List of destroyed libraries
Human action

List of destroyed libraries

Section Title: Human action
Table Section Text: None

Image	Name of Library	City	Country	Date of Destruction	Perpetrator	Reason and/or Account of Destruction

-	Xianyang Palace and State Archives	Xianyang	Qin China	206 BC	Xiang Yu	Xiang Yu, rebelling against emperor Qin Er Shi, led his troops into Xianyang in 206 BC. He ordered the destruction of the Xianyang Palace by fire.

-	Library of Alexandria	Alexandria	Ancient Egypt	Disputed	Disputed	Disputed, see destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

Library of Antioch	Antioch	Ancient Syria	364 AD	Emperor Jovian	The library had been heavily stocked by the aid of the perpetrator's non-Christian predecessor, Emperor Julian (the Apostate).

-	Library of the Serapeum	Alexandria	Ancient Egypt	392	Theophilus of Alexandria	The library was burned and looted at the perpetrator's decree, who was ordered to do so by Theodosius I.

Library of al-Hakam II	Córdoba	Al-Andalus	976	Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir & religious scholars	All books consisting of "ancient science" were destroyed in a surge of ultra-orthodoxy.

Library of Rayy	Rayy	Buyid Emirate	1029	Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni	Burned the library and all books deemed as heretical.

Library of Avicenna	Isfahan	Kakuyid Emirate	1034	Sultan Mas'ud I	After conquering the city of Isfahan, the library of Avicenna was destroyed.

Library of Banu Ammar (Dar al-'ilm)	Tripoli	Fatimid Caliphate	1109	Crusaders	Following Sharaf al-Daulah's surrender to Baldwin I of Jerusalem, Genoese mercenaries burned and looted part of the city. The library, Dar al-'ilm, was burned.

Library of Ghazna	Ghazna	Ghurid empire	1151	'Ala al-Din Husayn	City was sacked and burned for seven days. Libraries and palaces built by the Ghaznavids were destroyed.

Library of Nishapur	Nishapur	Seljuk Empire	1154	Oghuz Turks	City partially destroyed, libraries sacked and burned.

-	Nalanda	Nalanda	India	1193	Bakhtiyar Khilji	Nalanda University complex (the most renowned repository of Buddhist knowledge in the world at the time) was sacked by Turkic Muslim invaders under the perpetrator; this event is seen as a milestone in the decline of Buddhism in India.

Imperial Library of Constantinople	Constantinople	Byzantine Empire	1204	The Crusaders	In 1204, the library became a target of the knights of the Fourth Crusade. The library itself was destroyed and its contents burned or sold.

Alamut Castle's library	Alamut Castle	Iran	1256	Mongols	Library destroyed after the capture of Alamut Castle.

House of Wisdom	Baghdad	Iraq	1258	Mongols	Destroyed during the Battle of Baghdad

Libraries of Constantinople	Constantinople	Byzantine Empire	1453	Ottoman Turks	After the Fall of Constantinople, hundreds upon thousands of manuscripts were removed, sold, or destroyed from Constantinople's libraries.

-	Madrassah Library	Granada	Crown of Castile	1499	Cardinal Cisneros	The library was ransacked by troops of Cardinal Cisneros in late 1499, the books were taken to the Plaza Bib-Rambla, where they were burned.

Bibliotheca Corviniana	Buda	Hungary	1526	Ottoman Turks	Library was destroyed by Ottomans.

Monastic libraries	England	England	1530s	Royal officials	The monastic libraries were destroyed or dispersed following the dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII.

-	Glasney College	Penryn, Cornwall	England	1548	Royal officials	The smashing and looting of the Cornish colleges at Glasney and Crantock brought an end to the formal scholarship which had helped to sustain the Cornish language and the Cornish cultural identity.

-	Maya codices of the Yucatán	Maní, Yucatán	Mexico and Guatemala	1562-07-12	Diego de Landa	Bishop De Landa, a Franciscan monk and conquistador during the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, wrote: "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction." Only three extant codices are widely considered unquestionably authentic.

-	Raglan Library	Raglan Castle	Wales	1646	Parliamentary Army	The Earl of Worcester's library was burnt during the English Civil War by forces under the command of Thomas Fairfax

-	Library of Congress	Washington, D.C.	United States	1814	Troops of the British Army	The library was destroyed during the War of 1812 when British forces set fire to the U.S. Capitol during the Burning of Washington.

