Not everyone loves books. For centuries, despotic governments and rulers have feared the power of the written word and its influence on the masses; enough to destroy the most hallowed sanctuaries of bibliophiles across the globe—libraries. From Iraq to Los Angeles, countless libraries have been lost to war, fire, and “progress.”
3000 BCE – 1197 CE
The earliest libraries appeared during the third millennium BCE in the Near East. It wasn't too long after that the first library sackings would follow, particularly in the Mesopotamian region. Raiders weren't always successful. In one case, a fire meant to destroy the library of Assyrian King Ashurbanipal in 612 BCE actually hardened and helped preserve the clay tablets. In 1980, archeologists were able to recover 2,000 clay tablets from an archive in Syria that suffered a similar fate; while the shelves had burned, the tablets fell to the floor and patiently waited a few thousand years.
The Library of Alexandria is probably what most often comes to mind when speaking of the destruction of libraries. Rather than the fiery death usually accorded it, however, some scholars believe that the Library of Alexandria fizzled out of existence by 639 CE due to budget cuts. Meanwhile in Bihar, India, the Buddhist library of Nalanda survived until an attack by Turkic invaders in 1197 CE. Before its demise, Nalanda attracted scholars from multiple continents and contained over nine million manuscripts.
Rebecca Knuth goes so far as to directly link libraries with the development of civilization in Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century: “The barbarism, illiteracy, and regression that characterized Roman culture after the fall of Rome contrasts sharply with the cultural richness of earlier societies like the Greeks, or even Roman culture at its peak.”
Middle Ages – 19th Century
Historically, religion has served as a double-edged sword when it comes to promoting and protecting literacy. Sometimes places of worship became custodians of the written word, while in other cases religion became the excuse for its destruction. As Christianity spread to Mesoamerica via Spanish explorers, a number of valuable libraries and manuscripts were lost. The Maya Codices and a renowned library in the city of Texcoco were among the carnage.
20th Century
Every now and then, libraries fall for reasons that have nothing to do with human motivations. The Imperial University Library in Tokyo, for instance, was destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. You can see photos of what the library looked like before the quake on the University of Tokyo website. Approximately 700,000 volumes were lost.
The number of books lost during World War II is almost beyond comprehension. Over two million volumes are estimated to have been removed and destroyed from Czech libraries alone, approximately half of the country's books according to some estimates. Poland lost somewhere near 16 million volumes when the Nazis invaded. Frankly, this could have easily become an entire article dedicated solely to libraries damaged during the 1940's.
Some libraries fared better than others, opting to rebuild from the damage sustained. The King's Library Gallery was collected by King George III and being housed in the East Wing of the British Museum when a bomb fell on the building in 1940. By George's death in 1820, the collection (which he hired two librarians to curate) was comprised of over 65,000 volumes. Although the bomb destroyed over thirty feet of bookshelves, only 304 volumes were damaged beyond repair in the blast.
The worst library fire in US history occurred as the result of arson in 1986. It decimated Los Angeles Central Library, incinerating a large collection of Old West patents in a blaze that took down the third largest public library in the country. You can watch (oddly mesmerizing) footage of the fire here.
Today
Sadly, libraries are still being lost today. War in the Middle East has left a blight of scattered and charred books behind. An attack in early 2015 by ISIS on Mosul's central library resulted in the ruination of thousands of books and manuscripts, some dating back several hundred years. The early 2000's saw the fall of the National Library and State Archives of Iraq, institutions that held hundreds of years of history. Here, art historian Zainab Bahrani gives a fascinating account of how colleagues of hers protected Ottoman documents by using an old kitchen freezer in a bombed-out former club.
If there's one thing to be learned here, it's probably this: books are extremely valuable. Why else would anyone put so much effort into eradicating them?
About the author
Leah Dearborn is a Boston-based writer with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in international relations from UMass Boston. She started writing for LitReactor in 2013 while paying her way through journalism school and hopping between bookstore jobs (R.I.P. Borders). In the years since, she’s written articles about everything from colonial poisoning plots to city council plans for using owls as pest control. If it’s a little strange, she’s probably interested.
