Ankara (AA) - Turkey is to renovate nearly 1,000 Islamic manuscripts and take them under its protection in several Egyptian libraries.
Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) will renovate and digitalize the Islamic manuscripts that were written almost 500 years ago, and then protect them in libraries.
As part of the joint project launched by the Egyptian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and Turkish TIKA, manuscripts such as Sufism, Islamic Sufism, Fiqh Method, Fiqh of Hanafism, Fiqh of Shafiism, collections of Arabic poems and hadiths, and words of Prophet Mohammad, will be brought to Turkey.
"Collection of Arabic Poems (1207), Arabic Rhetoric (1625), Fiqh Method (1745), Sufism (1658), Fiqh of Hanafism (1638), Fiqh of Shafiism (1369)" were the most prominent among the manuscripts.
The main aim of the renovation project is to protect and hand down the Islamic rare manuscripts that have only a single copy to the next generations.
- Emphasis on "common cultural heritage" -
Speaking to AA in an exclusive interview regarding the renovation project, TIKA President Serdar Cam pointed out several Islamic manuscripts in Egypt belonging both Ottoman period and the Islamic world, as the "common cultural heritage".
"Egyptian authorities asked for our support for the renovation of some of these manuscripts which need maintenance. The support covers establishing a "Pathology Laboratory for Manuscripts," training experts for the laboratory, jointly maintaining the manuscripts and facsmiling them. Egyptian and Turkish officials have agreed on the digitalization of the rare books via an electronic archiving system" said Cam.
