Cultural Heritage

ISIS BURNS MOSUL LIBRARY, DESTROYING OVER 8,000 HISTORIC BOOKS

Wow, between the barbarians and the unfortunate series of fires, our libraries are seriously under threat right now! **DB

“ISIS BURNS MOSUL LIBRARY, DESTROYING OVER 8,000 HISTORIC BOOKS”

Mary Chastain via “Breitbart“

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) burned down the Mosul public library, which was home to over 8,000 rare books and manuscripts.

“ISIS militants bombed the Mosul Public Library,” said library director Ghanim al-Ta’an. “They used improvised explosive devices.”

The terrorists regularly destroy shrines, tombs, books, and manuscripts as they attempt to implement their caliphate over Syria and Iraq. Elderly residents begged the men not to burn the building. From Yahoo:

The former assistant director of the library Qusai All Faraj said that the Mosul Public Library was established in 1921, the same year that saw the birth of the modern Iraq. Among its lost collections were manuscripts from the eighteenth century, Syriac books printed in Iraq’s first printing house in the nineteenth century, books from the Ottoman era, Iraqi newspapers from the early twentieth century and some old antiques like an astrolabe and sand glass used by ancient Arabs. The library had hosted the personal libraries of more than 100 notable families from Mosul over the last century.

“900 years ago, the books of the Arab philosopher Averroes were collected before his eyes and burned,” said activist and blogger Rayan al-Hadidi. “One of his students started crying while witnessing the burning. Averroes told him… the ideas have wings… but I cry today over our situation.”

“What a pity!” exclaimed Akil Kata, who fled Mosul years ago. “We used to go to the library in the 1970s. It was one of the greatest landmarks of Mosul. I still remember the special pieces of paper where the books’ names were listed alphabetically.”

The militants also destroyed the church of Mary the Virgin and the Mosul University Theater on the same day.

The terrorists raided the Central Library of Mosul in December to destroy all non-Islamic books. The library was “the biggest repository of learning the northern Iraqi town.” More than likely the terrorists destroyed “Iraq newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire, and book collections contributed by about 100 of Mosul’s establishment families.” After that raid, the militants targeted the library at the University of Mosul. They burned science and culture textbooks in front of the students.

War’s many victims

“War’s many victims”

**via “The Economist“**

IF YOU know anything about the laws of conflict, you probably know that destroying or stealing the cultural and spiritual heritage of an enemy or an occupied land can be a war crime, especially if it’s done in a systematic way. That principle is laid out with ever-growing clarity in every modern document that aspires to set limits to the way people fight. You can find it in Abraham Lincoln’s code of conduct for the American civil war, in the Geneva Conventions, and in the statutes of modern war-crimes tribunals.

Still, that can seem like an awkward point to raise in situations where many other unspeakable things are happening. When the Pakistani Taliban is massacring children, should we also worry about the fact that it has physically eliminatedmany traces of the Buddhist heritage of its home region? During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, some locals were exasperated by media coverage of the shelling of old Dubrovnik by Yugoslav forces. Bad as it was, didn’t this cultural loss pale compared with the human suffering that was unfolding in the region? More recently, the built heritage of Mali and Syria has suffered terrible damage, but surely that is less significant than the killing and uprooting of human civilians?

In reality, the two kinds of atrocity can’t be separated. That point was made vividly in London this week at a House of Lords event organised by Elizabeth Berridge, a lawyer and peeress who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom, and Walk of Truth (WOT) a Hague-based NGO which campaigns to protect spiritual and cultural treasures from crime and war. (Full disclosure: I gave some informal advice when WOT was set up in 2011.) Persecuting people and harming or grabbing the things they call holy are two misdeeds that have gone hand in hand throughout history. If anything the interconnection is getting closer.

Islamic State (IS), the ultra-zealous force which under various names has run amok in Iraq and Syria, makes no secret of its intent to wreck or appropriate places of worship, monuments and sites that belong to belief systems other than its own narrow reading of Islam. That contrasts with early Islamic history, in which there were some famous acts of self-restraint: Caliph Omar held back from offering Muslim prayers in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, thus ensuring that it would remain a Christian place of worship. But no such spirit of self-limitation inhibits IS, for whom destroying the enemies’ holy things serves a double purpose. On one hand, it consolidates the group’s monopoly on power, by demoralising rival groups, and ensuring that they flee forever. On the other, cultural vandalism has a more immediate aim, that of raising money to fund further violence.

