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>From: "Sharon Parker" <[log in to unmask]>
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>Subject: Robert FIsk: Library books, letters....
>Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 10:20:41 -0500
>X-OriginalArrivalTime: 16 Apr 2003 15:20:42.0726 (UTC)
>FILETIME=[BEC60860:01C3042B]
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>FYI -
>
>>
>>Robert Fisk: Library books, letters and priceless documents are set
>>ablaze in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad
>>http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=397350
>>
>>
>>
>>15 April 2003
>>
>>So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then
>>the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad.
>>The National Library and Archives - a priceless treasure of Ottoman
>>historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq -
>>were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of
>>Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze.
>>
>>I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a
>>book of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes
>>of Iraqi history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages
>>of handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of
>>Mecca, who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence
>>of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.
>>
>>And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew,
>>letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for
>>ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks
>>on pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was
>>holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written
>>history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of
>>the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the
>>burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the
>>cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these
>>fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed?
>>
>>When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning - flames 100
>>feet high were bursting from the windows - I raced to the offices
>>of the occupying power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An
>>officer shouted to a colleague that "this guy says some biblical
>>[sic] library is on fire". I gave the map location, the precise
>>name - in Arabic and English. I said the smoke could be seen from
>>three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive
>>there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the scene -
>>and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air.
>>
>>There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written
>>in Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn
>>libraries in Baghdad. In the National Archives were not just the
>>Ottoman records of the Caliphate, but even the dark years of the
>>country's modern history, handwritten accounts of the 1980-88
>>Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs and military diaries,and
>>microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the early
>>1900s.
>>
>>But the older files and archives were on the upper floors of the
>>library where petrol must have been used to set fire so expertly to
>>the building. The heat was such that the marble flooring had
>>buckled upwards and the concrete stairs that I climbedhad been
>>cracked.
>>
>>The papers on the floor were almost too hot to touch, bore no print
>>or writing, and crumbled into ash the moment I picked them up.
>>Again, standing in this shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked
>>the same question: why?
>>
>>So, as an all-too-painful reflection on what this means, let me
>>quote from the shreds of paper that I found on the road outside,
>>blowing in the wind, written by long-dead men who wrote to the
>>Sublime Porte in Istanbul or to the Court of Sharif of Mecca with
>>expressions of loyalty and who signed themselves "your slave".
>>There was a request to protect a camel convoy of tea, rice and
>>sugar, signed by Husni Attiya al-Hijazi (recommending Abdul
>>Ghani-Naim and Ahmed Kindi as honest merchants), a request for
>>perfume and advice from Jaber al-Ayashi of the royal court of
>>Sharif Hussein to Baghdad to warn of robbers in the desert. "This
>>is just to give you our advice for which you will be highly
>>rewarded," Ayashi says. "If you don't take our advice, then we have
>>warned you." A touch of Saddam there, I thought. The date was 1912.
>>
>>Some of the documents list the cost of bullets, military horses and
>>artillery for Ottoman armies in Baghdad and Arabia, others record
>>the opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz - soon to
>>be Saudi Arabia - while one recounts, from the village of Azrak in
>>modern-day Jordan, the theft of clothes from a camel train by Ali
>>bin Kassem, who attacked his interrogators "with a knife and tried
>>to stab them but was restrained and later bought off". There is a
>>19th-century letter of recommendation for a merchant, Yahyia
>>Messoudi, "a man of the highest morals, of good conduct and who
>>works with the [Ottoman] government." This, in other words, was the
>>tapestry of Arab history - all that is left of it, which fell into
>>The Independent's hands as the mass of documents crackled in the
>>immense heat of the ruins.
>>
>>King Faisal of the Hejaz, the ruler of Mecca, whose staff are the
>>authors of many of the letters I saved, was later deposed by the
>>Saudis. His son Faisel became king of Iraq - Winston Churchill gave
>>him Baghdad after the French threw him out of Damascus - and his
>>brother Abdullah became the first king of Jordan, the father of
>>King Hussein and the grandfather of the present-day Jordanian
>>monarch, King Abdullah II.
>>
>>For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of
>>the Arab world, the most literate population in the Middle East.
>>Genghis Khan's grandson burnt the city in the 13th century and, so
>>it was said, the Tigris river ran black with the ink of books.
>>Yesterday, the black ashes of thousands of ancient documents filled
>>the skies of Iraq. Why?
>>
>>RA
>
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School of Art
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