A copy of the Koran from the 12th century. According to notes in the text, it was bought for a Moroccan king for a sum of gold.
This is what the vandals could have destroyed: ''There were thousands of Korans and books on Islamic law, as well as decorated biographies of the Prophet Muhammad, some dating back a millennium.''
The 'Orphan World Mores' under the fury of Political Islam! Gibbon wrote of these destructive types in his book ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’: “…..A race of filthy animals……” The Manuscripts contained on the left as shown the rare copies of holy scriptures. That is all they will ever be. The great Library of Alexandria itself deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command… Carl Sagan wrote about it in his book, Cosmos: Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization. Beneficiary of the Ionian Awakening, it had its citadel at the Library of Alexandria, where 2,000 years ago the best minds of antiquity established the foundations for the systematic study of mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy, literature, geography and medicine. We build on those foundations still. The Library was constructed and supported by the Ptolemys, the Greek kings who inherited the Egyptian portion of the empire of Alexander the Great. From the time of its creation in the third century B.C. until its destruction seven centuries later, it was the brain and heart of the ancient world.
Timbuktu radicals actions to set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts are in line with the way Mongol horde succeeded in the capture of the capital of Islam Baghdad and burnt it, her libraries were ransacked and her books flung into the river Tigris so that a passage had been made through that thick deep torrent. The ink of scholars and the blood of martyrs stained the river. The new ways of the vandals are intensifying, the hideous tentacles of 'political Islam' deal with the heritage, culture, custom and tradition of the world civilization in an unparalleled and uncouth manner. The rich heritage is vanishing as we wait weirdly for some common sense to evolve. The Saharan town's mayor of Timbuktu said of the incident that this is a "devastating blow" to world heritage.
New York Times in 2007 reported on what actually some of these rare Manuscripts were:
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara held a treasure in his slender fingers that has somehow endured through 11 generations — a square of battered leather enclosing a history of the two branches of his family, one side reaching back to the Visigoths in Spain and the other to the ancient origins of the Songhai emperors who ruled this city at its zenith. A copy of the Koran from the 12th century. According to notes in the text, it was bought for a Moroccan king for a sum of gold.“This is our family’s story,” he said, carefully leafing through the unbound pages. “It was written in 1519.”
From the lowest to the highest form of intellectual life nothing escapes the prying eyes of the mullahs; the ideological interpretations and limits that are to be imposed are fanatically exerted. Whatever brings some solace to our lives, from the dead stones of caves of Bamiyan carved into beautiful majestic Buddha's; to Sphinx, Pyramids ; even Khomeini Iran tried to destroy the poetry and culture of pre Islamic era. Abolqasem Ferdowsi wrote the "Shahnameh," a 1000 years ago known as "Book of Kings. It is the legendary epic encapsulating the first erratic moments of creation to the Arab conquest of the Persian Empire in the seventh century. Ayatollah Khomeini considered the "Shahnameh" unpleasant, even blasphemous. He rejected public readings and declared all unspiritual verse as forbidden. Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali in 1979 tried to bulldoze the Ferdowsi's tomb and Persepolis, he was stopped by the provisional governor.
Ferdowsi maintained connection of essence to the bequest and heritage of pre-Islamic Iran. "Shahnameh" was composed on request of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazanavi. Abolqasem Ferdowsi was offered one dinar for every couplet. Ferdowsi presented the Sultan with almost 60,000 couplets, an embarrassed Mahmud Ghazanavi backed out of his enterprise. Ferdowsi abandoned the lessened reward, he died impoverished and embittered in Tus. Yet, his poem is now the grand epic of Persian literature . Ferdowsi's hostility toward the desert invaders ends the epic where 'Rostam' stood before the marching army and mourn:
When the pulpit's equal to the throne
And Abu Bakr's and Omar's names are known
Our long travails will be as naught, and all
The glory we have known will fade and fall.
The stars are with the Arabs, and you'll see
No crown or throne, no royal sovereignty.
The ancient statues of Bamiyan were between the tallest standing Buddha's in the world. They had survived the ravages of Genghis Khan, centuries of invasions and wars and the natural wear of the elements. Taliban have been considered the true descendants of all the other barbarians who destroyed what their ideologies could not accept: the Vandals and Huns stealing of the Roman Empire; Stalin's destruction of churches; Mao's Cultural Revolution; Pol Pot's razing of schools and cities; Hitler's book burnings and desecration of synagogues. The Taliban claimed that "the Buddha's violate the Islamic prohibition against sacred images and that they are false idols that must be destroyed.....the statues should be destroyed so that they are not worshipped now or in the future ...". But the reasons of the action were politics and may be also religious. The city of Bamiyan was a base of the Taliban's opposition - Northern Alliance's "rebel" forces. The Taliban took control of Bamiyan in 1998 and, to humiliate the locals, they tried to destroy their heritage.
‘Destroy the idols,’ Egyptian jihadist calls for removal of Sphinx, Pyramids. Yesterday it was the Bamiyan, today the Sphinx, Pyramids and Timbuktu Manuscripts! Arabic media lately had reported words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids. Now Murgan Salem al-Gohary, have joined the chorus, he is an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, he called on Muslims to remove such “idols.”
NYT says:
''Timbuktu was home to the University of Sankore, which at its height had 25,000 scholars. An army of scribes, gifted in calligraphy, earned their living copying the manuscripts brought by travellers. Prominent families added those copies to their own libraries. As a result, Timbuktu became a repository of an extensive and eclectic collection of manuscripts.
“Astronomy, botany, pharmacology, geometry, geography, chemistry, biology,” said Ali Imam Ben Essayouti, the descendant of a family of imams that keeps a vast library in one of the city’s mosques. “There is Islamic law, family law, women’s rights, human rights, laws regarding livestock, children’s rights. All subjects under the sun, they are represented here.”
One 19th-century book on Islamic practices gives advice on menstruation. A medical text suggests using toad meat to treat snake bites, and droppings from panthers mixed with butter to soothe boils. There are thousands of Korans and books on Islamic law, as well as decorated biographies of the Prophet Muhammad, some dating back a millennium, complete with diagrams of his shoes.''
Anything innovative, skilful or original should be smashed, if the mountains of Bamiyan would have stayed uncared it is OK, any attempt of chiselling them to an object of reverence is threat to an ideology, is loveliness and adore of life a-thesis of dogma? It looks like so. Hate begets hate, Violence begets Violence and Terrorism begets terrorism. Medievalism breeds and begets medievalism; even if the mind tries to be free from the ideologically induced enslavement of soul the fables and folklores of desert tie the person firmly to medievalism ! The 'terrorism' to chain the masses is the worst kind of 'terrorism,' the avatars who help practice it with greatest scriptural gifted immunity are blight of mankind.