Dubai: El Escorial Library and the Juma Al Majid Centre for Culture and Heritage are to sign a memorandum of understanding to preserve manuscripts.

El Escorial Library, located in central Spain in San Lorenzo de El Escorial near Madrid, houses more than 4,700 manuscripts in numerous languages and 40,000 printed books. It was founded by Philip II who envisioned it as a centre for studies in the late 16th century.

The Juma Al Majid Centre for Culture and Heritage’s goal is to preserve the heritage of humanity regardless of its origin, whether religious or historical, by conserving, restoring and saving manuscripts digitally and indexing them to bring them closer to researchers and scholars, said Bassam Daghestani, Head of the Manuscript Department at the centre.

“We went to Spain in September last year. Juma Al Majid and I met Bishop Juan Luis in El Escorial Library to discuss cooperation with them regarding ancient manuscripts,” said Daghestani. “We discussed the expertise we have to offer in terms of restoring, conserving and indexing manuscripts and we invited him to visit our centre in Dubai.”

Under the agreement, a team from the Juma Al Majid Centre will visit El Escorial Library to make copies of manuscripts. One copy will be left behind in El Escorial and the other will be indexed at the Juma Al Majid Centre.

Bishop Juan Luis paid a visit to the centre recently and praised the centre’s conservation, restoration and processing of manuscripts operations. El Escorial Library will carry out a study to list the different factors to be taken into consideration to start collaborating with the Juma Al Majid Centre. “As soon as we get the approval from El Escorial Library, we will start working with them,” said Daghestani.

The Juma Al Majid Centre for Culture and Heritage, which was established in 1991 by Juma Al Majid in Dubai, is considered the centre for cultural reference. It aims at making intellectual and heritage material easily accessible for researchers and scholars while protecting human heritage.

 Maria Botros is a trainee at Gulf News