Vandals and Museums
When Amr ibn al-Aasi captured Alexandria in AD 642 his followers came to him with a question. The city contained the largest collection of books in the ancient world, the famous Library of Alexandria, and they wanted to know what they should do with them. Fortunately for their peace of mind, al-Aasi knew the answer.
"If they contain what is in the Qur'an, they are superfluous; if they contradict what is in the Qur'an, they are blasphemous. In either case, burn them."
For the next month, so it is claimed, the public baths of Alexandria were fuelled by burning books.
Various apologists have since claimed that the library was, in fact, destroyed by a variety of villains, from Julius Caesar, Aurelian, the monk Theophilius and others. Muslims themselves are eager to exculpate their hero from the charge, but recent events in Mosul make it all too likely that whatever depredations earlier attackers may have caused, the final destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria was indeed down to al-Aasi.
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| Mosul's Central Library in happier times. |
Mosul, in northern Iraq, contained a collection of rare and valuable documents, including maps and books from Ottoman times, a unique collection of Iraqi newspapers from the early Twentith Century, and books contributed by around a hundred of Mosul's wealthiest families, which were held in special rooms to which the public had access. These were part of the Mosul Public Library, founded in 1921, where scholars could access the rarer documents while the general public could make use of the more modern collection of contemporary books and magazines.
Back in January 2015 black-robed warriors from ISIS invaded the library, smashing locked doors, and conducted a hurried sorting of books. Children's stories, books of poetry, books on philosophy and anything to do with sport, health or science, were all claimed to be un-Islamic. The fanatics loaded them into pickup trucks and departed, proclaiming, "These books promote infidelty and call for disobeying Allah, so they will be burned." So far as anyone knows, they were.
However this was deemed to be insufficient and in late February the morons returned, this time with explosives, and blew up the library and left it in flames. It is feared that up to 112,000 books may have been destroyed, including 600 to 800 rare and irreplaceable manuscripts. In addition objects such as an astrolabe and an hour glass used by Muslim astrologers are missing, presumed destroyed.
Other reports from inside Mosul claim that libraries held by the Dominican Fathers and the Latin church have also been destroyed. With grand impartiality the lunatics also attacked the archives of the Sunni Library - presumably they were not Islamic enough!
In the last week of February video emerged showing black-robed fanatics attacking the Mosul Museum, toppling statues from their pedastals and smashing them into fragments with sledge-hammers. Massive Assyrian bulls were destroyed with power tools, with particular attention being paid to their human faces, which are regarded as particularly offensive by Muslims.
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| Daesh activists live up to their name by vandalising priceless statues in Mosul Museum. |
Unfortunately, it is possible that this upsurge in vandalism may be the fault of the Americans. An American general leading the retraining of the Iraqi army announced details of the plan to retake the city of Mosul from the forces of ISIS. The move was initially hailed as clever tactics, for it was followed by reports of ISIS fighters abandoning their posts in the city and then more reports of ISIS deserters being brutally killed as the leadership attempted to quell the incipient rebellion. It is possible that the attack on the museum and the libraries is another attempt to inspire wavering fighters with confidence.
It is equally possible that it is an attempt to ensure divine favour by cleansing the land of all heathen influences. In Afghanistan the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas was triggered by a famine that lasted for several years and which the ignorant mullahs blamed on divine displeasure for the continued existence of such idols. Ironically the drought continued unbroken until the Taleban were destroyed by the American invasion and only once the Christians were in control did the rains come!
One cannot help but think, however, that Allah the All-Wise, may not share the insane logic of the fanatics, which calls suicide bombers who attack Muslim civilians "martyrs" and which calls statues never intended for worship "idols". Indeed, there is good reason to believe that the God Who surrounds us with beauty and implanted in us the ability to create music and art may be better pleased by artists than by vandals. Of course both music and art can be perverted and some statues are indeed idols, but that does not make every statue an idol.
However this brings me to a theme which I have often mentioned before and that is the need to widely disseminate the world's cultural heritage. Museums and art galleries which impose restrictions on photography and other reproductive media are being selfishly destructive. They look only to the profits they hope to make from the copyright of the items they contain rather than to the long-term preservation of the world's heritage. What if - which God forbid - Muslim fanatics should indeed conquer Rome or London? What if they should go around destroying the priceless collections of art and statuary held by the museums of those cities?
Some would be fine; their collections could be recreated from the thousands of photographs taken by tourists, even if some of those photographs have Aunty Maud grinning inanely in the foreground. Others, too precious to allow photography, would end up with their collections lost forever and their cultural treasures not even a memory.
In short, I believe that museums and galleries should make every effort to disseminate the treasures they hold so that if the unthinkable should happen, those objects will not be totally lost. Reproductions should be made available to other museums or to visitors - and these days, with 3D printers becoming more popular, it costs virtually nothing to scan an object and make the file available to anyone who wants to print off a copy. I agree that a bright red plastic reproduction of the Elgin Marbles will lack something of the grace and beauty of the originals - but I can think of no finer use for discarded lemonade bottles! Far better to have them turned into a thousand scaled down versions of the Venus de Milo than left to circulate endlessly in the mid-Atlantic gyre.
© Kendall K. Down 2015
