Saturday, September 25, 2004

Bibliophile

As a self-proclaimed bibliophile, I enjoy stories about others. Have you ever heard of Abdul Kassem Ismael (AD.938-995) who was Grand Vizier of Persia? He never left home without his personal library.

On his many travels as a statesman, he was always accompanied by a train of 400 camels just for his library of 117,000 volumes. They were trained to walk in alphabetical order so tht each camel-driver-librarian could retrieve any book quickly. Each camel carried about 300 books. The camel train was nearly a mile long. Wouldn't the people at an oasis hate to see them coming....

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