I find myself inclined to excuse my pen from glorifying the book and demonstrating its benefits, deferring in my own mind to those who first glorified it, and fearing for my pen lest it fail to catch even their dust in this field; I should then be like one lighting a candle in the blaze of midmorning. So I content myself with saying that the matter is self-evident to those who hear me and those who do not; the book can dispense with me, since it imposes itself upon the age — the age of knowledge and learning — for it is the first and direct instrument in acquiring knowledge and gaining learning.

Yet if I extricate myself, like a lover of safety, from speaking about the book, I have something to say about the receptacle that holds it, in which it sleeps soundly until there comes to it a discerning hand, soft or not soft, which wakes it from its slumber to press it into the service of its owner.

The library has been known since the most ancient ages of history, and it passed through various crises before it settled into a corner of the house where it could dwell at peace, fearing neither fire nor flood.

The acquisition of books was, among the ancient kings, a cause for boasting and rivalry: they would spend vast sums upon it, sacrifice what was most precious for its sake, and exert unflagging efforts to obtain a book to add to the contents of their libraries. It is related in the introduction to Kalila wa-Dimna that King Dabshalim, after his rule was firmly established, resolved that there should be in his royal library a book composed for him, to add to what each of his predecessors had left. And when we read, too, in the chapter on Chosroes' sending of the physician Burzoe to India in quest of a book he had heard

existed in the treasury of the Indian kingdom and wished to join to his own treasury — of the hard-ships Burzoe endured, the pertur-bations he was exposed to, his fear for himself of the pain of scandal, and what free rein in money his king allowed him — we learn what importance the ancient kings, and some of the elite, attached to the acquisition of books.

History has made famous certain libraries which the historians mention and proudly count as a foundation of human civilization. In the East, there is the library of Alexandria, which the Arabs found on the day they conquered Egypt, and with the burning of which they were charged — though among the scrupulous of their own historians, and some historians of the Franks, are those who clear them of this charge. And there is the library of Pergamum in Asia Minor, contemporary with the first, some of whose books perished, as did the library of Alexandria, upon the ruin of that city.

Nor did the Arabs fall short of the advanced peoples who preceded them in this arena. It is related of al-Ma'mun that he would pay, for every new book he added to the treasury of the caliphate, the equivalent of its weight in gold; and if we consider the size of books in those days and what they weighed, we realize what a price authors received — writers could truly live with easy minds thanks to the pen.

The most famous of the Arab libraries, as related by al-Qalqashandi, was "the treasury of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad, in which there was what could not be counted for multitude; it perished, and its trace was effaced, when the Tatars overran Baghdad." It is said that they threw its contents into the Tigris,

until the waters turned into a black liquid because of the ink of the books that dissolved in them.

Then there is the treasury of the Fatimid caliphs in Egypt, which was also among the greatest of treasuries and the richest in pre-cious books in all the sciences; and so it remained until their dynasty came to an end with the death of al-'Adid and the seizure of the Egyptian realm by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, whereupon al-Qadi al-Fadil bought most of the books of the treasury and endowed them to the Fadiliyya school in Egypt, where they remained until grasping hands laid hold of them, and only a little was left.

And a third treasury: that of the Umayyad caliphs in Cordoba, "which contained a precious collection of books, that perished with the passing of the dynasty and the seizure of Andalusia by the Party Kings, so that the books went every which way." Perhaps these books were the keys of the European renaissance in the Middle Ages.

The blessing of acquiring books remained confined to those upon whom God had bestowed wealth — and, with it, the possibility of devoting their time and money to copying them or having them copied — until the printing press was discovered. Books then came out of the narrow circle of kings and the rich and were set before the sons of the people, who could now acquire them as they pleased; the iron machine dispensed the book generously and made the enjoyment of its benefit easy for the many.

Houses were then blessed with a special room, or at least a special corner, in which stood a cabinet, large or small, called the home library.

A period passed in which certain households, whether in the West or in the East, grew accustomed to acquiring books in a merely formal way — that is, for decoration only. Collectors of books very often, even the cultivated among them, took care to gather and bind them in a fashion whose splendor delights the eye, without heeding what lies between their covers or profiting