Under rubble and rain, Gaza women try to save rare books in centuries-old library
Raneem Mousa is part of a group of Palestinian women volunteers working to save rare books and manuscripts at the destroyed Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City
Ahmed Dremly reports in Middle East Eye on 7 May 2026:
Raneem Mousa lifts a heavy volume from a shattered shelf inside the centuries-old library of Gaza’s Great Omari Mosque. With a small brush, she gently sweeps away layers of dust before passing the book to a colleague, who wipes it clean with a soft cloth. Together, they carry it to what they call the “safest corner” – a small space reserved for the volumes they have managed to salvage.
It is a painstaking, improvised effort to rescue rare books and manuscripts from a historic collection devastated by Israeli bombardment during the genocide in Gaza.
“The library was filled with shrapnel, rubble, and dung from stray animals taking shelter,” Mousa, 35, told Middle East Eye. “Hundreds of shattered books and torn papers were scattered on the ground, covered in stones.”
A master’s graduate in Arabic language, she is among a group of Palestinian women volunteers from the Eyes on Heritage Institute in Gaza City who have launched what they describe as a “first-aid” mission to preserve what remains.
“We began by removing stones and cleaning the space,” she said. “Without specialised conservation tools and cleaning equipment, such as alcohol, we relied on the simplest methods – dry cloths, basic brushes, and air-drying damp books.”
The Great Omari Mosque, Gaza’s largest and oldest, stands on a site that dates back millennia – from a Philistine temple, then a Roman temple, to a church, before its conversion into a mosque in the 13th century. Its library, the third-largest in Palestine, once held around 20,000 volumes, including 187 manuscripts, some of which were centuries old.
During the two-year genocide in Gaza, Israeli forces bombed the mosque at least three times, leaving it in ruins and its library severely damaged.
Still, Mousa and her colleagues hope to salvage that heritage despite the ongoing siege, displacement and lack of resources. “This library has an educational and historical value that underscores the Palestinian historical right to their home,” Mousa said. “The condition of the manuscripts was deteriorating rapidly due to months of exposure to humidity, rain and fungi, leading to the erosion of pages,” she added. “Every time a page crumbles in my hand, I feel a pang of guilt, as if a witness to history is dying.”