From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com> Subject: Re: [fyi] History ? That's yesterday ! Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 01:42:16 +0000 Jan .... how should I say this, books, letters, documents, and artificats ... compared to THIS: http://www.rense.com/general37/jailed.htm Anthony Crifasi >From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl> >Reply-To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu >To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu >Subject: [fyi] History ? That's yesterday ! >Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 21:59:27 +0100 > >Robert Fisk: Library books, letters and priceless documents are set ablaze >in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad [15 April 2003] > >So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then the >arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad. The National >Library and Archives - a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical >documents, >including the old royal archives of Iraq - were turned to ashes in 3,000 >degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious >Endowment was set ablaze. > >I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of >Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, >I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters >between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt >against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of >Baghdad. > >And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters >of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for >troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in >delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last >Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is Year >Zero; >with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on >Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic >library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these >fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed? > >When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning - flames 100 feet high >were bursting from the windows - I raced to the offices of the occupying >power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An officer shouted to a >colleague that "this guy says some biblical [sic] library is on fire". I >gave the map location, the precise name - in Arabic and English. I said the >smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five >minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the >scene - and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air. > >There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written in >Cairo, >printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad. >In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the >Caliphate, >but even the dark years of the country's modern history, handwritten >accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs and >military diaries,and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to >the early 1900s. > >But the older files and archives were on the upper floors of the library >where petrol must have been used to set fire so expertly to the building. >The heat was such that the marble flooring had buckled upwards and the >concrete stairs that I climbedhad been cracked. > >The papers on the floor were almost too hot to touch, bore no print or >writing, and crumbled into ash the moment I picked them up. Again, standing >in this shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked the same question: why? > >So, as an all-too-painful reflection on what this means, let me quote from >the shreds of paper that I found on the road outside, blowing in the wind, >written by long-dead men who wrote to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul or to >the Court of Sharif of Mecca with expressions of loyalty and who signed >themselves "your slave". There was a request to protect a camel convoy of >tea, rice and sugar, signed by Husni Attiya al-Hijazi (recommending Abdul >Ghani-Naim and Ahmed Kindi as honest merchants), a request for perfume and >advice from Jaber al-Ayashi of the royal court of Sharif Hussein to Baghdad >to warn of robbers in the desert. "This is just to give you our advice for >which you will be highly rewarded," Ayashi says. "If you don't take our >advice, then we have warned you." A touch of Saddam there, I thought. The >date was 1912. > >Some of the documents list the cost of bullets, military horses and >artillery for Ottoman armies in Baghdad and Arabia, others record the >opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz - soon to be Saudi >Arabia - while one recounts, from the village of Azrak in modern-day >Jordan, >the theft of clothes from a camel train by Ali bin Kassem, who attacked his >interrogators "with a knife and tried to stab them but was restrained and >later bought off". There is a 19th-century letter of recommendation for a >merchant, Yahyia Messoudi, "a man of the highest morals, of good conduct >and >who works with the [Ottoman] government." This, in other words, was the >tapestry of Arab history - all that is left of it, which fell into The >Independent's hands as the mass of documents crackled in the immense heat >of >the ruins. > >King Faisal of the Hejaz, the ruler of Mecca, whose staff are the authors >of >many of the letters I saved, was later deposed by the Saudis. His son >Faisel >became king of Iraq - Winston Churchill gave him Baghdad after the French >threw him out of Damascus - and his brother Abdullah became the first king >of Jordan, the father of King Hussein and the grandfather of the >present-day >Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II. > >For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab >world, the most literate population in the Middle East. Genghis Khan's >grandson burnt the city in the 13th century and, so it was said, the Tigris >river ran black with the ink of books. Yesterday, the black ashes of >thousands of ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq. Why? > >------- >From: >http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=397350 > > > > > --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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