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A: Cairo Governorate, Egypt

Destruction of the Very Large Palace Library at Cairo

1068

The sacking of Cairo in 1068 resulted in the destruction of its very large palace Library, that some have said, without documentation, might have contained as many as 200,000 volumes. Speculations of the number of volumes in this library very wildly, based as far as I know, on lack of evidence.

Harris, History of Libraries in the Western World, 4th ed. [1999] 80.

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