Shafaq News- Basra

Basra province is working through a dedicated center to collect and preserve manuscripts and rare books tied to the city's history, part of a project aimed at protecting its scientific, intellectual, and literary heritage and making it accessible to researchers, eventually publishing critical editions of selected manuscripts.

Ismail Dawood, director of the Basra Manuscripts and Heritage Center, told Shafaq News that the center, established in 2024, places special emphasis on manuscripts with a distinct Basran character, those written by Basran authors or dealing with the city's history and its scientific, intellectual, and literary life.

Dawood said the center's focus on this type of heritage stems from Basra's historical standing as one of the major Arab and Islamic centers of learning, literature, and authorship for centuries, a legacy that produced a vast body of manuscripts, now scattered across libraries and documentation centers both inside and outside Iraq.

According to Dawood, the center collects manuscripts and rare books related to Basra through two main channels: purchasing them from their legal owners when funding is available, and receiving donations from Basran families and individuals who own manuscripts or rare books and wish to have them preserved, maintained, and made accessible to researchers.

He noted that the center's goal goes beyond simply collecting and storing manuscripts, extending to their proper and secure preservation, public display, and making them available for academic use by researchers, scholars, and those interested in Basra's cultural heritage. 

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Dawood pointed to a key challenge facing the project: manuscripts linked to Basra are scattered across public and private libraries, and documentation centers both in Iraq and abroad, making it difficult to locate, collect, document, and make scholarly use of them, an issue the center is actively working to address.

He added that the center is also working to cooperate with literary figures, academics, and local publishing houses to critically edit old manuscripts of scholarly and local significance, moving them from storage into study and publication, allowing their content to be reintroduced to new generations and researchers.

Looking ahead, Dawood said the center hopes to establish a specialized literary prize dedicated to the critical editing of old Basran manuscripts, aimed at honoring researchers and scholars working in this field and encouraging further studies related to the city's manuscript heritage.

On the research resources available, Dawood said the center houses specialized materials on manuscript cataloguing, preservation, and critical editing, accessible to researchers and interested parties for in-house reading during official working hours, while the center works to strengthen its academic capacity through cooperation with specialists and academic and cultural institutions.

He noted that the center's location adds to its significance, as it is housed in one of the heritage buildings in Basra's historic Pasha neighborhood, an area that includes a number of historic landmarks and structures.