Beginnings

Literary and scientific activity began in the Islamic world in the late 8th century. It was helped by the manufacture of paper, introduced from the Far East. The libraries of the Eastern Roman Empire were used as models in building and were fitted out in a lavish manner. They appear to have influenced Christian libraries. They transmitted Eastern and Greek literature to western Europe. With the conquest of Persia, Greek and Persian literatures were translated into Arabic. There began a thousand years of building Muslim libraries.

Books were presented and collections were bequeathed to a mosque in the city of the donor. The reasons were to preserve them and to make them available to scholars. Where there was more than one mosque in a city, the recipient one was generally the chief mosque, known as the congregational mosque. Many libraries began as Quaric libraries. Multiple copies of the Quran – in whole or in part – were presented to new mosque libraries. The largest donations usually came from reigning monarchs. Over the centuries, ordinary people donated copies of the Quran and books on other subjects. Mosque libraries contributed much to Muslim learning and scholarship.

(This page was updated in December 2012.)