Race to restore valuable historical books and digitise them for online

(30 Jan 2014) LEADIN At the start of the 20th century, an urgent call went out across the Middle East from Arab leaders in Jerusalem: send us your books so that we may protect them for generations to come. Now, 90 years later, the al-Aqsa mosque library is fighting to restore many of these centuries-old manuscripts that have fallen into disrepair, and digitise them for the future. STORYLINE: The al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is Islam's third holiest site. Located on a hilltop compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and to Jews as the Temple Mount, it is ground zero in the territorial and religious conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The library and its 130,000 books is housed in two separate rooms in the compound, where modern steel bookshelves adorn ancient stone walls. The drive to restore the manuscripts and get them online is part of a greater global trend that has seen an array of historical documents digitised and uploaded to increase access to researchers worldwide. But the challenge in this collection lies beyond physical distance. Residents of countries with no diplomatic relations with Israel - that's much of the Arab world - are unable to visit Jerusalem and Palestinians living in the nearby West Bank or the Gaza Strip need to secure a permit from Israel to enter the city. Manager of Al-Aqsa Library, Sheikh Hamed Abu Teir says: "We want to prevent past mistakes. We worked on a plan to preserve them and take pictures of them and to put them online. We are interested in putting those manuscripts online, because students in the Arab and Muslim world can't access them, a student in Algeria or Saudi Arabia for example can't reach here and access them. We want to grant him the knowledge in his own house." This includes reaching scholars that are little more than a 20 minute walk away from the library. Abu Teir says: "Palestinians from the West Bank can't reach the library for example Al-quds university, one of the largest Islamic universities, is 3-4 kilometres away from this library. Its students can't come here." The library's manuscripts trace the history of the area. Many were donated following a call in the early 1920s from the Supreme Islamic Council, a religious governing body, which wanted to prevent Arabs from selling old manuscripts to foreign buyers and preserve the Islamic heritage in one of its holiest sites. The oldest book dates back 900 years, with some of the newer titles from the 19th century. Most of the texts are religious, but other subjects include geography, astronomy and medicine. Some of the pages contain personal letters about travel in the Middle East of the18th century. The manuscripts were stored in a library for the first few years of the 1920s, but when riots erupted in 1929 over disputes surrounding Jewish and Arab access to the sacred compound, the manuscripts were shoved into bags and arbitrarily filed into closets in a separate building nearby, where they would remain for nearly half a century, when a new space was created for them. While unpacking the books, officials realised they had been pillaged, with many destroyed. Today's collection numbers 4,000 with about a quarter considered in poor condition. The restoration and digitisation project is funded by the Waqf, Jordan's Islamic authority which manages the holy site. With assistance from UNESCO it aims to preserve what remains. But the painstakingly slow process of treating every individual page to protect the intricate text and the paper's delicate fibres means restorers have a long road ahead of them. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...