Alexander the Great and the Sea Monsters | al Muqaddimah Ep06

[Music] asalamu alikum and welcome back to the adab book club so we're still in book one of we're reading through Princeton Edition and I want to share with you a very small story that relates to us from the account of Ali in his famous book in order to highlight the the errors and the embellishment of historians gives us an account of how Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great so according to almi Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great following a series of Supernatural events and wants to explain to us that uh it is very possible for people to inherit these stories and to believe in them without critically analyzing and assessing them so on page 36 then describes it as follows students often happen to accept and transmit absurd information that in turn is believed on their Authority Ali for instance reports such a story about Alexander sea monsters prevented Alexander from building Alexandria so if you know the history of Alexander the Great and his uh fantastic campaigns across Europe in Asia he stopped in Egypt where he effectively became a pharaoh and um pronounced himself a demigod and went on to to establish Alexandria which is the second City in Egypt today this was around 400 years before the the event of Christ so Alexander himself was actually the figure of many mythical um accounts we have the alexandrian romance for example so there is no shortage of myth surrounding this great man but myth and reality often times are confounded and confused so where the myth ends and reality begins may be a bit blurred so on the occasion in which Alexander the Great was establishing this great cityal tells us that according to al- masi in his sea monsters prevented Alexander the Great from building Alexandria so in order to remediate this Alexander the Great took a wooden container in which a glass box was inserted and dived it into the bottom of the sea so in effect Alexander constructed A Primitive submarine it took a wooden container in which there was a glass container and here Alexander went in the glass container and the entire Contraption was slowly lowered into the the water so he took a wooden container in which a glass box was inserted and dived it in the bottom of the sea there he drew pictures of the devilish monsters he saw he then had metal Effigies of these animals made and set them up opposite the place where building was going on when the sea monsters came out and saw the effes they fled Alexander was thus able to complete the building of Alexandria and so clearly a mythical tale by this intends to teach us and to demonstrate that it is possible to inherit stories that make no sense or have no basis in reality but because of the continual transmission and the tradition of receiving and conveying without critically thinking these eventually end up in the books of history and at times are presented as facts so he concludes by saying it is a long story made up of nonsensical Elements which are absurd for various reasons and in true alian style he goes into breaking analogical terms as to why this could not be a feasible proposition and why the entire story should be discarded so a point for us to take away from this is although the stories you come across when we read history may not be as absurd as this one here there may be uh perhaps more um there may more subtle forms of exaggeration that we come across in embellishment it is upon us then to question every time we come across such stories how much of this we should take as L literal value and how much we should inquire into and investigate so it's a timely reminder in fact fromal that uh we should always remain critical and Vigilant of what we read and consume and to stay away from being as he mentioned the lost sheep who are grazing on the pastures of stupidity and so we conclude today's reading with that and I hope as we travel through the madima that we can gather gems and treasures together one of the greatest treasures I believe personally from reading a mad is the license that gives us to be critical to investigate to question to think not just to inherit from the Ancients and to just accept it as being uh a truth that was conveyed to us but to question and when we apply this critical thinking perspective in any other reading we do any any other Endeavor intellectual Endeavor we can benefit a lot greater from our studies our readings and our experiences so the madima is an Awakening for people who read this book to question everything around them to re-evaluate what they think they know of the world civilizations as talks of and to really investigate and think how how much of this must I accept as fact and reality and how much of this even if the information given to me is correct the perspective may be incorrect so it's a great opportunity to reflect to introspect to review and to revise what we think we know of the world which would in turns make us a lot more um tolerant and a lot more open to learning new information so until then remain curious and keep reading [Music]