IS and similar groups either trade in antiquities themselves or license others to do so. Amr al-Azm, a scholar at America’s Shawnee State University, reported after visiting the area that IS was creaming off 20-50% of the proceeds of criminal looting. You can’t always distinguish between cultural vandalism in the name of religious zeal, and the more opportunistic kind. The result is the same: objects and images which are holy to some people are wrenched from the places where they were created and offered to auction houses and galleries in prosperous Western cities.

ISIS and the Decimation of a Culture

“ISIS and the Decimation of a Culture”

by Eileen Toplansky via “American Thinker“

In the foreword to Catastrophe: The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past, Gil J. Stein, director of the Oriental Institute, writes that “when we think of the awful consequences of war, the deaths of the soldiers and civilians always remind us that futures have been destroyed[.] But war in the third millennium AD has brought us an entirely new and different horror – the destruction of an entire past.”

In 2003, the world’s attention was focused on the looting of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad. The 15,000 stolen artifacts had, for the most part, been “scientifically excavated and carefully recorded and identified by trained professional archaeologists and museum staff.” Thus, there existed the scientific knowledge of their archaeological context, or a means to reconstruct “how an ancient civilization developed and functioned.”

Archaeological context refers to the “immediate material surrounding an artifact such as gravel, clay, or sand; its provenience or horizontal and vertical position within the material; and its association with other artifacts.” But once an artifact is ripped from the ground by looters and/or terrorists, context and association with other artifacts is irretrievably lost. In essence, the wholesale destruction of the artifacts being stolen or totally demolished results in a “creeping annihilation of an entire culture.”

As a result of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, a web-accessible database was established to document the destruction and theft of the artifacts. The database is accessible here. Though “as many as 5,000 objects were reported to have been recovered[,]” other pieces will “remain difficult if not impossible to recover.”

Fast-forward to ISIS, that “JV” organization that Obama so nonchalantly dismissed. How is it being financed? What does an Islamic caliphate have to do with the wholesale destruction of historical and cultural artifacts? And are we seeing an instant replay of Nazi looting of museums less than a hundred years later vis-à-vis Islamic jihadists?

According to the Guardian, in June 2014, the seizure of 160 computer flash sticks that “included names and noms de guerre of all foreign fighters, senior leaders and their code words, initials of sources inside ministries and full accounts of the group’s finances” was a key discovery into the workings of ISIS.” Amazingly, in a mere three days, “ISIS [had] seized control of Mosul and Tikrit.” Before Mosul, ISIS cash and assets were $875M. After ISIS robbed banks and looted military supplies, total cash and assets rose to $1.5B.

ISIS’s massive cash flow comes from the “oilfields of eastern Syria which it had captured in 2012, the smuggling of raw materials pillaged from the crumbling state, as well as priceless antiquities from archaeological digs.”

Looting Is the Greatest Threat to Our Cultural Heritage in Syria

“Looting Is the Greatest Threat to Our Cultural Heritage in Syria”

By Franklin Lamb via “Foreign Policy Journal“

Can the worst patrimonial disaster since World War II be stopped?

No matter how badly this observer periodically assesses the threat to our cultural heritage as he travels across Syria, the reality always turns out to be worse.

As we enter 2015, much of Syria has been reduced to apocalyptic landscapes. During the 45 months of the Syrian crisis, war destruction inflicted from all sides has created massive damage to our shared global cultural heritage that has been in the custody of the Syrian people for more than ten millennia.

Few would dispute the fact that the level of destruction of Syria’s archaeological sites has become catastrophic. Unauthorized excavations, plunder, and trafficking in stolen cultural artifacts in Syria is a serious and escalating problem and threatens the cultural heritage of us all. Due to illicit excavations, many objects have already been lost to science and society.

Today, the single greatest threat to our cultural heritage in Syria is looting. It is rampant and being done from many sources. One virulent source is Da’ish (IS) and like-minded jihadists who desecrate and destroy irreplaceable artifacts and lay siege to and loot more than 2000 archeological sites under its control in Syria and double that number in Iraq.

