Islamic Literature Preservation Must Become a Strategic Priority
What happens when a civilisation fails to preserve the literature that documents its intellectual history?
For the Muslim world, this is more than a cultural question. Islamic literature encompasses centuries of scholarship in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and literature. Yet preserving this intellectual inheritance must become a far greater priority for Muslim governments, institutions and communities.
The urgency is underscored by developments in artificial intelligence. In June 2025, a US federal court documented how Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI, purchased millions of physical books, removed their bindings, scanned their pages, and discarded the paper originals to strengthen its large language model; however, it highlights the risk of losing the context of the literature. 
If technology companies are investing millions to acquire knowledge, the Muslim world must recognise the strategic importance of preserving its own intellectual inheritance.
What Anthropic’s Book-Scanning Operation Reveals
In Bartz v. Anthropic, the US District Court for the Northern District of California described Anthropic’s acquisition and scanning of millions of physical books. According to Ars Technica’s investigation, the company spent millions of dollars on purchasing and scanning books, frequently buying used copies in bulk.
The precise expenditure on this particular operation was not disclosed in the ruling. Nevertheless, the scale demonstrates the value an AI company placed on assembling a large, searchable collection of hard-published knowledge and purposely shredding them to pieces – it could have been resold to the market or deposited into a public library.
In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to a separate $1.5 billion copyright settlement with authors over claims involving pirated books. This was a settlement concerning copyright litigation, not the amount spent on physical-book scanning. Read the federal court ruling and Reuters’ settlement report.
There is no established evidence that Anthropic specifically targeted Islamic literature. Nevertheless, the case raises a fundamental question: as knowledge becomes a strategic resource for AI development, who will preserve the original works, document their origins, and ensure that the scholars behind them receive appropriate recognition?
Baghdad 1258: A Warning from History
The Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258 remains a powerful reminder of the vulnerability of intellectual heritage during war. Books, libraries, scholarly institutions, and the lives of learned people suffered amid the destruction.
The familiar image of the Tigris running black with manuscript ink has become a symbol of this loss, although historians caution that some details of the story may have been embellished over time. Research on libraries, books and knowledge transmission in post-conquest Baghdad also demonstrates why the history must be understood carefully: intellectual life continued after the conquest.
The consequences of losing books extend beyond the disappearance of their pages. When original works vanish, future generations may lose the ability to establish who first developed an idea, trace how knowledge travelled, or recover the contributions of scholars whose names and writings were never adequately preserved. Intellectual traditions can become fragmented, and the historical record can grow dependent on whatever texts survive elsewhere. This is why the Muslim world must act now, not out of fear or resentment, but out of responsibility. We cannot reverse the destruction of Baghdad, but we can prevent avoidable losses today by collecting, conserving, and documenting Islamic literature before more of our intellectual memory disappears.
When Muslim Scholars’ Contributions Are Forgotten
The history of science offers compelling reasons to protect original Islamic texts. Al-Khwarizmi’s foundational work in algebra helped shape the development of mathematics; Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine influenced medical education in Europe for centuries; and Ibn al-Haytham’s pioneering studies of optics contributed to the development of scientific thought.
Ibn al-Nafis provides a particularly striking example. His account of pulmonary circulation preceded Michael Servetus’s similar description by centuries. Yet the question of direct transmission remains debated, and historians have cautioned against treating similarity alone as proof of plagiarism. Research in the Journal of Applied Physiology discusses both Ibn al-Nafis’s achievement and the uncertainty surrounding whether later European scholars knew his work.
These examples do not establish a universal pattern of deliberate intellectual theft. They reveal something equally important: Muslim scholars’ contributions can remain obscure when their original works are inaccessible or insufficiently represented in historical narratives.
When manuscripts disappear, editions become scarce and scholarly attribution is poorly documented, the evidence needed to establish who developed an idea becomes harder to recover. Preserving Islamic literature is therefore essential not only to protect knowledge, but also to safeguard authorship, historical accuracy, and the rightful recognition of Muslim scholars.
Building a Physical and Digital Library for the Muslim World
The response must move beyond rhetoric. Muslim-majority countries should establish a coordinated Islamic literature preservation initiative involving national libraries, universities, museums, religious institutions, philanthropists and private collectors.
The priorities should be clear:
- Acquire and conserve: Identify rare, endangered and under-catalogued books, manuscripts and historical editions, prioritising works that cannot easily be replaced.
- Digitise responsibly: Create high-quality scans, searchable catalogues, multilingual metadata and secure backups while preserving the physical originals wherever possible.
- Fund preservation: Establish long-term funding for conservation, archival training, scholarly research and the responsible acquisition of important collections.
- Protect provenance and rights: Ensure acquisitions are lawful, respect cultural property and copyright, and document authorship, ownership and historical context.
- Make scholarship accessible: Support translations, critical editions and research platforms that allow scholars worldwide to study Islamic intellectual traditions.
Physical preservation and digital access must work together. A digital file can broaden access, but it cannot always preserve every feature of an original manuscript. A physical collection, meanwhile, requires professional care and protection against deterioration, disaster, and neglect.
Preserving Islamic Literature Is Preserving Muslim Identity
Artificial intelligence will transform how future generations discover and interpret knowledge. But technology cannot replace the responsibility of a civilisation to safeguard the sources of its own history.
The Muslim world should not respond with fear of innovation or unsubstantiated accusations. It should respond with investment, coordination and a renewed commitment to scholarship.
Every rare book conserved, every endangered manuscript catalogued and every original text made accessible strengthens the evidence available to future historians. This is an opportunity for Muslim institutions to protect their intellectual inheritance while contributing to a more complete understanding of humanity’s shared history.
If we fail to preserve our books, we risk losing not only the knowledge they contain, but also the evidence needed to establish who created it.
The task is urgent: collect strategically, preserve professionally, digitise responsibly and ensure that Islamic literature remains accessible to future generations.
A civilisation that safeguards its books safeguards its memory. And a civilisation that safeguards its memory protects its identity, honours its scholars and gives future generations the evidence to tell their history accurately.
