> The Mongol destruction was particularly thorough in their destruction of scholarship
Why did the Mongols hate books so much? Central Asian Turkic invaders (related to the Mongols) were also responsible for burning down one of India largest libraries (at Nalanda).
I don't understand why certain groups of people would be so bent on destruction. Destruction of life, property, art, culture, scholarship, literature, etc.
Having listened to some history (some who don't like him would say pseudo-history) lectures by Dan Carlin on the whole Mongol thing, my takeaway was that the reason for all the murder is the classic dehumanisation approach.
Mongols did not consider the people they conquered to be far above cattle. When they took over cities they staged systematic executions where they would literally corral a hundred thousand people together, and have a thousand of their soldiers armed with axes be told "go collect 100 right ears to prove that you've killed your quota of people". As far as I can tell the way to get humans to do that to other humans seems, throughout history, to be to convince the murderers that the people they're killing aren't really human, they're just some sort of weaker other-species.
This is just my hypothesis, but I think it's for "brand". They didn't destroyed only books but basically everything, because of this many cities surrendered without even trying to fight back. In that case your civilization was preserved. That's why the mongols were able to conquer so much so quickly, fear build on these horrible actions.
Why did the Mongols hate books so much? Central Asian Turkic invaders (related to the Mongols) were also responsible for burning down one of India largest libraries (at Nalanda).
I don't understand why certain groups of people would be so bent on destruction. Destruction of life, property, art, culture, scholarship, literature, etc.
It is very sad.