General information on book burnings across a number of centuries.

Pages from the Koran.

Near the end of the then ruling dynasty in China in 554 AD, the Emperor Yuan himself, set fire to the royal library of the time which was apparently very prestigious, containing some 140,000 books. Between 907 AD and 960 AD, the situation in China was extremely chaotic and as a result the destruction of libraries happened frequently. Sometimes, as in the case of Li Yui, this was to ensure thatthe books were burnt, rather than being handed over to his enemies - the song. In 1000 there were wars which eliminated thousands of books and the library in Kaifeng contained some 73,000 to 74,000 book

Sometimes books were burnt as civilisations fell, as in the case of Constantinople in 1453, which fell after a particularly vicious attack by the Turks in which women and children were also butchered. Manuscripts, churches and icons were also destroyed. In Ireland, books and monasteries fell victim to the relentless attacks of the Vikings who either threw them into the sea or burnt the libraries and monasteries which so often housed them - of course, they murdered monks as well. Monasteries disappeared and libraries in England and Ireland were left in tatters. The library of Crowland was reconstructed but a fire sadly occured in 1091, destroying everything.

A page from the Koran in Arabic.


The Talmud, a book of commentary by Rabbi's, on both the Bible and Jewish verse is one of the most persecuted books in history and was first burnt by the French Crown in the year 1242. The burning of Hebrew books was continued throughout the next few centuries until the 1500's and was almost successful in eradicating all Jewish books, however the invention of the printing press won out and Venice became a centre for the printing of Jewish books as it was very tolerant in those times. The Koran was also burnt in Spain in the 1500's and it was supported by the King and Queen of the time: Isabella I and Ferdinand V, who were advised primarily by Cisneros to eradicate a book of a different faith and concept of the world that had the power to galvanize an enemy. There's that power thing again.

Books, obviously, have been burnt on religious grounds by Muslims, Christians, Pagans and no doubt others in the belief that the other religion is blasphemous in comparison to that of their own faith. My main purpose this week was to present general information to fill in the time, spanning from the last post on the Library of Alexandria, through to the destruction of the Mayan culture, which I intend to look at in my next post.Whilst I relied heavily on Fernando Baez and his text A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, I also visited a few websites, which are referenced below. James Hannam has some great information about Burning Down Libraries, Magical and Prophetic Texts, Persecution of and by the Christians, the end of the Classical Age, the Loss of Literature, and the Preservation of Literature as well as his own Further Reading list. Likewise,I visited other websites but as they were not directly related to the history of the destruction of books they are not included ie. outlines of chronolgical historical dates in Ancient China.

Quaran C18th.

REFERENCES:
BOOKS:
Baez, F 2008, A Universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq, Atlas & Co, New York.

WEBSITES:
2010, Book burning, free online encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, viewed April 25 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning

James Hannam, 2003, Bede's Library, last revised 2009, viewed April 25, 2010 http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm