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Oldest Libraries in the World
- peter_d_sherman 6y ago>"The library at Saint Catherine’s Monastery located at the foot of the legendary Mount Sinai, is the oldest continually operating library in the world." [...] "Due to its age and importance in the Christian world, the monastery’s library has the second largest collection of ancient manuscripts and codices, just after Vatican City. The library houses several unique and important texts, including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest known complete Bible dating back to around 345 CE. A few years ago, the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Library began reproducing digital copies of about 1,100 unique Syriac and Arabic manuscripts from Saint Catherine’s Monastery."
- Aldipower 6y agoMaybe libc?
- fb03 6y agoI know it's not productive but this was the kind of comment I was expecting to read, thank you. I would like to know the oldest code libraries to be reused in 'large scale' tho.
- jcranmer 6y agoI don't know what you want to consider 'large scale', but I've definitely come across some Fortran code with dates in the comments from the 60s or 70s. Although the only I can find right now dates to 1983 (see https://github.com/nwh/lusol/blob/master/src/lusol_util.f#L3725 https://github.com/nwh/lusol/blob/master/src/lusol_util.f#L3...).
- michaericalribo 6y agoDNA?
- stolenmerch 6y ago> The library (of Alexandria) flourished until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE and it was burned down and thousands of scrolls were lost. This is just one of those legends that won't die. There was, indeed, an accidental fire in 48 BCE, but it didn't destroy everything in one cataclysmic event. The Library was in continuous operation and declined slowly over centuries. It's likely many of the scrolls were dispersed by scholars to other libraries.
- SeanLuke 6y agoThese were not libraries in the modern sense so much as private archives, owned and controlled by religious orders or royalty and only available to a select few. The oldest public library in the world, as far as I know, is the Biblioteca Malatestiana, established in 1447 and owned collectively by the town of Cesena, Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library In this image you can see the books still chained to their desks to prevent theft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library#/media/File:Sala_del_Nuti_6.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library#/media/Fi... EDIT: It's worth mentioning that this is still Cesena's public library. Here's the library's website: http://www.comune.cesena.fc.it/malatestiana http://www.comune.cesena.fc.it/malatestiana. Check out the kid's section ("Ragazzi").
- sandworm101 6y agoNot all modern libraries are public. Many academic and law libraries are not public. So too there are internal libraries maintained by state organizations, mostly military, which are not public access. But there are all still "libraries".
- monadic3 6y agoSure, private libraries are a thing. I don't understand why this is what you think of, though, do you not have a library in your city?
- SeanLuke 6y agoOf course. I'm just saying that while cultures have been cobbling together collections of stuff since time immemorial -- doubtless there were archives much older than these -- the really interesting innovation didn't occur until the Renaissance. Yet this article doesn't even mention it.
- michaericalribo 6y agoThat is one interesting innovation, but not the only interesting innovation: centralized repos of knowledge, scribes used to copy and thus distribute handwritten books, a dedicated focus to literacy(even by just a few privileged individuals)...those are all fascinating.
- a11r 6y agoSince the list includes libraries not in opration any more, I was expecting to find the Nalanda Library there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#Library
- nickt 6y agoWe visited the Libraries in Chinguetti, Mauritania and met the custodian in this BBC Reel video [1] It’s an amazing place. The libraries date from the late 8th century CE, and as you can see, the scientific works were ahead of their time, for the average European at least! [1] https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p085dgnl/inside-the-abandoned-city-of-ancient-libraries https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p085dgnl/inside-the-abandoned... edit: typo
- dstola 6y ago> After the fall of Constantinople in 1204 CE Fall of Constantinople was in the mid 15th century [1] (1453 to be exact), not 1204. Its unfortunate when overall informative articles make basic mistakes which could be easily verified/researched [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople
- teh_klev 6y agoIt was also sacked in 1204, which what the site refers to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople
- dstola 6y agoInteresting, thank you. I had no idea. Especially since it was done by the Christian crusaders themselves. I guess the article makes no distinction between a Sacking and a Fall.
- teh_klev 6y agoSack, Fall, Conquer, they pretty much amount to the same thing. Maybe the article should have used the term "Sack", but then if you google around it's also known as the "Fall" or the "Siege".
- dstola 6y agoA sack in this case would be different because in the end it was still controlled by Christiandom, as opposed to the Fall when it switched to being controlled by the Ottomans. I think these small details do matter in this case, but maybe its just me.
- chr15p 6y agoBefore the 1204 sacking it was controlled by Greek speaking Eastern Orthodox christianity and afterwards it was rued by western catholic christians with a Latin mass and a pretty fundamentally different culture. Its known as the Latin Empire and lasted about 70 years before one of the surviving remnant parts of the Byzantine empire managed to recapture the city. So while it was not The Fall Of Constantinople it was certainly A fall of Constantinople.
- riazrizvi 6y agoIf the Al-Qarawiyyin library was not able to resist Islamic influence, as I suspect based on extensive precedent, then the oldest libraries in the West are Christian or Muslim. Which I suspect had a large bearing on preserved history. I wonder how much interesting stuff was destroyed because it didn’t conform to the party line.
- f154hfds 6y agoThere are good examples of the opposite too - such as Boethius, one of the critical links saving classical philosophy from oblivion on the outset of the dark ages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius#De_topicis_differentiis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius#De_topicis_differenti...
- bobthechef 6y agoIndeed, the Church is responsible for preserving many ancient pagan records that would otherwise have been lost with the fall of Rome. Islamic scholars also played a role in this (e.g., the surviving Aristotelian corpus).
- bobthechef 6y agoLike what? And why would you suspect that? Christian apologists and scholars were active in debating pagans and drew from pagan philosophy, science, etc. And part of the job of an apologist is to respond to things which do not conform to what you cynically call the “party line”. So you should expect various records that reflect that. There’s ideas would resurface sooner or later.
- partiallypro 6y agoI was hoping this would be a list of the oldest -active- libraries, does anyone have a list of those? This is the best I could find: https://alltimelists.com/10-oldest-libraries-world/ https://alltimelists.com/10-oldest-libraries-world/
- egorfine 6y agoBefore I opened the link I was fully expecting to see jQuery on the list.
- suprfsat 6y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17141024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17141024
- quenix 6y agoI can't be the only one who immediately thought of libraries in the context of software development.
- sildur 6y agoI was expecting jQuery.
- peter_d_sherman 6y agoSome libraries are older than jQuery! <g>