Manuscripts · a Light

A wall in Sana'a gave up a paper hoard in 1972

In 1972 workers repairing the roof of the Great Mosque of Sana'a in Yemen broke into the space between the ceiling and the roof and found it packed with old parchment and paper. The material was swept into sacks and left on a staircase. A conservation project funded by the German foreign ministry ran from 1980 to 1989, with the conservator Ursula Dreibholz sorting and flattening fragments, and it recovered tens of thousands of pieces from what had served as the mosque's store for worn out copies of scripture, which are set aside rather than destroyed. Among them are some of the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts known anywhere, kept safe by being walled up and forgotten.

Great Mosque of Sana'a, Yemen · 1972