Why libraries are booming in the UAE, and House of Wisdom is leading the way

Dubai: Walk into House of Wisdom in Sharjah on any weekday this summer and you won't find the hushed, half-empty reading room you might expect. Instead, there are final-year high-school students hunched over coursework, remote workers tapping away on laptops, packs of twenty-something Gen Zers scanning the shelves for their next read, and children spilling out of a summer workshop. The library, it turns out, is not dying. It is having a moment.

For years, the narrative around public libraries has been one of quiet decline, dusty archives abandoned by a generation raised on screens. But at House of Wisdom, that story doesn't hold. A decade ago, few would have called the local library a destination, let alone a place to hang out or get work done. Today, it has become something else entirely: a rare third space that asks nothing of you - no purchase, no subscription, no obligation to consume, in order to belong. Libraries worldwide are enjoying something of a golden age, and in the UAE, House of Wisdom is leading the charge.

"I think the biggest barrier that learners and creatives faced was connection, the lack of a third space to bring like-minded people together," says Ali Abdulaziz Alblooshi, Executive, Cultural and Literary at House of Wisdom. "It's not just about offering accessibility, but about creating the ways to actually use what's accessible. That's the approach here - a third space for creators, for students, for artists, for writers to come and simply do the work."

Alblooshi's connection to the library runs deep. As a student at the American University of Sharjah, he would visit House of Wisdom almost weekly, losing hours in its literature, fiction and poetry sections. That early devotion to the written word still colours the way he talks about the space today - his enthusiasm is unmistakable as he leads a tour through the building. He is, fittingly, a published author himself, with a collection of poems to his name. For him, no two days at work are ever quite the same.

In an age of shrinking attention spans, an ancient idea is thriving

In a world where attention spans are shrinking and reading itself is migrating to screens how does something as old as the library, a concept nearly 5,000 years in the making, survive into 2026 and beyond?

For Alblooshi, the answer lies in redefining what a library is for. Modern libraries are open to everyone, free of charge, and no longer built around books alone. They host seminars and classes, offer meeting rooms and study spaces, and have quietly become something else too - a workplace, and a rare pocket of calm in an increasingly noisy world.

"I find people sketching, start-up founders holding meetings, artists, writers working on a draft, students, people reading, a new workshop happening, these are people who carry a passion, who carry a drive, and House of Wisdom activates that," he said.

It is little surprise that House of Wisdom has found such fertile ground in Sharjah. The emirate has long positioned itself as a cultural capital, building its identity around the written word and championing the preservation of book culture across the Arab world, most visibly through the Sharjah International Book Fair. UNESCO named Sharjah the Cultural Capital of the Arab World in 1998, and the Capital of Islamic Culture in 2014. House of Wisdom itself was inaugurated on December 9, 2020 by the Ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, commissioned to mark the emirate's tenure as UNESCO World Book Capital in 2019.

The name is not incidental. The original House of Wisdom, in 8th-century Baghdad, was a storied Abbasid-era academy and grand library, a global centre for translating and advancing science, mathematics and philosophy at the height of the Islamic Golden Age, before its destruction in 1258. Alblooshi is careful to draw the distinction, Sharjah's House of Wisdom is not an attempt to recreate that institution, but to honour its legacy.

"The House of Wisdom in Baghdad ignited such a significant movement in literary history, in translation, in civilisation and coexistence and cultural exchange. And Sharjah, in the current world, is almost the reincarnation of that, if not the evolution of it. Sharjah has been recognised time and again for its cultural and literary standing. It continues to prove that through the authors, researchers and pioneers from across the world who gather here at House of Wisdom to share knowledge, to encourage one another, and to further their work.”

Built to be more than a library 

Legacy and ambition aside, House of Wisdom still has to earn its keep the old-fashioned way, through what it actually offers. The library holds more than 100,000 physical books and a further 15 million digital titles. For a library to remain relevant today, Alblooshi argues, it has to adapt and that starts with range. House of Wisdom stocks titles across virtually every genre, in Arabic, English and more than ten other languages, including German, Persian, Japanese, Urdu, French, Spanish, Turkish, Russian and Italian, alongside specialised formats such as Braille. 

The collection spans books, journals, magazines, e-books and research papers, built with one goal in mind: making sure every community in Sharjah can see itself reflected on the shelves.

A building designed to be lived In

Content is only half the story. The building itself does a great deal of the work. Designed by the architectural firm Foster + Partners, the library is flooded with natural light, House of Wisdom offers seating for every mood and purpose, individual desks, group tables, study pods, private rooms and quiet reading nooks, including dedicated nooks for women seeking extra privacy. 

A coffee shop and café are tucked into the design too, less an afterthought than an invitation to stay. At the heart of the 12,000-square-metre structure sits a garden, serene and deliberately woven into the architecture, blurring the line between indoors and out.

"The way the library is structured, the architecture, is meant to blend nature, community and workspaces, but also privacy, to give yourself some quiet time, private rooms. The idea is to create a space where people are comfortable spending hours to work, to learn, to pursue the catalogue of books, to read, and to keep coming back to feel inspired. The library should be a place where people feel productive, creative and inspired," Alblooshi says.

Among the building's most striking features is a spiral monument resembling an unfurled scroll, created by artist Gerry Judah to mark Sharjah's designation as UNESCO World Book Capital. Seen from above, the building's exterior takes the shape of a graduation cap. "Both of these elements symbolise knowledge and continuous learning," Alblooshi notes.

House of Wisdom's ambitions, too, extend well beyond the shelves. This is less a place to borrow a book and leave. Over the summer, it runs a children's camp; throughout the year, it hosts talks and seminars with prominent writers from across the region, alongside workshops, classes and events.

Where the rare books live

Tucked away in a temperature-controlled room, the library also safeguards its most valuable holdings: rare books and manuscripts on Islamic art and architecture, housed in what is known as the Wisdom Vault. The collection was a personal donation from Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah, and includes texts, books and manuscripts dating back to the 17th century. Among the rare titles is the private library of Richard Ettinghausen, the German-American historian of Islamic art, featuring research on art from across the Islamic world, including Iran, India, Spain and Turkey.

"We are not trying to compete with malls or attractions."

House of Wisdom doesn't measure its success the way you might expect. Not by books checked out, memberships sold, or footfall through the door but by the role it plays in people's lives. "We are not trying to compete with malls or attractions," Alblooshi sais, plainly.

Public libraries have become popular third spaces largely because they ask nothing in return, no barrier beyond simply showing up. It's neutral ground, one of the few left, where everyone gets the same shelf, the same chair, the same light, regardless of income or background.

Alblooshi believes libraries will keep thriving for a simple reason, people want an escape from their digital lives, a distraction-free space that inspires rather than an algorithm or AI that merely feeds them. To him, House of Wisdom remains one of the last places where discovery still happens organically, not curated by a feed, but stumbled upon on a shelf.

"I don't think the popularity of libraries contradicts our rapidly developing world, I think it feeds off it," he says. "It provides a counterbalance. The more we progress and develop, the more we need to understand how and why we're developing, and that can only happen through cultural understanding and exchange. The more civilisations advance, the more they need to remind themselves why they keep advancing."

It's that instinct to pause, to reconnect, to make sense of a world moving faster than most people can process that keeps bringing people back through House of Wisdom's doors. perhaps that's the clearest proof the library isn't going anywhere, on any given afternoon in Sharjah, someone will walk in meaning to stay an hour, and end up staying much longer than they planned.