Egypt State Information Service

Thanks to early interest in an ancient Egyptian civilization, the world came to know much about pharoanic papyri that were written in ancient Egyptian, Greek and Coptic languages. In contrast, little has been yet known about Arabic papyri that came to be widely used following the Arab conquest of Egypt As the Arabic language was the medium of the new incoming religion and rulers, Arabic papyri were used in a wide range of purposes including government correspondance and communications, endowment and donation documents and contracts, in addition to poetry and prose writings and even magic spells. The bulk of crude papyrus sheets were manufactured in Egypt and then sent for use in other parts of the Islamic state, such as the Levant, Iraq and Andalusia.

Discovery
The first Arabic papyri were discovered as early as 1825 AD and first published by French orientalist Sylvestre de Sasse in the Scholars Journal. These were found in Saqqara within a huge package of papyri. Since then, there had been a race in Europe and America to acquire these papyri, in view of their historical value. Austria was the most fortunate collector of Arabic papyri. The Austrian collection, comprising 100,000 papyri, of which 40,000 were written Arabic and the rest in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Persian, Aramaic, Hebrew etc., is absolutely the largest in the world. This was commonly known as the collection Archiduke liz who bought it from Austrian orientalist Karpaschik and deposited it with the Austrian Museum. Besides Austria, Arab papyri are widespread in many other country of Europe and America.

It is noteworthy that German orientalist Bernard Moritz who served as the first director of the Egyptian National Library (Darul Kotob) (1898-1911) managed to acquire a rare collection of such papyri dating back to several epochs. This collection consists of about 4000 Arab papyri found in several Egyptian towns. Egypt's collection of papyri is absolutely the rarest and most important because they complement other international collections. Although these are not locerated, yet they mostly need careful, meticulous and methodical maintenance.

Indexing
The Egyptian National library, is currently undertaking a huge multi-phase project for maintaining and indexing Arabic papyri. Prominent German orientalist Adolf Gruhman has already studied and published 784 papyri of this collection. The study was made in ten volumes, of which the first was published in 1934, with other five following and four under publication.

Two years ago, the National Library initiated an all-inclusive index of the Arabic papyri collection including both published and so far unpublished.

The Egyptian National Library and Documentation House is the nation's memory and custodian of its heritage of science, art, literature and culture. It comprises huge treasures of manuscripts, papyri, encyclopedias, reference books and periodicals in Arabic and foreign languages, as well as a large number of audio tapes, records and musical notes.

Ali Mubarak, minister of education in 1870 was the originator of the national library, having recognized the danger of leaving unattended and unused Egyptian books and manuscripts scattered in schools, mosques and elementary religious teaching units (Kuttabs) .
The proposition appealed to Khedive Ismail, who was fascinated by western civilization. It was his dream to create an Egyptian national library that could vie with its counterpart in Paris. The national library was later opened to the public on September 24, 1870.

Ali Mubarak
Ali Mubarak, the pioneer of educational awakening in Egypt, was born in a village in the Nile Delta in 1824. When he graduated from the engineering college as the first of his class, he was chosen to study military science in a private military school, established in France by Muhammed Ali. In 1850, Mubarak returned to Egypt where he started his career as a teacher at the Military School. He later took up various governmental jobs. He crowned his career with the creation of the Egyptian national library.

Initially, the library contained 30,000 manuscripts and printed books collected from mosques, the old Khedive library and ministries of waqfs (endowments), public works and education libraries. As the number of books grew too big to be accommodated in the narrow space of the library, a larger building was contemplated. A new building comprising the Khedivi library and the Islamic Antiquities House (later the Islamic Art Museum) in Bab al-Khalq square, downtown Cairo was completed in 1889. The National Library was relocated to this new building in 1903 and was opened to the public in early 1904.

Acquisitions of the library grew as a result of procurements, donations and exchanges of books and the mandatory practice of depositing copies of books published in Egypt with the National Library.
Book inventory at the National library has tremendously own as a result of donations and endowments of huge libraries especially during the Thirties of the past century, the Bab al-Khalq building became too narrow to hold this huge amount of books. Hence, it became necessary to relocate it to a wider place to accomodate the contents of the Library that reached in 1970, about 559515 books in Arabic, 90,000 manuscripts and 7,105 Arabic and foreign periodicals. In 1973, the Egyptian Library was relocated to a new building lying on Cornish en-Nil which was officially inaugurated in 1977.

Library Components
Following recent developments, the National Library contains 15 large halls of a total area of about 6,000 sq.m including three for the national documentation house.
Following is a brief description of main halls:
* Periodicals Hall: It includes a huge heritage of periodicals dealing with different branches of science, art and literature. They contain premier issues of many journals, magazines and newspapers. It has a card index of all periodicals, old, modern, current or extinct in Arabic or foreign langauages kept since the inception of the library.
The hall also contains three published indices; index of Arabic periodicals up to 1959; current Arabic publications from 1960 to 1974, and index of current Arabic and foreign periodicals.

* Main reading hall contains large indices of all the books available in the library. Each borrower is allowed two books at a time, while MA or Ph.D students are allowed more. The hall provides photocopy services for visitors.

* The music listening hall comprises a great number of records, audio cassettes and musical notes, in addition to large numbers of books, reference books and encyclopedias on different types of music, as well as biographies and works of world famous composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. The music library contains a great number of old Arabic songs and musical compositions by prominent famous old singers and composers like Abdo al-Hamouli and Yosef al-Manyalawi. Most importantly, the hall provides a music service for the blind and CDs of famous world classics by Shakespeare, Dickens, Milton, Hemingway etc..

*Art hall comprises a large library of most recent books and reference books in different specilities. The hall also comprises a permanent plastic arts exhibition.
* Manuscript hall contains manuscripts, papyri, patch works and objects d'art kept in closed shelves. The library contains 55,000 scripts.
* Humanities hall contains a huge number of reference books, including 5,000 in Arabic and 3,000 in European languages. This hall also comprises books on Egyptology, description of Egypt collection, publications of the old and new national libraries, old library indices and book depository bulletins.
* Donated libraries hall comprises private libraries donated by Egyptian celebrities and prominent men of letters and intellectuals.
* Private libraries hall comprises a number of private acquisitions of royal palaces and those of the members of the royal family owing to the National Library following the July 1952 Revolution. These libraries comprise unique acquisitions of Arabic and foreign books and illustrated maps.
In addition, there are halls for science and technology, microfilms of premiere publications, periodicals and UN publications.
* The multi-media hall contains, in addition to Internet access monitors, CDs on all branches of knowledge. There is also an indexing programme to facilitate access to all topics of research. Besides, there is a microfische reader that contains 851 titles of topics since the invention of painting in early 19th Century. The Library has recently launched its Internet website:
www.dareLkotob.org