Post by BrainFade on Apr 15, 2003 10:31:59 GMT -5
Baghdad - First came the looters, then came the arsonists. In what can be seen as the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad, the national library and archives - priceless storehouses of Ottoman historical documents - were turned to ashes.
Even the library of Qur'ans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment were set ablaze.
One of the looters cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a small boy.
Amid the ashes of hundreds of years of Iraqi history, I found just one file blowing in the wind outside: pages and pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sheriff Hussein of Mecca - who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia - and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.
And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for Ottoman troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all of them in delicate hand-written Arabic script.
I was holding in my hands some of the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history.
But for Iraq, this is Year Zero - with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and the Qur'anic library of the ministry 500 metres away, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased.
When I caught sight of the library burning - there were flames 30 metres high bursting from the windows - I raced to the offices of the US Marines civil affairs bureau for help. An officer shouted to a colleague that "this guy says some Biblical (sic) library is on fire".
I gave the map location, the precise name - in Arabic and English - of the buildings and said it would take only five minutes to drive there.
There was a time when the Arabs said their books were written in Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad.
In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the Caliphate, but even the dark years of the country's modern history, handwritten accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs and military diaries, an entire library of Western newspapers - bound volumes of the Financial Times were lying on the pavement opposite the old defence ministry - and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the early 1900s.
The microfiche machines were burned too.
The papers on the floor were almost too hot to touch, bore no print or writing, and crumbled into ash the moment I picked them up.
And again, standing in this shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked the question: why?
Some of the documents list the cost of bullets, military horses and artillery for the Ottoman armies in Baghdad and Arabia, others record the opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz - soon to be Saudi Arabia - while one recounts, from the village of Azrak in modern-day Jordan, the theft of clothes from a camel train by Ali bin Kassem who attacked his interrogators "with a knife and tried to stab them but was restrained and later bought off".
This, in other words, was a tapestry of Arab history.
For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab world, the most literate population in the Middle East.
Genghis Khan's grandson burned the city in the 13th century and, so it was said, the Tigris River ran black with the ink of books.
On Monday, the black ashes of thousands of ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq.
Even the library of Qur'ans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment were set ablaze.
One of the looters cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a small boy.
Amid the ashes of hundreds of years of Iraqi history, I found just one file blowing in the wind outside: pages and pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sheriff Hussein of Mecca - who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia - and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.
And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for Ottoman troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all of them in delicate hand-written Arabic script.
I was holding in my hands some of the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history.
But for Iraq, this is Year Zero - with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and the Qur'anic library of the ministry 500 metres away, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased.
When I caught sight of the library burning - there were flames 30 metres high bursting from the windows - I raced to the offices of the US Marines civil affairs bureau for help. An officer shouted to a colleague that "this guy says some Biblical (sic) library is on fire".
I gave the map location, the precise name - in Arabic and English - of the buildings and said it would take only five minutes to drive there.
There was a time when the Arabs said their books were written in Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad.
In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the Caliphate, but even the dark years of the country's modern history, handwritten accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs and military diaries, an entire library of Western newspapers - bound volumes of the Financial Times were lying on the pavement opposite the old defence ministry - and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the early 1900s.
The microfiche machines were burned too.
The papers on the floor were almost too hot to touch, bore no print or writing, and crumbled into ash the moment I picked them up.
And again, standing in this shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked the question: why?
Some of the documents list the cost of bullets, military horses and artillery for the Ottoman armies in Baghdad and Arabia, others record the opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz - soon to be Saudi Arabia - while one recounts, from the village of Azrak in modern-day Jordan, the theft of clothes from a camel train by Ali bin Kassem who attacked his interrogators "with a knife and tried to stab them but was restrained and later bought off".
This, in other words, was a tapestry of Arab history.
For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab world, the most literate population in the Middle East.
Genghis Khan's grandson burned the city in the 13th century and, so it was said, the Tigris River ran black with the ink of books.
On Monday, the black ashes of thousands of ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq.
States serve Iraq to the Jews
Don't Die Before You Live...