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On the Destruction of Libraries

The History of the Decline and Fall of t... (by Gibbon, Edward)
Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and R... (by Plutarchus, Lucius Mestrius)
Julius Caesar's War Commentaries (by Caesar, Julius)
Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra : A Tale of th... (by Ware, William)

One of the favorite moves of any invading military force, occupying power, or totalitarian dictator is to destroy libraries. While it has often happened on accident or as a byproduct of fighting in and around the city, time and again repressive regimes destroy repositories of information, literature, and history purposefully in order to rein in knowledge and annihilate cultural identity that run counter to the false narratives or ideologies of the regimes in power.

Many great libraries have been lost this way. The destruction of the Library of Alexandria, one of the largest in the ancient world, has long been regarded as a prime example of the destruction of knowledge and culture. However, it is still not known how the library came to meet its end. Scholars and sources ranging from Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, to Julius Caesar himself tell differing stories. The great library's fate is narrowed down to four competing accounts: Caesar's civil war with the Roman senate in 48 BC, Emperor Aurelian's attack on the city in the third century in order to suppress Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, the eradication of what were deemed pagan texts and temples at the hands of Emperor Theodosius, Pope Theophilus, and the Christians in 391 AD, and the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 642 AD.

There were also many documented destruction of libraries during the various Christian crusades. Crusaders of the thirteenth century annihilated many private Muslim libraries, most notably the Library of Constantinople, considered the last great library of the ancient world. For nearly a thousand years the library withstood various fires and war damage that claimed portions of the books within, during times when each book was a unique item of knowledge. It housed many ancient Greek and Roman texts lost forever in the fall of Constantinople on April 12, 1204, at the hands of the Franks and Venetians of the Fourth Crusade.

The Nazis destroyed libraries all over Europe, before and during World War II. Notably, they plundered, burned, bombed, or otherwise intentionally damaged Jewish libraries, communist bookshops, and nationalist libraries of Czechoslovakia, Library of the Academy of Sciences in Hungary, and the Public Library of Milan. The list for museums and university and municipal libraries partially damaged or destroyed in both World War I and II is extremely long.

Today, we consider such actions as forms of cultural cleansing or cultural genocide. Not all that long ago when country borders were not a concept and war and invasion were constant, impending threats--and even a celebrated way of life--the destruction of libraries meant that culture and history belonged to the victors. Examples of the destruction of libraries and the cultural or religious documents they contain still occur today. Even as recent as this year, 2017, The library in Mosul, Iraq has only recently been recovered from the Islamic State and their campaign to destroy any version of Muslim culture differing from theirs.

By Thad Higa