MHC making effort to collect, preserve rare manuscripts

On the occasion of Arab Manuscript Day on April 4, the Ministry of Heritage and Culture (MHC) said that it is making intensive efforts to collect, restore, preserve and catalogue significant and rare manuscripts in the country.

In a bid to preserve the national treasure, the ministry not only restores rare manuscripts but also preserves them in a digital format so that they are not lost forever. The Department of Manuscripts at MHC maintains more than 5,000 manuscripts in various fields of science.

It preserves, maintains, and takes care of them to ensure their existence for years to come in their original form, given the knowledge and intellectual importance of Omani manuscript, and constitute a knowledge, sci- entific and cultural asset of great importance and great prestige.

Historically, manuscripts have a cultural value and intellectual knowledge as a historical source of great importance, and one of the important channels for knowledge of historical facts and knowledge values, because they contain science, news, events and ethics, in addition to reflecting their own age of the scientific, intellectual, social and cultural features. To restore and preserve the manuscripts, the ministry has a library, which is lightproof and temperature controlled. It has started digitisation process of the entire collection. The department has bought two machines for digitisation, each costing about RO16,000.

Eventually, the collection is made available online so that it helps researchers and historians to promote further research and create awareness about Oman’s rich legacy. The department has rare manuscripts on literature, medicine, chemistry, hadith, Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy, astronomy and more. The process is on to catalogue and index all manuscripts.

The manuscript department continuously makes efforts to look out for manuscripts and urges people to come forward and get their manuscript archived or scanned so that a copy of it is preserved in a digital format and not lost forever.

For this, the ministry from time to time sends its personnel in the interiors to educate people about the significance of preserving and archiving rare handwritten books that have been with the Omani families for generations.

According to ministry estimate, there are more than 30,000 significant and rare manuscripts in the country but only about 5,000 have so far been restored and archived at the Manuscripts Department at MHC.

“They are encouraged to give it to the ministry but a majority of them refuse to part with the manuscript or even acknowledge that they have it. Some manuscript owners demand so much money that the ministry cannot afford.”

The department has established several exhibitions in universities and colleges to acquaint students with the importance of manuscripts and how to preserve them properly.

In the field of printing and publishing, the manuscript department has been able to publish a number of new titles this year, for example Djami’ Ibn Baraka and Djami’ Ibn Jaafar.

There are more than 30,000 significant, rare manuscripts in the country but only about 5,000 have so far been restored and archived