(4 Jul 2014) During the 1992-5 Bosnian war, the collection at the Gazi Husrev Bey's Library in Sarajevo narrowly escaped the fate of the city's National Library and Oriental Institute which were burned down along with over 3 million books, manuscripts and countless historic documents.
But when the bombs started to fall ,setting libraries and mosques ablaze, employees of the Gazi Husrev Bey's Library began a desperate rescue effort to save its thousands of books, manuscripts and artefacts - some dating back a thousand years.
They were helped by other citizens to move the collection from site to site. Often the collection was sheltered in private basements. As the situation in the city constantly shifted, locations had to be changed.
"During the 1992-95 war we had to move the manuscripts from location to location exactly eight times. Of course, under normal circumstances it is not advisable to do that, especially not when you are handling with materials as precious and as old as ours, but we had to do it to save our manuscripts and thanks be to God we have saved all of them," says library director, Mustafa Jahic.
The Gazi Husrev Bey library is named after its founder - an Ottoman governor in 16th century Bosnia and one of the greatest donors and builders of Sarajevo.
The library's collection of some 100,000 titles includes more than 10,000 manuscripts in Arabic, Turkish and Persian. There's also periodic literature published in Bosnia since 1866 to date as well as more than 500 waqfnamas (testaments).
For centuries following its opening in 1537 the library was housed in the Madrasa (religious high school) - another part of Gazi Husrev Bey's generous endowment in Sarajevo. Over a hundred years it often changed locations, but none was appropriate for the library's constantly expanding collection.
In February this year (2014) the library was finally moved into a permanent home - a grand, new building funded from a 9 million US dollars donation from Qatar.
The new library building has 7,000 square meters of space, including several reading and conference rooms, exhibition halls and a state of the art conservation and restoration laboratory.
Many of the library's manuscripts are several hundred years old, its oldest possession being the 4th volume of the encyclopedic work 'Revival of Islamic Sciences' (Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din) by Persian scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, reproduced by hand in Arabic in 1106.
"People often call our department the book hospital�and in a way they are right," says Mevludin Kost - one of the library's four book conservators who specialise in antiquarian books and manuscripts.
"Some of the specimens we are working with are nearly a thousand years old. You can imagine what sort of damage such manuscripts have suffered�especially if we take into account all the wars, diseases, floods, natural disasters and fires this city has experienced," he adds.
The library has attracted a lot of attention from scholars, students and tourists alike.
"Since the (new) library building was opened we have registered about 5,000 new members," says public information officer Sehsena Djulovic. "As far as the use of the library building is concerned, between 50 and 70 people use our collections, our reading rooms and other services on daily basis."


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