Iraq library struggles to survive.

Sa'ad Eskander, director of Iraq's National Library in Baghdad, braves bullets and bombs to do his job each day.

The National Library--located on Haifa Street, one of the most dangerous in Baghdad--housed a valuable collection of ancient Islamic texts until 2003, when it was looted as U.S. forces invaded the city.

Since then, the library and its staff have struggled to keep the doors open. Just last year, five staff members were killed and more than a dozen abducted, according to a Reuters report. Bomb blasts and machine-gun fire rattle the building every day, and the violence has exacerbated the heart problems of some senior staff, who have been forced to take medical leave.

Before the war, according to Reuters, the library housed 1 million items, including centuries-old books and rare documents, some going back to the 8th century when Baghdad was founded as capital city of the Abbasid Caliphate under Harun al-Rasheed, in whose time the "One Thousand and One Nights" tales were collected.

During the 13th century, invading Mongols sacked the city and dumped thousands of books into the Tigris River which, according to legend, turned black from all the ink. Manuscripts that survived that scourge were stolen or destroyed during the chaos that engulfed Baghdad in April 2003.

More recently, Reuters reported, 90 percent of the library's rare books have fallen victim to looters--many of whom are suspected of being professional thieves hired by overseas collectors--as Saddam Hussein's government was toppled. Documents that have disappeared include literary and religious texts of Iraq's once-thriving Jewish community and records dating back to the time of the Ottomans and the British-installed monarchy. Also gone are a treatise authored 1,000 years ago by Islamic thinker Ibn Sina as well as minutes of Hussein military courts and national security documents.