Islamic Rebels Burn Medieval Manuscript Library

[Sausy]

Jack, when you use that broad brush you often do you make far less credible your assertions of being open minded and thinking for yourself. Islamic hstory is neither wholly benign or negative....for most of our medieval period the areas they controlled in Europe were far more enlightened than the authoritarian Christian monarchies that replaced them. "The Spanish Inquisition" anyone?

 

[rareboy]

For all those that think that this is just an Islamic tic....Check your History.

Under Savonarola, many irreplaceable humanist manuscripts and works of art were sacrificed to fire.

Every religion has its phases of fundamentalism.

 

[rareboy]

^^
Yes, the culture of Islam brought so much to progressive culture in the past.

You are so fucking right.

But the Wahabists have risen to prominence because of Saudi Arabia.

Anyone who doesn't realize that America's bestest friend with oil wells has been the heart and soul of the fundamentalist movement in Islam is just ignoring history.

 

[Nemothepanda]

Not much is known about Imperial Mali and Songhai outside of western Africa, the two empires responsible for turning Timbuktu and other cities into centers of learning. These manuscripts are invaluable if we are going to learn anything more about Africa's history and place in the world. A good number of these texts are commentaries on the Qu'ran and Sharia, so although it would be a loss nevertheless, I hope we didn't lose the works of some unnamed genius.

 

[palbert]

No one group can claim blamelessness in the destruction of knowlege:

Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria: Julius Caesar's fire in the Alexandrian War, in 48 BC; the attack of Aurelian in AD 270 – 275; the decree of Coptic Pope Theophilus in AD 391; and the Muslim conquest in AD 642 or thereafter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

And one of the ancient world's knowledge repositories was lost.

 

[ChickenGuy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21248951

The BBC has put up a set of pictures. They were taken in May 2010 when a BBC Africa journalist went to Timbuktu and visited the Ahmed Baba Institute (the same place JockBoy mentions in his first post) They held the most important manuscript collections.

There might be some consolation - I bolded a part of the quote underneath....

These 13th-Century commentaries on the Koran were among the oldest manuscripts in the library. Workers at the Ahmed Baba Institute have told the BBC that around 2,000 manuscripts may have been lost while 28,000 were taken to Bamako, Mali's capital, after the Islamist groups took control of the city.

....so thankfully, all is not lost.

Some other pics and descriptions....

The ancient Malian city of Timbuktu has housed for centuries thousands of manuscripts which are invaluable to the history of Africa and Islam. Several thousand of them seem to have been lost or taken away by retreating Islamist militants as French and Malian troops were advancing towards Timbuktu.

The manuscripts dealt with different fields of knowledge. The text with red drawings, for example, is a treatise on astronomy by Nouradine bin Mohamed Ahmed, and the manuscript on the bottom left is an 18th-Century copy of an earlier text on pharmacology. It contains recipes for traditional Sahelian remedies written next to Koranic verses.

Many of the manuscripts were acquired from Timbuktu families which had kept them for centuries. The dry climate of the region, located on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, contributed to their preservation. This is a 17th-Century copy of a biography of the Prophet Muhammad.

The centre is named after Ahmed Baba, considered Timbuktu's greatest scholar. Several of his best known texts were written while he lived in Morocco, like this manuscript from Marrakech which dates from 1599. He died in 1627 in Timbuktu.

 

[palbert]

Does anyone know of any efforts to digitally encode most/all of these texts, much as is being done with The Dead Sea Scrolls? It is no good to bemoan their loss if no effort is made to protect them irretrievably.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Does anyone know of any efforts to digitally encode most/all of these texts, much as is being done with The Dead Sea Scrolls? It is no good to bemoan their loss if no effort is made to protect them irretrievably.

Absolutely no idea. I was actually just thinking it's rather appalling how little we know or hear about anything in Africa really unless you go very far out of your way to look it up. I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of world academia didn't even know this respository existed.

 

[ChickenGuy]

Does anyone know of any efforts to digitally encode most/all of these texts, much as is being done with The Dead Sea Scrolls? It is no good to bemoan their loss if no effort is made to protect them irretrievably.

That was discussed in another pic in my link (I only posted some of them)

Good news in bold again....

In the new building the manuscripts were being digitised before being restored - in case something went wrong and also with the hope of making them available on the internet. It was a project that was expected to take many years. It may have saved some of the contents of the missing texts as the hard disks containing the digital data were reportedly taken to Bamako.

Plus this....

In Timbuktu there are several other manuscript collections, mostly private ones. It is believed that, together, they contain hundreds of thousands of documents. It is not known whether any of them were also vandalised by the retreating rebels. Text and photos: Manuel Toledo, BBC Africa

 

[Zeno Lorea]

Every religion is evil and retrograde, but Islam just happens to be a little more evil and more retrograde than most. I am friends with several muslims, but always the secular kind. Then again, Europeans are usually quite secular, so that includes most of our muslims.

 

[Kulindahr]

Every religion is evil and retrograde, but Islam just happens to be a little more evil and more retrograde than most. I am friends with several muslims, but always the secular kind. Then again, Europeans are usually quite secular, so that includes most of our muslims.

