Some of the priceless literary treasures in the 100-year-old library in Mosul library dated back to 5000 B.C. According to Ghanim al-Ta’an, Director of the Mosul Museum Library, “ISIS militants bombed the Mosul Public Library. They used improvised explosive devices.” Notables in Mosul begged ISIS members to spare the library, but they refused, according to The Fiscal Times.
Among its lost collections were manuscripts from the eighteenth century, Syriac books printed in Iraq’s first printing house in the nineteenth century, books from the Ottoman era, Iraqi newspapers from the early twentieth century and some old antiques like an astrolabe and sand glass used by ancient Arabs. The library had hosted the personal libraries of more than 100 notable families from Mosul over the last century.
Sunday night, the Mosul Museum Library was bombed
“900 years ago, the books of the Arab philosopher Averroes were collected before his eyes…and burned. One of his students started crying while witnessing the burning. Averroes told him… the ideas have wings…but I cry today over our situation,” said Rayan al-Hadidi, an activist and a blogger from Mosul. Al-Hadidi said that a state of anger and sorrow are dominating Mosul now.
At the same time ISIS was destroying the Mosul Museum Library, other ISIS members were abolishing an ancient church in Mosul, the Church of Mary the Virgin; the Mosul Mosul University Theater was burned down; and in western Iraq, the al-Anbar province, over 100,000 books were burn and destroyed. Last December 2014, ISIS burned the Mosul University’s Central Library.
One militant reportedly explained, “These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned.”