Jihadists in Syria are estimated to have reaped more than $20 million from looted artifacts during 2014, and they rationalize their frenzy of wonton obliteration by sighting religious obligations. Also increasingly active in looting Syria’s cultural heritage are local residents who, with no jobs, income, or tangible economic prospects, are increasingly turning to age-old plunder taking advantage of a growing cash market to feed their families.

The trade in looted Syrian cultural artifacts has become the third largest market in illegal goods worldwide. Current laws at the national and international level are woefully inadequate to prevent the illicit traffic in looted antiquities and even less, to effectuate the return of stolen antiquities to their countries of origin. In the 1960s, according to experts, it was a buyers’ market as there were few national collectors interested in Islamic art or other antiquities in Syria. But that that has now dramatically changed since the Gulf countries Qatar and Abu Dhabi started collecting, and it is also now a seller’s market.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and a crossroads for trade and culture for countless centuries, has been particularly hard hit. Its vast labyrinthine souk was gutted by fire in 2012. The Citadel, a castle that dates back to 3000 BC, has also been damaged, while the minaret of the Umayyad Mosque was toppled by fighting in 2013. But hundreds of other sites have also been looted and shops selling Syrian antiquities dot the Turkey side of the border just 40 miles north of Aleppo. . . .

“The Art of Storytelling”

by Yvonne Yan via “Huffington Post“

My introduction to pingshu, traditional Chinese storytelling, was Yuan KuoCheng’s “Journey to the West”, a classical Chinese novel popular among all ages. Since then, pingshu has become a significant part of my bedtime story. I fall asleep imagining the Handsome Monkey King angering all the gods and fighting against the deities, swinging his 17,550-pound golden rod from heaven to hell, and using his 72 transformations to overcome all challenges throughout the journey. Words come out of Yuan’s mouth like clips of movies, vivid and captivating, as if the characters appear right in front of me. Listening to pingshu has allowed me, along with generations of Chinese, to appreciate the art of oral stories and the most powerful aspects of Chinese culture.

Most of the pingshu stories that I have listened to are drawn from Chinese history and can be broken into several classifications. The story of loyal and law-abiding officials or chivalrous and dauntless folk heroes, for instance, is my favorite. The characters in this type of pingshu, such as the “Pure Official Bao”, help the commoners fight against evil and corruption in society, symbolizing the virtues of leniency and integrity.

Other types of pingshu also have their own characteristics: the conflicts during the Three Kingdom Period following the Han Dynasty and the early heroes of the Tang Dynasty are typical stories of the establishment of Chinese dynasties; the widely known stories of the Yang family and the renowned Chinese hero Yue Fei both depict tales of dynasties and conflicts, relating to a specific group of soldier’s experiences in resisting barbarian invasions; the last type of story, which differs from the previous three types in both content and narration style, is about fictional legends of monsters, ghosts, or about being challenged in life. The most well known story of this type is “Journey to the West,” which depicts the arduous journey of a small group traveling to see Buddha in order to gain enlightenment.

During my brief interactions with contemporary pingshu artists, I have come to learn more about the art as a folk tradition of telling stories. Since the mid-Qing dynasty, pingshu gradually became an important recreational tool for people to communicate information, share interests, and enjoy their glorious history. Traditional pingshu artists usually perform in teahouses or small theaters, where people can gather around on a nice afternoon.

Like calligraphy and many other Chinese traditional art forms, pingshu requires years of training. Such experience comes from a long apprenticeship with a master. An aspiring storyteller might have to perform years of basic chores, such as cooking for the family and cleaning the house. Most importantly, the artists must passionately devote time, effort, and talent to the business of attracting a permanent audience. The famous Pingshu artist Yuan, who retired several years ago, once characterized pingshu as “difficult mental and physical labor.” Not only do the artists have to memorize long passages, sometimes hundreds of thousands of words long, they also have to incorporate the origins of certain customs, the backgrounds of characters, the history and geography, and other enchanting facts about the stories they tell.

To help the artists narrate stories in a more exciting way, pingshu has also developed a few widely used stage props: a table, a folding fan, and an attention-catching wood (xingmu). It is incredible to imagine that riveting performances can be achieved using such simple objects. The performer usually stands behind the stable during the entire performance. The attention-catching wood, a rectangular piece of dark wood, is knocked against the table to start the performance and to highlight climactic moments of the story. The artist uses the folding fan to illustrate certain physical actions, such as brandishing a sword or reading a book. . . .