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.

The Scope of the Islamic Library

My research into the history of the Islamic Libraries took a turn for the better when I was able to discover, through googling with perseverance, a recent PHD thesis, posted online, that had an academic review of this very topic. It was part of a mini-thesis on the history of Islamic museums in South Africa (Adams, 2003). 
The discovery of such a well rounded review presented problems to me as a student researcher. As I had to decide how I could incorporate such information without just duplicating it (or re-writing it in my own words). This sort of discovery is a stimulus to original ideas and methods of presentation. It may also lead to looking up more significant academic references cited to see if the reviewer missed interesting points. 

A blog has more scope for visual presentation than a conventional thesis.  The youtube video about the Chinguetti library is a good example of an excellent communication device that would be very unconventional in a contemporary thesis. 

The review was a great aid with the topic I was interested in, the geographic and literary scope of Islamic libraries.  Facts cited below are from the review unless otherwise noted. 

The first Islamic libraries were, in effect, the book collections of mosques, and always featured the Quran as an important component of the collection.   The wording of the Quran has been fixed since its original compilation by Caliph Abu Bakr (573-634) of the Rashidun caliphate shortly after the death of the Prophet  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran).  There has been, however, a long history of producing Qurans in elaborate, decorative calligraphies

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_calligraphy), or, more rarely, in pictorially illuminated pages. 

The Islamic ban on use of images where they might appear to have spiritual significance meant that Qurans tended not to have the detailed images of animals, people and fantastic creatures that were found in medieval European illuminated manuscripts. 

Influential mosque libraries were located in the major centres of the Islamic world.  Here Adams’ list (Adams, 2003) of some well known examples:

• Al-Unawi Mosque (Damascus);

• Al-Azhar Mosque (Cairo);

• Al-Mansour Mosque (Baghdad);

• Al-Kamariah Mosque (Baghdad);

• Al-Zaitunah Mosque (Tunis);

• Al-Masjid Al-Jame’a (Merv);

• Mecca and Medina Mosques

  Wars, colonizations and other historical events – especially the Mongol invasions early in the 13th century – damaged the collections of many libraries.   Two clusters of libraries that still contain many ancient books are the libraries at Chinguetti, Mauritania (featured in the previous blog) and the Central Library complex of Astan Quds Razavi in Mashad, Iran.

The latter was established in the 15th century or earlier, and it, along with associated museum trusts, currently holds over 1.1 million volumes, including approximately 70,000 rare, historical manuscripts.  Mashad, situated in northeastern Iran, was a minor city until the Mongol raids of 1220, when it was left largely intact while many other cities in the area were destroyed. 

 

Adams, R.  2003.  Historical development of Islamic libraries internationally and in South Africa : a case study of the Islamic Library in Gatesville.   Minithesis for Magister diploma, University of the Western Cape

 

Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Book 61: Virtues of the Qur'an

http://web.archive.org/web/20110107135721/http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/061.sbt.html

 

Chinguetti the library of the desert (Mauritania)

First Post- Introduction

The Messenger (Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم  Sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam) believes in what has been sent down to him from his Lord, and (so do) the believers. Each one believes in Allah, His Angels, His books, and His Messengers.

(Surah ‘Al-Baqara,’ Quran Chapter #2, Verse #285)

Cultural information in Islamic societies has a long history of being maintained in libraries. 

Islam was established in the area where alphabets with fewer than 50 characters (as opposed to syllabaries and ideograms) first came into use, and it had access from the beginning to paper-making technologies imported from China. This situation facilitated both widespread literacy and the relatively convenient production, dissemination and storage of books.  Previous libraries in Mesopotamia, Iran, and eastern Asia Minor had consisted of collections of clay tablets bearing cuneiform syllabaries with over 80 sound-representing characters, plus ideograms.  In the Near East and Egypt, libraries were mainly collections of vellum or papyrus scrolls.  The time of early Islam was the time when the codex-style book (the ‘normal’ book with pages bound in signatures) was replacing the scroll as a more convenient format for accessing written content on paper-thin materials. 

Islam itself had the unique idea that God had written a holy book.  It was held to have been pre-existing through eternity. It was quoted to the prophet Muhammad (citation of whose name in text is conventionally followed by the phrase “peace be upon him,” or the original Arabic ‘Sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam’) by the angel Gabriel in order to be reproduced on Earth.  Two earlier collections of religious writings, the Torah and the Gospels (Injeel) were also conceived of as pre-existing books, imperfectly transcribed on Earth.  Thus God implicitly had a book collection and had allowed humans to reproduce it. This was an incentive to collect books.

My research will look into the history of these Islamic libraries and their contributions to current world knowledge and practice, as well as contemporary Islamic knowledge and practice. I started off initially looking at basic wikipedia articles (on Islamic libraries, Quran, alphabet, syllabary, codex) as well as online searchable Islamic texts (http://www.searchtruth.com/) and then followed links from those articles.  Also googled combinations such as ‘islamic libraries history’. I also looked at the resources made available by the Swinburne library and accessed subscriber-paid sources of professional literature in electronic form made available through the Swinburne library.