Türkiye’s ‘book hospital’ is restoring rare manuscripts, one page at a time

Centuries of wisdom lie stacked on tables lined side by side in this historical building. Bibliosmia – the moldy smell of old books and manuscripts – hangs heavy in the air.

Hunched over frayed and weather-beaten pages are groups of experts engaged in one of the most painstaking and delicate jobs – restoring damaged manuscripts and books.

All are very rare, some are millennia old. And all of them are priceless.

At Istanbul’s Rami Library – inaugurated in early 2023 – old manuscripts and rare printed works are being given a new lease of life by Sifahane, which translates to ‘hospital for books’, under the Manuscripts Institution of Türkiye. The library is housed in an 18th-century building and was used as a military barrack earlier.

Dr. Nil Baydar, the head of the Book Hospital, tells TRT World why the work they do is like surgery.

“Conservation is a profession like medicine. The health of the manuscript is the most essential element,” Baydar says. “Work is carried out in a way that does not spoil them, but to preserve them…this is done in line with global standards.”

Founded in 2010, the Manuscripts Institution of Türkiye is located in Istanbul, but it also has offices in Ankara and Konya.

Multi-nation, multi-lingual project

Among the manuscripts and books brought here for restoration are from different manuscript libraries working under the institution and museums across Türkiye, particularly from Istanbul.

Besides Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, books in other other languages like Hebrew and Russian are being restored at Rami Library.

Other nations – including Lebanon – also send manuscripts to be restored at the Sifahane, which also gets restoration work from the Süleymaniye Library, one of the world’s biggest repositories of Islamic manuscripts.

Sifahane is also among the top in Europe in terms of number of professionals – with a team of up to 80 experts, including chemical engineers, chemists, and biologists. It also uses the latest technology in book restoration.

Experts at the library said that very rare copies of the Holy Quran dating back to the early periods of Islam have been restored at the library.

One of the rare books restored was the ‘Kitab al-'llal wa-ma’rifat al-rijal’, a 1069-year-old book on the science of Hadith by the influential Muslim jurist and theologian Ahmad ibn Hanbal. The Süleymaniye Library has the only copy of the book that exists in the world.

How it is done

Restoration and conservation is a laborious job, experts at Sifahane tell TRT World, giving details of the process that goes into saving each page.

Manuscripts – made of organic materials such as paper, leather, and parchment – are damaged over time due to various reasons, including humidity, fungal growth, insects and natural aging.

After a detailed documentation, the first task of the experts is cleaning – removing the dust, dirt, oil and stains on the manuscripts.

Working in the controlled environment of the library where the temperature is regulated, the experts apply natural adhesives specially prepared with wheat starch on the tiny tears in the manuscripts.

Then, hand-made Japanese paper with suitable thickness is glued on this area and pressed. The same process is repeated on the other side of the paper. The pages that have been restored are later bound together in book form. Sometimes, work on a single book can take months.

“There are many factors that destroy the artefacts,” says Baydar, who has been working in the institution for several years.

“The organic materials age naturally over time. Then there is also an external factor. Those who read the books may not always be sensitive (and careful).”

Mebrure Ipek Yuksel, one of the experts, says the restoration process starts with documentation, “which is the most important stage” when they learn about the material and technique used for writing.

She says they seek help and learn from their more experienced colleagues as they go about their job.

“This is a gratifying job. There are manuscripts I finished in 15 days and also the one that took me two years,” Yuksel tells TRT World as she works on a page to fix holes made by insects.

Experts also reveal that fixing “old repairs from previous treatments” done in the past is also part of Sifahane’s work.

“Professional conservation studies in Türkiye began in 2012 when the Manuscript Institution of Türkiye was established,” says Baydar.

“Actually, some work started in the 1950s, but they were not very professional. Of course, technology has advanced. In addition, the budget allocated to this work has also increased. Therefore, our responsibilities are greater now.”