I hear people say that, but I have yet to figure out what's evil about love, peace, generosity, hospitality, kindness, goodness, gentleness, compassion, humility, sharing, or any of the other things Christianity is about.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I hear people say that, but I have yet to figure out what's evil about love, peace, generosity, hospitality, kindness, goodness, gentleness, compassion, humility, sharing, or any of the other things Christianity is about.

I don't actually believe the core of any of the major religions is evil. And I believe you can find passages, however obscure or remote or out of character, from any of their holy books which you could potentially twist and use to justify really horrible things.

It's not about the core message but the interpretation and emphasis. Just as radical Islam today is pretty fundamentally against what a majority of moderate Muslims feel their faith is really about, so too we had things like the Inquisition or the book burnings in Medieval Europe.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't actually believe the core of any of the major religions is evil. And I believe you can find passages, however obscure or remote or out of character, from any of their holy books which you could potentially twist and use to justify really horrible things.

It's not about the core message but the interpretation and emphasis. Just as radical Islam today is pretty fundamentally against what a majority of moderate Muslims feel their faith is really about, so too we had things like the Inquisition or the book burnings in Medieval Europe.

But it is about the core. If it weren't, then we could define the Democratic party as communist and the Republican party as terrorist -- and both as totalitarian.

The core of a thing is what that thing is about, just as the seeds in the core of an apple are what the apple is about. In terms of religion, anyone who doesn't adhere to the core is manifestly not truly part of that religion. And while it may be difficult to precisely define the border, it is definitely possible to assess those who are plainly far away from it as not belonging.

Those who engage in violence in the name of God are far from the core of Christianity, and likely far from the core of Islam. THey are thus logically not a part of those communities -- and that means that the source of the violence, the hatred, the bigotry, must be sought elsewhere. Accusing the entire religions of the aberrations of some is both dishonest and intellectually lazy.

 

[xbuzzerx]

But it is about the core. If it weren't, then we could define the Democratic party as communist and the Republican party as terrorist -- and both as totalitarian.

The core of a thing is what that thing is about, just as the seeds in the core of an apple are what the apple is about. In terms of religion, anyone who doesn't adhere to the core is manifestly not truly part of that religion. And while it may be difficult to precisely define the border, it is definitely possible to assess those who are plainly far away from it as not belonging.

Those who engage in violence in the name of God are far from the core of Christianity, and likely far from the core of Islam. THey are thus logically not a part of those communities -- and that means that the source of the violence, the hatred, the bigotry, must be sought elsewhere. Accusing the entire religions of the aberrations of some is both dishonest and intellectually lazy.

I agree with you, on one caveat. I think religious communities in the world today all largely perceive themselves, regardless of their strength or predominance in a given society, as "under attack." You can hear the same thing from people of virtually any faith. And I think that engenders something of a bunker mentality where the moderate or mainstream practictioners of almost any religion, even when they don't approve of their extreme elements, are often loathe to step out of the crowd and denounce it. It's not limited to Islam, though I'm sure that would be in the forefront of many people's minds. That would be part of my issue with religion, or rather, with "the religious", not with their particular religions.

- - - Updated - - -

Good news, reported by Reuters, only 2000 or so manuscripts were destroyed out of the estimated 300,000 in the city. Still that's a significant number. The Walter's in Baltimore has about 900. To think about losing more than twice that number... There's also a video by Reuters showing French President Francois Hollande in the museum. It looks like some of the pages might be recoverable. What some have said here is apparently true, the manuscripts were targeted for being against the rebels' radical form of Islam.

I'll still be really mad if they find out one of the burned ones had the secret of Greek fire in it.

 

[Ninja108]

Next to human life,an assault on history is the worst thing you can do.

 

[Kulindahr]

Next to human life,an assault on history is the worst thing you can do.

Exception: book burners should be caught, tied up, and tossed on the same fire with the books they're burning.

 

[bankside]

I hear people say that, but I have yet to figure out what's evil about love, peace, generosity, hospitality, kindness, goodness, gentleness, compassion, humility, sharing, or any of the other things [STRIKE]Christianity[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]Lutheranism[/STRIKE] Kulindarism is about.

revised for accuracy; the history books bear out a very different picture of that religion you first mentioned; it is actually quite like all the others you were unwilling to defend.

 

[xbuzzerx]

revised for accuracy; the history books bear out a very different picture of that religion you first mentioned; it is actually quite like all the others you were unwilling to defend.

Have to agree. There's a modern, warm, huggable reinvention of Christianity as harmless love that doesn't reflect its role in most of history prior to the last century or so.

 

[Kulindahr]

revised for accuracy; the history books bear out a very different picture of that religion you first mentioned; it is actually quite like all the others you were unwilling to defend.

Revised for your prejudice, rather. History books do not define a religion or anything else, they merely show what people claiming to follow some system do. If we go by history books, what the US is about is genocide, racism, war and terror -- but to know what the US is really about, one must look at the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and other core documents. In philosophical terms, it's the substance that defines a thing, not the accidents.

 

[Kulindahr]

Have to agree. There's a modern, warm, huggable reinvention of Christianity as harmless love that doesn't reflect its role in most of history prior to the last century or so.

By this, the right wingnuts are correct, and what the Democratic party is really about is racism and killing the unborn.

One does not define a thing by the accidental attachments to it, one defines a thing by its definition.