Manuscript Destruction

Manuscripts Lost Since the Reformation Era

It is common to hear modern textual criticis justify their craft by making this claim: “We have so many more manuscripts today than those in the Reformation era!” That cannot be proven and it is, in fact, quite unlikely. The following chart documents the destruction of millions of books and manuscripts since that time.

Name of Library	City	Country	Date of Destruction	Perpetrator or Cause	Reason and/or Account of Destruction
Madrassah Library	Granada	Crown of Castile	1499	Cardinal Cisneros	The library was attacked by troops of the perpetrator in late 1499, the books were taken to the Plaza Bib-Rambla, where they were burned in public.
Bibliotheca Corviniana	Ofen	Ottoman Empire	1526	Troops of the Ottoman Empire	Library was destroyed by Ottomans.
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.
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.
Guildhall Library	London	England	1666	Great Fire of London	The Great Fire of London destroyed 436 acres of central London. The fire badly damaged the Guildhall and burnt down the library which held many manuscripts and the original working papers for the King James Bible.
University of Copenhagen Library	Copenhagen	Denmark	1728-10-01	Fire	The collections of the University Library go back to 1482, three years after the foundation of the University of Copenhagen in 1479. Almost all of the c.35,000 books and manuscripts in the University Library were consumed by flames during the fire of Copenhagen
Royal Library of Portugal	Ribeira Palace	Lisbon	1755-11-01	Natural disaster	Great Lisbon earthquake
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.
Birmingham Central Library	Birmingham	England	1879-01-11	Fire	A fire broke out behind a wooden partition serving as a temporary wall during building operations. The fire caused extensive damage, with only 1,000 volumes saved from a stock of 50,000.
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.
Library of Berlin University	Berlin	Germany	1940-44	WWII	20,000 volumes lost
The Hessische Landesbibliothek	Hessische	Germany	1940-44	WWII	760,000 volumes lost, including 2,217 incunabula and 4,500 manuscripts
National Library of Germany	Frankfurt	Germany	1940-44	WWII	2,000,000 volumes and manuscripts lost
Municipal and State Library of Dortmund	Dortmund	Germany	1940-44	WWII	250,000 volumes lost
Sächsische Landesbibliothek	Sächsische	Germany	1940-44	WWII	300,000 volumes lost
Library of Bremen	Bremen	Germany	1940-44	WWII	150,000 volumes losts
University and State Library of Hamburg	Hamburg	Germany	1940-44	WWII	600,000 volumes lost
Library of the Catholic University of Leuven	Leuven	Belgium	1940-05-01	German Occupation Troops	Caught fire during German invasion of Louvain, Belgium.
National Library of Serbia	Belgrade	Yugoslavia	1941-04-06	Nazi German Luftwaffe	Destroyed during the World War II bombing of Belgrade.
Methodius National Library	Sofia	Bulgaria	1943-1944	Allied air forces	Allied bombing
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. According to some sources, 1200 of most precious manuscripts disappeared, and no memory is left of the Library’s organization and operational procedures of that time.
Jaffna Public Library	Jaffna	Sri Lanka	1981-05-01	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. At least 95,000 volumes – the second largest library collection in South Asia – were destroyed.
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 Institute of History, Language and Literature & National Library of Abkhazia	Sukhumi	Abkhazia	1992-10-01	Georgian Armed Forces	Destroyed during the War in Abkhazia.
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	2003-04-01	Unknown members of the Bagdad population	Several libraries looted, set on fire, damaged and destroyed in various degrees during the 2003 Iraq War.
Egyptian Scientific Institute	Cairo	Egypt	2011-12-01		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.
Saeh Library	Tripoli	Lebanon	2014-01-03	Unknown	The Christian library was burned down, it contained over 80,000 manuscripts and books.
National Archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina	Sarajevo	Bosnia and Herzego	2014-02-07	Seven Bosnian rioters suspected of having started the fire; two (Salem Hatibović and Nihad Trnka) were arrested.	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. Among the lost archival material were documents and gifts from the Ottoman period, original documents from the 1878-1918 Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as documentations of the interwar period, the 1941-1945 rule of the Independent State of Croatia, papers from the following years, and about 15000 files from the 1996-2003 Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the repositories that were burnt, about 60 percent of the material was lost, according to estimates by Šaban Zahirović, the head of the Archives.
Mosul University libraries and private Libraries	Mosul	Iraq	2014-12-01	Ongoing ISIS Book Burning	Book burning.
Libraries in Anbar Province	Anbar Province	Iraq	2014-12-01	Ongoing ISIS Book Burning	Book burning.
Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences	Moscow	Russia	2015-01-29	Unknown.	Fire spread to 2000sqm in third Floor. Roof caved in. Additional water damage. Ambient temperature too high for self-freezing of damaged Works. Library contains 14 million books, including rare texts in ancient Slavic languages, documents from the League of Nations, UNESCO, and parliamentary reports from countries including the US dating back as far as 1789.
Mosul public library	Mosul	Iraq	2015-02-01	ISIS Book Burning	8,000 rare old books and manuscripts. Manuscripts from the eighteenth century, Syriac books printed in Iraq’s first printing house in the nineteenth century, books from the Ottoman era.