Research without Archives? The Making and Remaking of Area Studies Knowledge of the Middle East in a Time of Chronic War. 1 Archivaria (Spring 2018): (accepted for publication (original) (raw)

The Middle East region is home to ancient historical documents of great value to archivists and historians. Systemic violence, warfare, and political instability in the region since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have taken a terrible toll on documents and archives as well as human life. The destruction of libraries that house primary source materials affects the creation of knowledge in Middle Eastern Studies in important ways that remain to be understood. In this article, I review the extent of the damage to libraries and archives in the region since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then ask: What happens to Middle Eastern Studies when archives are destroyed and researchers must change their topics and methods of research? Can we create knowledge about a region when its archival resources and human informants are so endangered? If access to archival materials is essential to the very essence of Middle Eastern studies, then what is happening to that field and why should that matter to archivists? I recount anecdotal evidence of researchers changing the topics and themes of their research in response to a situation of limited access to archives and to the region and then present outcomes of a survey I designed to more systematically understand how these problems are affecting the shape of research and knowledge about the Middle East. Finally, I present an aspirational call from culture heritage preservation community-researchers, archivists, and librarians-researchers, archivists and librarians to digitize archival resources in the Middle East. Introduction: Research without Archives? In his 1974 presidential Address to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Dr. Leonard Binder said "Area Studies….holds that true knowledge is only possible of things that exist." Since the concept of area studies came into being in the wake of the Second World War, and since then the field has gone through many changes. Likewise, there has been considerable debate about what constitutes "true knowledge." In 1974, Binder could not have known how direct would be the very question of existence in now devastated regions of the Middle East. 2 Common sense indicates that the destruction of libraries, archives, and cultural resources affects research about the region. But how? What happens when access to a region and its archival, cultural, and human resources are so drastically curtailed? We do not yet know how the destruction of libraries and archives in time of war, along with limitations on access to countries 2 For the purposes of this article, I will draw on the statement of Richard Cox that archives are "repositories of interesting stuff, documents and artifacts, all of human history, all of human memory and knowledge, and simply as one more sources of entertainment." Richard J. Cox, Vandals in the Stacks? A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries. (London: Greenwood Press, 2002), 20. 3 UNESCO. Memory of the World Programme Objectives, unesco.org/new/en/communication-andinformation/flagship-project-activities/memory-of-the-world/about-the-programme/objectives (accessed 1 March 2016). .4 Assessing the Damage It is hard to access the full scale of the destruction of libraries and archives in the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (putting aside for the purposes of this paper the scale of the loss of human life). Soon after the invasion, all of the following were looted and burned: the Iraq National Library and Archives, the Awqaf Library, The Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, the University of Baghdad Library in Baghdad, and other libraries and cultural sites. According to Koichiro Mastsuura, Director General of UNESCO before the invasion in 2003, collections housed in these libraries and archives contained nearly 20 centuries of human written history. Since ancient cuneiform writing was on tablets and other material artifacts, the destruction of written heritage and archives went beyond the loss of paper. Before the invasion, Mastsuura had called for endangered collections to be protected from looting and destruction. Unfortunately, his call went unheeded. In Baghdad, the National Museum of Iraq alone lost more than 15,000 items because of looting and destruction. 4 Looters took thousands of ancient stamps and cylinder seals, including 120,000 out of 170,000 artifacts and completely destroyed archives of newspapers and other documents. 5 The Mosul National Library and Archives and the museum in Nimrud were looted as well during the war in 2003-and then again in 2015 and 2016 by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 6 During the U.S. invasion of 2003, libraries and archives in Iraq lost historical books, documents, maps, and other irreplaceable materials-many of which are still unaccounted for. It remains difficult to know exactly what was lost from the Iraq National Library and Archives, the Awqaf Library, The Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs Central (MERA), and other libraries in Iraq.