Abstract
In April 2003 the assault on Iraq by American and British armed forces cost not only thousands of civilian and military lives but also brought graphic reports of the destruction of much of the country’s precious material heritage. Within 48 hours of the entry of American troops into Baghdad, it was claimed that looters had emptied the National Museum of more than 170,000 artefacts, while the National Library and the library at the Ministry of Religious Endowment lay in ruins. In Mosul the University Library was utterly destroyed. Interpretations of the tragedy were both immediate and problematically political.1 Much testimony has proved to be inaccurate. According to one British commentator, writing in the heat of the moment, ‘when the Mongols conquered Baghdad in 1258, they sacked the city and destroyed its library. This time, Iraqis have chosen to ransack their own capital and the legacy of their own past’.2 By contrast, a leading British Islamic bibliographer condemned those ‘who launched this invasion of Iraq … they may not have committed massacres or genocide, but they are responsible for the wanton obliteration of the historical memory and artistic and literary heritage, not just of Iraqis, but of all of us’.3
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Notes
Cited in Adam Lebor, ‘City Life: Sarajevo — Heritage reduced to ashes as Serbs tried to wipe Muslims from history’, The Independent, 21 Aug. 2000 (© The Independent). See also András Riedlmayer, ‘Convivencia under Fire: Genocide and Book Burning in Bosnia’, Jonathan Rose, ed., The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), pp. 266–91, and the video documentary by Knut W. Jorfald, Burning Books: The Story of the Destruction of a National Library.
See Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972);
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997);
Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Recent and continuing scholarship reconstructing libraries is diverse, but notably includes the Plume Library, Maldon; David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, The David Hume Library (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 1996); the Royal Library at Lisbon,
Angela Delaforce, Art and Patronage in Eighteenth-Century Portugal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
Liudmila V. Sharipova, ‘The Kiev Mohyla Academy’, unpublished Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 2000; the library of Jonathan Swift, continuing project directed by Hermann J. Real. 10. For a broad and classic account, see William Blades, The Enemies of Books (London, 1880);
also, Suzanne Briet, Bibliothèques en détresse (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1949).
See, in particular, the arguments of. Jeffrey Garrett, ‘Aufhebung im doppelten Wortsinn: The Fate of Monastic Libraries in Central Europe, 1780–1810’, Verbum Analecta Neolatina, 2 (1999): 15–27, qualified by Chapters 8 and 10 below.
The editor is most grateful for the comments of Dr Gabriel Sanchez Espinosa; further reading is offered by Julián Martín Abad, Los incunables de las bibliotecas española: Apuntes históricos y rioticias bibliográficas sobre fondos y bibliófilos (Valencia: Vicent Garcia Editores, 1996);
Inmaculada Arias de Saavedra, ‘La biblioteca de los jesuitas de Granada en el siglo XVIII: Una aproximación’, in A. Mestre Sanchís and E. Giménez López, Disidencias y exilios en la España Moderna: Actas de la IV Reunion Científica de la Asociación Española de Historia Moderna (Alicante: University of Alicante, 1997): 609–26;
Gregorio de Andrés, ‘El hispanista Obadiah Rich y la almoneda de libros espanoles en Londres en 1824’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 190 (1993): 285–311;
Josefina Bello Voces, ‘La ocupación de los bienes de los regulares (1835–1836)’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 185 (1988): 54–82;
Enric Mirambell i Belloch, ‘Projecte de Biblioteca provincial (1820–1823)’, Revista de Girona 136 (1989): 75–82;
Manuel Sanchez Mariana, ‘Los codices del monasterio de Silos’, Boletín de la Insti-tución Fernán González 63 (1984): 228–30;
Manuel Sanchez Mariana, ‘Notas sobre la biblioteca monástica de San Salvador de Oña’, Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 82 (1979): 473–93.
Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 92;
J. O. Ward, ‘Alexandria and its Medieval Legacy: The Book, the Monk and the Rose’, in Roy Macleod, ed., The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000), p. 165.
David Stam, ed., International Dictionary of Library Histories (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), p. 656.
Charles A. Goodrum and Helen W. Dalrymple, The Library of Congress (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982), p. 15.
Peter Waters, ‘Phased Preservation: A Philosophical Concept and Practical Approach to Preservation’, Special Libraries 81:1 (1990): 35–43; Stam, ed., International Dictionary of Library Histories, p. 676.
See, for example, Serious Thoughts Occasioned by the Late Earthquake at Lisbon (London 1756); see also Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 150–1.
Carolyn Horton, ‘Saving the Libraries of Florence’, Wilson Library Bulletin 41 (1966–67): 1035–43;
A. H. Goetz, ‘Books in Peril’, Wilson Library Bulletin 47 (1972–3): 428–39; the Biblioteca Nazionale was formed from the Florentine Library and the Palatina Library of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. See also The Book Collector, a special issue on Florence, Spring 1967.
E.S. De Beer, ed., The Diary of John Evelyn, new edn, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 3: 459.
See also Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols (London: Bell and Hyman, 1970–83), 7: 297 (26 Sept. 1666), 309–10 (5 Oct. 1666), 9: 22–3 (14 Jan. 1768);
and Walter G. Bell, The Great Fire of London in 1666 (London and New York: John Lane, 1920).
Otto Vilhelm Cison Walde, Storhetstidens litterära krigsbyten, en kulturhistorisk-bibliografisk studie (Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1916–20);
Don Heinrich Tolzmann, et al., The Memory of Mankind: the Story of Libraries since the Dawn of History (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 2001), pp. 67, 76.
