lian four thousand workmen, skilful in tlie manufactures
of woollen stuffs, of silk, and of linen. A great part
of these advantages was, no doubt, lost for the conquerors,
who, during the siege ravaged the country round, and on
taking the citv, carried fire and sword throughout the whole
of it.
Tripoli contained other riches for which the Franks showed
no less disdain than they had e^*inced for the productions of
industry. A library established in this citv, and celebrated
throuo^h all the East, contained the monuments* of the an-
cient literature of the Persians, the Arabians, the Eg^'ptians,
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,t 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 ]\[ahomet, it was given up to the flames. Some
eastern authors have bitterly deplored this irreparable loss
but not one of our contem.porary chronicles has spoken of
it, and their silence plainly shows the profound indifference
v^-ith which the Erank soldiers were witnesses of a fire which
consumed a hundi'ed thousand volumes.
Biblies, situated on the smiling and fertile shores of Phoenicia;
Sarepta, where St. Jerome saw still in his day the tower
of Isaiah ; and Berytus, famous in the early ages of the
Chm'ch for its scliool of eloquence, shared the fate of Tripoli,
and became baronies bestowed upon Christian knights.
After these conquests the Pisans, the Genoese, and several
* Sir William d'Avenant elegantly calls books "the monuraents of
deceased minds." Trans.
Aboulteda in his account justifies the Genoese for the massncre of the
f
Mussulmans ; the city being taken by assault, they did not exc ed the
usual rights of war. Another Arabian historian, Ebn-Abi-Tai, says that
the Christians exhibited at the taking of Tripoli the same destructive fury
as the Arabs had uho burnt the library of Alexandria. Tlie same historian
speaks of the incredible number of three millions of voluanes. We
have preferred the version of NovaVry, who reduces the numb'irof vohimes
to a hundred thousand. This author states that the library of Tripoli
•was founded by the cadi Aboutaleb Hasen, who had himself composed
several works.
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