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====The Destruction of the Lighthouse of Alexandria====
[[File: Alexandria Harbor.jpg|250px|thumbnail|rightleft|Panoramic View of the Modern Alexandira Harbor: the Pharos Island and the Fort of Qaitbay Can be Seen in the Middle of the Background]]
As discussed above, the Lighthouse of Alexandria incurred its first recorded man-made damage at the hands of Julius Caesar. There were few accounts written about the Lighthouse after Josephus. The medieval Islamic historian, Ibn Battuta, visited Alexandria twice during his epic journeys of the Islamic world – 1326 and 1349 – and found the Lighthouse severely damaged on his first trip and all but destroyed on the second trip. Battua never gave an opinion on what caused the destruction. Thanks to advances in science, modern scholars have been able to determine that much of the damage the Lighthouse suffered in the post-Roman/Islamic Period was due to nature.
Alexandria was a city built by Greeks and then inherited by the Romans and later the Byzantine Empire. To these peoples, Alexandria was an important place in their empires and the Lighthouse was the physical focal point of the city, both literally and metaphorically. When the Arab Muslims conquered Egypt in AD 642, they viewed the city of Alexandria and the Lighthouse in very different manner. Although the Muslims were impressed with certain aspects of Hellenic Civilization, they were not part of it and monuments such as the Seven Wonders of the World list were of little consequence to them. Egypt played an important role in the new caliphate, but the newly built city of Cairo, not Alexandria, became the focal point of medieval Egypt.
With that said, the Muslims did not totally abandon Alexandria or the Lighthouse. As mentioned above, Ibn Battuta knew of the Lighthouse, but by his time, it had long ceased to function as an actual lighthouse. During the ninth century, about a century before the large earthquake destroyed the top level, the lighthouse was converted into a mosque. <ref> Claire, p. 94</ref> It is not known if the rulers of Egypt attempted to rebuild the Lighthouse-mosque after the devastating earthquake of the tenth century, but it is known that the Sultan Qaitbay converted what was left of the Lighthouse into a fort in 1480. <ref> Claire, p. 138</ref>
====Conclusion====
