Iraqi Manuscripts House holds some 47,000 works

Shafaq News- Baghdad

The Iraqi Manuscripts House holds about 47,000 manuscripts in a range of languages and subjects, giving the collection exceptional scholarly and historical value, Director General Ahmed al-Aliyawi told Shafaq News on Thursday.

Besides Arabic, the manuscripts are written in Kurdish, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Syriac, Urdu and other languages, and cover more than 30 fields of knowledge, al-Aliyawi said.

The collection includes rare and unique copies, manuscripts from important collections and works written for kings and sultans, and calligraphy panels by Iraqi and foreign calligraphers. Some items date back to the first century AH, spanning the seventh and early eighth centuries CE, including Quran folios in Kufic script, he said.

The institution was named the best manuscript institution in the Arab world in 2023 under the evaluation criteria of the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO), as part of Arab Manuscript Day events, according to al-Aliyawi.

On Wednesday, the Manuscripts House announced that it was preparing to release the first volume of "The Comprehensive Index of the Iraqi Manuscripts House," an encyclopedia cataloging the holdings it has gathered over eight decades. Al-Aliyawi described it as the first full catalog to be checked against the original manuscripts kept in the national repository, aimed at giving researchers and editors a reliable guide to the collection's contents.