World Bulletin/News Desk

The Yemeni Manuscripts Department are restorating 20,000 Ottoman scripts to a digital library, with many of them written in Ottoman, Turkish Arabic and Persian script. The works that are held at the Yemeni Manuscripts Department in Old Sana'a, are being rebound and restored.

With many of them dating back hundres of years and many of them having being destroyed by insects has contributed to a great length of time being spent on them. The organisations represntative Elham Haydra, “Our professional team are looking after this page by page. If necessary, they will also be converted to digital format to be protected”.

Looking after the manuscripts with great care, Haydra also said that “we have three different libraries that contain 20,000 handwritten scripts. Our first library has 3,935 works, the second has 13,000. The remainder have not been restored yet, and not organised”.

The restoration and the cataloging of the completed works will be available on digital copies after its completed and finalised.

The handwritten scripts are displayed in a hall, and are open to visitors as part of the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA). The works that are in Ottoman Turkish that is written in Arabic are being catlogued by the Sana University Turkish  Language and Translation Department along with TIKA and have begun to be archived