this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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out: being mad about the Library of Alexandria
in: being mad about the Mongol destruction of Baghdad
Honestly, as much as I crave those classical texts, the destruction of Baghdad had much further-reaching effects (especially economic, but certainly including greater loss of potential learning/extant texts) than any, or all, of Alexandria's fires. Baghdad wasn't built in a day, but it was sacked in one.
... metaphorically speaking, since I'm pretty sure the sack was a literal multi-day affair.
i have heard somewhere that the amount of books that were there - it took days (closer to week, maybe more, allegedly) for books to burn, that is the amount of stuff that was burnt.
I remember it being described, possibly hyperbolically, as turning the local river black with ink there were so many texts tossed into water to destroy them.
sometimes all you can think is how much info we lost, and if we could have progressed at a better rate than current time line