"Stuff Happens": A Brief Overview of the 2003 Destruction of Iraqi Manuscript Collections, Archives, and Libraries

On March 20, 2003, military forces of the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia invaded Iraq. In the course of this invasion and subsequent occupation, Iraq’s cultural infrastructure suffered a great deal of destruction. While international attention has focused primarily on the immense destruction done to the country’s preIslamic archaeological assets, domestic Iraqi attention has focused equally on the losses suffered by the country’s manuscript collections, archives, and document collections. This article provides a general overview of the latter category, including a brief discussion of the events involved, damages sustained, and current status of the collections in question. While in certain key cases the damage sustained by collections was not as severe as initially reported, there were significant losses and a great deal of work lies ahead to reconstitute the facilities involved. Introduction On March 20, 2003, military forces of the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia invaded Iraq.1 In the course of this invasion and subsequent occupation, Iraq’s cultural infrastructure suffered a great deal of destruction. While international attention has focused primarily on the immense destruction done to the country’s pre-Islamic archaeological assets, domestic Iraqi attention has focused equally on the losses suffered by their manuscript collections and archives. This article provides a general overview of the latter category, including a brief discussion of the events involved, damages sustained, and current status of the collections in question. LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 55, No. 3, Winter 2007 (“Libraries in Times of War, Revolution, and Social Change,” edited by W. Boyd Rayward and Christine Jenkins), pp. 730–745 © 2007 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois “Stuff Happens”: A Brief Overview of the 2003 Destruction of Iraqi Manuscript Collections, Archives, and Libraries