-	University of Alabama	Tuscaloosa, Alabama	United States	1865-05-04	Troops of the Union Army	During the American Civil War, Union troops destroyed most buildings on the University of Alabama campus, including its library of approximately 7,000 volumes.

-	Royal library of the Kings of Burma	Mandalay Palace	Burma	1885 – 1887	Troops of the British Army	The British looted the palace at the end of the 3rd Anglo-Burmese War (some of the artefacts which were taken away are still on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) and burned down the royal library.

Hanlin Academy Library	Hanlin Academy	China	1900-06-23/4	Disputed. Possibly the Kansu Braves besieging the west of the Legation Quarter, or possibly by the international defending forces.	During the Siege of the International Legations in Beijing at the height of the Boxer Rebellion, the unofficial national library of China at the Hanlin Academy, which was adjacent to the British Legation, was set on fire (by whom and whether deliberately or accidentally is still disputed) and almost entirely destroyed.

-	Library of the Catholic University of Leuven	Leuven	Belgium	1914-08-25	German Occupation Troops	The Germans set the library on fire as part of the burning of the entire city in an attempt to use terror to quell Belgian resistance to occupation.

-	Public Records Office of Ireland	Dublin	Ireland	1922	Disputed. Poss. deliberately by Anti-Treaty IRA or accidental ignition of their stored explosives due to shelling by Provisional Government forces.	The Four Courts was occupied by the Anti-Treaty IRA at the start of the Irish Civil War. The building was bombarded by the Provisional Government forces under Michael Collins.

-	Several religious libraries	Madrid	Spain	1931	Anarchists and anti-clericalists	In 1931, several groups of radical leftists and anarchists, with the complicit inaction of the Republican government, burned down several convents in Madrid.

1933-may-10-berlin-book-burning.JPG	Institut für Sexualwissenschaft	Berlin	Nazi Germany	1933-05-??	Members of the Deutsche Studentenschaft	On 6 May 1933, the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organised attack on the Institute of Sex Research. A few days later, the Institute's library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz.

National University of Tsing Hua, University Nan-k'ai, Institute of Technology of He-pei, Medical College of He-pei, Agricultural College of He-pei, University Ta Hsia, University Kuang Hua, National University of Hunan	China	1937 – 1945	World War II Japanese Troops	During World War II, Japanese military forces destroyed or partly destroyed numerous Chinese libraries, including libraries at the National University of Tsing Hua, Peking (lost 200,000 of 350,000 books), the University Nan-k'ai, T'ien-chin (totally destroyed, 224,000 books lost), Institute of Technology of He-pei, T'ien-chin (completely destroyed), Medical College of He-pei, Pao-ting (completely destroyed), Agricultural College of He-pei, Pao-ting (completely destroyed), University Ta Hsia, Shanghai (completely destroyed), University Kuang Hua, Shanghai (completely destroyed), National University of Hunan (completely destroyed).

-	Library of the Catholic University of Leuven	Leuven	Belgium	1940-05-??	German Occupation Troops	Caught fire during German invasion of Louvain, Belgium.

Bombed National Library Belgrad.JPG	National Library of Serbia	Belgrade	Yugoslavia	1941-04-06	Nazi German Luftwaffe	Destroyed during the World War II bombing of Belgrade.

SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library	Sofia	Bulgaria	1943–1944	Allied bombing Allied air forces

-	Załuski Library	Warsaw	Poland	1944	Nazi German troops	The library was burned down during the Nazi suppression of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The burning of this library was part of the general setting on fire of a large part of the city of Warsaw.

Lebanese National Library	Beirut	Lebanon	1975	Lebanese Civil War	The 1975 war fighting began in Beirut's downtown where the National Library was located. During the war years, the library suffered significant damage.

National Library of Cambodia	Phnom Penh	Cambodia	1976 – 1979	The Khmer Rouge	Burnt most of the books and all bibliographical records. Only 20% of materials survived.

Jaffna Public Library	Jaffna	Sri Lanka	1981-05-??	Plainclothes police officers and others	In May 1981, a mob composed of thugs and plainclothes police officers went on a rampage in minority Tamil-dominated northern Jaffna, and burned down the Jaffna Public Library.

