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Muslim rebels in Mali burn priceless manuscripts

O

OlafSicky

Platinum Member
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/28/mali-timbuktu-library-ancient-manuscripts

"Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, according to the Saharan town's mayor, in an incident he described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage."

"French troops and the Malian army reached the gates of Timbuktu on Saturday and secured the town's airport. But they appear to have got there too late to rescue the leather-bound manuscripts that were a unique record of sub-Saharan Africa's rich medieval history"

I can't believe these people hate history and knowledge this much. A vary sad day for the world. It also made me remember the Buddha statues in Afghanistan that were blown up. I wish I could have visited Timbuktu and the library before this happened.
 
Some people just want to see the world burn.

I was in Mali a few years ago visiting my sister who was there doing Peace Corp service. Unfortunately, Timbuktu was off limits because even then AQ had a presence in northern Mali and so we were told to stay away. Sad that they destroyed so much history. Unfortunately, this is not a novel practice.
 
So much history has been destroyed since the dawn of warfare. It happens. It is sad, and really sad Mali didn't have precautions in place, but it happens in any war-type-fare.
 
Sad but no doubt education and history are dangerous weapons against their twisted, contorted view of Islam

Some of the most fascinating scrolls included an ancient history of west Africa, the Tarikh al-Soudan, letters of recommendation for the intrepid 19th-century German explorer Heinrich Barth, and a text dealing with erectile dysfunction.
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Clearly this was corporate espionage by Viagra and Cialis as they feared stiff competition from these written treatments wrought from years of hard, hands on experience
 
Should have been digitized, and put on InternetArchive. That's what happens when you try to horde knowledge for yourself, and don't have a backup plan in place.
 
T_Yamamoto said:
Sad. But thats the price of war
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No. It's the price of Islam... Radical interpretations of Islam really hate anything that is not Islamic, to the point of trying to erase such from existence. Reference also Afghanistan's Buddhas of Bamiyan, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in spite of outcry from the international community. From the wikipedia article:

A statement issued by the ministry of religious affairs of Taliban regime justified the destruction as being in accordance with Islamic law. Abdul Salam Zaeef held that the destruction of the Buddhas was finally ordered by Abdul Wali, the Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
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Ultimately, Islam as a whole wants all of humanity to be Islamic, and will not tolerate anything else.
 
Kadarin said:
No. It's the price of Islam... Radical interpretations of Islam really hate anything that is not Islamic, to the point of trying to erase such from existence. Reference also Afghanistan's Buddhas of Bamiyan, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in spite of outcry from the international community. From the wikipedia article:

Ultimately, Islam as a whole wants all of humanity to be Islamic, and will not tolerate anything else.
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It's a potential price of any radical interpretation of any religion. Christians have destroyed history as well.
 
grrl said:
It's a potential price of any radical interpretation of any religion. Christians have destroyed history as well.
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Yes they have but hundreds of years ago when science and knowledge wasn't so wide spread. We are living in the 21 century, where communication and spread of knowledge is instant. Its unthinkable that someone in this day and age would try to hold progress and knowledge back because of fairy tales and superstitions.
And don't bring up the old lady destroying the Jesus painting :biggrin:
 
xSauronx said:
romans, if wikipedia is to be trusted on this. perhaps arabs later on, depending on who you listen to...again, per wikipedia. /my google fu is lazy today
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Looks like it may have been an accident on the part of the romans. After burning the docks and ships, the fire spread to the library.

Julius Caesar usually let the local people keep their culture, but only if they bowed to Caesar.

During the gallic wars Julius Caesar may have conquered and killed a lot of people, but he also left a lot of them alive.

A lot of what he did was to prove a point. Either surrender or be slaughtered. Caesar's army built a couple of bridges over the Rhine river, marched across the river, looked around, marched back over the river and then burned the bridges. The whole event was to prove a point that the Roman army will go anywhere and do anything they want.

Burning a library would be a little out of character.

Now if Julius Caesar had his army slaughter everyone in Alexandria, then yea, maybe the library was burned on purpose. But then again, Caesar looked up to Alexander the great. Why would Caesar burn a library dedicated to someone he idolized?
 
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lxskllr said:
Should have been digitized, and put on InternetArchive. That's what happens when you try to horde knowledge for yourself, and don't have a backup plan in place.
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Apparently the British Library was undergoing such a project in the area. While many of the originals were destroyed in the fire, a bunch of the locals had hidden as much as they could from the invaders.
 
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