Conservation intern Nada Ben Bechria at the National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts in Raqqada, Tunisia, repairs a paper manuscript leaf. Photo credit: NLPCPM.

Collections from the library of the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia preserve records of one of the world’s earliest Muslim scholastic communities alongside some of the world’s oldest Islamic manuscripts. Kairouan’s library also provides unique evidence of early Islamic bookbinding technologies, as well as insights into how those craft techniques moved through the medieval world. However, these manuscripts face urgent conservation challenges.

Sewing a new endband. Photo credit: NLPCPM.

Hidden Stories has partnered with Tunisia’s National Heritage Institute and the University of Hamburg's Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) to support the continuation of the Kairouan Manuscript Project (KMP)'s early career conservator training program at the National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts (NLPCPM) in Raqqada (Kairouan, Tunisia). Under the mentorship of the NLPCPM’s senior conservators and networking with the international community of the Kairouan Manuscript Project, the early career conservators are training to become the next generation of Tunisian caretakers for Kairouan’s historic manuscripts and documents.

For updates on this project, please see our Hidden Stories newsletters.