This just in.
Barbara
from
<http://www.arabnews.com/print.asp?id=25219&ArY=2003&ArM=4&ArD=15>
Arab News
SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY
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Islamic Library Burned to the Ground
Robert Fisk, The Independent
Published on Tuesday, April 15, 2003
BAGHDAD, 15 April 2003 ? So yesterday was the burning of books. First came
the looters, then came the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sack
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Ottoman historical documents including the old royal archives of Iraq ?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 Islamic Library of
Qur?ans 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 who could have been no more than 10 years old. Amid the ashes of
hundreds of years of Iraqi history, I found just one file blowing in the
wind outside: Pages and pages of handwritten letters between the court of
Sherif Hussein of Makkah ? 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
Ottoman troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all
of them 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 Qur?anic library of the ministry, 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 Qur?anic library burning ? there were
flames 100 feet high bursting from the windows ? I raced to the offices of
the occupying power, the US Marines? civil affairs bureau, to report what I
had seen. 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 ? of the fire, I said that 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 now 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,
hand-written accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, an entire library of
Western newspapers ? bound volumes of the Financial Times were lying on the
pavement ? and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the
early 1900s.
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Copyright © 2003 ArabNews All Rights Reserved.
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Barbara Q. Prior
Head, The Clarence Ward Art Library
Oberlin College
Allen Art Building
83 North Main Street
Oberlin, OH 44074-1193
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: (440)775-8635
Fax: (440)775-8969
http://www.oberlin.edu/~library/artlib/
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