Scope of Islamic libraries (continued)

Public libraries

Apart from libraries held in mosques, the Islamic world also has a long-standing tradition of public libraries and large private libraries, as well as a more recent tradition of university and other academic libraries. Religious schools, now widely known under their Arabic name, Madrassas, also may hold substantial book collections.
The first public library in the Islamic world opened in Damascus, Syria, in 689 A.D. The opening of several libraries in the large Iraqi cities of Basra and Baghdad soon followed. The most famous of these was The House of Wisdom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom), a library and translation institute conceived by Caliph Harun al-Rashid and brought to fruition under his son al-Ma'mun, who reigned from 813–833. Unfortunately, libraries are consummately flammable, and they are a classic target for invaders wishing to intimidate local populations. Many of the southern Iraqi libraries were burned by Bedouin invasions in the 11th century, while all of Baghdad’s libraries were enthusiastically included in the general sacking of the city by Mongol forces in 1258.
In the 9th to through the 12th centuries, prior to the Mongol invasions and the Spanish reconquest of Andalusia, there were important public libraries in Mosul (Iraq), Aleppo (Syria), Tripoli (Lebanon), Merv (now a ruin near Mary, Turkmenistan), Cairo, Shiraz (Iran), Cordoba (Andalusia, now in Spain), and Fez (Morocco).
Though most of these ancient libraries were eventually destroyed or looted, public libraries are now widespread throughout the Islamic world.

Private libraries

Most libraries in early Islam were private; most notably, caliphs of the Islamic empire and its later segregates tended to amass large libraries. They often made these collections available to scholars and others who were thought suitable to enter. The Abbasid caliphate centred around Baghdad in the centuries before the Mongol invasion was especially notable for libraries. Apart from the caliph’s collections, a historian, Omar al-Waqidi (737/8-824 A.D.), collected books said to consist of one hundred and twenty camel loads. Another private citizen, Ibn al-Alkami, had a library with 10 000 volumes. These collections did not survive the Mongols.

Academic collections

Although some religious schools had sizeable book collections, the real birth of academic libraries in the Islamic sphere came with the Seljuk Turks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuq_dynasty). They ruled an area from Asia Minor through modern Uzbekistan from the 11th to 14th centuries. Most of the prominent colleges with large libraries in this period were in Syria, Iraq and Iran. An especially important academic library was Mustansiriyah College in Baghdad, opened in 1223. Precious books in all the categories of sciences were kept in this library (Elayyan, 1990).

Elayyan, Ribhi Mustafa. 1990. The history of the Arabic-Islamic libraries: 7th to 14th centuries. International Library Review, 22(2) : 119-135.