Hulagu Khan (brother of Kublai) and his Mongol army had invaded Baghdad, and among the many places they ransacked was the House of Wisdom, a library known to be the intellectual centre of the Arab world. The Mongols stripped the library of all of its books, tossing thousands and thousands of them into the waters of the Tigris. There was said to have been so many books thrown in that they eventually stacked up all the way from the bed of the Tigris to its surface, allowing men on horses to ride across them from one side to the other. Then, slowly, the ink of 500 years of accumulated knowledge,
...more
