The 'Iraqi libraries: moved, not lost

'Tis common in midwit historical thought that duh Cris-chins burnd duh liberary. A somewhat higher class of midwit used to say it was DAH MOODSLIMS, usually citing 'Umar. Muslim apologists got their own midwits, with various What Went Wrong theories, and many of these look to the Mongols' conduct in Baghdad. The dimwits rarely know which Khan it was, but I here address those who immediately know to say "Hulegu!", maybe even with the umlauts; our 101 IQ neural nets trap facts to arrange around the central lie, and we tell ourselves we are wise.

By the late AD 1200s the Mongols were already quite literate, and although their "Yuan" regime hadn't gone this far into China they already controlled that whole "Silk Road" between Persia and Gansu. They'd somewhat famously sponsored the Nestorian brand of Christianity (against Islam), to such an extent that the Catholics in the Crusader society figured them for a stable ally. By now we've left behind the dimwits; the midwits - we midwits - already came to this blog with an inkling of all the above. In our mind we should expect a effluorescence of Syriac Christian literature. We midwits would assume that Hulegu burnd duh Moodslim liberary.

So last year Michal Biran ran an audit on the liberaries of the 'Iraq after the Mongol "sack" - "Libraries, Books, and Transmission of Knowledge in Ilkhanid Baghdad". This reminds that Nasiruddin al-Tusi did, indeed, keep at work under the Ilkhans, up in Maragha in Azerbaijan. Most of the article looks at Ibn al-Fuwaṭī who, like Ebedjesu of Nisibis, and like Ibn al-Nadim, composed a bibliography, a book of the books he'd known.

There were, still, a lot of books. Many books by Jews and Christians, sure. But also many books in Arabic. Clearly the Muslims were not just copying books in exile in Cairo or Delhi. The Mongols let the scholars in Arabic, keep writing in Arabic.

Biran points out that the caliphate in the thirteenth AD century was, although relatively strong, still not the caliphate of the ninth. By then it had once more fallen behind the Saladins of the world. That Bayt al-Hikma was no longer the one authoritative Islamic library; plenty of madrassas were keeping their own libraria. We must keep in mind that The Hadith in this mediaeval world was already a matter of literature, well beyond the (already overstated) orality of that ninth century.

Biran finds that it was not until the middle 1300s that Muslims started talking of the Lost Library. If there was an appreciable loss of literature Ibn al-Fuwaṭī and Al-Tusi should have mentioned this with horror. Even Barhebraeus should have noticed, given his full immersion in Arabic literacy. (Timur would come still later, followed by other Sacks Of Baghdad perhaps more damaging.)

What the Mongols did do was to move books. The Yuan would bring books to their capital Peking / Beijing. The Ilkhans, likewise, shifted texts up north, to Tabriz I guess. Also to Maragha... where al-Tusi was at work. But even that is overstated since the Ilkhans maintained Baghdad as an intellectual hub, an oriental sort of Roman Athens, which is how Ibn al-Fuwaṭī found it.

If we are Mutazils we might bemoan that a caliphal library was scattered, to be preserved more whimsically by idiosyncrats; and that the hardcore Sunnism of Ibn Taymiya was thereby strengthened. Maybe. But now we are shifting goalposts.