Editing Library (section)

==History==
{{Main|History of libraries}}
[[File:Library of Ashurbanipal.jpg|thumb|[[Library of Ashurbanipal]] in [[Mesopotamia]], {{Circa|1500-539 BC}}]]
The [[history of libraries]] began with the first efforts to organize collections of documents.<ref name=britannica/> The first libraries consisted of [[archive]]s of the [[Writing#The beginning of writing|earliest form of writing]]—the [[clay tablet]]s in [[cuneiform script]] discovered in [[Sumer]], some dating back to 2600 BC. Private or personal libraries made up of written books appeared in [[classical Greece]] in the 5th century BC. In the 6th century, at the very close of the [[Classical antiquity|Classical period]], the great libraries of the Mediterranean world remained those of [[Imperial Library of Constantinople|Constantinople]] and [[Library of Alexandria|Alexandria]].

The [[Fatimid Caliphate|Fatimids]] (r. 909–1171) also possessed many great libraries within their domains. The historian [[Ibn Abi Tayyi|Ibn Abi Tayyi’]] describes their palace library, which probably contained the largest collection of literature on earth at the time, as a "[[Wonders of the World|wonder of the world]]". Throughout history, along with bloody massacres, the destruction of libraries has been critical for conquerors who wish to destroy every trace of the vanquished community's recorded memory. A prominent example of this can be found in the [[Mongol campaign against the Nizaris|Mongol massacre of the Nizaris]] at [[Alamut]] in 1256 and the torching of their library, "the fame of which", boasts the conqueror Juwayni, "had spread throughout the world".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Virani|first=Shafique N.|url=https://www.academia.edu/43674448|title=The Ismailis in the Middle Ages|date=2007-04-01|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-531173-0|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311730.001.0001|access-date=22 June 2021|archive-date=28 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211128055148/https://www.academia.edu/43674448|url-status=live}}</ref>

The libraries of [[Timbuktu]] were established in the fourteenth century and attracted scholars from all over the world.<ref>{{cite journal |title=African Bibliophiles: Books and Libraries in Medieval Timbuktu |journal=Libraries & Culture |year=2004 |last=Singleton |first=Brent D. |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=1–12 |doi=10.1353/lac.2004.0019 |jstor=25549150 |s2cid=161645561 |access-date=2022-01-19 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25549150 |archive-date=19 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819185236/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25549150 |url-status=live | issn = 1932-4855}}</ref>

The oldest modern public library was the [[Załuski Library]] ({{langx|pl|Biblioteka Załuskich}}, {{langx|la|Bibliotheca Zalusciana}}) established in 1732 in [[Warsaw]], [[Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth|Poland-Lithuania]],<ref group="Drukarnia Pijarów">{{cite journal |last1=Załuski |first1=Józef |title=Programma literarium ad biblio-philos, typothetas et bibliopegos tum et quosvis liberalium artium amatores |journal=Drukarnia Pijarów |issue=1732 |url=https://dbc.wroc.pl/dlibra/publication/57705/edition/42308?language=pl |access-date=3 May 2025}}</ref> which ultimately evolved into the [[National Library of Poland]].