Library testing to see whether it has a Koran bound in human flesh
CLEVELAND — Cleveland Public Library has a book in its collection that has long been rumored to be bound by human skin. Now it’s trying to find out for sure.
An edition of the Koran that the library acquired in 1941 has a catalog description that says the book is bound by human skin, as well as an additional pencil notation stating so. But the library has never known for sure if that is correct.
“Our book is not validated, but we’re pretty doubtful that it is,” says John Skrtic, chief of special projects and collections at the Cleveland Public Library. “But we are going to have our book tested, just in case the question ever comes up again, so we’ll have a definite answer about whether this book really is wrapped in human skin.”
Over the past decades, The Plain Dealer and other news sources have mentioned the Cleveland book. The question arose again this year when a New York Times reporter inquired about the book to research a story about a similar book at Harvard University. In March, Harvard said it had removed the binding of a 19th-century French book.
About a decade ago, Harvard confirmed that the book “Des Destinées de L’âme” by Arsène Houssaye was bound in human skin. The binding was taken from the back of a woman who was a psychiatric patient in a French hospital and died of a stroke in the 1800s. Harvard said it made the decision to replace the binding after ethical concerns were raised about the origin and history of the book it has held since the 1930s.
Until recently, the Cleveland book had been available to view in-house as reference material but not to check out. The library said it had no photos in its archives to share of the book, and would not say who is testing the binding or when they expect final results.
The religious text was published in 1867, but the original binding was removed and replaced. The book’s colophon states it was “formally the property of the East Arab chief Bushiri ibn Salim, who revolted against the Germans in 1888.”
Library records do not say if Salim did the rebinding himself or if it occurred after his death. Records also do not say how many others owned the book with this binding version.
The Cleveland Public Library says that it “has long believed the undocumented claim in the dealer’s catalog, regarding its binding to be false, and finds the claim sensationalistic and deeply offensive.”
Still, the book’s binding is being tested via peptide mass fingerprinting to determine the exact material.
While a shocking method of binding books, human skin is suspected to have been used for at least 51 books, according to the Anthropodermic Book Project, a team of curators, librarians and scientists looking to dispel the mystery behind these books.
Of the 51 books identified by the group, 18 have been confirmed to be human, and 14 have been proven not to be human.
If the testing confirms the Cleveland Public Libraries Koran binging is human skin, Skrtic believes the library will follow the same path charted by Harvard and unbind the copy. In addition, Skrtic says the library “will engage leaders in the local Muslim community to chart an ethical path forward.”