no, listen.

i want you to understand the scope of what happened. this was a major project, and it took a long time.

the rulers of the islamic empire (they called themselves caliphs, but they were emperors, and truly quite roman) very quickly inherited a number of major literary centres: alexandria, jerusalem, ctesiphon. they didn't get all of the books, but they got a large proportion of them.

at the time, people mostly wrote things in greek. so, you had to learn greek to read them. the muslim emperors wanted to change that - they wanted people to read things in arabic.

so, they literally walked into these massive libraries and went through all of the books, one by one, and translated them into arabic. all of them. no exceptions. then, when they were done, they deleted the originals.

so, now you had to learn arabic instead of greek, thereby cementing arabic as the central cultural force in the region. this was very successful - it's still there.

but, they didn't convert these books blindly. they had religious clerics overseeing this process, to ensure that only the books that upheld the koran were saved. so, it wasn't just a process of replacing the greek with the arabic, it was also a process of ensuring that all extant writing was consistent with islam.

they really, actually did this - they went through all of the libraries, one by one, and made a choice, book-by-book - translate or destroy.

the vast majority was destroyed, not translated.

again: be careful with what they tell you.