ISIS burned over 8,000 rare books and manuscripts at Mosul’s library in 2015

Evidence

The Mosul Public Library was founded in 1921 — the same year the modern Iraqi state was born. Over ninety years, it had survived two world wars, the 2003 invasion and subsequent looting (from which neighborhood residents rescued most of the collection), and the early years of ISIS occupation. On February 22, 2015, ISIS planted improvised explosive devices around the building and detonated them simultaneously, igniting fires that burned over 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. Among them: 18th-century Syriac manuscripts, Ottoman-era records, newspapers from Iraq’s founding year, an astrolabe and sand glass used by medieval Arab scholars, and the personal libraries of over 100 Mosul families. The library director, Ghanim al-Ta’an, survived. — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 1171

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s library-themed thread (The Library: A Fragile History) and the broader destruction-of-knowledge motif.
• SEED: Angle: a piece on how libraries destroyed then rebuilt lose a second time — the double loss of thing and reconstruction act.

Related

• A rebuilt library destroyed again suffers a doubling of loss (similarity 0.82)