Mongols capture Hasan-i Sabbah's library

1255

Among the booty at Alamut the Mongols found the grand master's famous library, which the Persian historian Juvaini was granted permission to inspect before the rest was burned. He rescued what he could of the Nizari chronicles and then watched the remainder feed a Mongol bonfire. The loss of the Ismaili library was one of the great intellectual catastrophes of the era, erasing centuries of heterodox scholarship.