Saudi’s King Fahd Saudi national library has 79,000 manuscripts

Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – The King Fahd National Library in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia currently has about 73,000 manuscript out of the 90,000 manuscripts which are being scanned, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) recently reported.

The library, which was established in 1983, also holds 6,000 rare and valuable original manuscripts.

Among the manuscripts stored by the King Fahd National Library are copies of the Quran written in Kufic script from the third century Hijri (624 AD) and written on parchments.

The name of the script derives from Kufa, a city in southern Iraq which was considered as an intellectual center within the early Islamic period.

Other manuscripts are Ibn Qayyim’s Zad al-Maad written by Suleiman bin Abdullah Ibnu Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulwahhab from 1220 Hijri, as well as parts of Sahih al-Bukhari written on vellum (sheets made from calf skin) from Andalusia dated back to 570 Hijri (1174 AD).

Reporting by Indonesia Window