Start from scratch

Books are written in Cairo, published in Beirut and read in Baghdad the saying goes. 

The Central Library from Mosul University had once more than one million books, including thousands of rare historical examples. When the “Islamic State” seized Mosul in 2014 they closed the University and used its departments for their own purpose. In the chemical laboratory bombs were build, school books rewritten. From now on, children learnt to count with bullets rather than apples.

In Spring 2016, as airstrikes intensives on Mosul, the militants set the library on fire. From once one million books, only 30.000 survived. Now, a team of students and  university staff tries to rebuild the libraries former glance.