Ahlulbayt News Agency: Israeli soldiers were accompanied by antiquarian groups to steal all the documents and manuscripts from Palestinian villages and towns, according to a report published by Al Jazeera, excerpts of which are as follows:
Shock and questioning, mixed with condemnation and anger, were the sentiments expressed on social networks by Moroccans opposed to the normalization of relations with Israel, when the national library of Israel posted a rare image of a Moroccan manuscript dating back 10 centuries on its website and page.
What increased their anger and discontent was that the director of the Moroccan archives re-published the photo of the manuscript on his page, quoting from the same library.
Although this was not the first incident of its kind to occur in a library affiliated with the Zionist occupiers, it has once again raised the issue of the loss and theft of valuable manuscripts from their countries of origin and found elsewhere.
Abdel-Samad Belkabeer, a Moroccan university professor, says that the theft of this valuable Moroccan manuscript is not unrelated to the global Zionist movement that seeks to humiliate nations by any means possible.
In the land of Palestine, this Zionist movement seeks to demonstrate that it has a right of ownership to the land and everything in it, even if it takes on a cultural appearance, he adds.
Ahmed Weihman, the head of the National Observatory for Normalization, fears that the manuscript is the same Moroccan manuscript that was written in gold by Sultan Abul Hassan of the Moroccan Beni Mirin dynasty, and that he kept in the Al-Aqsa Mosque and sent as a gift to Saladin.
There are many other Moroccan documents in the library of the Israeli occupiers, which only means the theft of the cultural and civilizational heritage of the Moroccans, which calls all Moroccan authorities to account, he says.
On what can be done to recover these manuscripts, he says that it is Morocco’s duty to try to recover these rare antiquities, even if it has to buy them because they are so valuable. He emphasizes that if such a move is made, international law will also support Morocco.
Weihman calls on the relevant institutions in Morocco to present an urgent international petition to recover what has been looted from the archives of various parts in the Moroccans Neighborhood of al-Quds (during the 1967 Six-Day War).
Rizwan Amr, director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque’s Centre for Manuscripts and Islamic Heritage, says once you visit this library or browse its archives, you will be shocked by the sheer volume of Arabic and Islamic manuscripts in it.
How did these remarkable manuscripts, unprecedented in the Islamic world, end up in libraries controlled by the Israeli regime occupiers, he wonders.
The Quds manuscripts in particular and those of Palestine in general, as influenced by the Crusades and changes in the political regime in Palestine, were also influenced by the fluctuations in the political situation in Palestine and the Israeli occupation, he states.
He adds that the Israeli occupiers tried various methods to collect these manuscripts, some through purchase and some by soldiers who invaded the area during the 1948 and 1967 wars.
These soldiers were accompanied by groups of antiquarians to steal all the documents and manuscripts from Palestinian villages and towns, as well as mosques and libraries. All these manuscripts were transferred to the archives of the occupiers, including the national library.
This theft is not limited to a single copy of the Quran, he says, adding that there are collections of amazing copies of the Quran brought to Palestine from various places in Morocco, Syria and elsewhere.
“These manuscripts were kept in Palestinian libraries but are now on display in the Israeli national library.”
He adds, “We found in the library manuscripts called ‘The Creation of the World’, which are treatises on ideas attributed to Ibn Taymiyyah. According to the researcher who found it, no other copy of this book exists in the world.”
He notes that there are very important manuscripts that have yet to be discovered in these libraries, because the Israelis display only a small part of these books. “We know that there are at least 40,000 Arabic and Islamic manuscripts in Israeli regime’s libraries.”
According to Amr, major disasters “have befallen our manuscript heritage, documents and past, as well as our land and people. These manuscripts are now imprisoned in the libraries of occupiers.”
He adds, “We have a policy at the Al-Aqsa Mosque that we try to get access to all the manuscripts that are dedicated to the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the libraries around it. We are trying to locate them, catalogue them and recover them. So, we are in contact with the families of families living in al-Quds to return this manuscript to the Islamic Relief Society to be preserved and cared for at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Manuscript Repair Center.”
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