Sikh Reference Library	Punjab	India	1984-06-07	Troops acting under Indira Gandhi's orders	Before its destruction, the library contained rare books and handwritten manuscripts on Sikh religion, history, and culture. It could have been a desperate act on failure to locate letters or documents that could have implicated the then Indian government and its leader Indira Gandhi.

-	Central University Library of Bucharest	Bucharest	Romania	1989-12-2?	Romanian Land Forces	Burnt down during the Romanian Revolution.

Oriental Institute in Sarajevo	Sarajevo	Bosnia and Herzegovina	1992-05-17	Bosnian Serb Army	Destroyed by the shellfire during the Siege of Sarajevo.

-	National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina	Sarajevo	Bosnia and Herzegovina	1992-08-25	Bosnian Serb Army	The library was completely destroyed during the Siege of Sarajevo.

Abkhazian Research Institute of History, Language and Literature & National Library of Abkhazia	Sukhumi	Abkhazia	1992-10-??	Georgian Armed Forces	Destroyed during the War in Abkhazia.

City library	Linköping	Sweden	1996-09-20	Lack of evidence for trial	After a year of repeated, minor arson attempts against an information bureau for immigrants located in the building, the library is eventually burnt down to the ground.

Pol-i-Khomri Public Library	Pol-i-Khomri	Afghanistan	1998	Taliban militia	It held 55,000 books and old manuscripts.

Iraq National Library and Archive, Al-Awqaf Library, Central Library of the University of Baghdad, Library of Bayt al-Hikma, Central Library of the University of Mosul and other libraries	Baghdad	Iraq	2003-04-??	Unknown members of the Bagdad population	Several libraries looted, set on fire, damaged and destroyed in various degrees during the 2003 Iraq War.

The People's Library Occupy Wall Street	Zuccotti Park Lower Manhattan New York City	United States	2011	New York City Department of Sanitation	Over 5,000 books cataloged in LibraryThing were seized.

Egyptian Scientific Institute	Cairo	Egypt	2011-12-??	A first estimate says that only 30,000 volumes have been saved of a total of 200,000.

Ahmed Baba Institute (Timbuktu library)	Timbuktu	Mali	2013-01-28	Islamists militia	The library was burned down, it contained over 20,000 manuscripts with only a fraction of them having been scanned as of January 2013.Before and during the occupation, more than 300,000 Timbuktu Manuscripts from the Institute and from private libraries were saved and moved to more secure locations.

Libraries of Fisheries and Oceans Canada	Canada	2013	Government of Canada headed by prime minister Stephen Harper	Digitization effort to reduce the nine original libraries to seven and save $C443,000 annual cost. Only 5–6% of the material was digitized, and that scientific records and research created at a taxpayer cost of tens of millions of dollars was dumped, burned, and given away.

Saeh Library	Tripoli	Lebanon	2014-01-03	Unknown	The Christian library was burned down, it contained over 80,000 manuscripts and books.

Predsjedništvo BiH.JPG	National Archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina (partially)	Sarajevo	Bosnia and Herzegovina	2014-02-07	Seven Bosnian rioters suspected of having started the fire; two (Salem Hatibović and Nihad Trnka) were arrested. On 4 April 2014, Salem Hatibović and Nihad Trnka were released (although still under suspicion of terrorism), on conditions that they don't leave their places of residence and abstain from having any contact with each other.	During the 2014 unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovina large amounts of historical documents were destroyed when sections of the Archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, housed in the presidential building, were set on fire.

Mosul University libraries and private libraries	Mosul	Iraq	2014-12-??	Ongoing ISIS Book Burning	Book burning.

Libraries in Anbar Province	Anbar Province	Iraq	2014-12-??	Ongoing ISIS Book Burning	Book burning.

-	Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) (partially?)	Moscow	Russia	2015-01-29	Unknown.	Fire spread to 2000 m² in third Floor. Roof caved in.

Mosul public library (Central Public Library in Ninawa)	Mosul	Iraq	2015-02-??	ISIS Book Burning	8,000 rare old books and manuscripts. Manuscripts from the 18th century, Syriac books printed in Iraq's first printing house in the 19th century, books from the Ottoman era, Iraqi newspapers from the early 20th century.

Sentence(s)

The British ransacked the Mandalay Palace and burned down the Royal library of the Kings of Burma.

final_sentence: The British ransacked the Mandalay Palace and burned down the Royal library of the Kings of Burma.