This is taken from ‘Paths of Survival’ (2017). You can read what I’ve written about this excellent book by clicking here. Modern knowledge of the Classical past, of the ‘foundations of European civilisation’ owes so much to the Arab scholars who preserved, translated and transmitted the literature of Greece and Rome. WIthout the librarians, scribes, translators and patrons who move through Balmer’s book, there would be so much less. After the destruction of the National Library of Baghdad, some of those precious books looked like this: