The survival rate of ancient literature

[Theodosius the Great]

I'd like to add another point for the general discussion : why is it that everything we know about the Persians comes from Greco-Roman sources ? Was this a failure of the Persians to preserve their history ? Was this due to the Arab destruction of Persia ? Or did the Persians simply have no tradition of recording their history ?

As bad as the loss of so much knowledge from the Greco-Roman world seems to us, we in the West are more fortunate than the Iranians who have an older culture / history. Again, we should put things in perspective.

Well, that sounds like they missed a bit, namely the period when the city grew back into a major city!

No, the Christian, Greek speaking Alexandria died many centuries ago. Even the Patriarch resides in Cairo. The modern city is just a namesake with no significant ties to the old one.

If the city was in ruins, then why would the Byzantines even have bothered to attempt a reconquest in 645, 3 years after it's being surrendered to Amr?

1. Simple : two reasons
   
2. Strategic : It still contained a valuable port that could and did launch raiding fleets across the Mediterranean (much as the Vandals vis-a-vis Carthage).
   
3. Religious : It's embarrassing to have the second ranking See of Eastern Christendom being occupied by foreign infidels.

Of course Alexandria was inhabited afterward, it still had a a Christian organisation of the Church for later Muslim leaders to abolish. That would be difficult with an empty ruin..

It became a shanty town much like Rome in the 6th century which only had a few hundred residents which sometimes swelled to a couple thousand when it had a garrison. So, I suppose one could say both were still inhabited but this is far from the one million inhabits both cities once housed. And who can blame the inhabitants ? Both cities were repeatedly put under siege.

That sounds logical, but I also read that the Orthodox church developed a very negative attitude towards earlier Classical learning. Do we know for sure what survived in Constantinople or are we just assuming things here?

Why is this relevant to the question of the thread ? Whether or not the Orthodox Church valued classical learning the point is that Constantinople housed the largest repository of Greek works from the classical period. They weren't destroyed by monks unless, on occasion, paper was so scarce that they recycled the old books to write prayers on. This wasn't done out of malice but out of scarcity.

That sounds like a very partisan view to me. Is there really evidence that the re-emergence of Classical texts et al came directly from Constantinople?

Yes, read more on Willem van Moerbeke, the Flemish Dominican friar and one time Latin bishop of Corinth from the mid 13th century. He translated all of the works of Aristotle and many by Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria and more. He translated "Politics" which was never translated into Arabic.

Due to Willem van Moerbeke's translations European thinkers by the late 13th century had a much more accurate and complete understanding of Greek thought than any of the prior Muslim philosophers.

This sounds to me like a denial of the Arab connection in favour of a so far unsupported view, bent on denying any Arab role in the passing on of Classic culture

I don't deny the roles the Arabs or the Latin monks played in copying ancient texts but my point is that both were ancillary at best, at least with Greek texts.

The two main figures who are responsible for the preservation and transmission of Greek thought to Western Europe were Isidore of Seville and William of Moerbeke. Spanish students were already familiar with Aristotle before the Arab invasion on 711 AD.

I cannot see any Greek scholars going to monks for the translation of ancient texts despite this sentiment.

Ditto to what SigniferOne said. By that time, Europe had many secular scholars that could have received scholarly Greek refugees.

~Theo