Austin Baxter Keep, History of the New York Society Library (Boston: Gregg Press, 1972), pp. 94–8.
Cited in Elmer D. Johnson, History of Libraries in the Western World, 2nd edn (Metuchen NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1970), p. 105.
Etienne de Bourbon, Anecd. Hist. no. 327 ed. A. Leroy de la Marche, 1877, pp. 275–7, cited in Jonathan Sumption, The Albigensian Crusade (London: Faber and Faber, 1978), p. 47.
Charles Ripley Gillett, Burned Books: Neglected Chapters in British History and Literature, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 1: 15.
Edward Alexander Parsons, The Alexandrian Library: Glory of the Hellenic World, Its Rise, Antiquities, and Destructions (London: Cleaver-Hume, 1952), p. ix.
Three influential contributions were published in 1838: Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschi, Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken unter den ersten Ptolemäern (Breslau); Gustav F.C. Parthey, Das Alexandrinische Museum (Berlin); George Heinrich Klippel, Ueber das Alexandrinische Museum (Göttingen). The many later discussions notably included Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides, 4 vols (Paris, 1903–07);
Everisto Breccia, Alexandria ad Ægyptum (Bergamo, 1914);
J. B. Bury, A History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, AD 395 to AD 565, 2 vols (London: Macmillan and Co., 1923);
Paul Harvey, The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), ‘The Alexandrian Library’.
Notably, Edward Edwards, Memoirs of Libraries including a Handbook of Library Economy, 2 vols (London: Trübner and Co., 1859).
The following account benefits greatly from the survey offered by Mostafa El-Abbadi, The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria (Paris: UNESCO/UNDP, 1990).
Alfred J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion, ed. P.M. Fraser, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; 1st edn, 1902); Canfora’s ingenious Vanished Library reinvigo-rated debate, although its ‘fictional’ aspects are often noted (e.g. Robert Barnes, ‘Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken-Coop of Muses: The Ancient Library of Alexandria’, in Macleod, ed., Library of Alexandria, pp. 74–5).
P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 1: 27–9; Butler, Arab Conquest of Egypt, p. 412.
Alan K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs (London: British Museum, 1986), p. 225; Butler, Arab Conquest of Egypt, pp. 410–11. For a further chronology, see also Barnes, ‘Cloistered Bookworms’, pp. 61–77.
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Library of Babel’, in Collected Fictions, ed. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 116.
The full text (and continuing development of the library) is given in ‘Bibliotheca Alexandrina — The Revival of the Library of Alexandria’, http://www.unesco.org/webworld/alexandria. Another recent, colourful, speculation is offered by Robert H. Blackburn, ‘The Ancient Alexandrian Library: Part of it May Survive!’, Library History 19 (March 2003): 23–34.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (London: Macdonald Futura, 1980), p. 20.
Peter Fleming, The Siege at Peking (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959), pp. 121–2.
Richard O’Connor, The Spirit Soldiers: A Historical Narrative of the Boxer Rebellion (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973), p. 134.
Hans van der Hoeven, ‘List of Libraries and Collections Damaged or Destroyed’, in Lost Memory — Libraries and Archives Destroyed in the Twentieth Century (UNESCO, 1996), p. 14.
Jacqueline Borin, ‘Embers of the Soul: The Destruction of Jewish Books and Libaries in Poland during World War II’, Libraries and Culture 28: 4 (Fall, 1993): 445–60 (p. 446).
Marek Sroka, ‘The University of Cracow Library under Nazi Occupation, 1939–1945’, Libraries and Culture 34: 1 (Winter, 1999): 1–16 (p. 12), Borin, ‘Embers of the Soul’, p. 445.
Negley Harte and John North, The World of UCL 1828–1990 (London: University College, 1991), pp. 181, 344–6; Stam, ed., International Dictionary of Library Histories, p. 851.
Margaret F. Stieg, ‘The Postwar Purge of German Public Libraries, Democracy, and the American Reaction’, Libraries and Culture 28: 2 (Spring, 1993): 143–64 (p. 144).
See also G. Leyh, Die deutschen wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken nach dem Krieg (Tübingen, 1947).
Cheng Huanwen, ‘The Effect of the Cold War on Librarianship in China’, Libraries and Culture 36: 1 (Winter, 2001): 40–50 (p. 46 and table 1).
Helen Jarvis, ‘The National Library of Cambodia: Surviving for Seventy Years’ Libraries and Culture 30: 4 (Fall, 1995): 391–408 (pp. 402–3).
See Wayne Wiegand, An Active Instrument for Propaganda: The American Public Library during World War I (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989).
Kaljo-Olev Veskimägi, Tsensuur Eesti NSV-sja tema peremehed (Tallinn, 1996), summary in English in www.einst.ee/literary/spring97/04censor.htm. For Lithuania in particular, see Chapter 12 below.
See Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandelbrote, eds, Under the Hammer: Book Auctions since the Seventeenth Century (London and New Castle DE: Oak Knoll and the British Library, 2001);
Gwyn Walters, ‘Early Sale Catalogues: Problems and Perspectives’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris, eds, Sale and Distribution of Books from 1700 (Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1982): 106–25; and, classically, Edwards, Memoirs of Libraries, 2: 110–51.
Nicholson Baker, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (London: Vintage, 2002).
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel (London: Secker and Warburg, 1949), p. 40.
Michel de Certeau, ‘Reading as Poaching’ in de Certeau, trans. Steven F. Rendall, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 165–76.
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© 2004 James Raven
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Raven, J. (2004). Introduction: The Resonances of Loss. In: Raven, J. (eds) Lost Libraries. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524255_1
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